So it occurred to me that I never told you guys about my new job.  If you hadn't been watching last season, I lost my job with Direct Energy in 2019, my last day was December 18th.  I was told at the beginning of November that it was coming, just didn't have an exact date.   Direct Energy paid me a healthy severance of 7 months of salary, plus bonus, plus a medical stipend.  After 13 years, I was ready to go and I can't be mad at them for laying me off.

In the ensuing months, Direct Energy laid off another 6,000 in June and then another 7,000 in August.  They've also been sold out to a competitor.  So I think I got out just in time.

My initial plan when I found out I was being laid off was that I would take January and February off just to recuperate from 13 years of burn-out. 

Well, you know what happened at the end of February.  But I had already started job hunting and was starting to get calls for interviews.  At the beginning of March, I was hearing about this weird virus and places like Italy were shutting down.  I decided that since I hadn't seen my parents in 18 months, I should make a trip down. I jumped on National's app and got a car for the next day and drove down to Miami the next day. I stayed with them for a week and every day I was getting 5 to 6 calls a day and setting up interviews for my return.  By the end of the week all hell was breaking loose, NYC was shutting down. By the time I got home to Pittsburgh, all of my interviews had been canceled. 

I got back and we hunkered down for the next few months, but I kept applying to places.  Thankfully, I was also getting unemployment and the extra $600 during this time.

End of May, I got a call about a project manager job for a local municipality.  After a few rounds of video interviews I got the job as Acting Director of I.T. and Project Manager for the Municipality of Bethel Park PA. My job is to update and bring they Municipality up to date and move their technology into the cloud.  I'm enjoying it and they're keeping me quite busy.  They never really had an I.T. presence prior to me and there is a lot of fixing that needs to happen. I finally get to build an I.T. department the way I think it should be built.

Right now the position is a contract to hire (hence the "Acting" part of my title) and I have a strong reason to believe they will make me full time in January.

So yeah, things are pretty secure for me now.

 

That is awesome Drew. Way to go, wishing you all the best for even more in the future as you become permanent.!

Good luck!  In these uncertain times it is good to have a good job.  Hope it becomes permanent.

Congrats!