A couple of nights ago, 5 friends and I went for a meal in Brussels. We were young, crazy and expat together once, and that creates a bond. We like to meet up once in a while.
We all moved on since that first job. Three of us are employees, three of us went freelance.
One of the employee friends had gotten his notice recently. Funnily enough, soon after his soon-to-be ex-employer asked him to do a substantial job in Croatia, so he made them an offer … freelance, and for a decent amount of money. Typical organisational cock-up: oops, fired the wrong guy.
Another one has finally obtained his dream job at a bank, but things are looking uncertain. The director of the department has just been promoted away, and they don’t know what’s happening, exactly. He is the most recently hired employee.
My third employee friend is a consultant. His job is safe, because he’s working on integration for the bank’s merger – which will take at least a few years.
One of my freelancer friends has an ultra-safe and ultra-boring job managing tests for a bank backend system. The backend system developers generate lots of bugs, so his contract is extended year after year.
The other freelancer witnessed the crash and burn of Kaupthing live from their front office. Even before that, he’d started a company with a friend, and they’d developed a product for financial quantitative analysis. They’ve just landed a good development contract, with large-ish license payments coming up in 2010. For them, the question is whether, and when, the customer will pay. He reckons that if they pass 2010, they’re really up and running.
And then there’s me, who remained on the technical side of things, and left banking behind 5 years ago. My aim is to keep it interesting, and somehow i had trouble seeing that happening in a bank, at the time. Not sure it’s the soundest choice, financially, but then money was never my main priority (though living comfortably is an important secondary goal, obviously).
It’s funny, how one evening can paint a picture of an economy that is shaking and cracking at the seams. Nothing stays the same, certainties erode, and lives change. So far, everyone manages to make it work, more or less.