More on work and jobs and #li

The flurry of activity on LinkedIn, as folks made a batch of new connections, gave a clue that there was news. Later, the Alliance@IBM/CWA web site started reporting that a IBM was going through a series of layoffs. "Resource action" is the neologism that's used to when they're trying to get you to believe that it's about something more important than the fact that you're losing your job.

via Catch-22

Yesterday, I received a note from a friend who'd said that the Dark Angel of Unemployment had visited her office area, but had spared her.
Stateside IBM job cuts may be the result of a continuing trend to move work to other countries, something that's not new for IBM. The company, from the selection of its name back in the 20s (after an antecedent part of the company in Canada initially adopted the name). Again, that's probably more interesting to those who didn't lose their jobs this week.
Of course, anyone who's working knows that you always need to be prepared to look for a job. Even when you've landed one, it's only a matter of time before you'll want to or have to start looking again. That's why sites such as LinkedIn have become so popular. It's a way to stay connected with people, to find out about new companies, and see what kinds of work people are finding. Some former co-workers tend to seek and find work in the same general areas of business and technology. Others have left all that to start quilting, antique, or arts and crafts businesses. A few try to stay low and hope not to be noticed.

The advantage in these times generally rests with the person offering the job.  For a variety of reasons, such the volume of resumes received, automated systems that you use to apply for a job, or just a lack of courtesy, most people or companies offering jobs don't even acknowledge your application, let alone inform you that you didn't get the job. A few might make some public comment, such as this post on the Greater Grafton site, How not to apply for a job.
There's a lot of things at odds today - job seekers who are intellectually lazy (see Seth Godin's repost of On self determination), hiring managers who forget that they'll likely have to ask someone they fired for a job some day, executives at corporations who send people to the unemployment office by changing a number in a cell in an Excel spreadsheet, a government that tells us that tells us that the unemployment rate stays the same when 36K jobs go away as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
If I could make sense of it, I'd probably be rich.