>A common way of avoiding having to lie is registering your own consulting company after getting laid off. No resume gap! As far as if it fools recruiters, no idea. It's got to sometimes, right? I see it too often on LinkedIn for it to be useless.
"Consulting" is the programmer equivalent of claiming "Entrepreneur" as a job title. Sure it exists, but it generally translates to "Unemployed".
Maybe for you, but tell that to the bank that gladly gave me a mortgage thanks to all the income I've made consulting in the past years. This web site is teeming with successful consultants and contractors.
When Silicon Valley was less toxic, less exploitive, and not so riddled with useless frat boy brogrammers, there generally didn't used to be any stigma attached to being laid off.
I was loyally working at Kaleida (a joint venture of Apple and IBM) for a long time, and then applied for my dream job at Paul Allen's Interval Research Corporation, but they took a while getting back to me with an offer. But in the meantime Kaleida announced they were shutting down and laying off all employees (after having been steamrolled over by the Java Juggernaut).
Apple and IBM allowed Kaleida to pay out generous layoff packages (even converting worthless "KVAR" virtual stock options to cash) and gave job offers to most of the technical staff (which I turned down, because Interval was much more fun and interesting to me).
I told Interval that I wanted to delay accepting their job offer by a month or so, until after the Kaleida layoff, so I could qualify for the financial compensation in the Kaleida layoff package, and they understood completely and were just fine with it.
During that time period and before, Apple would even lay off batches of employees for a while to downsize, then eventually hire some of them back again, restoring all of their accumulated benefits and seniority.
I’ve seen consultants make around £30,000 a month. Including at least one case where the person in question did that after being let go, consulting for the same people who were her customers when she was employed. Not too bad for unemployed people.
When my last employer went through a technical bankruptcy and had to fire some people, I volunteered because it would enable me to start my own business. I've been doing pretty well since then. Not 30k/month, but good enough.
Congratulations! It is not for everyone, but I have friends thriving in this role. Now, to be clear they did not make £30,000 pcm year after year. Ups and downs average out over the long term, and the average certainly is lower than that. Still, they do complain about stress and such, but not really about the money.
In the company I'm currently working with, 60% of employees are contractors/consultants. On average they make 30% more than fulltime employees (but they don't have benefits so it washes out).
Myself, I've been either an entrepreneur (had a company with up to 12 employees for a few years) or doing consulting pretty much exclusively in the last 16 years.
So no consulting/contracting doesn't mean unemployed.
Well, my “unemployed” compensation was much higher in some years, compared to when I was employed. Consulting is great, if you can tolerate uncertainty (which is kind of your profession now).
"Consulting" is the programmer equivalent of claiming "Entrepreneur" as a job title. Sure it exists, but it generally translates to "Unemployed".