As I watch the meltdown of major financial firms I’m paying particularly close attention to WAMU. They have a huge presence where I’m at and many thousands of people work for them around here. At one point I considered being a customer of Washington Mutual before I discovered credit unions.
A few years ago, a friend of mine worked at my company and was concerned he could be facing a layoff. He never actually got the layoff notice but the stress of knowing it might be around the corner finally drove him to look for another job. He ended up taking a job at Washington Mutual. Ironically, he was laid off from there after roughly one year. He ended up taking a second job at WAMU but quickly found himself wondering if that had been the right choice. In the end, he took a new job back at my company and is very happy here now. I learned a valuable lesson from his experience. Sometimes the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence. Unfortunately when you get over to the other side of the fence you find that it has been spray painted green and isn’t quite as green as you thought.
He is very glad he came back to our company. If he had stayed there he most certainly would be facing a layoff or would have already been laid off. While our company does have layoffs sometimes he is in a much more secure environment for now.