Got laid off... want to relocate, but where to?

You seem to have covered what each city will have to offer your out of work life to incorporate you hobbies and social needs…but since this is an ID forum you haven’t mentioned what sort of design you’re in to as each of those cities drastically vary in what kind of work will be available.

Do you want to work in a consultancy or in house? In what sector…houseware, consumer electronics, footwear, packaging etc?

I think that information will be the next piece of the puzzle and we can narrow that city/state list down to 2 or 3 options?

If you are interested in the greater Chicagoland area, shoot me a pm. We are looking.

I think one of his requirements were mild winters correct?

well forget Wisconsin then, although we are always filling various openings at Georgia Pacific and our “traditional Industrial design roles” are based out of Atlanta.

Our RD facilities are in WI.

Tampa Bay area here, shoot me a PM if you want to chat. Cheers

Denver is a desirable location, and be prepared to look outside of the role of Industrial Designer if you want to work there. It is growing at an accelerated rate. I have several friends who work there.

I would contact iDSA to help you with local intel for each region you are considering.

I heard TTI Floor-care is relocating Designers to Charlotte NC, which is also a perennial choice for “quality” of life

I currently live and work in Chicago.

If I were suddenly cut-loose from the various circumstances that have planted me in the Seattle area, I’d seriously entertain moving to either Austin or Miami.

Austin, for the reasons you listed above, plus when you order a shot of tequila in Austin, it tends to come in a half-full pint glass.

Miami actually has started to position itself as a sort of tech-hub, with tax breaks for tech companies and new office parks. For instance Magic Leap recently posted a couple jobs for ID which seems pretty drooly of an opportunity. Also a loooong time ago I turned down a job designing DJ equipment for a large audio manufacturer, based in Miami. Sometimes I don’t know what the **** is wrong with me.

2 months and counting.

Still haven’t filled 2 senior positions.

send me a PM with a link or some details, i may know a few designers who could be interested.

Variant- you and I seem to be in the same boat! I moved from the east coast to Portland, OR for a job last year and was laid off during a period of restaffing. I like the culture in Portland but I’d prefer to live somewhere with more sun. The gloomy winters and chilly summers here aren’t where I want to lay down roots.

I’d love to work at a design agency making consumer products. My background is largely retail displays with some consumer products and electronics. From what I’ve seen and heard, there’s a huge need for UX designers at design agencies but ID positions aren’t in demand now.

Is there much of an ID market in Austin? That’s one of the cities I’m seriously considering but it doesn’t look like there are many design agencies down there, and my ID friend who lives there went into web design.

iab - im ave problems with my account. if you did pm me i got a email saying i had one but cant access - can you send me the info to chevis.watkinson@gapac.com

thanks.

Have you considered San Diego? The design scene is growing here with things like Makers Quarter and The Design Lab at UCSD (where Don Norman heads the department). We just had a big event called DesignForwardSD where they released a nice directory/website of design-oriented organizations in the SD area. Maybe something to consider…

Cost of Living in SD is pretty steep but cheaper than SF (if that means anything). I’ve been here almost 10 yrs as IDer. There seems to be more opportunities in other CA cities in comparison.

I recently left the SD area specifically because of the lack of opportunity after being laid off. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better place to live (I miss the hell out of Encinitas,) but I found demand for ID work to be pretty low.

As far as I have seen, you haven’t yet posted a portfolio for review and feedback. This would be the very first thing to do to move forwards. In any case it would give you a baseline to work from, and still won’t stop you from moving industries if you wish.

I understand that it seems difficult to post your work if you don’t feel like your skills are good enough, but the feedback helps you to at least know what is and isn’t working. I’ve posted my portfolio a few times, and frankly they’ve been complete pieces of crap that, as it turns out, weren’t up to scratch and wouldn’t have gotten me a proper ID job, let alone the dream job.

However, it gave me a starting point to work from, and the feedback provided gave me some goals and helped motivate me to improve my skillset. I practise a lot in my own time now and will hopefully get into the right groove soon. Everything gained and nothing lost.

hmmm i reaally dont know where to do that

Sorry to see this took such a pessimistic turn, in terms of possible career moves have you considered teaching? There are a lot of growing design programs around the country where you could put that experience to work if you’re not looking to be hands on anymore.

I see SCAD has a couple openings for their next semester. Savannah might fit your bill for nice weather and low cost of living. Beautiful town if you haven’t been, as long as you’re fonder of the small scale.

Sorry to hear about your circumstances, I can imagine it is really tough and discouraging what you are going through, but you should re-read your posts. People have made some sound suggestions and you just keep calling yourself a “piece of shit”. As others have suggested, post your portfolio so it can be critiqued, be open to moving to new areas (instead of focusing on the “gentrified cities”) and most certainly focus on building your current/new skillset, it might very well pay off, or maybe it won’t, but that is the risk you have to take right now.

There must be something in your resume that is turning away employers if you haven’t gotten a single hit, if you haven’t already, have someone look over it and do the same with your portfolio. Seriously, if you want to get yourself out of this rut, you’ll do this.

I highly encourage you not to throw in the towel yet, but if you decide to, look at community college programs that have an easy-to-get degree in: IT, medical fields a lot of industries out there take minimal or no training to get your foot in the door, but that should be your last option.

There are CAD jobs out there, and if you’ve been mostly using 2D or surface software then knowing a proper solid modeler like Solidworks or Pro E would be important to a lot of fields.

There are draftsman jobs which are just about creating 2D drawings etc, but most of those are fairly low paid and more about supporting an existing business outside of a design career (a friend of mine moonlights by doing CAD drawings of commercial electrical boxes and then having a mechanic friend fab them for him after hours for example).

At the end of the day though, people in this industry get hired based on a portfolio, and attitude. Saying you have zero interest investing in a skillset is not the right attitude to have. I regularly invest in skillsets I may or may not ever use because I enjoy learning new tools, processes, programming languages, just for the technical challenge. As it turns out, eventually those skill sets can become valuable and you don’t need to worry about ramping up, you can jump into a project and say “oh by the way, I know how to prototype this from that weird time I learned Arduino in 2012”.

Investing in those skill sets also has the side effect of allowing you to grow your portfolio organically. Side projects that you do can now become showcases of your process and skills, making you more interesting of a candidate.

I interview a lot of people, and I’ve sat across the table from rock start designers who I’ve let walk out the door because their attitude was shit, and it comes across as very apparent. I had a recent candidate get mad at me because he was clearly the most qualified, but simply put I couldn’t see myself dealing with or interacting with him on a regular basis - he acted like employment was a drain to his life energy and he was doing me a favor by even offering to come in. Likewise, I’ve given under-qualified or inexperienced candidates position based on a clear sense of them being outgoing, optimistic, and eager to learn and grow.

I can’t make you to change your lifestyle and attitude over the internet, but it may be worth some soul searching to see what would actually make you happy in life and figure out what steps you need to take to get there. Slumming along in a low level CAD job just to pay the bills isn’t going to make you any happier in the long run.

Serious side note: Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I am a sarcastic SoB who spent most of my early life dealing with substance abuse and depression. So it’s extremely ironic for me to be preaching an optimistic attitude, but I have had a lot of time to reflect on myself, my career, my actions and use all of those as a means to grow personally and professionally. Looking back now I simply wish I had realized more of that sooner.



Do you even realize that these two statements are entirely incongruous?

ID is a small part of the NPD process. And as a hiring manager if I had a 40-year-old thinking that all you have to do, or even all you want to do, is make pretty renderings, I would pass on your resume. You don’t get it. Why would I want you?