This article on BusinessWeek inspired me to write this post.

I started my first permanent job 7 years ago, just when the dot-com bust happened. I find it strange that I’m beginning a new phase of my career now, just a year after the recession. I’ll have to say that I’ve become acquainted with recessionary careers, so much that I see opportunities rather than challenges.

Are you Normal? Shame on You.

When recessions happen, everyone wants to stay put. Almost nobody wants to make crazy career changes. Those who don’t have jobs want stable jobs as fast as they can. But because there are so many people reacting in this way, it’s hard for companies to accomodate all these needs, so it becomes really competitive and everyone gets really twitchy and nervous and unhappy about their situation – just sitting and waiting for the recession to pass. This sucks, and nobody wants that.

The people who benefit the most from this predicament are folks who work for almost nothing and have the energy to innovate a dead thing to life. That was me in 2002, when I had absolutely no clue what my market rate was and was just willing to work for a company that would allow me to do stuff I thought was cool.

Motivation + Blindness = 200% Increase in Productivity

I entered a team of engineers who were so conservative that they had to put me on projects where I was working by myself in order to keep the peace in the office. I can’t remember how many things I initiated in order to improve workflows and software implementation, and I basically left the company because no one understood what in the world I was talking about anymore.

The funny thing is, half of the innovative practices I had put in place, I learnt on the job. It wasn’t that I brought in knowledge from my previous work experience – I’d just graduated from college. A lot of the other engineers could have trumped me at any time if they had spent time doing the research, but they didn’t.

I did it because I loved it – I loved making stuff better. I wasn’t even thinking about bills and recessions and all that crap. Worrying about stuff doesn’t get you anywhere.

Taking Chances are Underrated, You Should Try It Sometime

Obviously, my next company hired me because of all this cool new stuff I picked up and implemented (pioneered, as they say) – simply because no one gave a hoot about doing it and I did (which is also why you shouldn’t aim for the best companies because there’s less to improve). This could only happen because of recession, when everyone was so scared to lose their jobs, they didn’t want to do anything crazy.

Last year when the recession came, instead of focusing 100% of my time in my studies like most others did, I sacrificed some of my time in the week to work for a startup company. A lot of students were afraid of failing, which would have led to a lower chance at getting a job during a recession, etc.

I’m glad I worked part-time while studying. I initially applied on Gumtree as a front-end web developer (hardly a glamorous job site), and by the time I had finished my course my boss turned me into the CTO because I was practically the most “technical” person in the team (granted, there were only 3 of us).

And yes, I absolutely love my job.

Recessions are a Great Place to Make Things Happen

Of course, there are things you need to avoid in a recession. I’m nowhere near a 6-figure salary. And I’m still living in a shoebox with my wife. But I am absolutely confident it doesn’t get worse from here. A recession is a good place to start for folks who are just dying to make things happen.

Wait, it’s not just good – it’s great.