A company man’s journey
Fired corporate executive had to find a new life
When his Time Warner boss fired him after two decades of service, James Kunen thanked him and shook his hand, he writes in Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life. “You can feel pissed off if you want to,” his boss proffered.
That was four years ago, and Kunen, now 63, is still a bit incredulous about his own polite reaction to his coldhearted firing. This firing stuff is peculiar business. It rocks your world. You lose your “normal connection to time and space . . . signaling the onset of nausea, faintness, or a bad trip (or all three),” he recalls.
His job, as Time Warner director of communications, was whacked as part of a purging that lopped off 100 of the 500 employees at headquarters. He notes, “Four out of the five people laid off in corporate communications were over 40.”
He was given a severance package — a combo of pay and a lump sum. Although he doesn’t disclose how much, he observes, “The word generous doesn’t ring true when they’re throwing you under the bus.”
He had four hours until his computer access was to go kaput and ID turned off, but was told he could clean out his office with 20 years’ worth of books and files and framed pictures over the next day or two.
In truth, Kunen’s career until this point had been pretty golden. He wrote a book, The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary in 1968, at the age of 19. That book, an account of the student uprisings at Columbia University, was made into a film. He worked as a public defender in Washington, D.C., and as a writer and editor at People magazine before slipping into his presumably high-paying corporate post at Time Warner during the auspicious days of the AOL merger.
Kunen’s prose has a wry, selfdeprecating tone. He’s a regular guy with a wife and two kids. His wife was laid off by Time Inc. after 17 years, not long before he was let go.
He invites the reader along on his quest to find meaningful work at the ripe old age of 60. It’s fairly lighthearted reading on the surface, although somewhat disjointed.
But at the heart of it lie simple truths, raw feelings and “aha” moments. “Now I find myself at this place called Too Young to Retire and Too Old to Hire, and there’s a huge crowd here, a regular Woodstock, with more arriving all the time,” he writes.
He confronts the core questions many laid-off older workers do: What is it he can do now? Where can his skills translate to a job, one that makes him feel some sense of purpose? And who will hire him?
He had a sense that he wanted to do something “socially useful” this time out of the gate.
Reality snatched him up. The “initial rush of euphoria at being released from the company’s yoke dissipated with my first painful premium payment for the aptly named COBRA health insurance coverage,” he writes. “I must get paid.”
His skills, however, didn’t fit the bill: “I want to go to work right now doing something meaningful. Unfortunately, as I search the employment listings, I find that I’m not qualified to do anything. Even entry-level jobs demand experience or skills I don’t have.”
Fortunately, because of their savings and severance, Kunen and his wife viewed this crisis as an “opportunity.” His wife went to school and got her master’s in social work and now works at a special education school.
He took the necessary steps to succeed at a new career, even if he didn’t know it at the time.
-He soul-searched to remember what work experiences in his life made him happy.
-He tapped into the outplacement services Time Warner offered to help focus on his skill set and where to look for work.
-He ramped up his volunteer efforts by teaching English to refugees. He had already been a volunteer at the Arab American Association for a year, helping immigrants write better English prior to being cut loose on the job market.
-He was patient. Changing careers often takes a few years to lay the groundwork. He took on freelance writing assignments to bring in money while he built his teaching experience. It was a gradual realization that teaching English as a second language to immigrants is something he’s hardwired to do.
-He found his passion. He introduces readers to the grateful students he helps. The payback to him is palpable. You smile. He’s on it.
-He networked broadly. In fact, it was his son’s friend, who mentioned that his mother was the assistant director of the English as a second language department at Brooklyn College. Kunen contacted her. She told him he didn’t need a master’s degree to teach adult and continuing education courses and began forwarding him notices for ESL teacher openings at various City University of New York (CUNY) colleges — “an alternate universe heretofore completely unknown to me. . . . This is how the world works,” he writes.
At last, 2½ years after being booted from Time Warner’s corporate suite, he landed a paying job four nights a week teaching a three-hour intermediate English literacy/civics class at a community college.
He’s OK with making far less than he did in his old position. “Riding the G train home, I realize I am happy,” Kunen concludes. “I am good at teaching ESL. It’s worth doing. And I’m appreciated. The trifecta.”