7 Lessons on Lumber & Leaving An Entire Industry

My first corporate job was with 84 Lumber. I started right after college – a few weeks before graduation. It was May 2007, and the housing market fundamentals were already sputtering, even if the industry was still in full-on growth mode. The company was still aggressively recruiting college graduates, especially those with even the slightest experience in the construction industry. I didn’t want to move for a career at the time, so I went for it.

I dove head first. I did every corporate training. I worked late. I started early. I hit every metric possible. I met contractors, planners, and corporate bosses. I won employee of the month, got moved to sales, and got promoted. I hadn’t dreamed of working in the construction industry, but it checked a lot of other life goals.

It lasted 9 months.

In January, I went to the Walton County (previously the fastest-growing county in the US) permit office. They had issued 0 permits for new houses.

I showed up at 6 a.m. one morning and saw the regional VP’s truck parked out front. I walked in, and he gave me a notice of employment termination. He offered me two weeks of hourly wage work if I could help shut down the store. I did that.

At that point, I was done with not only 84 Lumber but an entire industry. I decided to move to something completely different. But leaving an entire industry is a much bigger deal than I’d expected. I don’t regret how my career is turning out, but I do wish I had known a few things in college, pre-career.

Understand That Every Industry Is Unique

Every industry has jargon, best practices, and a structure obvious to insiders but completely strange and foreign to outsiders.

This makes leaving an industry much harder than it should be for a few reasons. First, it’s hard even to identify what you like about another industry when it’s very different than the one you know.

Second, it’s hard to find a skills match in another industry…because the “same job” is actually very different. This is why writing custom cover letters and custom resumes are so important. How experience and skills translate is not obvious – you have to spell them out for your potential new boss.

Third, learning the jargon, best practices, and structure takes a long time. And usually, there’s no shortcut because none of it makes sense until you are doing the work.

Plan For A Long Time To Transition

Companies with unlimited capital, skills, and talent struggle for years to break into a new market & industry…and usually fail anyway. Individuals are no different.

It took me 6 years to fully transition from the construction industry to the advertising industry after brief detours into retailing and web development, as well as look-ins at real estate and geographic information systems.

It can be worth it (and for me, it was), but I wish I had set my expectations differently.

Go Job or Career Adjacent If Possible

Every industry has segments that overlap. They share jargon, best practices, and structure…but they operate differently. In hindsight, moving into real estate would have been much more rational and faster. Even though home sales were collapsing, the US as a whole was about to have record growth in real estate services for the next 16 years (and ongoing).

If possible, I’d recommend looking to move career adjacent rather than leaping to something different.

Get In At The Bottom, Not The Top

When I was in college, the tech sector was in a major downturn. There was no money and seemingly few ideas. Finance, property, and global trade were hot. I was interested in global trade and went that route, even though I was pretty good at tech.

When I went through college and got a job, property and finance were in collapse mode, and tech was primed for the biggest economic boom in history. Thankfully, even after my switch, I was able to catch some of the rising tide in tech.

However, the takeaway for me was that every industry works in cycles. When you are starting, don’t get caught up in what’s hot. Everything usually comes around. The colleagues who toughed it out in construction ended up doing quite well. And right now, a lot of graduates who tried to time the tech boom are experiencing tough times.

Be OK With Trends Bigger Than You

That said, sometimes there are global trends that are simply bigger than you. No one in America in the mid-2000s is getting rich in consumer textile manufacturing. Now, there are people and companies who moved adjacent to consumer textiles (into carpet, turf, industrial-grade, etc) who are doing well. But sometimes parts of an industry just aren’t returning – and that’s nothing personal.

Vote For A Safety Net

Because there are trends bigger than all of us, I learned the hard way that a minimal safety net is critical to economic and personal growth. I grew up hearing how a safety net makes people lazy and want to sit in it. But my experience is that no one will be ambitious enough to climb a sheer mountain without some safety equipment.

I was fortunate enough to have a family to help. But when it came to rent and insurance, Georgia paid out so little that I had 30 days to desperately take any job that I could…not the one that would maximize lifetime earnings (and taxes paid to the State of Georgia!). This was also pre-Affordable Care Act, so the instant lack of health insurance created a cascade of life-changing decisions.

In my last semester at the University of Georgia, I learned about the political theory of the “veil of ignorance.” It’s the idea that a just society is one that a person would rationally design if they had no idea who they would be in that society. Getting laid off and changing industries made that idea real.

There are smart policymakers across the political spectrum. I don’t know what the right balance of programs, incentives, etc are. But I did learn to vote not on my current self-interest of where I am at but based on the wide spectrum of possibilities that can happen in my life – or anyone’s life.

Learn Transferable Skills

Even though every industry has a jargon, best practices, etc – there are a set of highly transferable skills that anyone can learn and practice.

• Sales skills – everyone in every organization is selling something, whether it’s ideas, processes, products, etc.
• People skills – getting along, setting boundaries, giving status, listening, etc
• 21st-century skills – the person who knows how to filter a spreadsheet, edit documents, prompt LLM AI, and troubleshoot devices will always be more valuable

Do Right By The People You Know

Never burn a bridge. I never thought I’d return to my employer from college, but when I was laid off and needed a job nearby, I could go right back with no issues because I still had good friends there. Ditto when I needed a reference, my co-workers were all there for me.

But…Always Look Out For #1

That said, I did learn that America’s economy is a game with real consequences. You play by being sure to look out for yourself. No matter what they claim, a company will never be a family. At-will employment goes both ways, and you’ve got always to have a career plan independent of anyone else.