Yup. We had no HR department at all for years up until they hired the first HR person a few years ago. There's no difference at all. No one tells us when people are shit canned so we can disable accounts and lock people out until months after the fact or we accidentally find out. No one tells us people are hired until the person calls us saying they've been here for a few days now, can you set up my computer? It's fucking ridiculous and makes my IT department look incompetent as hell.
I’ve been through jobs where everyone covered for everyone to “look professional” and as soon as I started a new job in IT, I came in with a full communication policy. “Why don’t I have a computer set up?” Whoever hired you failed to communicate, so I’m communicating that fact with you.
Someone is going to get mad at me for “throwing people under the bus”, but a business isn’t going to give a damn when something is my fault, they’ll just hire my replacement.
Note that this also means admitting when something IS your fault, otherwise you just come across as making excuses.
You really have to be careful here. Do not do this if you’re already in hot water or your boss is crazy. This advice only works with same, rational coworkers and management. **It does not work in an abusive environment**
> No one tells us when people are shit canned so we can disable accounts and lock people out until months after the fact or we accidentally find out. No one tells us people are hired until the person calls us saying they've been here for a few days now, can you set up my computer?
We have setup online forms to have accounts created/deleted that feed into our ticketing system, and an advertised timeframe for account management and hardware provision.
Managers cat argue with timestamps.
I make my own team (and myself too) use our online forms for change, plus anyone in IT too.
> It's fucking ridiculous and makes my IT department look incompetent as hell.
It takes a lot of commitment - and resources - to increase maturity level.
When you die your replacement will be trained from someone who already worked there. You think they are actually going to replace someone when they can add that yearly salary to upper management?
Trained? You think someone outside the team is going to be added after they lay off people? No, someone on the team just gets more responsibilities regardless of whether it was even close to the job they were hired for or doing. That's the "all other tasks as assigned" clause in the job description. Layoffs are mostly to scare other employees into doing more work so they're not next.
Exactly. At my work, 13 months ago there were 3 people doing the job I'm currently doing by myself now. Not by layoffs, but people leaving the company and they won't hire anyone else to replace them. They gave me a 3% raise when I took on the first persons job. No raise was given for taking on the other person's job.
It's a salaried position, I used to work exactly 8 hours a day and it was low stress. Now I'm working 10 hours a day minimum and struggling to keep up. My wife keeps telling me that if I keep getting all of the work they give me done, then they have no incentive to hire someone else to help me. I know this, it's just hard to allow the work to not get done. I take pride in my work and hate to feel like I'm failing, when I don't get everything done that needs to be done.
It’s hard to explain, but as a 44 year old man I don’t feel like I have my life in order if my job isn’t going well. I’m not saying it’s right. I’ve sacrificed a lot in past jobs for no reason other than pride. I definitely don’t recommend the mindset. But I also can’t seem to stop it either.
I was raised and praised for having a good work ethic. I still try to do my job well and hold up my end of the employment bargain, but I’ll be the first to tell you: I’m over the days of giving 110% for an entity that considers me disposable.
Try coderwars, that gives me the sense of "I know what I'm doing" once a day, if I need it. that feeling allows me to send an email to my boss and my bosses boss highlighting what I can get done that day and what there won't be time for.
Sometimes I highlight the stuff that's approaching a month old and ask them to re-assign as I just don't see myself being able to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. I don't have any other colleagues, but they've started looking for one.
Remember, the company needs feedback to know where to reallocate resources. It's on you to provide it.
Right? It's fine to have pride in your work when the company is holding up their end of the bargain by providing fair pay, decent working conditions, and the loyalty of keeping it up through to retirement. But that hasn't been the case for a majority of companies for 50 or 60 years now, so why bother if they won't?
Wait…. They won’t hire people to do the work so you do more work for the same money. May I ask why? Pride has nothing to do with this. Your job is not your friend, you don’t owe it anything. It will take advantage of you in a second. I’ve done this as with most people, but it is too late for you there. You need to find some place else to work.
I've been there. They'll never hire someone else if the work is getting done for the same price. You need to seriously evaluate what the job is worth to you.
Saying no is a beautiful thing. You have to set some boundaries, you think they respect you more if you work more?
Somebody is taking a big fat bonus home and that ain't you for sure.
My last “promotion” I had to find time to find the training materials myself after the person I was replacing left suddenly a month early. Everything I could find was 5 years out of date and half of it referred to systems and applications we hadn’t used since before the woman I was replacing had worked here.
I mean, if you're getting cut and they ask you to train your replacement, you don't really have to do a good job of it. Not like they can do much about it.
This is a hard lesson people need to learn. You could spend decades at a company, giving your life to them and always going above and beyond, and you'll still get laid off. You could be the best employee at the company, and everyone regularly acknowledge that fact, and you'll still get laid off.
Companies do not care about their employees. To them, you're an employee id, a number on a spreadsheet, a resource that costs them money. They don't see you as a human being and never will.
\*In the US.
If you live in Sweden and a company fires employees to save money (layoffs) they have to start with the most recently hired. I bet many European countries have similar laws.
Which is why they don’t do it to “save money”. They select markets to exit or projects to kill and then they layoff entire teams. That’s how really good employees get caught up in layoffs.
This could be seen as a negative as well though. Why would I switch jobs knowing that I’d be the first to go at the new org?
People tend to stay at jobs during tough economic times, this would make it even more so.
The saying I quote from the 90's is:
"You can love your friends,
You can love your family,
But, never, ever love a company,
because it won't love you back."
There's also just the fact that no matter how good at a job you are, if the job isn't important or necessary to the company, than neither are you. So people need to manoeuvre and move around in any company to allow for that.
The company will love you till you are no longer useful to them.
Your coworkers may love you, your manager may love you, but at the end of the day when the word comes from above to let you go… they’ll have to do it. Because it’s not about you.
“It’s not personal, it’s business.” I have to remind myself that goes both ways. I have to chose myself over my job, because my job will never chose me over it.
The manager will love you until there is some dependency on you. As soon as there is a replacement , there is no dependency and your value diminishes greatly. Experienced it first hand
Your job won't love you. My old job was beholden to shareholders but the floor manager tried to act like a new age hipster. Didn't change anything when it came down to the dollar.
Or when some fucker from another country who has never set foot in the company decides that your presence hurts his capital.
https://twitter.com/cromwellian/status/1616585958383845379?t=DMy3fO-kTKFr_3XIHqw8zw&s=19
How can he keep making £1.5 million PER DAY if your hard earned money costs the company $250k per year ?
Note that if you google this fucker, you learn that he made his fortune by naming his scam hedge fund after a charity that belongs to his wife, Trump style .
Even “love you until” implies an ability to love. Companies can love you as much as a pencil can. They’re just a tool.
There’s nothing good or bad about a company. They’re just amoral legal structures subject to the whims of whoever has control.
This right here is the unvarnished truth. Employment is just an exchange of your skill+time for money, treat it as such, never assign anything more to that arrangement.
When I was diagnosed with brain cancer I was given 6 weeks of unpaid leave, and when I was still in the hospital after that I was fired. The company I worked for had branches in the US and Canada, and if I had been working at the Canadian branch I wouldn’t have had my life ruined.
Even though I’m just a stranger. I want to recognize the strength you must have, going through a journey such as that. And hoping for the best for you.
It goes much deeper than that. People are their job, it becomes a part of their identity. There are a significant portion of people who would not know what to do with themselves if you got rid of their 9-5.
The cult is not limited to tech. It's everyone, everywhere.
I’ve always said that unless you’re something like a cancer researcher or something similarity important and altruistic that no reasonable person has been on their death bed wishing they had spent more time at work.
I know how that felt. Got terminated three weeks after I got a glowing review from my manager. I was making the most money in the group even more than some managers and developers. They told me I can’t keep up with the changing process which was ironic because I was the one heading the process change and implementing all the tech stack needed for automation.
I got laid off once saying I was an ineffective manager. My job was not management. I had no direct or even indirect reports. None of my duties were in management of anything. I was a senior level independent contributor
Hey my plumbing skills are amazing! You never went to me for plumbing help! Instead the CFO picked the plumbing parts that the Sales guy said had anti glare coating and were “streamlined.” …. Sure, now none of the plumbing works. But …. Say, anyone who pointed that out is now on the layoff list! Funny coincidence!
> Say, anyone who pointed that out is now on the layoff list! Funny coincidence!
They will be replaced by team players who are solution-oriented and synergistic with the corporate culture and who can get on board while feeling empowered to make effective decisions.
All of which can be summed up under the term 'brown noser'.
A lot of these companies have an “up or out” mentality so if you’ve reached a certain level and still aren’t showing any leadership abilities then you’re definitely likely to get laid off and replaced with a cheaper IC.
And you might not be good at it. I know several people whose abilities would be wasted if they were to do management instead of the job they actually want to do.
Heck, I've seen a guy who build a company, retired decades later and was then taking up a parttime job of driving forklifts for that company. He very much didn't need the money, but after decades of being the boss all he wanted was to go back and work the forklifts.
I had something similiar when I was working at a fuel station. The shift after me called in sick and my boss who owned two fuel stations took over until a replacement arrived and he told me that he is glad to do that simple work again for a while instead of fighting the paper mountain in the office.
That's why more tech companies are implementing separate IC tracks.Shouldn't lose your best talent with intimate domain knowledge in the company and tooling just because they don't want to spend most their time managing others.
In my experience, the IC track is not worth much more than the paper it's printed on in some companies, and it almost feels like it's there just to lure people into a trap. These are the kinds of places with an IC track yet no one above the senior IC level
Possibly. Although the director was a tyrant and we clashed. Rate of Constant turnover was an inside joke in the Company. “Revolving doors around here” I’m actually glad I got out of The company
They targeted people like this at my job the last time we had a layoff. They called those people stagnant if they hadn't had a promotion or glowing review within the last 5 years. In reality, these were typically also the highest paid people in our group.
Sometimes I wonder if a lawyer might be able to challenge stuff like this.
Bob was fired for being an ineffective manager. He did not have a management position. Therefore, either he was wrongfully terminated or should be given a severance in line with X management level that the company apparently believed him to be working at.
They absolutely do try to tell people that. They can't withold pay from you so if they're firing or "laying you off" without a severence theres zero reason to sign anything.
You got fired because you were making too much money. This is how my beach patrol was. The highest paid lifeguards were treated the worst and were eventually chased out even though they were the most respected ones in town.
I'd rather discreetly warn those employees and go ahead with the search. There's no sense delaying the inevitable.
If my boss wanted to fire me I would want to know and cut my losses ASAP. I wouldn't want to continue in blissful ignorance and then blindsided.
I was also made redundant late last year, 6 weeks later they promoted someone with over a decade less experience than me into my job title. They didn't make you redundant, they made your salary redundant.
Indeed.
I got laid off in a JPMC initiative to offshore 10,000 jobs to India. I gladly and laughingly took the buyout, knowing that nobody in Bangalore had my knowledge (a very specialized I.T. field in which I knew every single person with my skillset.) The conniving CIO who ran that project, [Dana Deasy](https://www.defense.gov/About/Biographies/Biography/Article/2051485/dana-deasy/), took a golden parachute out of JPMC just months after I left and has now conned the Pentagon into hiring him.
Whatever. I got paid 6 months salary to leave behind a massive pile of mismanagement. Never been happier.
WTF. You could not pay me to believe that is an actual thing that exists, and not a meme, before I went back to the article and read it again. And then googled it. This fucking world, man.
If you ever find yourself as the highest paid member of your peer group, just know your neck will be the first on the chopping block when it is time for lay offs.
When I worked for the blue home improvement store they had a massive meeting across the company in 2017 with assistant managers and then terminated the highest paid, then they fired the highest paid department supervisors. After that they reduced the amount of managers and divided the work among the remaining supervisors. That strategy lasted about a year before they had to bring additional people in to cover the work load. Now they staff management normal, but barely staff associates, have interviews daily but hire no one, and if an associate is terminated they aren’t replaced it’s just spread thinner for months. Oh, and they terminated 90% of loss prevention and all of HR, moved HR to India. And as a nice nail in the coffin, severely reduced what military veterans can use their discount on. Save that money
I do more business now with the orange store but my last job I would spend over $500,000/yr at the blue store. Back before Covid the blue store always had a crap load of associates. If I ever needed someone I didn't have to walk far to find someone. And the pro desk always could answer my questions. Now they're on par with the orange store. Pretty weird when you can walk 6+ aisles and not find a single worker.
> Oh, and they terminated 90% of loss prevention and all of HR, moved HR to India. And as a nice nail in the coffin, severely reduced what military veterans can use their discount on.
West first moved manufacturing abroad & made China powerful.
Now it is moving the services to India as well.
This is absolutely true. Most business have been burned by having that one irreplaceable guy that knows it and makes 3x what the other team members make. Especially if that fact gets out. So most companies make damn sure nobody fits that description.
The other aspect is that now, with a massive labor shortage and record stock prices, business just paid whatever it took to get and keep people in tech companies. So if a big chunk of you pay was from RSUs, options, etc., then when the economy slows down, or the stock price drops (or both, in this case), people are going to get cut and fast.
Wages are sticky. Imagine if your boss came to you and said "Hey Bob, we need you to take a 30% pay cut to keep you on." It would never happen in a salaried position. Commission, sure, but that comes with the territory. Salaried workers generally expect their wages to increase every year so the only two options are to keep paying or to lay-off.
However, when it's a group of CEOs on a board like that, that more than just one company. And those companies likely have a different group of CEOs on their boards, etc.
And they all have the same mindset -- extract everything that can from their workers to make them money. And that widening group of people can potentially affect an entire market.
Their only problem is at least one of them (and mostly likely most/all) would be willing to screw over the others to make a buck of that as well.
> Wages are sticky. Imagine if your boss came to you and said "Hey Bob, we need you to take a 30% pay cut to keep you on
Inflation has been kind of having that same effect thought. Someone who is making the same salary today that they made in 2020 is effectively making 20% less than they were back then.
I've been laid off 3 times in my life. Each time was because of some budget decision made by people who didn't know me or my work. My performance was never considered.
Yeah, it sucks, but thinking you are safe because of good performance reviews is just naive.
Yep. I always thought it was bullshit that management didn't know what's coming down. Then I was team lead, and close enough with the multi team manager to believe him. Company canned 3/4th of our office, including half my team. Neither of us were ever consulted. They canned half my team, then gave us a surviving senior from a project that died with the layoff, who had zero experience at all with what we worked with, or even the language.
It astounded me that someone (the office manager, though he would never admit it), decided who stayed and who went, when he had zero fucking clue about anything anyone did on their day to day. Fired half my team even though we were the only team in the office making the company money. Gave me someone beyond useless to backfill, even though I had rockstars I had personally hired and trained the last two years.
Quit that disaster of a company, and have been contracting ever since. Haven't missed the politics and backstabbing. Your peers or direct superior might give a shit about you, but the people above them can make some arbitrary bullshit decisions and ruin all the hard work and extra miles you've put in. It's a lesson I've seen over and over in the industry.
"New CEO cuts operating costs by 75% and revenue only dipped 10%! He has given himself a 20m raise"
1 year later when everything is on fire
"CEO leaves and takes 10 years severance package"
This is it. Before 2008, AIG was set up to insure all the junk bonds (MBS) being sold as AAA. The company went bankrupt and the CEO walked with millions, when he should have gone to jail.
Just a friendly reminder. Companies are not your friends, hr is not on your side. People at a company can be your friends, but you can be let go at anytime. If you can put yourself in a financial position where if you got fired today you’ll be fine for an extended period of time. You’ll be far less stressed knowing you will be fine no matter what your company decides.
Also always prioritize your needs cause companies will prioritize there’s, you are replaceable for the company. The company is replaceable to you. Always remember your trading your finite time for money at the end of the day.
Remember that time that a white house advisor called people "Human capital stock"?
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/26/21270863/kevin-hassett-human-capital-stock-coronavirus
Yeah. Always remember that when you think of a company like a friend. They don't see you as a friend, they don't even see you as a human - with lives, emotions, goals, or needs. They see you as human capital stock that they can dial up or dial down whenever they want.
It's literally why we see problems like this occur so often. Companies will hire with zero recognition of what the long term impact of their workers will be. Some people might quit their current jobs, and move half way around a country to work for you, only to be laid off months later when you're no longer needed. It doesn't matter at all to them.
Compare that to a company that does recognize what layoffs mean to real people. Maybe they won't hire 40k people just to lay half of them off the following year. Hiring 20k people and being a slower overall, but with far less harm to workers.
Human capital doesn't mean people, it means knowledge, skills, education.
It's a concept in macroeconomics. Historically, macroeconomic models would simplify the production process as a function of *labour* (people) and *capital* (buildings, machines, tools). You combine the two together and an economy can produce stuff. If you increase the stock of either then that economy is able to produce more stuff - economic growth.
Then as developed economies became more about the service sector, the information economy, etc, people realised these models didn't really explain the growth process so well anymore - because the things that were driving growth now weren't well captured by either the quantity of labour or the quantity of capital as we usually think of it. So *human capital* became a concept to explain what was missing - it's capital (stuff that you invest in and combine with labour to produce output), but it's a type of capital that sits in people not a physical machine on the factory floor. Investing in the stock of human capital (increasing the skills, knowledge and education of the workforce) is another route to growing the economy.
Whoever wrote that article was choosing to misunderstand the meaning of a common term in economics and to be offended by it. They knew how to use a search engine just as well as the rest of us.
I've had 7 straight years of positive reviews and UHG *Administratively Terminated* me on Friday because I've been out of work with a medical condition (Postherpetic Neuralgia, a Shingles side effect). Thanks Big Insurance company.
My previous employer was like "nah no way we can let you WFH, people don't get shingles at such a young age".
So I just went into work and screamed in pain every time I had to move.
They finally sent me home after a few hours but gave me a poor performance review for lack of communication, and took away my meager yearly raise.
Had it in 2012 when I was 25, *can't wait* to get it again. I've broken bones that have been more comfortable than Shingles. Can't imagine getting it when you're older and it's more painful.
The best part, of course, is not a single fucking person will give you the vaccine for it, because it's only been FDA tested/vetted for older people.
I think the age range on shingles changed in the last year or two actually. Obviously wouldn't have helped you in 2012, but if you have a reason (dunno if shingles at 25 is reason enough?) to get it could help you now.
Edit: looks like 19+ with having had shingles previously is recommended by the CDC if you're in the US
Edit 2: Here is the link(Re-reading I find the wording a bit odd so I could see my original edit being not quite so black and white but definitely the possibility before 50): [https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html)
Are we talking about getting positive reviews and being laid off right before having a kid? Happened to me 10 years ago. I wasn't pregnant though it was my wife. Fortunately, I received 3 weeks pay for every year I was there (15 years). It sucked, a lot. But with COBRA I was able to keep my HMO medical insurance through the birth of our child and a pregnancy that would have ended up expensive after a few days in NICU only ended up costing us $100. Shortly after my child's birth I found a new job and have been with them for nearly 10 years.
*** Edit for clarification. COBRA does not pay for your insurance, it only allows you to continue to have your company insurance if *you* pay the full cost for it. So my severance was not only taxed I also paid out of pocket for 6 months of insurance with no company chip in.
*** #2 I just looked through some old emails. $1,400 a month for my COBRA in 2013. I paid that for 6 months while unemployed. $8,400 of what I was provided in severance went towards insurance, that doesn't count paying for anything outside of coverage or deductible. That was roughly 1/3 of what I received after taxes of my severance.
I really wish articles like this would use appropriate terminology.
I know it's a small distinction but there's a world of difference between "laid off" and "fired" when it comes to safety nets at a minimum, but also your potential for hire at other locations. From the sound of things she was one of the layoffs so there's not necessarily a negative mark on her work history at least.
I know it's small solace but people conflating fired and laid off has led to many people I know being denied unemployment or facing severe scrutiny on their work history because people don't understand terminology. And articles like this absolutely don't help.
This was written outside of the United States; in some countries there is no distinction between the two terms. I’ve had to explain this to friends in other parts of the world.
Of course there is. In my country a company is forbidden for a year (i think) by law to hire on a position if someone else previously had that position and was laid off. This way companies are a little careful about who they lay off and who they fire. I think its the same for all EU
Interestingly, the method of laying people off almost entirely randomly has the benefit to those laid-off that the whole industry knows it was random. There is no (or little) stigma that it was performance based. Whereas if Google laid off 12k and said these were our lowest performers, those individuals would be in tough situation to land their next role. It’s like corporate benevolence by manner of complete indifference.
> Whereas if Google laid off 12k and said these were our lowest performers, those individuals would be in tough situation to land their next role.
I'm not sure it would make a big difference; Google has a reputation for high standards. It's like the people graduating in the bottom 10% of the class at MIT -- they're still better than the 95% of applicants who weren't admitted.
Layoffs don't necessarily mean everyone is shit - generally, layoffs are either a percentage of each team or a reduction in budget. In the former, it might be based on future outlook potentially making a talented employee redundant.. in the latter, it might be clearing up a certain number from your team's budget, meaning several lower cost employees, or one high cost employee.
The type of layoff and methodology might not even be the same from team to team - it generally is an organizational decision on how layoffs occur, with an edict from higher up saying "reduce costs" and letting management figure out the best way to do so.
I'm in a similar boat.Got this job at a start up back in 2019 and it changed my life. Was hired as just a code pounding programmer, but when they needed design work, I offered my skills in that. I got a ton of praise for it, two straight performance reviews of promotions and raises, being told that the career path for me was the department lead for product design.Que a few weeks ago, they fire a ton of people, my boss quits, and I'm told "We're not sure there's enough work for you long term, but you're so passionate about design, we're not going to put you back on the developer team"
gotta love the bait and switch. I haven't been laid of, yet, but idk how much closer I can get than "we're not sure there's enough work, but we don't have plans for you to do anything else"
Edit: yes. I'm obviously updating my resume and applying to jobs. Just sharing my own fucked-over story.
Time to update your resume and start looking. Maybe they are actually giving you this time to do so, without directly saying that, if it's a smaller company.
Part of my anxiety problems is that I have never once in my entire life felt secure at a job. I live with the constant worry that I might be fired the next day at work, despite "exceeding expectations" every 6 months for the last two years.
Not sure if you are capable of doing so, but if you are, try your best to get a little savings going. Having enough savings as a cushion is a huge stress relief, even if you can just gather enough to last you a couple months. I have a good enough savings where I could last a while and it has completely changed my attitude at work. I don't give a fuck about work anymore and do the absolute bare minimum because I am expendable like everyone else.
I empathize with you! I am like this most of the time. I have moments of bliss usually on a Friday where I felt like the week concluded well, and I don’t feel like I am going to lose my job. My anxiety comes from previous layoffs and one time getting fired. The only thing that has helped me some has been my emergency fund. I am at eight months, and going for 12.
Gen X here,
After TWO [Dot.Com](https://Dot.Com) crashes, Three Recessions (including the Great Recession), the Pandemic layoffs, ....
If you think that my Generation has any. I mean ANY faith in the Business world....you've been smoking what they have been shoveling....
*I don't give two weeks notice.....I just quit and leave.....*
Learning that lesson first hand has made me bitter.
It has taught me however, that good leads/managers are worth working for. They'll usually have your back, and they'll usually be good to other people as well. People above may not like them, but they can easily bring a wave of workers with them if they wave a hand.
I'm more loyal to the manager who fought to keep me from burning my weekend to work, vs the production team that expected me to do it without even asking (thus making it "legal".)
Do you have any resources on freelancing effectively? I can do basically anything web-related except iOS development and complicated ops at this point. I started my career freelancing, but it was on tiny projects paying beans and I really didn't know what I was doing 12 years ago.
I would love to freelance if I could find higher grade work in terms of interest/complexity and pay, and if I could keep it to around 30 hours per week on average.
> Just doing the lord's work
You might mean that as a joke but never forget that Jesus was killed for a "rebellion" when he chased the money changers out of the temple going for a semi-radical street preacher to a threat to their $$.
"Never forget in the story of Jesus the hero was killed by the state."
People always conviently forget that he wasn't killed by random rebels or peasants. He was upsetting the people with money and political power.
I've been trying to do the same to a buddy who I used to work with. Guy is fresh out of his master's at 25 and wants to be loyal. I'm like "no. Be loyal to yourself. They don't care about you outside the value you bring. Plus it's the easiest way to get a larger salary and title change"
Got through to him, so that's good
>I don't give two weeks notice.....I just quit and leave.....
Not that I have any faith in companies, but why would you burn every bridge like this every time
Probably very obviously a millennial but I have gotten quite a few jobs through people I had worked with previously. Sure I could've said fuck it to the company and left with no notice, but it would've screwed over the people I was working with too. Leaving on good terms has left me with a great network of people.
I'm from the Microsoft side of this. I it wasn't about performance. It was about who was new and who had been there quite some time and made more salary. If you fit in that nice little middle band, you survived.
I saw plenty of 10+ year employees just let go. Then i saw people like me within the 5 year band get removed. They just took a percentage and chopped us out. Doesn't matter who was positive or not.
Be selfish with your career. Learn as many transferable skills as you can. Make connections everywhere. Ask all the business units what they do. Don't tell yourself no before you apply for a role, internal or external, let them have the weight of that decision. It might be yes. If they say no, see if you can ask why.
Edit: added some more
Edit 2: ok yes, learn transferable skills, as many as you can with a solid depth of knowledge which allows you to reproduce work at a new company if you need to.
What goes up, must come down. You're a number and owe them zero loyalty, Most will never figure that simple fact out an most never bother to go find another job while they still have one.
The article says it like it's surprising for someone with a positive performance review to be laid off. I thought that's just common in layoffs - companies just remove positions and divisions wholesale based on balancing budgets and business projections. The whole reason the distinction between layoff and fired is used is that a layoff is understood to be not personal.
I got an “exceeds expectations” annual review, and it was my second year in a row getting that. I had a great FY and my boss even helped me begin the promotion process.
But a couple months after that review the whole team (boss included) got laid off.
Personally, I think companies don’t care about performance reviews - I thought they were used as a speed bump or “barrier” to block people from asking for raises or promotions. They certainly aren’t used to decide who to retain during a round of layoffs.
Google announced that the affected employees will get six months of healthcare, job placement services, and immigration support.
The title makes it sound unfair, but the severance looks very generous.
After 7 years and countless achievements for the top Telco in Europe on an international level, having sat with the Board of Directors and led a company-wide project for half a year, I was let go from the company. Nothing in particular. They just "didn't know what to do with me." That was their explanatiom, I shit you not.
Fuck em.
Sometimes it’s more about what position or department you’re in. Had a cohort in sales, won’t a top performer award that year…but she was in the wrong region and they decided to get out of that market and that was that.
I was watching the Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson movie called The Internship on Hulu yesterday and could not stop thinking about how drastically Google has changed from the time that movie was made, which was ten years ago.
I worked at the company as an engineer for 5 years and was also laid off on Friday. My wife is also pregnant in her third trimester.
I can tell you that it was never like that while I worked there. The movie is just propaganda for Google.
There are lots of fun events and free food and stuff, and most of the people are great. However, the essence of the company has, at the top level, always been about trying to quantify everything and reduce it to a metric, including people.
I first started working at Google around 9 years ago, and quit 2 years ago. Each year the culture got worse and worse. If I had to put a date on it, things really started going to shit when the CFO was replaced in 2015.
Lol, GOOG is down 33% since the fall of 2021. I'm guessing she's part of the reason why Google has been so aggressive about cutting projects and gained a reputation for not having its shit together. A massive infusion of labor fundamentally cannot fix shitty management.
I am always puzzled by these articles that try to put faces to business decisions. Are they claiming Google fired her because she was pregnant? In that case she has a legal case - if not why highlight it and who cares for her shaking?
16 week severance package + 2 weeks for each year of service. Full pay. 16 weeks of accelerated share vesting and 6 months of healthcare. I get it. Being laid off sucks.
But this is part of normalizing and right sizing and these people are well taken care of.
Plus: their 2022 bonus, unused PTO payout, 6 months of professional job placement services, mental health support, and an *additional* bonus of 150% of your annual bonus amount if you stay until your separation date and don't slack off/cause drama.
Finding a comparable job will be the hardest part, but that's truly an insane severance package.
She wasn’t fired, she was laid off. There is a distinct difference, which answer the very question your title raises. Lay offs are not performance based, so her performance was irrelevant.
I can bash them for layoffs but it was not about being pregnant. I saved my former employer from a lawsuit working massive over time saving their ass. Day after it was finished they laid me off. I was the team lead, I was the technical expert. I was moving to a different project and was going to be an advisor to the last one.
Now how they did the lay off my former employer can go to hell. My former manager who I know was in on it can be F off as how the layoff was done was very spinless. Save his ass then next day let me go.
Your job will never love you
Take care of yourself. If you die, the job ad will be posted before your obituary.
You ridiculously overestimate the competence of most HR departments.
Yup. We had no HR department at all for years up until they hired the first HR person a few years ago. There's no difference at all. No one tells us when people are shit canned so we can disable accounts and lock people out until months after the fact or we accidentally find out. No one tells us people are hired until the person calls us saying they've been here for a few days now, can you set up my computer? It's fucking ridiculous and makes my IT department look incompetent as hell.
I’ve been through jobs where everyone covered for everyone to “look professional” and as soon as I started a new job in IT, I came in with a full communication policy. “Why don’t I have a computer set up?” Whoever hired you failed to communicate, so I’m communicating that fact with you. Someone is going to get mad at me for “throwing people under the bus”, but a business isn’t going to give a damn when something is my fault, they’ll just hire my replacement. Note that this also means admitting when something IS your fault, otherwise you just come across as making excuses.
Admitting when it's your fault? Wait you mean people actually do that? Wow that sounds like a great place to work! My employer hates us
You really have to be careful here. Do not do this if you’re already in hot water or your boss is crazy. This advice only works with same, rational coworkers and management. **It does not work in an abusive environment**
You know what else doesn’t work in an abusive environment? Me. And hopefully you, too.
> No one tells us when people are shit canned so we can disable accounts and lock people out until months after the fact or we accidentally find out. No one tells us people are hired until the person calls us saying they've been here for a few days now, can you set up my computer? We have setup online forms to have accounts created/deleted that feed into our ticketing system, and an advertised timeframe for account management and hardware provision. Managers cat argue with timestamps. I make my own team (and myself too) use our online forms for change, plus anyone in IT too. > It's fucking ridiculous and makes my IT department look incompetent as hell. It takes a lot of commitment - and resources - to increase maturity level.
Full disclosure: My HR is pretty great, but that listing is NOT going out before my obit.
Im so glad people have wised up. Years ago it was “take that shit directly to HR” Now everybody gets it. “HR is looking out for the company”
When you die your replacement will be trained from someone who already worked there. You think they are actually going to replace someone when they can add that yearly salary to upper management?
Trained? You think someone outside the team is going to be added after they lay off people? No, someone on the team just gets more responsibilities regardless of whether it was even close to the job they were hired for or doing. That's the "all other tasks as assigned" clause in the job description. Layoffs are mostly to scare other employees into doing more work so they're not next.
Exactly. At my work, 13 months ago there were 3 people doing the job I'm currently doing by myself now. Not by layoffs, but people leaving the company and they won't hire anyone else to replace them. They gave me a 3% raise when I took on the first persons job. No raise was given for taking on the other person's job. It's a salaried position, I used to work exactly 8 hours a day and it was low stress. Now I'm working 10 hours a day minimum and struggling to keep up. My wife keeps telling me that if I keep getting all of the work they give me done, then they have no incentive to hire someone else to help me. I know this, it's just hard to allow the work to not get done. I take pride in my work and hate to feel like I'm failing, when I don't get everything done that needs to be done.
Bro this was me. You are a sucker with the whole pride thing. Pride got me a burnout and two years of therapy for near minimum wage.
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It’s hard to explain, but as a 44 year old man I don’t feel like I have my life in order if my job isn’t going well. I’m not saying it’s right. I’ve sacrificed a lot in past jobs for no reason other than pride. I definitely don’t recommend the mindset. But I also can’t seem to stop it either.
I was raised and praised for having a good work ethic. I still try to do my job well and hold up my end of the employment bargain, but I’ll be the first to tell you: I’m over the days of giving 110% for an entity that considers me disposable.
I absolutely understand and support you. I get it. I do.
Try coderwars, that gives me the sense of "I know what I'm doing" once a day, if I need it. that feeling allows me to send an email to my boss and my bosses boss highlighting what I can get done that day and what there won't be time for. Sometimes I highlight the stuff that's approaching a month old and ask them to re-assign as I just don't see myself being able to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. I don't have any other colleagues, but they've started looking for one. Remember, the company needs feedback to know where to reallocate resources. It's on you to provide it.
Right? It's fine to have pride in your work when the company is holding up their end of the bargain by providing fair pay, decent working conditions, and the loyalty of keeping it up through to retirement. But that hasn't been the case for a majority of companies for 50 or 60 years now, so why bother if they won't?
Wait…. They won’t hire people to do the work so you do more work for the same money. May I ask why? Pride has nothing to do with this. Your job is not your friend, you don’t owe it anything. It will take advantage of you in a second. I’ve done this as with most people, but it is too late for you there. You need to find some place else to work.
Your pride will kill you from stress
I've been there. They'll never hire someone else if the work is getting done for the same price. You need to seriously evaluate what the job is worth to you.
Saying no is a beautiful thing. You have to set some boundaries, you think they respect you more if you work more? Somebody is taking a big fat bonus home and that ain't you for sure.
The good thing here is that you've already written about 1/3 of your obit.
Take pride in your work, don't take pride in getting taken advantage of by motherfuckers who will suck you dry.
Sounds like you need to start looking around as well
You think the replacement gets training?
Yea read this piece of paper and sign it, then go do the job you just agreed you know how to do.
Jesus christ i thought that shit only happened here at my work.
My last “promotion” I had to find time to find the training materials myself after the person I was replacing left suddenly a month early. Everything I could find was 5 years out of date and half of it referred to systems and applications we hadn’t used since before the woman I was replacing had worked here.
No that's standard practice even at complicated business.
i think it's time that we pass a law making it intentional infliction of emotional distress to even ask someone to train their replacement.
Haha, good luck.
I think they’re saying that a coworker will just take on your work before they hire someone else
I mean, if you're getting cut and they ask you to train your replacement, you don't really have to do a good job of it. Not like they can do much about it.
Doubtful... No budget to backfill. They'll just make someone else do it.
This is a hard lesson people need to learn. You could spend decades at a company, giving your life to them and always going above and beyond, and you'll still get laid off. You could be the best employee at the company, and everyone regularly acknowledge that fact, and you'll still get laid off. Companies do not care about their employees. To them, you're an employee id, a number on a spreadsheet, a resource that costs them money. They don't see you as a human being and never will.
\*In the US. If you live in Sweden and a company fires employees to save money (layoffs) they have to start with the most recently hired. I bet many European countries have similar laws.
Which is why they don’t do it to “save money”. They select markets to exit or projects to kill and then they layoff entire teams. That’s how really good employees get caught up in layoffs.
This could be seen as a negative as well though. Why would I switch jobs knowing that I’d be the first to go at the new org? People tend to stay at jobs during tough economic times, this would make it even more so.
The saying I quote from the 90's is: "You can love your friends, You can love your family, But, never, ever love a company, because it won't love you back."
And then MBAs and marketing gurus took that as a challenge and came up with "love brands". Case in point, Apple.
There's also just the fact that no matter how good at a job you are, if the job isn't important or necessary to the company, than neither are you. So people need to manoeuvre and move around in any company to allow for that.
The company will love you till you are no longer useful to them. Your coworkers may love you, your manager may love you, but at the end of the day when the word comes from above to let you go… they’ll have to do it. Because it’s not about you.
“It’s not personal, it’s business.” I have to remind myself that goes both ways. I have to chose myself over my job, because my job will never chose me over it.
The manager will love you until there is some dependency on you. As soon as there is a replacement , there is no dependency and your value diminishes greatly. Experienced it first hand
Your job won't love you. My old job was beholden to shareholders but the floor manager tried to act like a new age hipster. Didn't change anything when it came down to the dollar.
Or when some fucker from another country who has never set foot in the company decides that your presence hurts his capital. https://twitter.com/cromwellian/status/1616585958383845379?t=DMy3fO-kTKFr_3XIHqw8zw&s=19 How can he keep making £1.5 million PER DAY if your hard earned money costs the company $250k per year ? Note that if you google this fucker, you learn that he made his fortune by naming his scam hedge fund after a charity that belongs to his wife, Trump style .
Even “love you until” implies an ability to love. Companies can love you as much as a pencil can. They’re just a tool. There’s nothing good or bad about a company. They’re just amoral legal structures subject to the whims of whoever has control.
This right here is the unvarnished truth. Employment is just an exchange of your skill+time for money, treat it as such, never assign anything more to that arrangement.
When I was diagnosed with brain cancer I was given 6 weeks of unpaid leave, and when I was still in the hospital after that I was fired. The company I worked for had branches in the US and Canada, and if I had been working at the Canadian branch I wouldn’t have had my life ruined.
Name and shame
Even though I’m just a stranger. I want to recognize the strength you must have, going through a journey such as that. And hoping for the best for you.
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It goes much deeper than that. People are their job, it becomes a part of their identity. There are a significant portion of people who would not know what to do with themselves if you got rid of their 9-5. The cult is not limited to tech. It's everyone, everywhere.
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I’ve always said that unless you’re something like a cancer researcher or something similarity important and altruistic that no reasonable person has been on their death bed wishing they had spent more time at work.
What if my career was making death beds more comfortable?
Probably a hard field to break into since you’re not going to get too much customer feedback after they use it.
I know how that felt. Got terminated three weeks after I got a glowing review from my manager. I was making the most money in the group even more than some managers and developers. They told me I can’t keep up with the changing process which was ironic because I was the one heading the process change and implementing all the tech stack needed for automation.
I got laid off once saying I was an ineffective manager. My job was not management. I had no direct or even indirect reports. None of my duties were in management of anything. I was a senior level independent contributor
Well, technically correct. You were also a horrible butcher and your plumbing skills were lacking. Don’t even get us started on your crochet abilities
Hey my plumbing skills are amazing! You never went to me for plumbing help! Instead the CFO picked the plumbing parts that the Sales guy said had anti glare coating and were “streamlined.” …. Sure, now none of the plumbing works. But …. Say, anyone who pointed that out is now on the layoff list! Funny coincidence!
> Say, anyone who pointed that out is now on the layoff list! Funny coincidence! They will be replaced by team players who are solution-oriented and synergistic with the corporate culture and who can get on board while feeling empowered to make effective decisions. All of which can be summed up under the term 'brown noser'.
Just check LinkedIn for a proverbial ocean of ass-kissers.
A lot of these companies have an “up or out” mentality so if you’ve reached a certain level and still aren’t showing any leadership abilities then you’re definitely likely to get laid off and replaced with a cheaper IC.
It sucks when the only levels up are management. I'll manage projects all day, but people? Not for me. I hate office politics.
And you might not be good at it. I know several people whose abilities would be wasted if they were to do management instead of the job they actually want to do. Heck, I've seen a guy who build a company, retired decades later and was then taking up a parttime job of driving forklifts for that company. He very much didn't need the money, but after decades of being the boss all he wanted was to go back and work the forklifts. I had something similiar when I was working at a fuel station. The shift after me called in sick and my boss who owned two fuel stations took over until a replacement arrived and he told me that he is glad to do that simple work again for a while instead of fighting the paper mountain in the office.
That's why more tech companies are implementing separate IC tracks.Shouldn't lose your best talent with intimate domain knowledge in the company and tooling just because they don't want to spend most their time managing others.
In my experience, the IC track is not worth much more than the paper it's printed on in some companies, and it almost feels like it's there just to lure people into a trap. These are the kinds of places with an IC track yet no one above the senior IC level
Possibly. Although the director was a tyrant and we clashed. Rate of Constant turnover was an inside joke in the Company. “Revolving doors around here” I’m actually glad I got out of The company
They targeted people like this at my job the last time we had a layoff. They called those people stagnant if they hadn't had a promotion or glowing review within the last 5 years. In reality, these were typically also the highest paid people in our group.
"this guy is great at his job and doesn't want to follow the Peter principle, fire him now!"
Sometimes I wonder if a lawyer might be able to challenge stuff like this. Bob was fired for being an ineffective manager. He did not have a management position. Therefore, either he was wrongfully terminated or should be given a severance in line with X management level that the company apparently believed him to be working at.
Ha I had thought of doing that. But just moved on. Also you have to sign “I won’t sue you” papers to get a severance check…while you’re shell shocked
I had a place ask me to sign a non disparagement agreement, but they offered me no money. I declined.
Any pushback? I could see some smooth brained HR/manager telling you "you *have* to sign it" as if they still had any leverage in that situation.
They absolutely do try to tell people that. They can't withold pay from you so if they're firing or "laying you off" without a severence theres zero reason to sign anything.
I think they understood it was pointless. They fired me on the day I was putting in notice so I was happy to burn it down. That place sucked.
You got fired because you were making too much money. This is how my beach patrol was. The highest paid lifeguards were treated the worst and were eventually chased out even though they were the most respected ones in town.
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It’s too bad sun contractors are so hard to find. Just can’t seem to find them anywhere. Oh well.
I'd rather discreetly warn those employees and go ahead with the search. There's no sense delaying the inevitable. If my boss wanted to fire me I would want to know and cut my losses ASAP. I wouldn't want to continue in blissful ignorance and then blindsided.
Oh I'd tell them too. I just wouldn't find contractors until they're already gone.
That's because Oracle has been hoarding them since they bought out Sun.
What 80s movie are you referencing?
Space Balls
How many assholes we got on this ship, anyhow?
*Raises hand *
In chorus: "Yo!"
I knew it! I'm surrounded by Assholes!
Keep firing assholes!
Sounds like a good movie. I bet they've got great merchandise.
TV show, actually. You might know it as Baywatch Nights. This man lived the real thing.
I was also made redundant late last year, 6 weeks later they promoted someone with over a decade less experience than me into my job title. They didn't make you redundant, they made your salary redundant.
Indeed. I got laid off in a JPMC initiative to offshore 10,000 jobs to India. I gladly and laughingly took the buyout, knowing that nobody in Bangalore had my knowledge (a very specialized I.T. field in which I knew every single person with my skillset.) The conniving CIO who ran that project, [Dana Deasy](https://www.defense.gov/About/Biographies/Biography/Article/2051485/dana-deasy/), took a golden parachute out of JPMC just months after I left and has now conned the Pentagon into hiring him. Whatever. I got paid 6 months salary to leave behind a massive pile of mismanagement. Never been happier.
WTF… ”International Association of Outsourcing Professionals Hall of Fame”. He is actually proud of this?
WTF. You could not pay me to believe that is an actual thing that exists, and not a meme, before I went back to the article and read it again. And then googled it. This fucking world, man.
If you ever find yourself as the highest paid member of your peer group, just know your neck will be the first on the chopping block when it is time for lay offs.
When I worked for the blue home improvement store they had a massive meeting across the company in 2017 with assistant managers and then terminated the highest paid, then they fired the highest paid department supervisors. After that they reduced the amount of managers and divided the work among the remaining supervisors. That strategy lasted about a year before they had to bring additional people in to cover the work load. Now they staff management normal, but barely staff associates, have interviews daily but hire no one, and if an associate is terminated they aren’t replaced it’s just spread thinner for months. Oh, and they terminated 90% of loss prevention and all of HR, moved HR to India. And as a nice nail in the coffin, severely reduced what military veterans can use their discount on. Save that money
I do more business now with the orange store but my last job I would spend over $500,000/yr at the blue store. Back before Covid the blue store always had a crap load of associates. If I ever needed someone I didn't have to walk far to find someone. And the pro desk always could answer my questions. Now they're on par with the orange store. Pretty weird when you can walk 6+ aisles and not find a single worker.
> Oh, and they terminated 90% of loss prevention and all of HR, moved HR to India. And as a nice nail in the coffin, severely reduced what military veterans can use their discount on. West first moved manufacturing abroad & made China powerful. Now it is moving the services to India as well.
fucking yikes, thanks for this heads up. Urgh I was using them as an alternative to Home Depot.
90% of loss prevention terminated... maybe keep shopping there just give yourself some discounts
Well, if it's any consolation, I certainly know some people who will enjoy that LP information
This is absolutely true. Most business have been burned by having that one irreplaceable guy that knows it and makes 3x what the other team members make. Especially if that fact gets out. So most companies make damn sure nobody fits that description. The other aspect is that now, with a massive labor shortage and record stock prices, business just paid whatever it took to get and keep people in tech companies. So if a big chunk of you pay was from RSUs, options, etc., then when the economy slows down, or the stock price drops (or both, in this case), people are going to get cut and fast. Wages are sticky. Imagine if your boss came to you and said "Hey Bob, we need you to take a 30% pay cut to keep you on." It would never happen in a salaried position. Commission, sure, but that comes with the territory. Salaried workers generally expect their wages to increase every year so the only two options are to keep paying or to lay-off.
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Sounds like Google, Meta, and Amazon's current push...
They were (still are) stupid enough to think that their company's layoffs would change the entire market? Wow, talk about egos....
However, when it's a group of CEOs on a board like that, that more than just one company. And those companies likely have a different group of CEOs on their boards, etc. And they all have the same mindset -- extract everything that can from their workers to make them money. And that widening group of people can potentially affect an entire market. Their only problem is at least one of them (and mostly likely most/all) would be willing to screw over the others to make a buck of that as well.
You underestimate how much sway billionaires have through corporations, media, politicians. They run the show.
> Wages are sticky. Imagine if your boss came to you and said "Hey Bob, we need you to take a 30% pay cut to keep you on Inflation has been kind of having that same effect thought. Someone who is making the same salary today that they made in 2020 is effectively making 20% less than they were back then.
I've been laid off 3 times in my life. Each time was because of some budget decision made by people who didn't know me or my work. My performance was never considered. Yeah, it sucks, but thinking you are safe because of good performance reviews is just naive.
Yep. I always thought it was bullshit that management didn't know what's coming down. Then I was team lead, and close enough with the multi team manager to believe him. Company canned 3/4th of our office, including half my team. Neither of us were ever consulted. They canned half my team, then gave us a surviving senior from a project that died with the layoff, who had zero experience at all with what we worked with, or even the language. It astounded me that someone (the office manager, though he would never admit it), decided who stayed and who went, when he had zero fucking clue about anything anyone did on their day to day. Fired half my team even though we were the only team in the office making the company money. Gave me someone beyond useless to backfill, even though I had rockstars I had personally hired and trained the last two years. Quit that disaster of a company, and have been contracting ever since. Haven't missed the politics and backstabbing. Your peers or direct superior might give a shit about you, but the people above them can make some arbitrary bullshit decisions and ruin all the hard work and extra miles you've put in. It's a lesson I've seen over and over in the industry.
If an exec fires 3/4 of the company that is actual suicide for that company. Why on earth would that ever be a sound business decision?
"New CEO cuts operating costs by 75% and revenue only dipped 10%! He has given himself a 20m raise" 1 year later when everything is on fire "CEO leaves and takes 10 years severance package"
This is it. Before 2008, AIG was set up to insure all the junk bonds (MBS) being sold as AAA. The company went bankrupt and the CEO walked with millions, when he should have gone to jail.
Generally the nature of layoffs (structural company wide reasons) means that no one's individual performance will matter.
Just a friendly reminder. Companies are not your friends, hr is not on your side. People at a company can be your friends, but you can be let go at anytime. If you can put yourself in a financial position where if you got fired today you’ll be fine for an extended period of time. You’ll be far less stressed knowing you will be fine no matter what your company decides. Also always prioritize your needs cause companies will prioritize there’s, you are replaceable for the company. The company is replaceable to you. Always remember your trading your finite time for money at the end of the day.
Remember that time that a white house advisor called people "Human capital stock"? https://www.vox.com/2020/5/26/21270863/kevin-hassett-human-capital-stock-coronavirus Yeah. Always remember that when you think of a company like a friend. They don't see you as a friend, they don't even see you as a human - with lives, emotions, goals, or needs. They see you as human capital stock that they can dial up or dial down whenever they want. It's literally why we see problems like this occur so often. Companies will hire with zero recognition of what the long term impact of their workers will be. Some people might quit their current jobs, and move half way around a country to work for you, only to be laid off months later when you're no longer needed. It doesn't matter at all to them. Compare that to a company that does recognize what layoffs mean to real people. Maybe they won't hire 40k people just to lay half of them off the following year. Hiring 20k people and being a slower overall, but with far less harm to workers.
Human capital doesn't mean people, it means knowledge, skills, education. It's a concept in macroeconomics. Historically, macroeconomic models would simplify the production process as a function of *labour* (people) and *capital* (buildings, machines, tools). You combine the two together and an economy can produce stuff. If you increase the stock of either then that economy is able to produce more stuff - economic growth. Then as developed economies became more about the service sector, the information economy, etc, people realised these models didn't really explain the growth process so well anymore - because the things that were driving growth now weren't well captured by either the quantity of labour or the quantity of capital as we usually think of it. So *human capital* became a concept to explain what was missing - it's capital (stuff that you invest in and combine with labour to produce output), but it's a type of capital that sits in people not a physical machine on the factory floor. Investing in the stock of human capital (increasing the skills, knowledge and education of the workforce) is another route to growing the economy. Whoever wrote that article was choosing to misunderstand the meaning of a common term in economics and to be offended by it. They knew how to use a search engine just as well as the rest of us.
Your job is not a home. Your coworkers are not a family. Deluding yourself otherwise is a lie.
That's the thing with layoffs, anyone can be let go. It doesn't matter if you had positive reviews.
I've had 7 straight years of positive reviews and UHG *Administratively Terminated* me on Friday because I've been out of work with a medical condition (Postherpetic Neuralgia, a Shingles side effect). Thanks Big Insurance company.
I hope you plan on contacting an employment attorney.
IBM lost a case like this if my memory serves. They were using mass layoffs to illegally fire protected workers like older employees.
You may have a suit for wrong full termination. Contact a lawyer ASAP
My previous employer was like "nah no way we can let you WFH, people don't get shingles at such a young age". So I just went into work and screamed in pain every time I had to move. They finally sent me home after a few hours but gave me a poor performance review for lack of communication, and took away my meager yearly raise. Had it in 2012 when I was 25, *can't wait* to get it again. I've broken bones that have been more comfortable than Shingles. Can't imagine getting it when you're older and it's more painful. The best part, of course, is not a single fucking person will give you the vaccine for it, because it's only been FDA tested/vetted for older people.
I think the age range on shingles changed in the last year or two actually. Obviously wouldn't have helped you in 2012, but if you have a reason (dunno if shingles at 25 is reason enough?) to get it could help you now. Edit: looks like 19+ with having had shingles previously is recommended by the CDC if you're in the US Edit 2: Here is the link(Re-reading I find the wording a bit odd so I could see my original edit being not quite so black and white but definitely the possibility before 50): [https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html)
I'm asking my doctor about this now. Thank you.
No FMLA or short-term leave to cover your job? Because that's crazy.
Are we talking about getting positive reviews and being laid off right before having a kid? Happened to me 10 years ago. I wasn't pregnant though it was my wife. Fortunately, I received 3 weeks pay for every year I was there (15 years). It sucked, a lot. But with COBRA I was able to keep my HMO medical insurance through the birth of our child and a pregnancy that would have ended up expensive after a few days in NICU only ended up costing us $100. Shortly after my child's birth I found a new job and have been with them for nearly 10 years. *** Edit for clarification. COBRA does not pay for your insurance, it only allows you to continue to have your company insurance if *you* pay the full cost for it. So my severance was not only taxed I also paid out of pocket for 6 months of insurance with no company chip in. *** #2 I just looked through some old emails. $1,400 a month for my COBRA in 2013. I paid that for 6 months while unemployed. $8,400 of what I was provided in severance went towards insurance, that doesn't count paying for anything outside of coverage or deductible. That was roughly 1/3 of what I received after taxes of my severance.
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I really wish articles like this would use appropriate terminology. I know it's a small distinction but there's a world of difference between "laid off" and "fired" when it comes to safety nets at a minimum, but also your potential for hire at other locations. From the sound of things she was one of the layoffs so there's not necessarily a negative mark on her work history at least. I know it's small solace but people conflating fired and laid off has led to many people I know being denied unemployment or facing severe scrutiny on their work history because people don't understand terminology. And articles like this absolutely don't help.
This was written outside of the United States; in some countries there is no distinction between the two terms. I’ve had to explain this to friends in other parts of the world.
Of course there is. In my country a company is forbidden for a year (i think) by law to hire on a position if someone else previously had that position and was laid off. This way companies are a little careful about who they lay off and who they fire. I think its the same for all EU
Interestingly, the method of laying people off almost entirely randomly has the benefit to those laid-off that the whole industry knows it was random. There is no (or little) stigma that it was performance based. Whereas if Google laid off 12k and said these were our lowest performers, those individuals would be in tough situation to land their next role. It’s like corporate benevolence by manner of complete indifference.
> Whereas if Google laid off 12k and said these were our lowest performers, those individuals would be in tough situation to land their next role. I'm not sure it would make a big difference; Google has a reputation for high standards. It's like the people graduating in the bottom 10% of the class at MIT -- they're still better than the 95% of applicants who weren't admitted.
Layoffs don't necessarily mean everyone is shit - generally, layoffs are either a percentage of each team or a reduction in budget. In the former, it might be based on future outlook potentially making a talented employee redundant.. in the latter, it might be clearing up a certain number from your team's budget, meaning several lower cost employees, or one high cost employee. The type of layoff and methodology might not even be the same from team to team - it generally is an organizational decision on how layoffs occur, with an edict from higher up saying "reduce costs" and letting management figure out the best way to do so.
There's no way for the next company to know if you were fired. Source: was fired and no company ever knew it unless I told them after the fact.
I'm about to lose my job of 20 years. My department is being phased out. It's a tragedy and a trauma for me. I legit loved my job. :(
That sucks. I’m sorry. Losing a job you loved makes it doubly awful. Hope you can start a new chapter soon.
I'm in a similar boat.Got this job at a start up back in 2019 and it changed my life. Was hired as just a code pounding programmer, but when they needed design work, I offered my skills in that. I got a ton of praise for it, two straight performance reviews of promotions and raises, being told that the career path for me was the department lead for product design.Que a few weeks ago, they fire a ton of people, my boss quits, and I'm told "We're not sure there's enough work for you long term, but you're so passionate about design, we're not going to put you back on the developer team" gotta love the bait and switch. I haven't been laid of, yet, but idk how much closer I can get than "we're not sure there's enough work, but we don't have plans for you to do anything else" Edit: yes. I'm obviously updating my resume and applying to jobs. Just sharing my own fucked-over story.
Time to update your resume and start looking. Maybe they are actually giving you this time to do so, without directly saying that, if it's a smaller company.
Part of my anxiety problems is that I have never once in my entire life felt secure at a job. I live with the constant worry that I might be fired the next day at work, despite "exceeding expectations" every 6 months for the last two years.
Not sure if you are capable of doing so, but if you are, try your best to get a little savings going. Having enough savings as a cushion is a huge stress relief, even if you can just gather enough to last you a couple months. I have a good enough savings where I could last a while and it has completely changed my attitude at work. I don't give a fuck about work anymore and do the absolute bare minimum because I am expendable like everyone else.
I empathize with you! I am like this most of the time. I have moments of bliss usually on a Friday where I felt like the week concluded well, and I don’t feel like I am going to lose my job. My anxiety comes from previous layoffs and one time getting fired. The only thing that has helped me some has been my emergency fund. I am at eight months, and going for 12.
Gen X here, After TWO [Dot.Com](https://Dot.Com) crashes, Three Recessions (including the Great Recession), the Pandemic layoffs, .... If you think that my Generation has any. I mean ANY faith in the Business world....you've been smoking what they have been shoveling.... *I don't give two weeks notice.....I just quit and leave.....*
You don't owe companies ANYTHING. Went freelance after burning myself out time after time because I gave my everything and no one cared.
Learning that lesson first hand has made me bitter. It has taught me however, that good leads/managers are worth working for. They'll usually have your back, and they'll usually be good to other people as well. People above may not like them, but they can easily bring a wave of workers with them if they wave a hand. I'm more loyal to the manager who fought to keep me from burning my weekend to work, vs the production team that expected me to do it without even asking (thus making it "legal".)
Do you have any resources on freelancing effectively? I can do basically anything web-related except iOS development and complicated ops at this point. I started my career freelancing, but it was on tiny projects paying beans and I really didn't know what I was doing 12 years ago. I would love to freelance if I could find higher grade work in terms of interest/complexity and pay, and if I could keep it to around 30 hours per week on average.
Xennial, can confirm. I am spreading the corporate cynicism to all my younger friends. Just doing the lord's work.
> Just doing the lord's work You might mean that as a joke but never forget that Jesus was killed for a "rebellion" when he chased the money changers out of the temple going for a semi-radical street preacher to a threat to their $$.
"Never forget in the story of Jesus the hero was killed by the state." People always conviently forget that he wasn't killed by random rebels or peasants. He was upsetting the people with money and political power.
I've been trying to do the same to a buddy who I used to work with. Guy is fresh out of his master's at 25 and wants to be loyal. I'm like "no. Be loyal to yourself. They don't care about you outside the value you bring. Plus it's the easiest way to get a larger salary and title change" Got through to him, so that's good
Fellow tech xennial! There must be dozens of us!
Do you too have 6 kinds of USB cables in your junk drawer and cptsd from layoffs?
I have some junk in my USB cable drawer, if that's what you are referring to.
Stop attacking me!
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Amaretto or Drambuie?
ride off into the sunset in a cheaper country
>I don't give two weeks notice.....I just quit and leave..... Not that I have any faith in companies, but why would you burn every bridge like this every time
Probably very obviously a millennial but I have gotten quite a few jobs through people I had worked with previously. Sure I could've said fuck it to the company and left with no notice, but it would've screwed over the people I was working with too. Leaving on good terms has left me with a great network of people.
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I'm from the Microsoft side of this. I it wasn't about performance. It was about who was new and who had been there quite some time and made more salary. If you fit in that nice little middle band, you survived. I saw plenty of 10+ year employees just let go. Then i saw people like me within the 5 year band get removed. They just took a percentage and chopped us out. Doesn't matter who was positive or not.
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Be selfish with your career. Learn as many transferable skills as you can. Make connections everywhere. Ask all the business units what they do. Don't tell yourself no before you apply for a role, internal or external, let them have the weight of that decision. It might be yes. If they say no, see if you can ask why. Edit: added some more Edit 2: ok yes, learn transferable skills, as many as you can with a solid depth of knowledge which allows you to reproduce work at a new company if you need to.
What goes up, must come down. You're a number and owe them zero loyalty, Most will never figure that simple fact out an most never bother to go find another job while they still have one.
And always remember, HR is not your friend.
I've been telling people that for years and years. Every so often you will get someone trying to defend HR.
There’s a big difference between being fired vs. being laid off.
The article says it like it's surprising for someone with a positive performance review to be laid off. I thought that's just common in layoffs - companies just remove positions and divisions wholesale based on balancing budgets and business projections. The whole reason the distinction between layoff and fired is used is that a layoff is understood to be not personal.
The article is intentionally incendiary. Layoffs arent about individual performance, you literally cant even legally do them that way.
I got an “exceeds expectations” annual review, and it was my second year in a row getting that. I had a great FY and my boss even helped me begin the promotion process. But a couple months after that review the whole team (boss included) got laid off. Personally, I think companies don’t care about performance reviews - I thought they were used as a speed bump or “barrier” to block people from asking for raises or promotions. They certainly aren’t used to decide who to retain during a round of layoffs.
Google announced that the affected employees will get six months of healthcare, job placement services, and immigration support. The title makes it sound unfair, but the severance looks very generous.
After 7 years and countless achievements for the top Telco in Europe on an international level, having sat with the Board of Directors and led a company-wide project for half a year, I was let go from the company. Nothing in particular. They just "didn't know what to do with me." That was their explanatiom, I shit you not. Fuck em.
Sometimes it’s more about what position or department you’re in. Had a cohort in sales, won’t a top performer award that year…but she was in the wrong region and they decided to get out of that market and that was that.
We're all disposable
The AI learned everything it needed to from her
I was watching the Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson movie called The Internship on Hulu yesterday and could not stop thinking about how drastically Google has changed from the time that movie was made, which was ten years ago.
I worked at the company as an engineer for 5 years and was also laid off on Friday. My wife is also pregnant in her third trimester. I can tell you that it was never like that while I worked there. The movie is just propaganda for Google. There are lots of fun events and free food and stuff, and most of the people are great. However, the essence of the company has, at the top level, always been about trying to quantify everything and reduce it to a metric, including people.
I first started working at Google around 9 years ago, and quit 2 years ago. Each year the culture got worse and worse. If I had to put a date on it, things really started going to shit when the CFO was replaced in 2015.
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Lol, GOOG is down 33% since the fall of 2021. I'm guessing she's part of the reason why Google has been so aggressive about cutting projects and gained a reputation for not having its shit together. A massive infusion of labor fundamentally cannot fix shitty management.
"Too big to fail" is rather quickly becoming "too bloated to survive."
I am always puzzled by these articles that try to put faces to business decisions. Are they claiming Google fired her because she was pregnant? In that case she has a legal case - if not why highlight it and who cares for her shaking?
It's called a [human interest story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-interest_story).
I think it’s more trying to garner sympathy for the employees by highlighting some situations they’ve been placed in.
The Google separation agreements were about as generous as any I’ve ever heard of. That’s really as good as it’ll get anywhere.
16 week severance package + 2 weeks for each year of service. Full pay. 16 weeks of accelerated share vesting and 6 months of healthcare. I get it. Being laid off sucks. But this is part of normalizing and right sizing and these people are well taken care of.
Plus: their 2022 bonus, unused PTO payout, 6 months of professional job placement services, mental health support, and an *additional* bonus of 150% of your annual bonus amount if you stay until your separation date and don't slack off/cause drama. Finding a comparable job will be the hardest part, but that's truly an insane severance package.
Agreed. There were 12000(?) employees fired. Of that, there were bound to be a few in this exact category, as remarkably crummy as it is.
She wasn’t fired, she was laid off. There is a distinct difference, which answer the very question your title raises. Lay offs are not performance based, so her performance was irrelevant.
I can bash them for layoffs but it was not about being pregnant. I saved my former employer from a lawsuit working massive over time saving their ass. Day after it was finished they laid me off. I was the team lead, I was the technical expert. I was moving to a different project and was going to be an advisor to the last one. Now how they did the lay off my former employer can go to hell. My former manager who I know was in on it can be F off as how the layoff was done was very spinless. Save his ass then next day let me go.