Impacted: Reflections on Getting Laid Off
Getting laid off from my job earlier this year was one of the strangest experiences of my life. I recognize describing something as “strange” isn’t exactly eloquent or profound, but I say strange because, in a way, I saw it coming. I just stood and watched as the lay-off train chugged down the tracks, knowing full well what was next. Still, I wasn’t mentally prepared for the range of emotions and rabbit holes of thought I would find swirling in my mind for several months as I searched for the next step in my career. Even now, as I write this, I am waiting on an offer from a company I’ve spent the last few weeks interviewing with, and I can’t help but feel the same cycle will inevitably repeat itself. A nagging thought that I’ll return to this exact spot in another couple of years persists unless I change.
I don’t think I’m alone in this sentiment. I would say this viewpoint is widely shared among those in my generation (millennials) and certainly with those in Generation Z who have been through a layoff cycle. There were signs. I could see the slow roll of corporate reorganization steaming toward me. Yet, I found myself completely uninterested in moving out of the way. I can confidently say I was responsible for getting laid off. It wasn’t that I performed poorly. In fact, just considering the quality of my work, I was one of the higher performers on my team. My fault lies in the fact that I had zero interest in playing the corporate game. Maybe this has always been the case, and I missed the memo, but broadcasting your work, no matter how insignificant, coupled with relentless networking, appears to be just as, if not more important, than the work itself. Perception is reality. I’ve often heard this turn of phrase, yet I still can’t seem to latch on.
Back to getting laid off. My situation isn’t an isolated incident, not at my company, which reduced headcount by nearly 25%, and certainly not in the tech sector, where I have spent most of my career. Since the start of this year alone, over 50,000 workers have been laid off, adding to the nearly 260,000 positions eliminated last year. The past two years have marked the most significant downturns in tech employment since the dot com crash of 2001. If current trends persist, the tech sector will fuel the largest employment downturn over the past few decades, even eclipsing the layoffs made in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.
Much has been written recently about the factors contributing to tech companies laying off employees in droves, almost all of which are completely out of the workers’ control. One often cited reason for layoffs was the failed realization of post-pandemic growth. Companies went on hiring sprees in what was dubbed “The Great Resignation.” Salaries soared as tech companies couldn’t bring enough talent through the door. Flash forward several years, these companies realized they over-hired. And the growth this new talent was supposed to spur was merely the collective fever dream of executives across the industry. As an insider, I see the life-altering circumstances these seemingly callous decisions made by execs can have on the employees, such as myself, who have been “impacted.” To an outsider, however, these layoffs are necessary to reduce bloat and become more focused on core competencies. The era of hiring big, expensive engineering teams, staffed with talent across the full stack and project managers to boot, for long-shot side projects is dead. Wall Street saw this phenomenon, as always, long before anyone on the inside and has rewarded these companies willing to make deep cuts to their talent pool.
These layoffs aren’t cynical. They aren’t being made to replace engineers and other positions with AI. Simply put, executives bet on exponential post-pandemic growth that didn’t pan out. I would argue the blame can’t be laid at the feet of the C suite, and broadly speaking, certainly can’t be pinned on the individual employee. The tech sector was derailed more by macroeconomic factors like inflation, high-interest rates, and the most worrying — looming stagflation- than by decisions made at the top. With all that said, I still have to take responsibility for losing my job. Getting that random twenty-minute Zoom call on my calendar at the last minute was gut-wrenching. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things I could’ve done differently. The engineering director was adamant that this decision didn’t reflect my performance. But it did. Regardless of what they were instructed by HR to say, I wouldn’t have been on that call if I had produced more, cared more, and tried harder to connect with my peers and managers. The last point, I would argue, was most salient in their decision. There’s a lot to be said on this topic, and maybe I’ll touch on it in another post, but remote work is incredible in the best of economic conditions. However, remote work can be a dagger when macroeconomic conditions turn south.
As I’ve grown in my career, I’ve recognized the immense importance of personal relationships with your peers and management. I can’t stress that part enough. You can be one of the best engineers on your team. Still, without making those personal connections, managers have difficulty justifying keeping you on versus a peer who has engrained themselves in the group’s social fabric. Therein lies one of the traps of remote work that I fell into. Working remotely makes creating and maintaining these relationships exponentially more difficult. The concept of “Zoom Fatigue” is real, and I often focused solely on the elements of my job that produced tangible results instead of staring at another person through a screen for the umpteenth time that day.
The quality of my work, although a large component, was still just a single component of my job. I watched as others on my team put more time and effort into building relationships and connections than they did their own personal work. They would then leverage these relationships to bring people together to help complete the work I considered solely their responsibility. And yet those are the types of people that get promoted while I, proverbially speaking, clocked in and clocked out all the way to unemployment. I was distant to a fault, believing my work output would shield me from the layoffs everyone saw coming.
So why didn’t I play the game? Whenever I saw coworkers putting in the extra effort to reach out to others halfway across the country, attend conferences, and volunteer for work that was generally outside the scope of our position, I often found myself contemplating why I lacked the drive to do the same. I didn’t have to look far, though. Deep down, I knew the answer. Burning at the back of my head was the brand that slowly became more and more visible to those around me. I just didn’t care enough to make an effort. Clock in. Clock out. At the highest level, your employment is transactional: time for money — only doing the work you’re being paid to do. In the middle, where it counts most, however, your employment is deeper and more personal. This is where my conundrum comes full circle. Did I pick a career where I can genuinely care enough to put in the extra effort beyond my job description? Or, at the very least, feign interest for long enough that the relationships I build mentally invest me in the work and the job as a whole? Sadly, I think the answer to the first question is no. Like many others in tech, I’ve become hamstrung by the “Golden Handcuffs.” While I’ve managed to live well below my means, being largely free from any heavy financial burdens. I still have a mortgage to pay and have grown accustomed to the high salaries in tech. I work in this industry for the money, not because I have any semblance of a passion for it.
The second proposition, however, carries more water. I think there comes a point in most people’s professional lives when they realize that finding a passion and making a career out of it isn’t in the cards. I have a passion for writing, but I grew up poor, and the prospect of being a starving artist is simply a non-starter. I’m a sound engineer with, ironically, a talent for building relationships with clients and customers. I’m slowly realizing there isn’t a magic bullet when picking your profession. No work I do for a corporation will provide the fulfillment I need to be fully invested in a job. The people and the relationships I can build just might, and hopefully, reciprocate with the job security I’ve long taken for granted in a distant booming economy.
