I’m sick of being laidoff. Got laid off again today, second time in 4 years in a big corporate layoff. Seems I can’t ever find any respite these days. No matter how hard I work or how much I put in, just bound to be laid off and even though I’ve been recognized officially through merit repeatedly, these companies here in the USA just keep laying people off And then passing all the jobs on to India for 3K a year salary…
So disheartening. At this rate I might as well just retire from White collar work and go and learn a trade as a tradesman, completely redo my entire life goals
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At this rate I might as well just retire from White collar work and go and learn a trade as a tradesman, completely redo my entire life goals
You wouldn’t be the first, i’ve seen it happen. And you’d most likely be happier.
My layoffs have been interesting.
1st was after working my 1st year a as a junior dev. The tech lead thought i didn’t have what it takes.
2nd was 'cos a higher up didn’t like my sarcastic remarks.
3rd was 'cos my boss got offended i refused to work on weekends.I’ve done it.
I am happier. Literally one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m going through a similar experience. Here’s what I learned from it: Generally, the higher the risk, the higher the pay. Corpos pay more, because your job is at risk from day 1. Find a job at a small company; a mom/pop, if possible. Eventually, if enough people do this and don’t get €€ in their eyes with the higher (but much riskier) pay, the corpos will catch on and adjust their layoffs practice or die.
I left a job that required a college education and professional licence to work in a factory and it has been amazing. I feel like I was lied to. People told me go to school and get a job with a fancy title, but the pay was terrible and my bosses were worse.
People have done blue collar work dirty. I get paid more now than at my fancy job and my bosses treat me with respect because of the work union. The only difference is the reaction you get when you tell people your job title. I’d rather money and respect than a fancy title.
I had the opposite experience. Left a shitty blue-collar job (it was even a union job, but the union was toothless and mostly just existed to get work from places that would only place orders with union shops) for an office job.
The hours are better, the pay is better, the co-workers are less bigoted, and I no longer smell like grease and sweat whenever I come home.
There will always be trade-offs in any job. Whether it’s blue-collar, white-collar, or whatever ever other collar you can think of. There is no perfect job type for everyone.
whenever I come home
How rarely does that occur??
Working from home it’s rare
“Let’s go home kids.”
“But we are home!”
“That was fast.”
I meant my other home
Anyone with a brain and a shred of critical thought will look at mass layoffs and see them as the desperate move of an idiot in charge who couldn’t think of anything else to save money.
Idiots in charge will look at them as a brilliant way to buy another yacht.
Edit: sorry you’re going through this. I’m feeling some empathy anger with you here
Tradesmen get laid off in the winter too.
Idk how much this will help, but… You can’t change massive corporations, they’re gonna do what they do so my recommendation is to just stop trying. I don’t mean that as in “give up on finding a job, don’t get me wrong” just that next time you find one for a massive corporation, do the barrreee minimum as written in your contract.
Bonuses, promotions and other bs like that are just lies to make you put in more work as far as I’m concerned. If they aren’t gonna appreciate you working hard, then don’t work hard, that’s what I’m tryina say.
I know this doesn’t help a whole lot but… Again, big corporations gonna be big corporations, layoffs are gonna happen with them, I mean… The CEO’s 10th yacht is way more important than your livelyhood after all. So you may as well cut your losses and not put in as much work for them next time…
If you’re young enough the trades are definitely a good idea. If you’re 35 yo or older I wouldn’t risk it, for one youll be paid very very low starting out, two the trades are very hard on your body, and this is coming from a guy that switched to the trades late in life.
Hang in there dude or dudette. Youll be ok in the end
I am on my 3rd layoff in 10 years.
First one I had all sort of dirt on my boss who was kissing ass to climb the corporate ladder. I was a massive liability as I knew what a waste of space he was. They laid me off with some really week excuses and a years wage/benefits to keep me quiet.
Second one we got a new CEO who decided to make massive changes to the company “to make it more profitable”. It hasn’t shown a profit since and the layoffs are a yearly tradition now.
The last one was this past fall. Smaller company over-invested when times where good. Then the market turned around and they are in trouble. One of those small “family” businesses, me and 20 others got kicked out of the family.
So as of now I have my own business. I am on track to make 100% more than I ever have before working for someone else.
Just for shits and giggles I also have an interview tomorrow for a C-suite position in a tropical country. It’s too fucking cold here.
I had all sort of dirt on my boss who was kissing ass to climb the corporate ladder
I had one where I had just spent like a year training my idiot boss on the systems, just for him to turn around and say I didn’t do anything, but during the exit interview he kept waving around a list of my shortcomings that was literally a blank page
That was the one where I was foolish enough to be willing to it in all sorts of crazy hours, I was willing to be the first one on, I was willing to be last one out, I was willing to also do his job of a daily status, but I finally drew a line at “and”. This was a startup where we all worked crazy hours - I felt I had to point out that I couldn’t physically do first in and last out: I’d get more sleep working overnight
Out of curiosity, for the first one. Would it have been possible to use that dirt on your boss to stay at the company? Of course I can imagine you just don’t want to work for a company where you’d have to do such things in order to stay with the company in the first place.
The place was a toxic cesspool at the time. An investment group had purchased 7 different companies and forced merged them in the space of 3 years and went on a massive hiring spree. The company I started with was 350 people. The company I left was over 4,000 people
It was an illegal layoff that I could taken them to court over. However the in-house lawyer knew what was going on and made them give me one hell of a severance package to stop me from suing them. I basically got everything I reasonably would have gotten if I sued.
That ended up being the most profitable year of my life.
My boss ended up CEO for a few years. It didn’t go well. They have 1/2 the number of employees now and 50% less market share.
I’m really sorry you lost your job, again.
I work in healthcare IT and I had to do the layoffs this past year to send the jobs to the Philippines and it was eye opening what their salaries are compared to ours. They are good people there and they are smart and have ambitions just like we do, only for a fraction of the cost. And yes, in one case I had to layoff an entire team regardless of how good they were (they were really good). For them it was just the case that I could find replacements for them in the markets we were looking and if I laid them off then I could layoff fewer in other departments. This was the first time I have been faced with having to do this and it was pretty awful. I take my work really personally and treasure the relationships and I think this whole thing has had a lasting impact on my happiness level. So many times I was fearful that I would be in a position of lying to my teams if asked a direct question, something I would never do. Trying to navigate the whole thing was led to many sleepless nights. I went through exercises where I practiced my responses to potential questions I might be asked as the rumor slowly started churning.
I don’t know why I’m sharing all of this, but it helps me to talk about it. The mid tier management (that’s me) that gets given the marching orders and has to carry it all out suffers a different kind of pain, even if we did keep our jobs. I hope I’m never asked to do it again.
I’m sorry again. Don’t take it too personally is maybe what my winding story and opposing perspective is to mean. I’m sure you are good at what you do.
I’m in the situation you’re talking about right now. There’s an upcoming restructuring and on paper, I’ve been able to reposition my teams so there’s no job elimination and I’ve found homes for everyone. I’m actually excited about the plan. But I’ve been around the block enough to know that my plan on paper might not be accepted, and that this is just phase one. The funding to contract externally needs to come from somewhere. Laying off entire teams might be what causes me to finally put my own job on the chopping block to save a few others. I could go back to being a staff dev and it’s potentially not even much of a pay cut. But damn do I love everything else about my job, but mental load of these decisions, even when I know they’re the best ones I could make, is a lot.
I have heard several stories like this from my boss who worked at a previous place where he was asked to remove an entire team like you did. He says he will never forget it and is soul crushing. He tried his hardest to cut budgets and even found a few things were he was able to save the money and brought this to upper management where they had to break it to him that it didn’t matter what was saved, that wasn’t the point… people are just names on paper to them and if they decide this is what they want there is pretty much no stopping them. He then said he was there long enough after that where they realized it was an awful mistake and the work you get in return is not nearly as good as the original team you had so they had to hire new people back. It’s a never ending cycle these days.
I also work in IT Healthcare! It’s a brutal industry huh! Thankfully I have been with the same place for 19 years now, but it have witnessed it all. When I started we grew exponentially throwing money at everything, then the owner sold and I got to witness the “no changes expected” followed by everything changing. Then saw partners separate from us completely which was crazy work, and then the boom of covid followed by almost going belly up with massive layoffs for the past 2 years and consolidation of everything basically back to when I started in 2006!
Thanks for sharing your experience. Even if it seems insignificant, I know it must’ve been so hard to go through. That trauma is understandable and makes you human. I appreciate you sharing it.
I’ve thought about going into management too. I have 5 years in my industry. I could be manager next. But I’ve never been trained. Idk how to lead. Idk how to report progress, manage projects, delegate, answer questions I don’t have the answers to. Lie to my employees and subordinates as to why they’re average even if they’re exceptional. Meets expectations, everyone gets that. So many new challenges id have to face I’m nervous about.
But then again I could just get laid off again after landing a manager job. Who knows? It’s terrifying thinking about moving up
@DuckWrangler9000@lemmy.world I feel you, I have a few other comments here because I feel you so hard. I’ve been there also twice in the last 3 years.
I wanted to give you advice if you decide to stay in White collar (and trust me, I understand the feeling, I was a hair close to buying a bar. Slinging drinks seems a lot less stressful than dealing with corpo).
My advice though. Take a few days to process, play some video games, veg out. Then, on top of job searching and all, decide on something new to learn. If you’re IT/development, this is crucial now, and my advice will follow for those roles. The days of “I’m just a react dev” are ending, or at least the market has been flooded, and AI is making it easy for junior devs to pretend that they’re more than what they are. It’s another evolution of our job, get out in front of it. If you’re a programmer for example, learn how models work, how to run them, how to call them, how to train them. Learn kubernetes. Learn infrastructure. Learn skills that you never would have before that set you apart. That’s what we’re going to have to do if we want to remain employable.
One silver lining is that you have time right now, time to set aside and learn something really useful. I set up a k8s cluster at home and forced myself to learn it during my unemployment, and now it’s my job
Do it. My buddy went into the trades after being laid off a few years ago and hasn’t looked back. He’s enjoying it.
In fact, he reminds me about it while I’m stuck in meetings…
I left a trade job after we got a new division manager with a background in sales. Despite the entire staff being on 20hr/week mandatory overtime, dipshit was holding 3x daily 30 minute shift meetings, and monthly 90-minute all-hands meetings to complain about productivity.
Two months after I left, corporate shitcanned the asshole.
That’s just the nature of corporate world. The beatings will continue.
Smart move is to not get emotionally invested.
Do bare min to keep the job and focus on your family and friends.
Fuck the parasite. Also, always be looking for a better job.
Same thing here, twice in 3 years. Stopped caring about companies, culture, all that bullshit. I’m there to do my job and clock out. 5 years I’d be devoted, work nights and weekends if I needed to, but now? Naw, fuck the companies. I do what I’m paid for. My time is my own. When I can be let go tomorrow for random cost cutting then why should I care about the well-being of the company?
Luckily I’m somewhere semi decent now, but I stay frosty. One thing is for sure, I’m 0 and 3 for private equity companies. Private equity is a red flag to anyone who doesn’t own stock in it - and even if you do it’s probably a short term gain before they tank it.
Yep. They’ll demand loyalty from you, but not return it. The second a new CEO arrives, they’ll want to show improvements on the bottom line. Fastest way to “save” money is to sack some people.
Unless you’re in sales, you are a line item in a cost centre. Your salary is a dollar value they can save if they get rid of you.
HR exists to protect the org, not the individual people in it.
If you’re looking for loyalty, get a dog.
There should be a requirement where the people who decide to lay folks off actually have to show up and tell them in person.
I’m the CTO of my company and was just forced this week to downsize from 48 devs to 3… It was really hard. Telling everyone myself was even harder. Everyone was nice about it, understood it wasn’t my choice, but you’re impacting lives. To talk to someone having a normal day and then suddenly they’re reeling and trying to think of how they’ll survive.
I honestly think if our board has to be the ones to tell them it wouldn’t even register for them. It would be like ordering food. The people at that level only see money.
My first layoff was this, and the CTO was genuinely distraught. I hold no ill feelings towards him. The company was not doing well, and we saw the writing on the wall for a while. That was a brave man, he got up there and took it himself.
Later I was laid off again by cowards. The CEO and CTO were offline when most of the people got the gauntlet, a 5 minute meeting with HR only. No feedback, no questions. HR woman we all knew, and she was crying, obviously crushed and was pushed to do all of this herself while they hid with their tail behind their legs. Heard the next day that the CEO bravely told the reset of the org that they had some “adjustments” that had to be made and no shit - direct quote “We’re feeling a little heartburn today”. Coward.
Reminds me off a friend who was made to lay off his entire team. Himself included.
He basically got his team in a meeting room, told them that everyone in this room is being fired. People of course were shocked and some shouted at him how he could do such a thing to them. “Again: Everyone, I mean literally everyone in this room is being fired.Understood?”
He rehired half his team soon after for the company he created with his severance package.
I feel for you.
My company got bought in June '23. I was offered a retention bonus with a final payout after two years. 1.5 years in (last month), they announced that they’re laying off our entire office in June '25.
The reason provided was that we can’t keep up with the expected demand of the product despite nobody ever coming on site to evaluate our abilities and us exceeding the goals set for us. It couldn’t have anything to do with the salary range in our area naturally. I asked the goon they sent us if the person who made the decision was on the phone. He said no. It was explained that “these things happen” in business.
And they expect everyone to stick around and happily assist in the transition. The retention bonus sounded good when it came with continued employment, but it’s not nearly enough to put up with that shit.
I’ve already interviewed three places. Fuck if I’m giving them two weeks.
I have friends who were offered retention in the same boat. They are taking it as they are being paid to job search, it’s a pre layoff. The second they don’t have anything holding them down they’re all out. Take the money and run, the company already showed their true colors
They literally have us trying to finish developing a product and get it through certification. They want first 10 units built at our location and for us to train up the people at the new location. I’m phoning it in for sure, but that’s not the expectation.
It is all about trade offs. Higher pay generally comes with a fast pace and more lay offs. Lower pay is much slower and sometimes there are never any layoffs.
Sadly we can’t survive on low pay. That’s just death
I hear you but after my husband was laid off (along with thousands in his field in our area) he looked for months and months for a new job. Unfortunately so did the other thousands, so sometimes even with 6 or 8 interviews he wouldn’t get the job. One place ghosted him after THEY made an offer.
He’s an apprentice now in a trade. These two years are really tight with money, but we wish he had started up in the trade immediately instead of wasting all that time looking. We’d be surviving better on this low pay if we hadn’t had so many months of zero pay for him.
Sorry to hear. Hopefully you bounce back regardless of which direction you take.
