Tag: layoffs

I’ve been talking to a lot of people since the layoffs last Wednesday, helping them (and myself) come to terms with the colleagues that are no longer here, all of the survivor’s guilt, uncertainty and fear that comes along with it. I’ve talked about some of those things in the previous two posts (this one and this one), but I want to talk about the fear and uncertainty today.

A lot of my friends are now really afraid there will be another layoff, to the point that it’s all they can think about. Because who loses their job in a layoff seems random and no one will ever give you a satisfactory answer of why anyone was let go, it feels impossible to make sense out of it.

I was talking through this earlier this week with someone and I think part of the answer is about losing our sense of control over our place in the world.

One of the causes of suffering in Buddhism is impermanence. I can’t remember where I read it, but my favorite way I’ve heard it stated is that suffering is caused by a misalignment in our perception of the world versus how the world really is.

Layoffs destroy the illusion that we have control over our work.

We think that once we have a job, that if we do that job well, it’s ours as long as we want it. In a layoff, there’s no way that illusion can survive, because who gets let go also doesn’t make sense.

For me, the solution to that is to stop pretending that I have control over things I can’t control.

I don’t get to choose the external conditions, the decisions of leadership or mistakes that lead to a layoff. I could lose my job at any moment. I have no control over any of that, and in order to be happy, I have to accept that I have no control over it.

What I can choose is:

• How I relate to work: work is just one part of my life, not all of my life. I need to do things that make me happy outside of work like maintaining my health, my relationships and my perspective.
• How I prepare for the possibility of being laid off: I call this the “blanket fort”. If I was laid off, how long could I go before I had to have another job? Do I have enough savings to alleviate most of that fear? If not, that’s where I would start.
• How I work day to day to get the most enjoyment out of my current situation: I mentioned this before, but I had to accept a long time ago that who I work with, what I work on, and how long I get to do both isn’t up to me; so, I choose to enjoy those things for as long as I can.

None of those things are easy, and they took me a long time to come to terms with and work towards. But, they make handling the inevitable disappointments of my work life easier to handle, and the feelings around them manageable.

Layoffs are a sudden and one-sided renegotiation of your working conditions. You don’t have to accept those new conditions. You can also renegotiate how you work, how much work you do, and your relationship with your work – up to and including deciding that you’d like to work somewhere else.

Nothing that happens during a layoff and the resulting chaos of reorgs and uncertainty about our position in an organization is easy. It’s all extremely stressful. The best we can do is try to ride that part out and get back to some sense of equilibrium. Lean on your friends and family for support. Talk to people. Don’t keep all of it inside, because other people have been there and can help. Being afraid, uncertain or angry… all of that is natural and you’re not the only one feeling it.

In my last layoff-related post, I tried to talk through some of the emotions you’ll feel, and why no question you’ll ask will get an answer that will satisfy you. Well, I’ve still been thinking about them, and how we navigate them.

A layoff confronts us with suffering we can’t turn away from, can’t reason with, and can’t help but see ourselves in.

When there’s a disaster or tragedy, we can turn off the news. When there’s a scandal, we can console ourselves that we’d never be that stupid. When our company gets hit with a layoff, and people we’ve worked with closely are just not there anymore, there’s no way you can turn it off or reason it away – because it could have easily happened to us. You have to confront it, and for some of us, that’s really difficult.

The questions we ask after a layoff all map pretty cleanly to the five stages of grief. They’re difficult to sit through. We’ve had two large meetings since last Wednesday at Gusto and I squirmed through both Q&A sessions.

Why?

Mostly because I knew the answers would be at best unsatisfying, and at worst, confusing. But, thinking on it over the weekend, I think the part that felt the worst was seeing the suffering beneath the question. People were angry. They were trying to negotiate with the grief, by trying to figure out ways to bring people back. And none of that’s going to work…

By the time a layoff happens, it’s almost always too late (“almost” is there just to account for Elon Musk’s Twitter, though I’ve experienced one other layoff where management realized they let go of too many people and brought some of them back, but it was almost the same situation – someone who had no business being in charge making decisions without enough information).

As “survivors”, we have to go through that mourning process before we can get to acceptance and rebuild (because a reorg pretty much always follows a layoff). Trying to skip that part, either management trying to prematurely rally everyone, or you not giving yourself time and space to mourn, always ends in more sadness.

I think it’s doubly hard to rebuild trust in a company after a layoff. Layoffs usually result in people renegotiating their place in it – and more people will leave, this time voluntarily.

But, if you stay, the resulting chaos of the reorg can be a lot of fun. For me, they always feel like the first day of school – who am I going to be? What am I going to do differently? What can I jettison or claim in the chaos that will make my life easier / better / more fun?

It’s OK if you’re not ready to think about that yet – but, there will come a time, hopefully sometime soon, when you get to the acceptance stage and can decide what you want to do. If you’re not there yet, please know you’ll get there eventually, even if it’s somewhere else with a fresh start.