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Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

#31

Post by massung »

Personally, I haven't been laid off, but wanted to recognize that a layoff also affects those who weren't: morale drop, worry, survivor's guilt, stress leading to physical symptoms, etc.

Sometimes, this can quickly lead to a downward spiral effect at the company. Productivity falls and whatever issues the layoff was intended to remedy end up being magnified instead. This is usually the case when - before the layoff - there was either "writing on the wall" (that typically management wouldn't admit to publicly) or an inherent distrust of management.

What really sucks is the pile on. Recruiters watch for these moments and jump on them like piranhas. They notice a sudden spike on LinkedIn of resume updates by people all working at the same company and hone in on those still there, reaching out to see if they want to take a look at other possibilities. Simply put: no one wants to be the last one to go down with the ship.

Whatever project you're building/working on, please remember those who weren't laid off, too.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

#32

Post by stanmancan »

I got a buy out offer about 14 months ago, fantastic offer and I was planning on leaving to pursue my own business anyways. It's turned out great; the buy out gave me a years runway to not have to worry about income so much, meanwhile I was able to pursue my own product. Making more now than I did before the buy out.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

#33

Post by eecc »

error417 wrote: post #18

I lost my job in January because the company closed the office in my country, haven't written a single line of code since then, looking for motivation to start again but I feel like an absolute failure and don't know what to do now. The fact that I stopped coding 10 months ago and wasn't even a good developer, to begin with, isn't helping. I guess I need therapy.

You can try going to meetups, participate to the local developer community. There you will realize how much of your self-deprecation is justified or not. Identify your weak spots and work on them, but also realize your strong points and use them to climb out of it.

And yes, talk to a counsellor as well if you feel it helps.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

#34

Post by ErrantX »

The small family firm I worked at folded after the owner remortgaged his house. I was told on the Friday and had my last pay check on the monday. (Sad story, I felt for them)

After contracting for a bit and running through my savings I was days away from losing my house when I was offered a great job writing software earning twice as much. 2 years later I was offered a dream job and doubled my salary again.

Today I am forever thankful for my fairly ridiculous salary because I've been at rock bottom.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

#35

Post by giancarlostoro »

ErrantX wrote: post #34

The small family firm I worked at folded after the owner remortgaged his house. I was told on the Friday and had my last pay check on the monday. (Sad story, I felt for them) After contracting for a bit and running through my savings I was days away from losing my house when I was offered a great job writing software earning twice as much. 2 years later I was offered a dream job and doubled my salary again. Today I a…

Don't forget to reinvest / save that extra income.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

#36

Post by archie2 »

I got caught up in a re-org when the company hired a new VP of Eng and he basically came in and fired all of the Ruby developers (everything was built with Rails) and hired a bunch of Java developers as replacements because Spring Boot was the bees knees according to him.

Took me about 6 months and almost all of my savings to get myself back on track but now I'm at a self-funded fintech startup that's already profitable as an architecture lead so everything is looking good for now.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

#37

Post by cryptozeus »

error417 wrote: post #18

I lost my job in January because the company closed the office in my country, haven't written a single line of code since then, looking for motivation to start again but I feel like an absolute failure and don't know what to do now. The fact that I stopped coding 10 months ago and wasn't even a good developer, to begin with, isn't helping. I guess I need therapy.

Get paid projects from online sites, get moving, do some exercises, get the momentum back. It will be hard to get out of the quicksand otherwise.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

#39

Post by bitcoinmoney »

ErrantX wrote: post #34

The small family firm I worked at folded after the owner remortgaged his house. I was told on the Friday and had my last pay check on the monday. (Sad story, I felt for them) After contracting for a bit and running through my savings I was days away from losing my house when I was offered a great job writing software earning twice as much. 2 years later I was offered a dream job and doubled my salary again. Today I a…

What’s current salary? 4x in a couple of years is big except for student -> non student cases

Re: Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

#40

Post by mpeg »

ErrantX wrote: post #34

The small family firm I worked at folded after the owner remortgaged his house. I was told on the Friday and had my last pay check on the monday. (Sad story, I felt for them) After contracting for a bit and running through my savings I was days away from losing my house when I was offered a great job writing software earning twice as much. 2 years later I was offered a dream job and doubled my salary again. Today I a…

I'm pretty curious how much you're currently making, I've never worked in the UK finance sector but I understand the salaries are just higher.
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