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The hero's journey of getting laid off

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Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#31

Post by efficax »

paulcole wrote: post #9

> Why are the smartest people in the world working on delivery food? They probably aren't. Some of them are really smart. Some of them are pretty dumb. Some are determined and hardworking. Some are lazy. Most are more or less somewhere in the middle. I don't know why anyone would assume the smartest people in the world are working on delivery food (I understand the subtext of the-smartest-people-are-choosing-to-work-…

everyone in this industry loves to think that they're surrounded by (and accordingly one of) the smartest people in the world. Sure, some people in tech are very very smart, but many, maybe most, of the smartest people in the world, don't work in tech at all (they work as researchers, in universities)

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#32

Post by aetherson »

diob wrote: post #27
colechristensen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is much less of a nightmare if you're prepared for this kind of predicable eventuality. If you're living paycheck to paycheck it's a nightmare, if you've got months saved up set aside for exactly this kind of thing it's a vacation.

The majority of folks are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, not of their own volition. I'd be fine for quite some time, heck I could probably semi retire so to speak.

The majority of which folks? People in the world? Certainly. People in history? Even more certainly. People in the United States of America? ...I mean, probably not actually a majority, but certainly lots of people in the US would have difficulty putting away months' worth of savings without really rigorous amounts of financial discipline.

The majority of people who read Hacker News? Uh. No.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#33

Post by UncleOxidant »

georgex7 wrote: post #13
duxup wrote: post #8

I got laid off from a company after nearly 20 years of work there. I was very lucky to get a big company layoff type package of ~ 9 months of pay. I decided to take it as opportunity to do new things. It was still a worrying experience, had kids, family to take care of, but I chose to take that money and time and enroll in a coding boot camp and go in a new direction in life after age 40. I figured I wasn't going to…

WOW what a story. And what an epic layoff package ;)

9 months after 20 years doesn't seem particularly great. Heck, I got 6 months severance + 6 months of paid health insurance after being at a large corp for only 2.5 years - it was a buyout, ie. they were asking for volunteers to take severance to leave so they wouldn't need to do an actual involuntary layoff later. Seemed like a great deal and I had another gig 6 months later so it was kind of an extended vacay.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#34

Post by shortstuffsushi »

bombcar wrote: post #25
shortstuffsushi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a "predictable eventuality" implies the victim is at fault for not preparing. I have a number of friends (of course, not software devs) who are aware that their company may at any point dump them (one company goes even so far as to say regularly "everyone is replaceable," and I have not been able to talk said friend out of leaving...). Due to a variety of reasons / excuses, they can't or won't leave these…

People treat being laid off like they treat death - it's something they intellectually know can happen, and does happen to others, but they're always entirely surprised when it happens to them. Many people (myself included!) have a hard time saving against potential outcomes and find it convenient to explain away why I don't (as I spend money on non-necessities).

Definitely, and I don't mean it to sound like these people couldn't be making better choices, but once you've dug your hole deep enough, it's hard to ever get to a point where you can be "safe" from this sort of thing. Even if they knew, for example, that the company was shutting down for a month starting in six months, the likelihood of being able to stow away ~ two paychecks during that window is quite small.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#36

Post by lianna-vba »

willcipriano wrote: post #24

Any tips for being the guy who gets laid off? I'd like to have an excuse to take a few months break but when layoffs happen they never pick me.

You can tactfully tell your manager that in a 1:1. I've had co-workers do that - the volunteering employee gets severance and the manager doesn't have to stress about a name for the list.

Success depends on your relationship with your manager and if they actually have control over who gets let go.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#37

Post by nus07 »

tra3 wrote: post #3

I'm thankful that the school that I attended forced us to take electives outside of Computer Science and Engineering. I took some Psychology classes. The list of stressful events was very surprising to me. The author alludes to it in the post. I recall that typically "happy" events are stressful, too. Here's the list [0]: Death of a spouse (or child*): 100 Divorce: 73 Marital separation: 65 Imprisonment: 63 Death of…

What’s my score according to my timeline of events - Late 2016- Layoff Early 2017- moved across country for new job Mid 2018- Got married Mid 2018- Layoff from second company Mid 2018-Mid 2019 - Moved away and back for two jobs Oct 2019 - Started new job Nov 2019 - Birth of child Dec 2019 - Death of father Mar 2020 - Cannot visit mother for 2 years due to Covid

I think my score is about 210-290 for the last 4-5 years . And I am supposed to keep a high performance because of health insurance and keeping my visa lol.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#38

Post by ragnot »

troelsSteegin wrote: post #11
tra3 wrote: post #3

I'm thankful that the school that I attended forced us to take electives outside of Computer Science and Engineering. I took some Psychology classes. The list of stressful events was very surprising to me. The author alludes to it in the post. I recall that typically "happy" events are stressful, too. Here's the list [0]: Death of a spouse (or child*): 100 Divorce: 73 Marital separation: 65 Imprisonment: 63 Death of…

from [0]: Each event is assigned a “Life Change Unit” score. These are then added together over a year and used to predict your risk of illness. So, it's a scale on a predictor of health impacts, vs say a measure of intensity.

Funny how retirement and dismissal from work are so similar.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#39

Post by jedberg »

willcipriano wrote: post #24

Any tips for being the guy who gets laid off? I'd like to have an excuse to take a few months break but when layoffs happen they never pick me.

Volunteer when you hear layoffs are coming. Just tell your boss you'd like to be on the list.

They will usually oblige you because you are solving a problem for them (meeting their cut headcount requirements) and they know that if you stay you might leave anyway and if you don't you'll be unhappy.

Heck, if they layoff is a surprise, ask your boss if you can swap with someone else. They often have the flexibility to do that.

Re: The hero's journey of getting laid off

#40

Post by brycewray »

brightball wrote: post #19
georgex7 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WOW what a story. And what an epic layoff package ;)

The teleco I used to work for gave people 2 weeks pay for every year a person was with the company when they had post merger layoffs. I don’t know if there’s a standard but that seems to line up pretty close.

In my case, was one week for every year — so 16 weeks for (just short of) 17 years.
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