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Layoff Thinking

blogs.newardassociates.com

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Re: Layoff Thinking

#61

Post by bluGill »

cj wrote: post #15
jjmarr wrote: post #2

I don't understand the American "what do you do?" as first introduction. It's more fun to ask "how do you know 'x'" where 'x' is the host of the party or event or whatever. Although I'm Canadian.

I follow an informal rule of "never be the first person in a conversation to bring up work/career" (or weather, or family/kids). If you play the rule like a game, it's kind of fun. After starting with a personal trainer, I made it 10 sessions (10 hours) of small talk before he finally asked me something that led to a conversation about work. It's a lot more challenging (but way more rewarding I find) to initiate conv…

That is horrible. Conversations are most easy to start around weather, work, and family. (Travel, where you live, hobbies, and sport are most of the rest.)

you don't help anyone avoiding conversation.

Re: Layoff Thinking

#62

Post by AnotherGoodName »

One of the biggest emotional triggers is unfairness. You can see this in anything with a brain from small animals, children through to adults. If there's perceived unfairness emotions are immediately and strongly triggered.

Layoffs are truly unfair. You have no control over them and no performance or ratings process is good enough to justify snap firings of some percentage. You're going to hit some of your hardest workers.

Honestly i don't think it's the self-worth or anything like that that gets to you. It's the sheer unfairness of the situation. I also think simply realizing this is helpful.

Re: Layoff Thinking

#63

Post by Planktonne »

gedy wrote: post #34
le-mark wrote: post #9

I’ve been in software development since 2003. I’d never been layed off until Jan 2024. I had some dodged several. The signs were all there, company acquired about a year before, product didn’t really fit in their vision. That’s when the layoffs usually happen, a year or so into it. Yet I was still surprised. They got me, they finally got me! At first I thought it was a blessing. I had changed jobs fairly regularly bu…

> once said long term technical unemployment would be a sign of the singularity; just pray for a soft take off I think that's true, but in your case (mine as well), companies just don't really want to hire older people. People get touchy when this is brought up, but young recruiter women aren't attracted to them and are biased, younger guys/interviewers view them as some dragon to be slayed to prove themselves, etc.…

Have you considered the possibility that the issue might be your own biases, not those of the recruiters?

Re: Layoff Thinking

#64

Post by cj »

bluGill wrote: post #61
cj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow an informal rule of "never be the first person in a conversation to bring up work/career" (or weather, or family/kids). If you play the rule like a game, it's kind of fun. After starting with a personal trainer, I made it 10 sessions (10 hours) of small talk before he finally asked me something that led to a conversation about work. It's a lot more challenging (but way more rewarding I find) to initiate conv…

That is horrible. Conversations are most easy to start around weather, work, and family. (Travel, where you live, hobbies, and sport are most of the rest.) you don't help anyone avoiding conversation.

That’s why it’s a game.

If I run out of interesting conversation starters, I default to weather/work/family and carry on.

I simply prefer to start with unique/contextual topics first.

Re: Layoff Thinking

#65

Post by austin-cheney »

I saw laid off about 3 years ago and it was rough. I was unemployed for 6 months. This ended up being a wonderful experience, but it was a huge challenge to get through of many resumes sent out, many failed interviews, and even when an offer was presented then I had to achieve acceptance from the wife that did not want to relocate. There was a lot of continuous failure at trying to achieve something I no longer wanted to do and had grown out of.

Back then my entire career was as a fulltime JavaScript/TypeScript developer. I had really grown to hate it because the older I got the more childish it felt. I love the language and writing software in the language. I still write personal software in the language. Its the JavaScript employment I hated. I really detested the exceptionally low baseline employers kept lowering just to find employment. The result was ever more entitled and less capable peers.

Now I manage a large development team doing something wildly unrelated. I am so grateful for the pivot.

Re: Layoff Thinking

#66

Post by donw »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #62

One of the biggest emotional triggers is unfairness. You can see this in anything with a brain from small animals, children through to adults. If there's perceived unfairness emotions are immediately and strongly triggered. Layoffs are truly unfair. You have no control over them and no performance or ratings process is good enough to justify snap firings of some percentage. You're going to hit some of your hardest wo…

My first job-job got hit by the dotcom crash, but was fortunately a real business with actual revenue, and the CEO was an absolute class act.

He reduced pay, the higher on the food chain you were, the bigger your cut. His cut was the biggest of all, and thanks to him, pretty much everybody at the company kept their jobs, and the company made it through while competitors folded.

That's what leadership looks like, and I can't tell you the kind of loyalty people had to him afterwards.

Re: Layoff Thinking

#68

Post by glitchc »

donw wrote: post #66
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #62

One of the biggest emotional triggers is unfairness. You can see this in anything with a brain from small animals, children through to adults. If there's perceived unfairness emotions are immediately and strongly triggered. Layoffs are truly unfair. You have no control over them and no performance or ratings process is good enough to justify snap firings of some percentage. You're going to hit some of your hardest wo…

My first job-job got hit by the dotcom crash, but was fortunately a real business with actual revenue, and the CEO was an absolute class act. He reduced pay, the higher on the food chain you were, the bigger your cut. His cut was the biggest of all, and thanks to him, pretty much everybody at the company kept their jobs, and the company made it through while competitors folded. That's what leadership looks like, and…

Can you share which company that was for our collective curiosities? I am hoping it was long enough ago and positive enough a story to reveal.

Re: Layoff Thinking

#69

Post by the_sleaze_ »

habinero wrote: post #39
gedy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once said long term technical unemployment would be a sign of the singularity; just pray for a soft take off I think that's true, but in your case (mine as well), companies just don't really want to hire older people. People get touchy when this is brought up, but young recruiter women aren't attracted to them and are biased, younger guys/interviewers view them as some dragon to be slayed to prove themselves, etc.…

> young recruiter women aren't attracted to them Having worked with a lot of recruiters, I promise -- promise! -- this is not a factor lol. Just because you find them attractive does not make the feeling mutual. They deal with enough shit from both management and engineers. They're friendly because of their job. As a second knowledge bomb, the barista also does not find you charming.

> I promise -- promise! -- this is not a factor lol.

Study after study after study shows more attractive people do better by the numbers in just about every single metric you can come up with. I imagine a recruiter may bristle at that as much as they would the racial bias that is also measurable in recruiting, since it would be the recruiter committing the bias. It's there in the numbers though.

1. Immune function: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8848230/ 2. hiring: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12383758/ 3. age: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38959815/ 4. wealth: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5558203/ 5. reputation: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4873083/

Re: Layoff Thinking

#70

Post by rogerrogerr »

rayxi271828 wrote: post #51

Internal assessment of self-worth is one thing. But one thing that I noticed while I was between jobs, was that the rest of the world was also built under the assumption that you "had a job". Sign up for financial anything, they always ask you, which company you're with? What's your title? What's the range of your income? I don't know if this is the case in the US, but in my country, I couldn't even open a brokerage…

"Consultant" for an LLC you own is a perfectly legit job. I've opened brokerage accounts and bank accounts while in that status.
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