Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
1–10 of 198 posts
Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
#2Having been laid off due to downsizing, I think everyone should go through it at least once. Sure, the first time will leave you panic stricken, but you'll come out the other side with a lot more clarity about the employee-employer relationship.
You are disposable. Even the CEO is disposable (as I've seen many times). Once you realize that, you'll stop the BS about loyalty to your company. It's a business arrangement, nothing more. Your job is to get the most you can (money, experience - whatever floats your boat). If it no longer works for you, leave. They'd do the same to you.
Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
#3I'm not certain what he expects: lifetime risk-free employment? Yeah, there's stress involved with risk. But the risk one has as an upper-middle-class American is tech is nothing compared to the risks that others alive today face, and less than nothing compared to the risks that others in the past have faced.
Nothing last forever. Not a job — not even one's life. Make the most of it while you can.
Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
#4TL;DR: a 22 year old CS grad gets a job and learns that vanila software development career is not going to be as exciting and rewarding journey as he'd imagined. Good for him; for some people, it takes much longer to figure this out.
Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
#5this is why i don't move out of Bay Area - me and my acquaintances have been through lay offs here at various years, during the booms and busts, and nobody had any significant issues promptly finding a new job (with a salary increase usually :). Compare that to, for example, the next best thing in US tech - when AMZN says come to Seattle i always imagine being laid off from it few years down the road (with a non-compete on top of that :), and if for any reason i don't get a job at the only other game in the town - MS - then what? Probably move to Bay Area :)
Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
#6Having been laid off due to downsizing, I think everyone should go through it at least once. Sure, the first time will leave you panic stricken, but you'll come out the other side with a lot more clarity about the employee-employer relationship. You are disposable. Even the CEO is disposable (as I've seen many times). Once you realize that, you'll stop the BS about loyalty to your company. It's a business arrangement…
Throwaway account because I'm currently in the middle of being laid off ("redundancy" in UK).
I thought I always had that somewhat-cynical outlook by default, coming from a leftist family; but still, the unfairness of this process (first time for me in 20 years of work) boils my blood. Metrics massaged to target this and that, backstabbing, disrespecting people who built the company... all that will forever scar the company, no matter what. Your best and brightest don't want to live in fear, once you scare them like this they will leave.
I don't understand why companies with troubled books don't just spin off the departments they want to cut: give people a chance to fend by themselves, keeping teams together and offloading risk without losing knowledge and propagating fear.
Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
#7Having been laid off due to downsizing, I think everyone should go through it at least once. Sure, the first time will leave you panic stricken, but you'll come out the other side with a lot more clarity about the employee-employer relationship. You are disposable. Even the CEO is disposable (as I've seen many times). Once you realize that, you'll stop the BS about loyalty to your company. It's a business arrangement…
Agreed. I once got a call out of the blue that I was being laid off. I had always associated stability with success: as long as I was doing a good job, my job would be secure. That was not the case.
It was purely a business decision for them, but I left dazed and wondering what to do. I had always planned job changes on my terms. But it was also freeing in that I now could find opportunities I would've missed. I'm much happier where I am now.
Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
#8To comment on one of the sentiments in the last paragraph. I often find myself wondering about the people doing the bidding above them where they are the last one compensated on a middle-upper class level before the VP or CEO or whoever that makes the 100X worker salary. What motivates that person? I’m sure they are compensated very well but at an exponentially lower rate than the will they are serving.
Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
#9Jesus, can you be more melodramatic, self-congratulatory and pointless all at the same time?
Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security
#10> Fewer and fewer careers offer a stable path to the financial and personal security that underwrote the Baby Boomers’ “American Dream.” Technology is the one career that has an optimistic future, isn’t beholden by regulation and credential inflation, and actually attempts to create some sort of meritocracy, and so, those that are fortunate enough to be in it want to preserve the one island of paradise left.
This really resonated with me, for a number of reasons. Primarily, it's because I am hyper aware of how delicate this "tech boom" really is. The good times will end, and I believe they will end sooner than most believe. I was layed off once before because the company I worked for outsourced their entire engineering department. That was a quick lesson for me early in my career that you are EASILY replaced. There are people in India, China, the Ukraine, you name it... who will do your job for half the cost.
There is an enormous, GLOBAL, influx of software engineers that is rapidly diluting the worker pool and is quickly reducing the implicit bargaining power that we've enjoyed for the last 10 years. Big "thanks" to all the initiatives by well meaning, but naïve, individuals and organizations who want to "spread the wealth" without realizing that the wealth is already spread very thin, and is being spread thinner, and thinner, every day by mechanisms outside of our control (cost of living, housing, taxes, etc.).
I am trying my best to save, but somehow the cost of merely existing seems to increase month over month. I don't have kids, can't afford them. I don't have a car payment, I bought a junker. I have minimized my expenses down to the bare necessity and even then coming up with the down payment for a home is going to take years. At my age, my parents were already on to their second home. My wife has enormous student loans that cripple her ability to save so even our dual income seems weak in this environment.
So what can you do? I'm starting a business in my after-hours and weekends, desperately trying to establish a source of low-overhead income. I'm specializing within my field, attempting to learn new skills in a niché programming field that can't be easily learned by bootcamps and YouTube videos. Above all, I'm remembering that right now things are good. This is the calm before the storm.