The company had a layoff on Monday. I’m not impacted. Still, it sucks.
It was announced in Jan that there will be a “performance-based” layoff, they would further announce who got impacted on Feb 10th. Even with the buffer time, it still hit me hard when the day actually came. As far as I can figure, there were 3 people gone in our team, all of them I had interacted with just weeks ago. I wouldn’t talked about their performance, we all know it’s the coorporation game. But I can say they are all decent and ethical workers. One of them is a nerdy and somewhat funny guy. Different from engineers with big ego or these big fakers, he is always sincere and too quick to admit his lack of knowledge on a subject. On things he knows, he is also quick to offer help; and I also received it. I have been thinking to write him a thanks note, but I didn’t until it was too late.
Impacted people got the message early morning on Monday. For other people, work continues on as if nothing happened. Projects with no owners got suffled to new owners. Sync meetings, scope fightings, bragging, bullshiting, work goes on.
In a company that do constant layoffs, people start to develop different mentalities to guard againt it:
The job is a transaction.
I’m here for the money, so focus on collecting another vest until they fire me.
I’ll stay until Aug, then I’m gone for better.
There are also more positive or proactive mentals like:
Let’s set this guy up for failure, so he can fill the layoff quota.
I’ll always find someone appears worse than me and make sure I appear better.
As a new comer to the team, I had the worry of not getting enough scope of work. I talked to my manager several times about this, but nothing came. Ironically, the project came with the layoff annoucement. One week ago, the concern was not enough work to show impact. One week later, the concern is too much work that could quickly burn me out.
People likes saying they’re golden cuffed to the grind; they’ll grind as long as they’re allowed to. Maybe there’s something more than the gold: the security of the daily consistency brings, the identity of a coorperate employee, the purpose of getting up in the morning. Grind and grind, never one step away from the track; the urge of break and the fear of not able to getting back on track are constantly fighting.
There will be a break, maybe soon within a few month, or longer like one or two years. Things to think about is, if you know it’ll be come for sure, what would you do now?