I just survived a round of layoffs. The employees laid off seemed to be selected at random. Their work was divided and picked up by the rest of the team. We also have team members out on family leave for 3-9 months and are expected to absorb their work in their absence. In addition our regular work, the work from staff recently laid off, and the work from the teammates out on leave, we are encouraged to "volunteer" for projects outside our job description. Obviously, there has not been any increase in compensation or benefits. It feels like we are auditioning for our jobs everyday. If we complain, it has been made clear that our job is not secure.
Same. Talk about more focus and better prioritization, but no indication of what the new priorities actually are. Also: no merit pay increases (for more senior folks) or promotions (for anyone). Equity? Unclear.
You nailed it! I was 0.02 from a merit pay raise. And focus/ prioritization is a joke- like you said no one at the top seems to know what to focus on/ prioritize. Meanwhile, we are top heavy and spot bonuses are distributed primary at the top.
This is such a good piece, thank you! I'm in a hyper-local facebook group of working moms, and our school district called a snow day today, despite the world not having been covered in a noah's ark of snow by the time most of us started our day. Usually, that group is a balm of collective goodwill, but today it's just a cesspool of bashing teachers, one-upping each other with stories of miserable, precarious jobs and other *crap*. Much of that feeling is, I think, motivated by these stories of layoffs all over the place. But like you said, if it's gonna be some kind of terrible Overlord of Precarity, it might as well be you. I get so frustrated watching these conversations between actual neighbors attacking each other, when it seems so clear that the problem is not US. I posted this piece in that group, and I hope people take the time to read it. Having a moment to think about what's actually happening, instead of just being super-reactive is so crucial. I'm in school right now, and my thesis director said to me that when we study systems (especially capitalism) and understand that the things that we face are large and systemic, it allows for a softening of relations between one another. I almost started to cry when she said that, because it's so true! If we understand that capitalism is the thing that is making our lives harder, we can make sure that with one another -- we are tender.
As an employee of a tech company that recently went through a large round of layoffs, this is the exact take I’ve been hoping to read. Thank you for writing it. I’m frustrated but not surprised that most mainstream publications aren’t talking about how these companies are conspiring with each other to depress the price of labor and thus bring about the recession that’s been looming for the past year. They’re also not talking about who ultimately benefits from these actions (executives, large investors, “the company”) and whether sacrificing hundreds of thousands of employees within and, once the recession hits, outside of the tech industry is a logical price to pay for the gains of the very few.
Great piece. Also: UGH. The mid-sized tech company I work for in Seattle did layoffs a week ago. 5% in total, except that Product Management was slashed by 25%. Doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been through it, it is always awful, and this was handled with particular ineptitude. Still trying to get my feet under me emotionally. Anyone who thinks loyalty to a company is a two way street is delusional.
Great if painful read, thanks! Relatedly, from Ed Zitron's substack, Google Should Fire Sundar Pichai (https://ez.substack.com/p/google-should-fire-sundar-pichai?, sorry, I dunno how to links here, am I super dumb?): "Every single layoff story seems to follow the same path - mass hiring in the post-lockdown society to scoop up massive consumer spending, followed by mass layoffs blamed on 'uncertain economic times.'
"Let’s be precise: every one of these companies chose to blame thousands of people for a problem that was specifically created by their executives. Google’s engineers didn’t choose to ramp up spending and hiring - the executive teams at Google (perhaps the same ones that were attempting to crush remote work) did. In fact, I’d argue that the same people that are writing these crocodile-tear-stained layoff letters are exactly the same ones responsible for the unrealistic projections, unrealistic spending and unrealistic hiring, yet they are completely and utterly divorced from any of the consequences."
I read Ed's Substack column this morning just before reading Anne Helen's. There have been several more comments/Twitter posts along similar lines. People in these positions aren't stupid, they know what's happening but are essentially trapped.
Also relatedly, from journalist Ken Klippenstein (https://kenklippenstein.substack.com/p/imagine-getting-laid-off-this-brutally): "It doesn’t have to be this way. Take France, where the leader of the country’s second-largest trade union threatened to cut electricity to members of parliament and billionaires 'so that they can put themselves, for a few days, in the shoes of … French people who can’t afford to pay their bill.' (France is in the midst of a general strike in opposition to the government’s attempt to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.) That’s the kind of pipe you can swing when you have high union density." I was involved in helping form a union at Mother Jones a lifetime ago and yeah, more unions, better unions, all the unions. That is what I want from Santa this and every Xmas.
Scroll down to download a memo from 1996 in which then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen writes, “In essence, unemployment serves as a worker-discipline device because the prospect of a costly unemployment spell produces sufficient fear of job loss to motivate workers to perform well without constant, costly supervision.”
Klippenstein calls this memo "shocking," although it is only shocking if you believe everything people tell you, which tends not to be a trait among experienced journalists. FYI, I once got pushback from the then-managing editor of a long-dead tech publication, The Standard, when I mentioned in public that company officials, and others, lie to journalists and lots of other folks on the regular. He did not agree. History has not vindicated that position.
I’m a teacher in a small school district, which means layoffs are rare and the news is delivered by someone you know, in person, with tears in their eyes. Our unions make it so it’s based on years of service + specialty area. That being said, watching my 52 year old husband hunt for work in tech makes me think the advice about finding a company that treats people better is irrelevant when you need a job asap.
"Find a company that treats people better" is such copout horse%#@ advice to someone with no power in the dynamic. Good luck to your husband, I've been in that boat too and it's not easy
I have noticed as well that they are using this as a way to force people back to the office. People who were happy and productive in a wfh environment now are being told be back in the office or face the axe. Anything to get that tiny bit of power back from the workers. This world is bonkers and I hate it.
"CEOs are willing this recession into existence to create a justifying narrative for layoffs."
Brazilian crisis in 2014! People in power talking about crisis and recession when all the economic indicators were just fine!
"Not because they necessarily want to save money, or even redirect the company, but to press reset on what they view as out-of-control compensation packages and worker demands."
It just came out that the last wave of layoffs on Google were ADMITEDLY about "excessive employee compensation"! There's an OPEN LETTER from the TCI Fund Management Limited saying that! The company grew 18% but profits ~~only~~ 6%!!!
We really oughta start eating those millionares sonner rather than later.
I appreciate the hard research and thoughtfulness you put into this newsletter. The insecurity of work today, when you fear being laid off with little notice, when you can’t support your family although you work full time because your pay is so low, when your job is somewhat secure but working conditions are soul-killing, that insecurity leads to anxiety and stress. I’m sure that contributes to the hate and lack of caring in our country.
I did find the recent Google layoffs shocking. There seemed to be so many tweets from people who had been with the company for 16 years or more who were well respected in their fields who were let go in the middle of a night by email! This to me is unacceptable for a company if their size and stature. If I were that person it would make me feel like I was not valued enough in my role to even have a face to face convo after that much time and effort dedicated to an organization. 😟
Wow, what an opus, connecting so many different threads about layoffs together. I am an oldest Gen X'er, also been an academic (in science, which has its own quirks). I internalized "worker layoff brain" when my advisor's grant didn't get renewed my 2nd year of grad school. And, I really internalized it, always planning a plan B in my academic life. I read the article about how "Gen Z is doesn't get it, but Gen X does" with skepticism (beyond recognizing that older people have just seen more loss and know that you have to go on). I'm watching Gen Z children enter the workforce and they are way more demanding, brilliant students looking at academics and saying "no one gets a job".
I read Douthat's column on the "striving upper class" (riffing off the Fleishman's in Trouble movie) and my insight was that indeed those of us who reached some form of 1% on salary are hamster wheeling to make our children into Nepo babies who will have the soft landing to avoid internalizing layoff brain to keep that job at all costs when the bosses have decided to strike fear into their workforce with layoffs.
(Oh, and this was the article that had me click to become a paid subscriber, not really so I could write this comment, but because it was the little I could do to empower at least one person to find a different away)
Thank you for this. Along with my team of ten, I was laid off as a tech writer in August (pay didn't end till October) and for the last several months I've been mostly futile-ly applying for jobs, as tech company after tech company floods the market. (extra-great as a 50-something woman: my male coworkers were able to get jobs before the downturn started in earnest.) Like journalists and copy editors, tech writers are always in danger of being cut anyway as a disposable function that might get robot-ed out of existence due to execs not understanding the value prop. I'm really ground down right now. Lucky to have a spouse paying the bills, but deeply demoralized.
It absolutely seems like a lemmings situation where the cool kids are doing it despite plenty of money in the bank, and despite many many years of seeing tech organizations not find the money to fund technical debt, or thoughtful design, or anything but hundreds of programmers and marketers churning out new code and new marketing copy. They could use the "extra" workers to do those things they've always said they don't have resources to do. But no.
This is corporate sociopath behavior at its finest - "entire departments unceremoniously let go because they weren’t making enough money, even though the company had openly refused attempts to monetize their content".
Really good piece. I've only been a victim of a "wave of layoffs" in the conventional sense once, mostly because I've usually worked for small companies. Since 2017 I've been a freelance contractor, working from home on one-year (or shorter) contracts for various places; my contract just got renewed at the Gigantic Health Care Hydra for which I proofread marketing copy. It's a six-month renewal after a one-year initial contract, but I'm confident I'll be able to latch onto a different head of the Hydra when the time comes. But as a Gen X person with a creative/artistic temperament (and a well-thumbed copy of Charles Bukowski's FACTOTUM on the shelf), I've been telling myself "There are no careers, only jobs" for about 25 years. It's a mixture of fatalism, paranoia, and "make sure you see it coming" that's served me pretty well. My wife and I live cheaply by a lot of people's standards — small apartment, 13-year-old car, no kids — but we've never had to say "I can't afford to buy that book I want to read" past the age of probably 27 or so.
Thank you for this. I need to read more carefully once I get my kid to school, but from my quick skim there is so much I am going to be muttering "yes, yes" to. Right now I'm waiting to hear about layoffs at my job -- the first significant layoffs ever at a company I've been with for nearly 12 years. I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll make it through, but the whole process is leaving such a bad taste in my mouth I'm not sure it'll feel viable to stay in the long term (in part because it seems clear that management has not given any thought to the possibility that making it a shitty process will cause people to want to leave even if they aren't forced to do so). This week I applied for my first job in nearly 15 years (having been hired to my current job without a formal application process).
I just survived a round of layoffs. The employees laid off seemed to be selected at random. Their work was divided and picked up by the rest of the team. We also have team members out on family leave for 3-9 months and are expected to absorb their work in their absence. In addition our regular work, the work from staff recently laid off, and the work from the teammates out on leave, we are encouraged to "volunteer" for projects outside our job description. Obviously, there has not been any increase in compensation or benefits. It feels like we are auditioning for our jobs everyday. If we complain, it has been made clear that our job is not secure.
Same. Talk about more focus and better prioritization, but no indication of what the new priorities actually are. Also: no merit pay increases (for more senior folks) or promotions (for anyone). Equity? Unclear.
You nailed it! I was 0.02 from a merit pay raise. And focus/ prioritization is a joke- like you said no one at the top seems to know what to focus on/ prioritize. Meanwhile, we are top heavy and spot bonuses are distributed primary at the top.
This is such a good piece, thank you! I'm in a hyper-local facebook group of working moms, and our school district called a snow day today, despite the world not having been covered in a noah's ark of snow by the time most of us started our day. Usually, that group is a balm of collective goodwill, but today it's just a cesspool of bashing teachers, one-upping each other with stories of miserable, precarious jobs and other *crap*. Much of that feeling is, I think, motivated by these stories of layoffs all over the place. But like you said, if it's gonna be some kind of terrible Overlord of Precarity, it might as well be you. I get so frustrated watching these conversations between actual neighbors attacking each other, when it seems so clear that the problem is not US. I posted this piece in that group, and I hope people take the time to read it. Having a moment to think about what's actually happening, instead of just being super-reactive is so crucial. I'm in school right now, and my thesis director said to me that when we study systems (especially capitalism) and understand that the things that we face are large and systemic, it allows for a softening of relations between one another. I almost started to cry when she said that, because it's so true! If we understand that capitalism is the thing that is making our lives harder, we can make sure that with one another -- we are tender.
As an employee of a tech company that recently went through a large round of layoffs, this is the exact take I’ve been hoping to read. Thank you for writing it. I’m frustrated but not surprised that most mainstream publications aren’t talking about how these companies are conspiring with each other to depress the price of labor and thus bring about the recession that’s been looming for the past year. They’re also not talking about who ultimately benefits from these actions (executives, large investors, “the company”) and whether sacrificing hundreds of thousands of employees within and, once the recession hits, outside of the tech industry is a logical price to pay for the gains of the very few.
Great piece. Also: UGH. The mid-sized tech company I work for in Seattle did layoffs a week ago. 5% in total, except that Product Management was slashed by 25%. Doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been through it, it is always awful, and this was handled with particular ineptitude. Still trying to get my feet under me emotionally. Anyone who thinks loyalty to a company is a two way street is delusional.
Great if painful read, thanks! Relatedly, from Ed Zitron's substack, Google Should Fire Sundar Pichai (https://ez.substack.com/p/google-should-fire-sundar-pichai?, sorry, I dunno how to links here, am I super dumb?): "Every single layoff story seems to follow the same path - mass hiring in the post-lockdown society to scoop up massive consumer spending, followed by mass layoffs blamed on 'uncertain economic times.'
"Let’s be precise: every one of these companies chose to blame thousands of people for a problem that was specifically created by their executives. Google’s engineers didn’t choose to ramp up spending and hiring - the executive teams at Google (perhaps the same ones that were attempting to crush remote work) did. In fact, I’d argue that the same people that are writing these crocodile-tear-stained layoff letters are exactly the same ones responsible for the unrealistic projections, unrealistic spending and unrealistic hiring, yet they are completely and utterly divorced from any of the consequences."
I read Ed's Substack column this morning just before reading Anne Helen's. There have been several more comments/Twitter posts along similar lines. People in these positions aren't stupid, they know what's happening but are essentially trapped.
Also relatedly, from journalist Ken Klippenstein (https://kenklippenstein.substack.com/p/imagine-getting-laid-off-this-brutally): "It doesn’t have to be this way. Take France, where the leader of the country’s second-largest trade union threatened to cut electricity to members of parliament and billionaires 'so that they can put themselves, for a few days, in the shoes of … French people who can’t afford to pay their bill.' (France is in the midst of a general strike in opposition to the government’s attempt to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.) That’s the kind of pipe you can swing when you have high union density." I was involved in helping form a union at Mother Jones a lifetime ago and yeah, more unions, better unions, all the unions. That is what I want from Santa this and every Xmas.
Scroll down to download a memo from 1996 in which then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen writes, “In essence, unemployment serves as a worker-discipline device because the prospect of a costly unemployment spell produces sufficient fear of job loss to motivate workers to perform well without constant, costly supervision.”
Klippenstein calls this memo "shocking," although it is only shocking if you believe everything people tell you, which tends not to be a trait among experienced journalists. FYI, I once got pushback from the then-managing editor of a long-dead tech publication, The Standard, when I mentioned in public that company officials, and others, lie to journalists and lots of other folks on the regular. He did not agree. History has not vindicated that position.
I’m a teacher in a small school district, which means layoffs are rare and the news is delivered by someone you know, in person, with tears in their eyes. Our unions make it so it’s based on years of service + specialty area. That being said, watching my 52 year old husband hunt for work in tech makes me think the advice about finding a company that treats people better is irrelevant when you need a job asap.
"Find a company that treats people better" is such copout horse%#@ advice to someone with no power in the dynamic. Good luck to your husband, I've been in that boat too and it's not easy
I have noticed as well that they are using this as a way to force people back to the office. People who were happy and productive in a wfh environment now are being told be back in the office or face the axe. Anything to get that tiny bit of power back from the workers. This world is bonkers and I hate it.
"CEOs are willing this recession into existence to create a justifying narrative for layoffs."
Brazilian crisis in 2014! People in power talking about crisis and recession when all the economic indicators were just fine!
"Not because they necessarily want to save money, or even redirect the company, but to press reset on what they view as out-of-control compensation packages and worker demands."
It just came out that the last wave of layoffs on Google were ADMITEDLY about "excessive employee compensation"! There's an OPEN LETTER from the TCI Fund Management Limited saying that! The company grew 18% but profits ~~only~~ 6%!!!
We really oughta start eating those millionares sonner rather than later.
I appreciate the hard research and thoughtfulness you put into this newsletter. The insecurity of work today, when you fear being laid off with little notice, when you can’t support your family although you work full time because your pay is so low, when your job is somewhat secure but working conditions are soul-killing, that insecurity leads to anxiety and stress. I’m sure that contributes to the hate and lack of caring in our country.
I did find the recent Google layoffs shocking. There seemed to be so many tweets from people who had been with the company for 16 years or more who were well respected in their fields who were let go in the middle of a night by email! This to me is unacceptable for a company if their size and stature. If I were that person it would make me feel like I was not valued enough in my role to even have a face to face convo after that much time and effort dedicated to an organization. 😟
Wow, what an opus, connecting so many different threads about layoffs together. I am an oldest Gen X'er, also been an academic (in science, which has its own quirks). I internalized "worker layoff brain" when my advisor's grant didn't get renewed my 2nd year of grad school. And, I really internalized it, always planning a plan B in my academic life. I read the article about how "Gen Z is doesn't get it, but Gen X does" with skepticism (beyond recognizing that older people have just seen more loss and know that you have to go on). I'm watching Gen Z children enter the workforce and they are way more demanding, brilliant students looking at academics and saying "no one gets a job".
I read Douthat's column on the "striving upper class" (riffing off the Fleishman's in Trouble movie) and my insight was that indeed those of us who reached some form of 1% on salary are hamster wheeling to make our children into Nepo babies who will have the soft landing to avoid internalizing layoff brain to keep that job at all costs when the bosses have decided to strike fear into their workforce with layoffs.
(Oh, and this was the article that had me click to become a paid subscriber, not really so I could write this comment, but because it was the little I could do to empower at least one person to find a different away)
Thank you for this. Along with my team of ten, I was laid off as a tech writer in August (pay didn't end till October) and for the last several months I've been mostly futile-ly applying for jobs, as tech company after tech company floods the market. (extra-great as a 50-something woman: my male coworkers were able to get jobs before the downturn started in earnest.) Like journalists and copy editors, tech writers are always in danger of being cut anyway as a disposable function that might get robot-ed out of existence due to execs not understanding the value prop. I'm really ground down right now. Lucky to have a spouse paying the bills, but deeply demoralized.
It absolutely seems like a lemmings situation where the cool kids are doing it despite plenty of money in the bank, and despite many many years of seeing tech organizations not find the money to fund technical debt, or thoughtful design, or anything but hundreds of programmers and marketers churning out new code and new marketing copy. They could use the "extra" workers to do those things they've always said they don't have resources to do. But no.
This is corporate sociopath behavior at its finest - "entire departments unceremoniously let go because they weren’t making enough money, even though the company had openly refused attempts to monetize their content".
Really good piece. I've only been a victim of a "wave of layoffs" in the conventional sense once, mostly because I've usually worked for small companies. Since 2017 I've been a freelance contractor, working from home on one-year (or shorter) contracts for various places; my contract just got renewed at the Gigantic Health Care Hydra for which I proofread marketing copy. It's a six-month renewal after a one-year initial contract, but I'm confident I'll be able to latch onto a different head of the Hydra when the time comes. But as a Gen X person with a creative/artistic temperament (and a well-thumbed copy of Charles Bukowski's FACTOTUM on the shelf), I've been telling myself "There are no careers, only jobs" for about 25 years. It's a mixture of fatalism, paranoia, and "make sure you see it coming" that's served me pretty well. My wife and I live cheaply by a lot of people's standards — small apartment, 13-year-old car, no kids — but we've never had to say "I can't afford to buy that book I want to read" past the age of probably 27 or so.
Thank you for this. I need to read more carefully once I get my kid to school, but from my quick skim there is so much I am going to be muttering "yes, yes" to. Right now I'm waiting to hear about layoffs at my job -- the first significant layoffs ever at a company I've been with for nearly 12 years. I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll make it through, but the whole process is leaving such a bad taste in my mouth I'm not sure it'll feel viable to stay in the long term (in part because it seems clear that management has not given any thought to the possibility that making it a shitty process will cause people to want to leave even if they aren't forced to do so). This week I applied for my first job in nearly 15 years (having been hired to my current job without a formal application process).