Reflections on Surviving My First Mass Layoff
Yes, I know that by just being able to say this, I am luckier than many others.
Hopefully by saying “first”, I am not cursing myself into another mass layoff (though looking at the current trends, I am not optimistic).
The company I work at had mass layoffs a few months ago, and I finally feel as though my feelings on the subject have settled — just in time for many other companies of similar size and in the same industry to discuss round 2 or even round 3 layoffs :(
Though I have been working in tech for less than a year, I have to say that this was the scariest episode of my life: just when I thought I no longer needed to financially rely on my parents and it was my turn to give back, here comes the news that my job might not be as safe and secure as I thought.
I acknowledge that I am in a much better position than my new-grad peers who got laid off simply for encountering drops in stock value and a cost-cutting company. Why do I think they were simply unlucky? Many of them had just newly entered the company before getting laid off — there wasn’t even a performance rating yet! — so I can think of no other reason for them being impacted. While a good portion of them were able to quickly secure new jobs, some of them are still looking after a few months.
While I was able to escape being laid off, a few team members were laid off. And while it was a shock for me, I can only imagine what a shock it was for them: it felt as though there was no pattern to the layoffs other than selection through a random number generator. They were high-performers as far as the rest of us knew, they were working on important and high-visibility projects within the team, and they had already been with the company for several years. Later on, there have been theories (not internal and not confirmed) that companies have been laying off people at the top of their level pay bands.
Other people I directly worked with who were laid off included those who were part of organizations/companies that had to reduce headcount. These were where the majority of the new grads that I knew were impacted.
What are the suspected factors correlated with being impacted by layoffs? As I understand from reading various unsubstantiated sources (cough Blind, cough Reddit, etc), those who are more likely to get laid off work on initiatives or products the company has decided to deprioritize, are at the top of the pay band for their level, have a record of low performance, or able to be laid off with the least cost in knowledge to the company. There are also talks of internal politics, but I am no way high up enough on the ladder to worry about that (yet).
Which of these factors can I actually control? I am not currently in a position in my career to choose what team or product I work on (outside of deliberating between job offers). I have not been at the company long enough to worry about being at the top of the pay band, and I am also not at a terminal level, so I am definitely working towards a promotion. At the time of the layoffs, I, and the majority of the other new grads at my company didn’t have performance ratings yet, so it’s really hard to say if that makes a difference for someone in my situation. Yet, performance ratings directly impact your salary for future years, so I don’t think anyone who wants to continue at their company would actively try to sabotage their own rating. Regarding expertise and knowledge, I feel this is entirely based on time and how much of the codebase you have touched, and it is also not something you can directly inform the layoffs decision-makers of since they are just way too high up the corporate ladder.
Now, for my own mental health and peace of mind, I am settling into the understanding that there really isn’t much I can do to prevent myself from getting laid off: none of the factors are what I can actively control and there is no behavior I can change to lead to an immediate reduction to my risk of being laid off.
I will continue to produce high-quality artifacts, show ownership, and work toward my promotion, but these are for my personal benefit and are actions I would take regardless of the risk of layoffs.
Overall, I don’t think the layoffs have impacted my working style or productivity in the long term (there was definitely some short-term shock), but I do have less trust in the company where I am employed: I no longer feel as though the company will act in their employees best interests, which I know, seems like a dumb idea to have in the first place. (I used to think that employees were valuable resources that the company needs to keep happy and thus productive in order to keep churning out products and profits.)
P.S. There might be readers who feel as though tech workers are overpaid anyways and thus deserve to get laid off, and are in fact celebrating their being laid off. However, I personally believe salary should be on a per-company basis: if a company generates high amounts of revenue and profits, it only makes sense that the workers should get a percentage for building the profit-generating products.
