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I'm sorry, but I can't disagree more strongly. Getting laid off is a traumatic event. It is not a hero's journey except in so far as a hero's journey is excit

I'm sorry, but I can't disagree more strongly. Getting laid off is a traumatic event. It is not a hero's journey except in so far as a hero's journey is exciting because it talks about a path through dangerous times where a person can fail. I, and likely many of us, have a family. We are blessed to work in technology where we earn more than we make and can put up savings for rainy days. The average person with a family who gets laid off will not sense adventure - they will have despair. Utter despair and worthlessness and the hope they can get things back together before their family suffers. Heck even us tech workers can feel that way. The most depressed time of my entire life was after I had been laid off. It was bad enough that I was having negative thoughts almost every day nonstop. It was traumatic enough that it fundamentally changed my approach to savings, life, and risk (likely for the worst). I am better now, have a family, a career I enjoy, but I now know how easy it is for the veneer to be ripped away. Its not a hero's journey - its a nightmare.

colechristensen 4y ago
It is much less of a nightmare if you're prepared for this kind of predicable eventuality. If you're living paycheck to paycheck it's a nightmare, if you've got months saved up set aside for exactly this kind of thing it's a vacation.
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  Some people may think of it as a vacation. I don't think most people in the world would and not even most people in technology. In my own experience, it was a sense of worthlessness that seeped into me daily. I was newly married, my wife supportive, but it was constantly between us. "How did it go today, did you find anything interesting? No - ok, no worries, I'm sure something will pop up." Deep depression and a sense that you are failing your family, that if you had tried harder maybe it wouldn't have happened, that you arn't successful and that is why noone would want to have you. Funny. I had thought I was over it - its been a long long long time - but I find myself affected even writing this.
  - TameAntelope 4y ago
    Contrast it with my experience where my wife was 100% supportive of me taking multiple months of not working at all and not really looking to recover from my time at my previous employer. I think you're presupposing that your experience is universal. I felt refreshed and reinvigorated when I started my new job, not panicked and depressed, because I had created for myself a solid support structure for such eventualities (financially and socially). I would argue that the real key here is preparation; if you can set yourself up not to be harmed by something like a lay off, you will be much more likely to go through it in a positive way than if you leave it up to fate to decide how and when you experience such a potentially negative event.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- shortstuffsushi 4y ago
  Calling it a "predictable eventuality" implies the victim is at fault for not preparing. I have a number of friends (of course, not software devs) who are aware that their company may at any point dump them (one company goes even so far as to say regularly "everyone is replaceable," and I have not been able to talk said friend out of leaving...). Due to a variety of reasons / excuses, they can't or won't leave these companies, and are not financially well off, so when it does come, they're going to be SOL. It's not un-preparedness, it's inability to get ahead of it. Yes, some of them could be making better fiscal decisions, but others are trapped by kids, medical conditions.. etc.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    People treat being laid off like they treat death - it's something they intellectually know can happen, and does happen to others, but they're always entirely surprised when it happens to them. Many people (myself included!) have a hard time saving against potential outcomes and find it convenient to explain away why I don't (as I spend money on non-necessities).
    - shortstuffsushi 4y ago
      Definitely, and I don't mean it to sound like these people couldn't be making better choices, but once you've dug your hole deep enough, it's hard to ever get to a point where you can be "safe" from this sort of thing. Even if they knew, for example, that the company was shutting down for a month starting in six months, the likelihood of being able to stow away ~ two paychecks during that window is quite small.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      >but they're always entirely surprised when it happens to them. Not always. When I was laid off I wasn't surprised in the slightest. There had already been layoffs and the company eventually effectively shut down.
    - cableshaft 4y ago
      I've been laid off six times. It was a surprise once, the first time, an early job at Wal-mart. The other five times I could see it coming (and three of those times I had already started actively interviewing elsewhere). Three of those jobs were small businesses in the video game industry, where layoffs after a game is finished and released are pretty common. I was actually more surprised that I somehow didn't get laid off at a previous corporation that had multiple rounds of deep layoffs, especially considering how often I had been laid off in the past. In fact I found out when the department head put in his notice that I was on the list of one of those layoffs, but so many people quit in the meantime that they didn't need to lay off as many people, so he was able to take me off the list. I stayed there a little too long, through inertia and also I had so many 1 to 1.5 year job "hops" from all those previous layoffs I felt I should stick around a bit longer to show I am able to stick with a company when they let me. It would have been a blessing if they had laid me off, though, it would have forced me to find a much better job much earlier.
- diob 4y ago
  The majority of folks are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, not of their own volition. I'd be fine for quite some time, heck I could probably semi retire so to speak.
  - aetherson 4y ago
    The majority of which folks? People in the world? Certainly. People in history? Even more certainly. People in the United States of America? ...I mean, probably not actually a majority, but certainly lots of people in the US would have difficulty putting away months' worth of savings without really rigorous amounts of financial discipline. The majority of people who read Hacker News? Uh. No.
    - diob 4y ago
      It's nearly impossible for folks outside our industry (or some comparable industry in terms of pay). Car trouble? Savings gone. Any sort of medical issue? Savings gone. I actually think those folks are more financially disciplined than us, given they somehow make it work despite their low pay.
      - aetherson 4y ago
        Median household income in the US is about $67k, and of course median cost of living the US is much lower than in the SF Bay area. It is thoroughly possible to put away enough money to pay for car troubles or many kinds of medical problems without superhuman financial discipline for most households in the US. Now: 1. Is there a substantial minority who genuinely can only really live hand-to-mouth in the US? Yes. 2. Is it obviously much easier for those of us who have tech-job incomes to put away substantial savings than it is for the median family? Also yes. 3. Am I personally some kind of paragon of financial discipline? No. 4. Is it understandable why many people live closer to paycheck-to-paycheck than they could? Yes. But I don't think that hyperbole serves anyone here.
        diob 4y ago
- ghaff 4y ago
  It very much depends on a lot of things including the economic conditions at the time. I was laid off almost immediately after 9/11 in the midst of dot-bomb. As it turned out, I almost immediately landed a new job with someone I knew. It was a pay cut and that company barely made it through the dot-bomb aftermath itself. But it was a comparatively good landing considering. I wasn't about to starve but you didn't want to be cashing in stock at the time. And I definitely knew, especially older, people who lost their jobs in that period and never really recovered in terms of financial position or career. Under those circumstances, unless you have a lot of cash tucked away, you probably shouldn't be treating it as a vacation. I wouldn't say it was traumatic for me--I pretty much knew it was coming and I lucked out--but it could have been quite bad as I didn't have so much as a nibble from anyone else I talked to.
- nerdawson 4y ago
  Having an emergency fund is basic financial planning that is too often neglected. Even with a cushion to fall back on though, don’t discount how it’s going to feel seeing the balance fall month after month. I expected a break when a company I worked for closed down. In fact, it was autumn and my original plan was to enjoy some time off and pick things up in the new year. Part of me regrets not doing that but I know at the time stress quickly set in.
kache_ 4y ago
The hero's journey is about facing a nightmare and emerging successful. So that sense, it is a hero's journey. Not everyone succeeds, but if you emerge, you are better for it. Being so dependent on your employer that it would ruin your life if they terminated your contract is probably not a good thing. A hero's journey is about remediating that deficiency. For some people, being laid off may have been a good thing.
CraigJPerry 4y ago
I never found the capitalist answer to this problem to be realistic - if you can’t find a new job then relocate. The advice is sound from an economic point of view but it’s unrealistic from a human perspective for most people. There are small numbers of people who naturally thrive moving location to location but most of us have family or just feel a sense of belonging to a particular place or don’t want to go through the hassle of being treated as an immigrant somewhere else - another aspect that humans have historically been bad at is adapting to people arriving from elsewhere.
- wonderwonder 4y ago
  Not to mention the overwhelming feeling of failure when you have to tell your kids they are moving away from their friends and everything they know because you lost your job.
- diob 4y ago
  Not only that, but moving is not free! You need money to move, often a good chunk of it. Throw in family (not a single person), and you've got a nightmare of coordination.
georgex7 4y ago
> Getting laid off is a traumatic event. I agree that it is for many, but in my case it wasn't. > It is not a hero's journey except in so far as a hero's journey is exciting because it talks about a path through dangerous times where a person can fail. Difficult events are often found at the beginning on the hero's journey... like getting laid off. > The average person with a family who gets laid off will not sense adventure - they will have despair. Utter despair and worthlessness and the hope they can get things back together before their family suffers. I totally agree with this. I originally wrote more about this but I reduced it to: "Most, unfortunately, will never hear it over their newborn’s cries or the deafening financial storms that suffocate them." This will be terrible for many people, and I have endless sympathy for them. But there will be others who gain from this.

colechristensen 4y ago

It is much less of a nightmare if you're prepared for this kind of predicable eventuality. If you're living paycheck to paycheck it's a nightmare, if you've got months saved up set aside for exactly this kind of thing it's a vacation.

OrangeMonkey 4y ago
Some people may think of it as a vacation. I don't think most people in the world would and not even most people in technology. In my own experience, it was a sense of worthlessness that seeped into me daily. I was newly married, my wife supportive, but it was constantly between us. "How did it go today, did you find anything interesting? No - ok, no worries, I'm sure something will pop up." Deep depression and a sense that you are failing your family, that if you had tried harder maybe it wouldn't have happened, that you arn't successful and that is why noone would want to have you. Funny. I had thought I was over it - its been a long long long time - but I find myself affected even writing this.
- TameAntelope 4y ago
  Contrast it with my experience where my wife was 100% supportive of me taking multiple months of not working at all and not really looking to recover from my time at my previous employer. I think you're presupposing that your experience is universal. I felt refreshed and reinvigorated when I started my new job, not panicked and depressed, because I had created for myself a solid support structure for such eventualities (financially and socially). I would argue that the real key here is preparation; if you can set yourself up not to be harmed by something like a lay off, you will be much more likely to go through it in a positive way than if you leave it up to fate to decide how and when you experience such a potentially negative event.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
shortstuffsushi 4y ago
Calling it a "predictable eventuality" implies the victim is at fault for not preparing. I have a number of friends (of course, not software devs) who are aware that their company may at any point dump them (one company goes even so far as to say regularly "everyone is replaceable," and I have not been able to talk said friend out of leaving...). Due to a variety of reasons / excuses, they can't or won't leave these companies, and are not financially well off, so when it does come, they're going to be SOL. It's not un-preparedness, it's inability to get ahead of it. Yes, some of them could be making better fiscal decisions, but others are trapped by kids, medical conditions.. etc.
- bombcar 4y ago
  People treat being laid off like they treat death - it's something they intellectually know can happen, and does happen to others, but they're always entirely surprised when it happens to them. Many people (myself included!) have a hard time saving against potential outcomes and find it convenient to explain away why I don't (as I spend money on non-necessities).
  - shortstuffsushi 4y ago
    Definitely, and I don't mean it to sound like these people couldn't be making better choices, but once you've dug your hole deep enough, it's hard to ever get to a point where you can be "safe" from this sort of thing. Even if they knew, for example, that the company was shutting down for a month starting in six months, the likelihood of being able to stow away ~ two paychecks during that window is quite small.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >but they're always entirely surprised when it happens to them. Not always. When I was laid off I wasn't surprised in the slightest. There had already been layoffs and the company eventually effectively shut down.
  - cableshaft 4y ago
    I've been laid off six times. It was a surprise once, the first time, an early job at Wal-mart. The other five times I could see it coming (and three of those times I had already started actively interviewing elsewhere). Three of those jobs were small businesses in the video game industry, where layoffs after a game is finished and released are pretty common. I was actually more surprised that I somehow didn't get laid off at a previous corporation that had multiple rounds of deep layoffs, especially considering how often I had been laid off in the past. In fact I found out when the department head put in his notice that I was on the list of one of those layoffs, but so many people quit in the meantime that they didn't need to lay off as many people, so he was able to take me off the list. I stayed there a little too long, through inertia and also I had so many 1 to 1.5 year job "hops" from all those previous layoffs I felt I should stick around a bit longer to show I am able to stick with a company when they let me. It would have been a blessing if they had laid me off, though, it would have forced me to find a much better job much earlier.
diob 4y ago
The majority of folks are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, not of their own volition. I'd be fine for quite some time, heck I could probably semi retire so to speak.
- aetherson 4y ago
  The majority of which folks? People in the world? Certainly. People in history? Even more certainly. People in the United States of America? ...I mean, probably not actually a majority, but certainly lots of people in the US would have difficulty putting away months' worth of savings without really rigorous amounts of financial discipline. The majority of people who read Hacker News? Uh. No.
  - diob 4y ago
    It's nearly impossible for folks outside our industry (or some comparable industry in terms of pay). Car trouble? Savings gone. Any sort of medical issue? Savings gone. I actually think those folks are more financially disciplined than us, given they somehow make it work despite their low pay.
    - aetherson 4y ago
      Median household income in the US is about $67k, and of course median cost of living the US is much lower than in the SF Bay area. It is thoroughly possible to put away enough money to pay for car troubles or many kinds of medical problems without superhuman financial discipline for most households in the US. Now: 1. Is there a substantial minority who genuinely can only really live hand-to-mouth in the US? Yes. 2. Is it obviously much easier for those of us who have tech-job incomes to put away substantial savings than it is for the median family? Also yes. 3. Am I personally some kind of paragon of financial discipline? No. 4. Is it understandable why many people live closer to paycheck-to-paycheck than they could? Yes. But I don't think that hyperbole serves anyone here.
      - diob 4y ago
ghaff 4y ago
It very much depends on a lot of things including the economic conditions at the time. I was laid off almost immediately after 9/11 in the midst of dot-bomb. As it turned out, I almost immediately landed a new job with someone I knew. It was a pay cut and that company barely made it through the dot-bomb aftermath itself. But it was a comparatively good landing considering. I wasn't about to starve but you didn't want to be cashing in stock at the time. And I definitely knew, especially older, people who lost their jobs in that period and never really recovered in terms of financial position or career. Under those circumstances, unless you have a lot of cash tucked away, you probably shouldn't be treating it as a vacation. I wouldn't say it was traumatic for me--I pretty much knew it was coming and I lucked out--but it could have been quite bad as I didn't have so much as a nibble from anyone else I talked to.
nerdawson 4y ago
Having an emergency fund is basic financial planning that is too often neglected. Even with a cushion to fall back on though, don’t discount how it’s going to feel seeing the balance fall month after month. I expected a break when a company I worked for closed down. In fact, it was autumn and my original plan was to enjoy some time off and pick things up in the new year. Part of me regrets not doing that but I know at the time stress quickly set in.

kache_ 4y ago

The hero's journey is about facing a nightmare and emerging successful. So that sense, it is a hero's journey. Not everyone succeeds, but if you emerge, you are better for it. Being so dependent on your employer that it would ruin your life if they terminated your contract is probably not a good thing. A hero's journey is about remediating that deficiency. For some people, being laid off may have been a good thing.

CraigJPerry 4y ago

I never found the capitalist answer to this problem to be realistic - if you can’t find a new job then relocate. The advice is sound from an economic point of view but it’s unrealistic from a human perspective for most people. There are small numbers of people who naturally thrive moving location to location but most of us have family or just feel a sense of belonging to a particular place or don’t want to go through the hassle of being treated as an immigrant somewhere else - another aspect that humans have historically been bad at is adapting to people arriving from elsewhere.

wonderwonder 4y ago
Not to mention the overwhelming feeling of failure when you have to tell your kids they are moving away from their friends and everything they know because you lost your job.
diob 4y ago
Not only that, but moving is not free! You need money to move, often a good chunk of it. Throw in family (not a single person), and you've got a nightmare of coordination.

georgex7 4y ago

> Getting laid off is a traumatic event. I agree that it is for many, but in my case it wasn't. > It is not a hero's journey except in so far as a hero's journey is exciting because it talks about a path through dangerous times where a person can fail. Difficult events are often found at the beginning on the hero's journey... like getting laid off. > The average person with a family who gets laid off will not sense adventure - they will have despair. Utter despair and worthlessness and the hope they can get things back together before their family suffers. I totally agree with this. I originally wrote more about this but I reduced it to: "Most, unfortunately, will never hear it over their newborn’s cries or the deafening financial storms that suffocate them." This will be terrible for many people, and I have endless sympathy for them. But there will be others who gain from this.