7 ms·

My friend just got notified he's out. He has like 12 years with the company. He was half way through a meeting that he was driving/leading when he got the noti

by mabbo 4y ago

My friend just got notified he's out. He has like 12 years with the company. He was half way through a meeting that he was driving/leading when he got the notification.

hotpotamus 4y ago
I'm ever reminded of Clint Eastwood as William Munny in "Unforgiven", when he says, "we all have it coming, kid".
- powvans 4y ago
  “Deserves got nothing to do with it.”
yellow_lead 4y ago
That's dehumanizing and souless.
- kvetching 4y ago
  Absolutely. This happened multiple times throughout my career in Tech. Everything I devoted my life to for years, taken from me, multiple times. There is no such thing as job security.
  - 1248 4y ago
    At least we have it relatively easy (I think you're talking about programming positions?). Imagine working in a mine or something and then what do you do.
    - eatsyourtacos 4y ago
      I think these comparisons are kind of disingenuous. Of course we understand what you mean. But on the other hand, it's kind of not relevant at all. OPs life is not that one of a coal miner. In theory this person has worked hard all his life, studied, dedicated time to companies. This is what he is doing. Then it's kind of taken away without his control. Saying "well at least you don't work in a mine" is minimizing his real problem so much. Should it be put in perspective? Sure. But it also doesn't really make it any better. Infact I would argue that kind of response is kind of like "hey why should we give everyone free healthcare? At least you have access to healthcare for money, 100 years ago we barely even had medicine so you should feel lucky!". True.. but also completely misses the entire point.
      - dopamean 4y ago
        There is a major difference between dedicating your life to developing a highly portable skill that you can do from your house and dedicating your life to physical labor that could get you killed and has ever decreasing opportunities for work. Yes, it's super lame if someone loves their job somewhere and gets laid off. It's a bit less lame if that person is highly paid and can find work doing almost the exact same thing somewhere else without leaving their house.
      - sleepychu 4y ago
        I took your parent to mean there are no more jobs out there without moving to another mining town. Versus a programmer job where there are plenty of other "mines" available.
    - busterarm 4y ago
      If you listened to journalists over the last several years it was "learn to code". Of course, they get mad when you tell them that.
  - wmeredith 4y ago
    > devoted my life to for years This is the problem (not the actual problem, but the one you can control). Your job isn't your life. I used to think/act this way. Then I was eliminated in a rather soulless manner myself. I realized it was an abusive relationship. I had actual PTSD for a couple of years. I no longer define myself by anything that is so transactional. Business relationships are just that. I am happier, I make more money at job, and I've got several things prioritized over work that fulfill me.
    - granshaw 4y ago
      The problem is, Amazon is one of those cult-like places who drill you into thinking you’re blessed with the best job in the world and to live the “amazon way” I can totally seeing someone who joined early in their career falling for that BS
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >I no longer define myself by anything that is so transactional. Business relationships are just that. A very large number of marriages and romantic relationships are too.
  - driverdan 4y ago
    > Everything I devoted my life to for years, taken from me, multiple times. Sounds like you need to step back and re-evaluate your approach. Your work for a large, soulless corporation should not be what you devoted your life to. It's work, not your life.
    - hisnameishank 4y ago
      Tech workers should start unionizing. Our skills and talents are borderline a trade and thusly should be bargained for. Having a giant corporation kill off your occupancy with no pre-warning is raw meat for union reps who would love to sue on your behave.
  - dfxm12 4y ago
    There is no such thing as job security. Why do you expect it? Large corporations have stacked the deck against workers for decades (at least). If you really want to be able to work the same job forever, you can try to get yourself a special contract, but you'd have better luck getting such worker protections by working with your state government or fellow workers. If you're worried that too many benefits, compensation, insurance, ability to rent, etc. are tied to employment, you're right there, and we can do better as a society to expand unemployment insurance and get affordable health care that isn't tied to employment, etc. This way, when we do lose a job, not everything is taken is from us.
  - valtism 4y ago
    *No such thing as job security in the US
    - thunky 4y ago
      Oh so in France businesses never shut down?
- _b 4y ago
  Companies do layoffs in a dehumanizing way largely to avoid lawsuits. If individual managers communicate it, some might say something wrong and invite a lawsuit. Even if they don't say anything wrong, some of the people being laid-off may misremember what they were told, and without a clear record of what they were told, they might win a lawsuit. In contrast, a mass email laying people off has the advantages that lawyers can review it beforehand, and it is clearly document exactly what was told to the employee in the course of laying them off. The other part is they want to lay everyone off at the same time, so people aren't finding out at different times and wondering if they are safe or not. An email, sent to everyone at the same time, achieves that much better than trying to rapidly schedule a lot of simultaneous meetings. Perhaps there is a better way, but that is the conventional wisdom that I've heard from folks planning layoffs.
  - pas 4y ago
    Why doesn't the company announce that they are going to cut about so and so many people in the next this and that timeframe? A lot of folks would go willingly anyway. (As this happens in other countries.) Managers can pick before the announcement and then HR can do the actual if not enough people left willingly. And there's always a chance of wrongful termination lawsuits... ... the real reason this is done this way is because that's the culture of these companies, mostly due to US culture (and labor laws are a synergic manifestation of this).
    - _b 4y ago
      People aren't interchangeable. The company might want to layoff 10%, but they don't want to layoff just any 10%. They will want to layoff people in positions and teams that they want to do away with, and to the extent some people are interchangeable, they would like to layoff those that are the least productive. If you announce layoffs before telling people who will get cut, the people who tend to leave voluntarily are often those most able to get jobs elsewhere because they are high performers in positions that are hard to staff -- so exactly who the company wants to keep.
- thunkshift1 4y ago
  Cue comments about how tech is the best place to work and the most comfy job around and we should be lucky to be picked for this glorious position and no tech unions are just dumb
artificial 4y ago
Bummer. About as immediate as a Windows error dialog.
nemo44x 4y ago
I wonder what the protocol is there? Do you continue the meeting and finish it up or do you just stop it? Was his access to all corporate systems just turned off so the meeting just cut out? I knew a guy who was in the middle of a consulting engagement when he got an email that he was part of a layoff. He finished the day with the customer since he had a relationship with the people there and figured he was being paid for that day anyways. But yeah, that's a really nasty way to be let go.
- nikau 4y ago
  Like this, but with your company laptop instead of the fish tank https://youtu.be/sQDggdQ-eUo?t=22 https://youtu.be/sQDggdQ-eUo?t=22
- p0pcult 4y ago
  YMMV, but, for the sake of and out of respect for my teammates, I'd finish the meeting.
  - raydev 4y ago
    I wouldn't. Getting laid off is a lifechanging event, on the approximate level of an immediate family member going to the ER. Both require leaving the office immediately. My teammates (if they are still employed) can sort it out.
    - p0pcult 4y ago
      no one's irreplaceable life is immediately endangered in the case of a layoff. apples and baseball bats. if required by the employer to leave immediately, then there is no choice in the matter, rendering OP's question moot. if not, and you ditch your team, then you're (editorial you, not parent poster you) the asshole. do your fellow human a kindness, as opposed to just selfishly passing along the garbage, and you'll make the world a marginally better place.
      - raydev 4y ago
karol 4y ago
So he's a millionaire. Right?
- rnk 4y ago
  If you worked there a decade you might be. Not everyone is in that category. If you bought a place in the Seattle area, you probably sank most of your excess money into it. That might be a temporarily depreciating asset (prices slightly down compared to last year). It's not like 10 years at Microsoft and you are retired.
  - areyousure 4y ago
    > (prices slightly down compared to last year) In case anyone is curious, at worst prices have been falling on a month-to-month basis but essentially nowhere are they falling year-over-year: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/home-prices-slip-for-fourth-month-with-us-sales-market-slowing/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/home-prices-slip-for-f... https://www.redfin.com/city/16163/WA/Seattle/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/city/16163/WA/Seattle/housing-market
  - rcarmo 4y ago
    That’s only valid for US folk.
krainboltgreene 4y ago
Maybe this time tech workers will understand we need to unionize.
- ugh123 4y ago
  Why? Because of layoffs? Thats not a reason to unionize. Maybe what we should be doing is asking our CEOs, GMs, product people, etc why we need to go on these hiring sprees in the first place, which seem to put the entire employee base in jeopardy when "times get tough. If the goal of these layoffs is to "do more with less", then maybe we as technologists should find a way to do that ourselves.
  - ygjb 4y ago
    >Why? Because of layoffs? Thats not a reason to unionize. Maybe what we should be doing is asking our CEOs, GMs, product people, etc why we need to go on these hiring sprees in the first place, which seem to put the entire employee base in jeopardy when "times get tough. Yeah, for the most part, asking those questions is a great way to get fired in many, many companies, especially if you ask those questions in a forum or format that makes leadership look bad. I am not sure where I stand on unions for tech workers (I grew up in a union mining town where the union saved lives by driving safety measures, but also got fined by the union on the first day of my first job for refilling an ink tray because the shop steward thought I needed a lesson), but at the end of the day, unions provide a method for engaging with the business to negotiate and ask these questions without fear of arbitrary retaliation.
  - krainboltgreene 4y ago
    > Why? Because of layoffs? Thats not a reason to unionize. This is one of many reasons to unionize because the reasons for layoffs may not be what we're being told.
- rnk 4y ago
  No, that's not going to happen. First we are too independent, too many libertarians. But the main reason is I think we still feel like there are lots of opportunities to find jobs. I'd love to pay 5% or something like that for job insurance that would cover me if the company died, or they start laying off people in a downturn. That would be 5% you don't have though.

by mabbo 4y ago

My friend just got notified he's out. He has like 12 years with the company. He was half way through a meeting that he was driving/leading when he got the notification.

hotpotamus 4y ago

I'm ever reminded of Clint Eastwood as William Munny in "Unforgiven", when he says, "we all have it coming, kid".

powvans 4y ago
“Deserves got nothing to do with it.”

yellow_lead 4y ago

That's dehumanizing and souless.

kvetching 4y ago
Absolutely. This happened multiple times throughout my career in Tech. Everything I devoted my life to for years, taken from me, multiple times. There is no such thing as job security.
- 1248 4y ago
  At least we have it relatively easy (I think you're talking about programming positions?). Imagine working in a mine or something and then what do you do.
  - eatsyourtacos 4y ago
    I think these comparisons are kind of disingenuous. Of course we understand what you mean. But on the other hand, it's kind of not relevant at all. OPs life is not that one of a coal miner. In theory this person has worked hard all his life, studied, dedicated time to companies. This is what he is doing. Then it's kind of taken away without his control. Saying "well at least you don't work in a mine" is minimizing his real problem so much. Should it be put in perspective? Sure. But it also doesn't really make it any better. Infact I would argue that kind of response is kind of like "hey why should we give everyone free healthcare? At least you have access to healthcare for money, 100 years ago we barely even had medicine so you should feel lucky!". True.. but also completely misses the entire point.
    - dopamean 4y ago
      There is a major difference between dedicating your life to developing a highly portable skill that you can do from your house and dedicating your life to physical labor that could get you killed and has ever decreasing opportunities for work. Yes, it's super lame if someone loves their job somewhere and gets laid off. It's a bit less lame if that person is highly paid and can find work doing almost the exact same thing somewhere else without leaving their house.
    - sleepychu 4y ago
      I took your parent to mean there are no more jobs out there without moving to another mining town. Versus a programmer job where there are plenty of other "mines" available.
  - busterarm 4y ago
    If you listened to journalists over the last several years it was "learn to code". Of course, they get mad when you tell them that.
- wmeredith 4y ago
  > devoted my life to for years This is the problem (not the actual problem, but the one you can control). Your job isn't your life. I used to think/act this way. Then I was eliminated in a rather soulless manner myself. I realized it was an abusive relationship. I had actual PTSD for a couple of years. I no longer define myself by anything that is so transactional. Business relationships are just that. I am happier, I make more money at job, and I've got several things prioritized over work that fulfill me.
  - granshaw 4y ago
    The problem is, Amazon is one of those cult-like places who drill you into thinking you’re blessed with the best job in the world and to live the “amazon way” I can totally seeing someone who joined early in their career falling for that BS
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >I no longer define myself by anything that is so transactional. Business relationships are just that. A very large number of marriages and romantic relationships are too.
- driverdan 4y ago
  > Everything I devoted my life to for years, taken from me, multiple times. Sounds like you need to step back and re-evaluate your approach. Your work for a large, soulless corporation should not be what you devoted your life to. It's work, not your life.
  - hisnameishank 4y ago
    Tech workers should start unionizing. Our skills and talents are borderline a trade and thusly should be bargained for. Having a giant corporation kill off your occupancy with no pre-warning is raw meat for union reps who would love to sue on your behave.
- dfxm12 4y ago
  There is no such thing as job security. Why do you expect it? Large corporations have stacked the deck against workers for decades (at least). If you really want to be able to work the same job forever, you can try to get yourself a special contract, but you'd have better luck getting such worker protections by working with your state government or fellow workers. If you're worried that too many benefits, compensation, insurance, ability to rent, etc. are tied to employment, you're right there, and we can do better as a society to expand unemployment insurance and get affordable health care that isn't tied to employment, etc. This way, when we do lose a job, not everything is taken is from us.
- valtism 4y ago
  *No such thing as job security in the US
  - thunky 4y ago
    Oh so in France businesses never shut down?
_b 4y ago
Companies do layoffs in a dehumanizing way largely to avoid lawsuits. If individual managers communicate it, some might say something wrong and invite a lawsuit. Even if they don't say anything wrong, some of the people being laid-off may misremember what they were told, and without a clear record of what they were told, they might win a lawsuit. In contrast, a mass email laying people off has the advantages that lawyers can review it beforehand, and it is clearly document exactly what was told to the employee in the course of laying them off. The other part is they want to lay everyone off at the same time, so people aren't finding out at different times and wondering if they are safe or not. An email, sent to everyone at the same time, achieves that much better than trying to rapidly schedule a lot of simultaneous meetings. Perhaps there is a better way, but that is the conventional wisdom that I've heard from folks planning layoffs.
- pas 4y ago
  Why doesn't the company announce that they are going to cut about so and so many people in the next this and that timeframe? A lot of folks would go willingly anyway. (As this happens in other countries.) Managers can pick before the announcement and then HR can do the actual if not enough people left willingly. And there's always a chance of wrongful termination lawsuits... ... the real reason this is done this way is because that's the culture of these companies, mostly due to US culture (and labor laws are a synergic manifestation of this).
  - _b 4y ago
    People aren't interchangeable. The company might want to layoff 10%, but they don't want to layoff just any 10%. They will want to layoff people in positions and teams that they want to do away with, and to the extent some people are interchangeable, they would like to layoff those that are the least productive. If you announce layoffs before telling people who will get cut, the people who tend to leave voluntarily are often those most able to get jobs elsewhere because they are high performers in positions that are hard to staff -- so exactly who the company wants to keep.
thunkshift1 4y ago
Cue comments about how tech is the best place to work and the most comfy job around and we should be lucky to be picked for this glorious position and no tech unions are just dumb

artificial 4y ago

Bummer. About as immediate as a Windows error dialog.

nemo44x 4y ago

I wonder what the protocol is there? Do you continue the meeting and finish it up or do you just stop it? Was his access to all corporate systems just turned off so the meeting just cut out? I knew a guy who was in the middle of a consulting engagement when he got an email that he was part of a layoff. He finished the day with the customer since he had a relationship with the people there and figured he was being paid for that day anyways. But yeah, that's a really nasty way to be let go.

nikau 4y ago
Like this, but with your company laptop instead of the fish tank https://youtu.be/sQDggdQ-eUo?t=22 https://youtu.be/sQDggdQ-eUo?t=22
p0pcult 4y ago
YMMV, but, for the sake of and out of respect for my teammates, I'd finish the meeting.
- raydev 4y ago
  I wouldn't. Getting laid off is a lifechanging event, on the approximate level of an immediate family member going to the ER. Both require leaving the office immediately. My teammates (if they are still employed) can sort it out.
  - p0pcult 4y ago
    no one's irreplaceable life is immediately endangered in the case of a layoff. apples and baseball bats. if required by the employer to leave immediately, then there is no choice in the matter, rendering OP's question moot. if not, and you ditch your team, then you're (editorial you, not parent poster you) the asshole. do your fellow human a kindness, as opposed to just selfishly passing along the garbage, and you'll make the world a marginally better place.
    - raydev 4y ago

karol 4y ago

So he's a millionaire. Right?

rnk 4y ago
If you worked there a decade you might be. Not everyone is in that category. If you bought a place in the Seattle area, you probably sank most of your excess money into it. That might be a temporarily depreciating asset (prices slightly down compared to last year). It's not like 10 years at Microsoft and you are retired.
- areyousure 4y ago
  > (prices slightly down compared to last year) In case anyone is curious, at worst prices have been falling on a month-to-month basis but essentially nowhere are they falling year-over-year: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/home-prices-slip-for-fourth-month-with-us-sales-market-slowing/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/home-prices-slip-for-f... https://www.redfin.com/city/16163/WA/Seattle/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/city/16163/WA/Seattle/housing-market
- rcarmo 4y ago
  That’s only valid for US folk.

krainboltgreene 4y ago

Maybe this time tech workers will understand we need to unionize.

ugh123 4y ago
Why? Because of layoffs? Thats not a reason to unionize. Maybe what we should be doing is asking our CEOs, GMs, product people, etc why we need to go on these hiring sprees in the first place, which seem to put the entire employee base in jeopardy when "times get tough. If the goal of these layoffs is to "do more with less", then maybe we as technologists should find a way to do that ourselves.
- ygjb 4y ago
  >Why? Because of layoffs? Thats not a reason to unionize. Maybe what we should be doing is asking our CEOs, GMs, product people, etc why we need to go on these hiring sprees in the first place, which seem to put the entire employee base in jeopardy when "times get tough. Yeah, for the most part, asking those questions is a great way to get fired in many, many companies, especially if you ask those questions in a forum or format that makes leadership look bad. I am not sure where I stand on unions for tech workers (I grew up in a union mining town where the union saved lives by driving safety measures, but also got fined by the union on the first day of my first job for refilling an ink tray because the shop steward thought I needed a lesson), but at the end of the day, unions provide a method for engaging with the business to negotiate and ask these questions without fear of arbitrary retaliation.
- krainboltgreene 4y ago
  > Why? Because of layoffs? Thats not a reason to unionize. This is one of many reasons to unionize because the reasons for layoffs may not be what we're being told.
rnk 4y ago
No, that's not going to happen. First we are too independent, too many libertarians. But the main reason is I think we still feel like there are lots of opportunities to find jobs. I'd love to pay 5% or something like that for job insurance that would cover me if the company died, or they start laying off people in a downturn. That would be 5% you don't have though.