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In my experience, anxiety is something you have. Layoffs give it a convenient focus but it doesn't have to be that way. I used to work at a hedge fund that bas

In my experience, anxiety is something you have. Layoffs give it a convenient focus but it doesn't have to be that way. I used to work at a hedge fund that basically screened for mental health during hiring. When we had layoffs, nobody freaked out. We knew we had a good run, we knew severance was good and we knew we'd be highly desirable in the market. So we metabolized the layoffs and went on with our lives. My job after that was at a scale up that leaned woke (a lot of employees were sold a tenuous connection between our work and a feel good mission). When layoffs happened, it was basically an all out mental health crisis, with everyone feeding into everyone else's anxiety. The facts weren't that different than at the hedge fund but the amount of angst and freaking out was through the roof. Now at a FAANG, obviously had layoffs recently. The emotional vibe is somewhere between the two above. Coworkers that came from tougher places (finance, Microsoft, Amazon) are holding it together fine. Others are not. I once heard the analogy of an orange. When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out because that's what an orange is made off. If extreme anxiety comes out when you are squeezed, it was there all along.

swatcoder 4y ago
Okay, but when you hire a few hundred thousand people into a booming industry and promise them unprecedented compensation, you’ll probably end up with at least a couple oranges in there. Maybe even a lot. Can we offer them some understanding and sympathy?
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Is it understanding or indulgence?
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  Must there be some token sympathy shown in any sort of analysis on this topic? Anyways > promise them unprecedented compensation They were promised and received uncompensated compensation. No promises of indefinite employment were ever given, and it’s a bit naive to assume boom times never end. I think it’s fair to make this point too, even if on an individual level I sympathize with pretty much anyone that loses their job.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I deeply appreciate your other response to me as well as this comment / question. Obviously this is going to happen, I am not shocked or surprised and I get how it can cause anxiety to emerge. I do think there's a connection between resilience (as you observed in your other response) and entitlement. I am not sure which way causality flows but you wrote: "promise them unprecedented compensation" - I feel like there's also a realistic mindset that should go with interpreting that: I am hired to do a job and things could change (vs something like I get this comp because the universe knows I am the shit or something like that)
- throwaway6734 4y ago
  >Can we offer them some understanding and sympathy? If you make over 200k a year in a booming market, no.
  - twelve40 4y ago
    what does that even mean? if you make over 200k a year in a busted market, then you are worthy of sympathy?
    - grioghar 4y ago
      I don’t understand this 200K thing… Are you some sort of bad person for making what the market pays you? It reeks of jealousy and brazen callousness because someone has secured compensation outside their reach or imagination. I don’t get it.
      - throwaway6734 4y ago
        200k is an arbitrary number but the general point is that someone making multiples of the median household income with high future prospects does not know the kind of struggle faced by many people and therefore does not deserve sympathy.
reducesuffering 4y ago
Most of Microsoft outside of Azure/Cloud is not a "tougher place." Whole lotta chill, 15 hour/week people, and WLB over there.
leto_ii 4y ago
> anxiety is something you have First, everybody is capable of anxiety and that's normal and to be expected in the current climate. > a scale up that leaned woke [...] When layoffs happened, it was basically an all out mental health crisis, with everyone feeding into everyone else's anxiety. Second, having an anxiety disorder is not a moral or behavioral failure and I don't see necessarily how it could be correlated to "wokeness". > When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out because that's what an orange is made off. If extreme anxiety comes out when you are squeezed, it was there all along. Again, this analogy doesn't make sense. It's totally normal for oranges to be full of orange juice. It would be weird if something else (or no thing at all) came out... Same with anxiety - it's normal for people to be stressed out in a stressful situation. It's not necessarily healthy, but should be expected. Otoh, having an anxiety disorder is not a normal psychological state, but that's something that shows up all the time, not just when you're "squeezed".
- discordance 4y ago
  Maybe not clearly expressed, but I took the parents point about mental preparedness and environment being big factors in dealing with anxiety, generally, and layoffs.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  I responded to them too, but I think their point is that some people have an internal sense of resilience, or a constructed foundation of security, that makes them less susceptible to anxiety in the face of unexpected change. You’re right that this doesn’t mean that people who are more anxious have somehow failed morally or behaviorally, and also right that nobody is immune to anxiety altogether. But I don’t think they were saying those things. They were just saying that some people are capable of navigating stuff like job loss with confidence and sharing their experience of environments that seemed to have proportionately more or less of those people. I do think that on net it read as dismissive to the real personal experience of the “oranges” who are highlighted in the article, but also think you’re responding to things that weren’t said there.
  - xyzelement 4y ago
anothernewdude 4y ago
I'm anxious now that layoffs are a possibility. I wasn't before.
neilv 4y ago
> hedge fund [...] nobody freaked out. [...] we knew severance was good and we knew we'd be highly desirable in the market. > scale up that leaned woke [...] feel good mission [...] all out mental health crisis [...] > FAANG [...] emotional vibe is somewhere between the two [...] Coworkers that came from tougher places (finance, Microsoft, Amazon) are holding it together fine. Others are not. Rather than attributing this to some employees being made of more-anxious stuff, could this also be explained by: * Concern about personal financial safety net (war chest, family money, connections, job market for them at that time)? * Concern about being able to find another work situation that they like (including perceived woke feel-good mission, and like-minded colleagues, for those people)?
saghm 4y ago
What's the lesson here? I'm guessing you're not literally saying "don't hire people who suffer from anxiety issues", but it's not clear to me what anyone is supposed to do if they think you're correct.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  For one, if you find yourself freaking out realize that the biggest level you have is working on your own reaction/ stability / resilience.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
I think something you're overlooking is that people from less privileged backgrounds tend to experience a higher degree of financial insecurity. If you don't have family that can help you and you grew up eating out of soup kitchens, you're going to have a very different attitude to the prospect of job loss (even if you're "making decent money" at one of these "woke companies") than someone who comes from money and didn't have these issues growing up. You're less likely to take risks, and you're more likely to pursue more secure careers (tech being a good one of late). Now that tech is not looking so safe anymore, of course there are a lot of people who are having full on crises. Dismissing those people as "being made of anxiety" fails to acknowledge the factors that caused the situation in the first place. Sure, someone with a wealthy family isn't freaking out right now, and they're probably less anxious in general. They have good reason to not care about maybe getting laid off, just as the people who are quite worried about it have good reasons to be anxious about getting laid off
- vvanders 4y ago
  Yep, additionally some people may not have nearly as much of a financial safety net depending on their circumstances. I'm pretty privileged but early in my tech career if I had lost one of my gigs I don't know if I would have been able to find something else before I would have chewed through the limited savings we had. This was at a time when remote wasn't nearly as popular and high CoL made it much harder to save.
  - brailsafe 4y ago
    I'm not as lucky, and this almost exactly happened to me. I burned through all my savings just paying rent, eventually losing my apartment and leaving the industry for a few years, then moving back home in a different city. Which of course I was happy to have, but it's a cold and desolate isolated place. Went from a promising development career yo literally working part-time at Starbucks in my late twenties. To this day I have like 8 years of accumulated back taxes to resolve, which will probably end up being a refund at this point.
ojbyrne 4y ago
Before the tech layoffs we have had: 1. A global pandemic that has killed nearly 7 million people worldwide. 2. The start of a large war between a nuclear power and a country in Europe supported by another nuclear power. 3. Minor thing, an attempt to overthrow the US government. Perhaps anxiety accumulates?
- nradov 4y ago
  Those are all very minor problems from a historical perspective and not valid reasons to be anxious.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    "Don't worry -- the reasons you have for anxiety are illegitimate" is sure to calm people down. If software doesn't work out you should consider talk therapy.
  - minusf 4y ago
    wow, good on you. i wonder what "very major" problems are for you if these are "very minor".
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I actually think your post itself oozes with anxiety. I see basically all of these things through a totally different lens: 1. Also plenty upside (eg normalization of working from home) that has impacted most ppl I know very directly. 2. Yes but also doesn't impact us on daily basis and whether we think about it a lot or none at all doesn't change anything. 3. Lol.
whichdan 4y ago
Okay, so people who had historically high-paying jobs, who were at a high-paying company with above-average severance, didn't have anxiety around layoffs. You can't say anxiety around layoffs is purely about mental health without looking at the financial aspect of it.
barbazoo 4y ago
> I used to work at a hedge fund that basically screened for mental health during hiring. As if mental health couldn't negatively change in a matter of weeks or months.
idontpost 4y ago
[dead]
doktorhladnjak 4y ago
> Now at a FAANG, obviously had layoffs recently. The emotional vibe is somewhere between the two above. Coworkers that came from tougher places (finance, Microsoft, Amazon) are holding it together fine. Others are not. This rings true to me too. Another factor I'll highlight is the average age of the employees. I'm older than most of those I work with. I've been through rounds of layoffs at other companies. It's stressful, but I know how it happens and what to expect. A lot of them have worked their entire careers at successful companies during good times. They're freaking out because they haven't been through it before.

swatcoder 4y ago

Okay, but when you hire a few hundred thousand people into a booming industry and promise them unprecedented compensation, you’ll probably end up with at least a couple oranges in there. Maybe even a lot. Can we offer them some understanding and sympathy?

renewiltord 4y ago
Is it understanding or indulgence?
DiggyJohnson 4y ago
Must there be some token sympathy shown in any sort of analysis on this topic? Anyways > promise them unprecedented compensation They were promised and received uncompensated compensation. No promises of indefinite employment were ever given, and it’s a bit naive to assume boom times never end. I think it’s fair to make this point too, even if on an individual level I sympathize with pretty much anyone that loses their job.
xyzelement 4y ago
I deeply appreciate your other response to me as well as this comment / question. Obviously this is going to happen, I am not shocked or surprised and I get how it can cause anxiety to emerge. I do think there's a connection between resilience (as you observed in your other response) and entitlement. I am not sure which way causality flows but you wrote: "promise them unprecedented compensation" - I feel like there's also a realistic mindset that should go with interpreting that: I am hired to do a job and things could change (vs something like I get this comp because the universe knows I am the shit or something like that)
throwaway6734 4y ago
>Can we offer them some understanding and sympathy? If you make over 200k a year in a booming market, no.
- twelve40 4y ago
  what does that even mean? if you make over 200k a year in a busted market, then you are worthy of sympathy?
  - grioghar 4y ago
    I don’t understand this 200K thing… Are you some sort of bad person for making what the market pays you? It reeks of jealousy and brazen callousness because someone has secured compensation outside their reach or imagination. I don’t get it.
    - throwaway6734 4y ago
      200k is an arbitrary number but the general point is that someone making multiples of the median household income with high future prospects does not know the kind of struggle faced by many people and therefore does not deserve sympathy.

reducesuffering 4y ago

Most of Microsoft outside of Azure/Cloud is not a "tougher place." Whole lotta chill, 15 hour/week people, and WLB over there.

leto_ii 4y ago

> anxiety is something you have First, everybody is capable of anxiety and that's normal and to be expected in the current climate. > a scale up that leaned woke [...] When layoffs happened, it was basically an all out mental health crisis, with everyone feeding into everyone else's anxiety. Second, having an anxiety disorder is not a moral or behavioral failure and I don't see necessarily how it could be correlated to "wokeness". > When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out because that's what an orange is made off. If extreme anxiety comes out when you are squeezed, it was there all along. Again, this analogy doesn't make sense. It's totally normal for oranges to be full of orange juice. It would be weird if something else (or no thing at all) came out... Same with anxiety - it's normal for people to be stressed out in a stressful situation. It's not necessarily healthy, but should be expected. Otoh, having an anxiety disorder is not a normal psychological state, but that's something that shows up all the time, not just when you're "squeezed".

discordance 4y ago
Maybe not clearly expressed, but I took the parents point about mental preparedness and environment being big factors in dealing with anxiety, generally, and layoffs.
swatcoder 4y ago
I responded to them too, but I think their point is that some people have an internal sense of resilience, or a constructed foundation of security, that makes them less susceptible to anxiety in the face of unexpected change. You’re right that this doesn’t mean that people who are more anxious have somehow failed morally or behaviorally, and also right that nobody is immune to anxiety altogether. But I don’t think they were saying those things. They were just saying that some people are capable of navigating stuff like job loss with confidence and sharing their experience of environments that seemed to have proportionately more or less of those people. I do think that on net it read as dismissive to the real personal experience of the “oranges” who are highlighted in the article, but also think you’re responding to things that weren’t said there.
- xyzelement 4y ago

anothernewdude 4y ago

I'm anxious now that layoffs are a possibility. I wasn't before.

neilv 4y ago

> hedge fund [...] nobody freaked out. [...] we knew severance was good and we knew we'd be highly desirable in the market. > scale up that leaned woke [...] feel good mission [...] all out mental health crisis [...] > FAANG [...] emotional vibe is somewhere between the two [...] Coworkers that came from tougher places (finance, Microsoft, Amazon) are holding it together fine. Others are not. Rather than attributing this to some employees being made of more-anxious stuff, could this also be explained by: * Concern about personal financial safety net (war chest, family money, connections, job market for them at that time)? * Concern about being able to find another work situation that they like (including perceived woke feel-good mission, and like-minded colleagues, for those people)?

saghm 4y ago

What's the lesson here? I'm guessing you're not literally saying "don't hire people who suffer from anxiety issues", but it's not clear to me what anyone is supposed to do if they think you're correct.

xyzelement 4y ago
For one, if you find yourself freaking out realize that the biggest level you have is working on your own reaction/ stability / resilience.

pcthrowaway 4y ago

I think something you're overlooking is that people from less privileged backgrounds tend to experience a higher degree of financial insecurity. If you don't have family that can help you and you grew up eating out of soup kitchens, you're going to have a very different attitude to the prospect of job loss (even if you're "making decent money" at one of these "woke companies") than someone who comes from money and didn't have these issues growing up. You're less likely to take risks, and you're more likely to pursue more secure careers (tech being a good one of late). Now that tech is not looking so safe anymore, of course there are a lot of people who are having full on crises. Dismissing those people as "being made of anxiety" fails to acknowledge the factors that caused the situation in the first place. Sure, someone with a wealthy family isn't freaking out right now, and they're probably less anxious in general. They have good reason to not care about maybe getting laid off, just as the people who are quite worried about it have good reasons to be anxious about getting laid off

vvanders 4y ago
Yep, additionally some people may not have nearly as much of a financial safety net depending on their circumstances. I'm pretty privileged but early in my tech career if I had lost one of my gigs I don't know if I would have been able to find something else before I would have chewed through the limited savings we had. This was at a time when remote wasn't nearly as popular and high CoL made it much harder to save.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  I'm not as lucky, and this almost exactly happened to me. I burned through all my savings just paying rent, eventually losing my apartment and leaving the industry for a few years, then moving back home in a different city. Which of course I was happy to have, but it's a cold and desolate isolated place. Went from a promising development career yo literally working part-time at Starbucks in my late twenties. To this day I have like 8 years of accumulated back taxes to resolve, which will probably end up being a refund at this point.

ojbyrne 4y ago

Before the tech layoffs we have had: 1. A global pandemic that has killed nearly 7 million people worldwide. 2. The start of a large war between a nuclear power and a country in Europe supported by another nuclear power. 3. Minor thing, an attempt to overthrow the US government. Perhaps anxiety accumulates?

nradov 4y ago
Those are all very minor problems from a historical perspective and not valid reasons to be anxious.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  "Don't worry -- the reasons you have for anxiety are illegitimate" is sure to calm people down. If software doesn't work out you should consider talk therapy.
- minusf 4y ago
  wow, good on you. i wonder what "very major" problems are for you if these are "very minor".
xyzelement 4y ago
I actually think your post itself oozes with anxiety. I see basically all of these things through a totally different lens: 1. Also plenty upside (eg normalization of working from home) that has impacted most ppl I know very directly. 2. Yes but also doesn't impact us on daily basis and whether we think about it a lot or none at all doesn't change anything. 3. Lol.

whichdan 4y ago

Okay, so people who had historically high-paying jobs, who were at a high-paying company with above-average severance, didn't have anxiety around layoffs. You can't say anxiety around layoffs is purely about mental health without looking at the financial aspect of it.

barbazoo 4y ago

> I used to work at a hedge fund that basically screened for mental health during hiring. As if mental health couldn't negatively change in a matter of weeks or months.

idontpost 4y ago

[dead]

doktorhladnjak 4y ago

> Now at a FAANG, obviously had layoffs recently. The emotional vibe is somewhere between the two above. Coworkers that came from tougher places (finance, Microsoft, Amazon) are holding it together fine. Others are not. This rings true to me too. Another factor I'll highlight is the average age of the employees. I'm older than most of those I work with. I've been through rounds of layoffs at other companies. It's stressful, but I know how it happens and what to expect. A lot of them have worked their entire careers at successful companies during good times. They're freaking out because they haven't been through it before.