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Thoughts on getting laid off after nine years at Twilio
- asaph 4y agoAs per https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/, Twilio laid off 1500 people on 2/13/2023, 17% of its workforce.
- johncessna 4y agoSince the author posted this, what's your goal with writing something like this?
- paulgb 4y agoDoes it need to have a goal? I found it to be a touching read and an often not-seen personal perspective on the ongoing layoffs.
- johncessna 4y ago[flagged]
- thomasfromcdnjs 4y agoYeah, doesn't really say much.
- mcphage 4y agoProbably catharsis.
- julianeon 4y agoVery lovely window into what it's like to work at a place for 9 years, and then leave.
- vertis 4y agoOne thing I recommend in this situation is forming alumni groups if they don't already exist. Regardless of whether it's layoffs or through just reaching the end of your journey it's a great time to form and/or retain your community. I'm part of several alumni groups on slack and they continue to be one of the most important networks for all kinds of opportunities. Way way better than Linked In. Essentially all the trust benefits and social capital of being part of the corporate tribe continue beyond the end of employment. Edit: fix really long sentence
- cableshaft 4y agoYeah, this is a good idea. There's one guy at my previous job that invites all former coworkers to hang out at a bar a couple times a year, and we get together and catch up. Not too many, just about 10 people end up showing up, but it's enough. I haven't used it for a new job yet, although it did get me an interview.
- busterarm 4y agoI can't imagine working for so long at a place burning huge piles of cash every quarter. Looking for the exit is something I'd have done at least 5 years ago.
- rybosworld 4y agoI think it's awesome that some people enjoy their work and love their jobs. That said, if you aren't an owner of the company then I think it's unhealthy to be emotionally invested. In my last job, I had received a competing offer and informed my boss that I would rather not leave but that this other offer was too financially good for me to ignore. My boss responded by beating the other offer and I stayed there for about five more years. I later admitted to him that I felt guilt about leveraging an offer in this way. He said something that really stuck with me: "You've got to put yourself first". In retrospect, the thing that actually stuck with me is that I'd gleamed into the mind of upper management. That is, they are putting themselves first, and so should you.
- twblalock 4y ago> That is, they are putting themselves first, and so should you. Another point to make is, it's possible to know this, put yourself first, and still love your job.
- maccard 4y ago> "You've got to put yourself first". This doesn't mean "take the highest offer", it means putting yourself first. In your situation, going back to your boss was clearly an ask to stay because that was what you wanted. It's possible to be comfortable and content with your work and your job, and to prioritize that over chasing more money too.
- ravenstine 4y agoWhile I totally agree, I can't blame people for getting emotionally invested because today's companies hammer that corporate propaganda into everyone's heads all the time. There are good intentions, but it's manipulative in the same way that a flaky boyfriend or girlfriend can lead you on even though they're not truly serious or committed. In the cast of corporatism, the sentimentality is directed toward a group of disparate individuals with an overlapping albeit replaceable goal. The best thing for everyone is to see it for what it is, not assume malice, and keep a safe distance.
- sgtnoodle 4y agoI've always been impressed with upper management at my current company, and I don't believe any of them have that mindset. My wife broke her leg a couple weeks ago, and we have a 3 month old baby and a 4 year old. I had just started working again after taking paternity leave. I've been a rather poor employee the last several weeks, and will continue to be for a while. Middle management is stressed out about schedules and stressing me out, while the word from upper management has been consistently clear: you've always gone the extra mile for the company, so let the company do the same for you. Focus on taking care of your family and don't worry about work.
- TobyTheDog123 4y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 4y agoDon't be an ass. He's referring to the way in which all kids see their parents as having a particular occupation. He's not saying that he built his career at Twilio at his daughter's expense.
- TobyTheDog123 4y agoI also don't think he built his career at his daughter's expense, I'm saying that the over-dramatization of the post leads to this even being something to call out, even when it shouldn't be. You can call me names all you like, but don't expect people to not question intent over a poorly-conceived sentence.
- tptacek 4y agoYou're right: what you wrote is poorly conceived. You can probably just delete it (or edit-clear it)! I'm an ass all the time; I'm not high-horsing you, but maybe we'd all just be better off if this whole subthread vanished.
- TobyTheDog123 4y ago[flagged]
- mrsuprawsm 4y agoThe guy worked there for 9 years. That's a really long time, longer than many posters here's entire careers (mine included), and longer than most of us will ever work at a given job. Of course he's going to be emotionally invested, and knocking him for this is a bit cruel. Not so long ago, your kids _would_ know you as someone who drives buses for the local bus company, delivers the post, or works down the mine.
- twawaaay 4y agoI wonder if large companies recognise they are shitting in the pond they are floating in. As somebody with over quarter of century of experience managing and hiring people I notice how candidates change over time (trying to adjust for how I change myself). I notice people care less about the company they work for and, honestly, it is more and more difficult to find arguments against. This whole trend of optimising everything to the max without caring for people is going to create an employee base that is completely disillusioned about their role or prospects or what's their best strategy for life. When more and more people started changing jobs every year just to get an incremental raise without even bothering to get the raise at the company I worked for I thought this is shortsighted and it will backfire on them and it will teach them. Well, did not happen. It just became a new normal. I wonder what new things are going to pass as acceptable. Any company needs some people who care about what they do. But these are in shorter and shorter supply every year, it seems. When you run a query on LinkedIn it will show you a list of candidates with their three last jobs. I noticed page after page after page everybody has their third last job starting 2020/2021. Meaning almost all seem to be spending less than a year on each of their jobs in past couple years. And these are all supposed to be senior candidates. It is no way to have a productive employee base. You can pay people more to keep them at your company for a while longer, but there is very little you can do to overcome their inherent cynicism.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoIn many positions, and at many points in your career, job hopping or the threat of it is the only real way to get any noticeable raise in actual compensation. Most companies just don't really reward loyalty anymore.
- hypothesis 4y agoIs that what they call a “loyalty tax”?
- atemerev 4y agoWhat is it, 80s? There is no “company loyalty” since 2000s, and soon there will be no “jobs” in general. We are all contractors and mercenaries now.
- haswell 4y agoGreg’s “Devs and Depression” talk many years back was a light in the middle of a very dark period of time in my life. Having followed some of Greg’s work when I was doing developer relations, this particular post hit me closer to home than most, and is just another reminder of the caliber of people impacted by these cuts. When I voluntarily left my job last year to refocus on my mental health for awhile, it was one of the harder decisions to make and I was an emotional wreck throughout the process. Having this happen suddenly is something I'm grateful I haven't yet experienced. Posts like this are a good reminder of just how personal many of these layoffs are for people, and I have nothing but empathy for everyone going through this right now.
- e2e4 4y agohttps://youtu.be/CausE8Sc8Uc https://youtu.be/CausE8Sc8Uc
- zerr 4y ago2 hours notice - How do you handover the work? Or is there nothing to handover?
- nibbleshifter 4y agoHere's the thing I've learned lately from friends who have survived layoffs: handover often doesn't happen. The company terminates access effective immediately (maybe with gardening leave) for security reasons. The immediate loss of institutional knowledge causes fucking havoc across the board. So some people will be taken back on as contractors for a while at extremely expensive rates. This also means there's a weird incentive to start hoarding knowledge if you suspect layoffs are coming down the pipe...
- paradox460 4y agoThis happened to me. Was the sole developer on a certain service. Other engineers would use the service at the company, but no one else really wanted to get into it and work on it. Was working on fixing an issue one morning, got roped into a meeting, and escorted from the building. Next week, saw an email from a coworker asking how to do something with the service. Told him, politely (don't burn bridges) that I didn't work there anymore and wasn't interested in helping that company without payment. Yeah, it might be thought of that I hung him out to dry, but that wasn't my intent. I just won't work for free, particularly when I was booted without much chance to get my affairs sorted
- fzeroracer 4y agoThis happens all the time and the downstream effects of hazardous layoffs are often not seen or felt until Jim the resident container expert isn't around to restart the critical containers that all of your other services need, so you start losing a lot of money and time as John the replacement scrambles to figure out how the system works and what to do. Or they get hired back as a contractor for 3x-4x the hourly wage as you mentioned.
- nivenkos 4y agoAnd then more good people leave too, as they're more willing to accept other offers.
- librish 4y agoReading the responses to some of these posts it feels like the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction in the "the company is not your family" discussion. Yes, if you expect corporate America to always treat you fairly you're going to end up disappointed. But spending 9 years at a place and not even giving a little bit of yourself to the company seems even worse. It's OK to think that your boss cares about you as a person, it's OK to make friends at work, and it's OK to believe in the company mission, as long as you don't overdo it.
- Xeronate 4y agoYour sentiment is nice in theory, but in reality it's just a recipe for getting taken advantage of.
- librish 4y agoIt's OK to be taken advantage of a little bit.
- buggy6257 4y ago…why? Sorry I’m not being flippant here I mean it. Why would this be okay? What is the reason that I would want someone to be able to intentionally take advantage of me as a person in a way that benefits them but not me when I have no personal connection to them? Moreover, why would I let a corporation or other business do that? Im genuinely curious where your thinking is at with this and hope you’ll elaborate beyond this short reply you gave.
- librish 4y agoStaying emotionally guarded for 9 years is a bad trade-off with having a layoff feel less bad.
- znpy 4y agoThe author of the post clearly would agree with you. And got fired anyway.
- throwaway675309 4y agoSorry to hear about this, being let go is always a demoralizing experience, but I just can't identify with this type of histrionic response towards being laid off at a company. It's not like you're losing a loved one, and if you properly built up your friendships with your coworkers, they'll still be meaningful relationships even after you're gone. All the lessons and skills that you acquired are still persistent as well. There must be some kind of cult of personality phenomenon that applies to companies as well as people. I hope that the one good takeaway for this person is that unless you're a majority stakeholder or have ownership in the company, one should learn to be detached about where your paycheck comes from.
- danesparza 4y agoWhy in the world would Twilio take somebody who is this loyal to their culture and put them out on their ear? This person was a true believer. They stuck with the company for 9 YEARS. If you want to shift the company, then do that -- and take your true believers WITH YOU. This isn't leadership on Twilio's part. This is a scared company. They aren't making smart decisions. They're just cowing to investors.
- znpy 4y ago> They're just cowing to investors. That’s what company do… keep the investors happy. That’s also why some companies underline at every possible occasion that they are bootstrapped (ie: they’ve grown organically without investments from vc firms or similar).
- Manuel_D 4y agoBecause companies aren't family, and they aren't welfare programs. Continuing to retain these employees would require increasing prices to pay for this glut of labor, and shift the burden on customers. And if customers drop because of increased prices, they might have to lay people off anyway. There is no "sacred company".
- giardini 4y agoI need a break: I read this as "Thoughts on getting laid after nine years at Twilio..." and my first though was "...and I thought my job was bad!"
- throwawaysalome 4y agoSame here. "Being laid off" is better here. The bigram "getting laid" occurs frequently enough to trigger an instinctive pattern match.
- nebulousthree 4y agoThere's a reason it's called human "resources". You better believe that if MBAs could kill or renice employees the way you might do computer processes, they would.
- ctvo 4y agoJust so we’re all on the same page: Not being loyal to the company doesn’t mean not being kind and good to your coworkers, or being a poor leader. It doesn’t mean you have license to be pessimistic, jaded, poisonous, and an asshole. It does mean your identity isn’t you work for Google, and your worth isn’t your continued relationship with your employer. It does mean make good financial decisions for yourself, your family, and avoid giving home team discounts.
- candyman 4y agoI wonder if we created the companies that we deserve? I worked at IBM a long time ago and they spent a ton of time and money developing employees. I was there when there was still a concept of “lifetime” employment. IBM was expensive but we smothered customers with support. Price was a factor but we still could compete on quality, support, service and I hesitate to say it, an actual relationship with our customer. We laugh at the joke now when someone says “if it was $2 cheaper I’d fly on a kite!” Ha, ha, LOL. Something about just caring about price and returns on investment has made it harder for companies to invest in their own people. Now that employees will jump for $$ the companies can also ask “why invest if the employee will just leave us in a second for more money?” There are still organizations out there that care but I think they are fewer and fewer. And none can probably be public. Like IBM in the 1980’s I think Twilio hired and spent like a drunken sailor because they could get away with it. IBM fired around 25K people at the beginning of the downsizing in 1988 or so and we didn’t even notice. Then another 25K or 50K and still, no difference. I think they topped out at 450K people. There were 100K people who basically didn’t do anything productive.
- sys_64738 4y agoWhat the first exposure to layoffs (whether you are or not) teaches you is to never be exposed in such a circumstance again. Make sure you have an exit strategy when your current company either goes down the toilet or they bin you. Companies have zero loyalty to you just as you should have zero loyalty to them. Walk when the opportunity arises that makes sense.
- abhnv 4y agoI don’t understand why are senior developers getting fired. If over-hiring was the reason for the layoffs. Then shouldn’t the recently hired people be fired?
- icedchai 4y agoOften it is not individuals being directly targeted, it is whole teams. "Project Foo is not working out, let's cancel it and fire the whole team." Not saying that happened here. It is impossible to say what logic went into these decisions.
- RickJWagner 4y agoThat was heartfelt. There, but for the grace of God, go I.