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1. No. Not because I'm a quite special engineer (I'm between the average and median) but one thing that I developed was a decent situational awareness in terms
by braza 3y ago
1. No. Not because I'm a quite special engineer (I'm between the average and median) but one thing that I developed was a decent situational awareness in terms of career management to know the early signs when something is going south and I decided to move first (last 3 experiences I escaped from a mass layoff in a Tech Mid-Cap company, another Scale-up that needed to do layoffs and all stock is underwater and a hostile takeover that ended up with a 65% layoff).
2. I became almost obsessed with company performance in almost all aspects to see early signs of something off. Another thing is that I worked on all of my weaknesses to be more employable (I am a SysAdmin by craft, but I navigate in SRE/DevOps/Operations nowadays).
3. At the time that I was fired some time ago, in my internal circles I was completely open about it, and most of the folks were super supportive. For new job opportunities, I would never place this reason because companies have this kind of stigma and consider you as "undesirable" or "leftover".
All those times I created some excuse like I needed to change cities due to family reasons, the company closed the operation in my city, I changed country, I was doing consulting, etc. This is something, in my experience, that you never open to potential employees.
First because of the stigma already said, second this transfers your leverage in terms of negotiation because the other side knows that you need the work and it incites the other side of the transaction to lowball you financially speaking; and during the job they put you in more pressure to deliver.
- op00to 3y ago> 3. At the time that I was fired some time ago, in my internal circles I was completely open about it, and most of the folks were super supportive. For new job opportunities, I would never place this reason because companies have this kind of stigma and consider you as "undesirable" or "leftover". I interview people who were laid off all the time. I don't care at all about why they left their last job as long as it wasn't for being a creep or an asshole.
- braza 3y agoMaybe I am quite used to doing interviews as a candidate, but when I decide to not open some specifics around being dismissed is to avoid some downstream questions that can place me in an uncomfortable position of not having leverage and most important raise some yellow lights in the interviewer to get something out of this. Ex: _You worked here for 1 and half years. Why did you leave?_ In this case, if I get evasive and put some personal circumstance around it as relocation, new moment of life, etc.; the interviewer will try to wrap it die to the fact that this does not bring any potential signal for the position. However, saying that I was laid off, at least will raise some downstream questions like "Why have you been dismissed?", "Tell me about the relationship with the team?", "What's the feedback that your boss gave to you?"; and the sad thing is that some of those questions are not specifically to understand circumstances and have a clear picture, a bit at least will serve as a signal and in a worst-case as an eliminatory.
- op00to 3y agoI think that's a solid strategy. You may have some luck being more open, depending on the company. A company that had recent layoffs might be more understanding of a layoff, and that layoffs have nothing to do with your own abilities. Better to just not bring it up! I was laid off a few jobs ago, and I experimented in my most recent job search with explaining the business impact, how I missed on the signals, and what I did to avoid being in that situation again. It went OK, probably didn't hurt or help.
- ethbr1 3y agoRe:2 Corporate finances are complex, but not a mystery at their base. If you work in a public company, join your earnings calls and listen to the presentations, questions, and answers. Nobody likes surprises -- CxOs, investors, analysts -- so you'll be amazed how often RIFs are telegraphed to anyone who's paying attention.
- braza 3y ago> so you'll be amazed how often RIFs are telegraphed to anyone who's paying attention Indeed. In this Mid-cap company that I mentioned, I used to participate in the earnings call; and the difference in tone and posture of our CFO and CEO with investors and with us employees were abysmal. The scenario was: during 8 months the company went from U$ 160B to U$ 11B. With us employees in the all-hands was all positivity, mental health tips, a bump in the road, keep pushing for the objectives, and even a Christmas dinner. During the earning calls, promises of cutting costs, flattening, hiring freeze, and institutional investors openly calling for layoffs. 2.5 months later first round of layoffs, months later a goal to reduce 25% costs in GCP, and after 2 months another round of layoffs and RTO of 4 days a week.
- ethbr1 3y agoI always thought of it as: If you stretch the trust on all-hands, there are no penalties. If you stretch the truth on an earnings call, the SEC and your investors sue you.
- VirusNewbie 3y agodoes that mean if you worked for Meta or Google you would have bailed before the layoffs, just because? That doesn't seem very sustainable.