4 ms·

I have never been laid off or fired*. However, for most of my adult life, a layoff would have been traumatic. I have a specialized skillset, and it takes a whil

by blagie 3y ago

I have never been laid off or fired*. However, for most of my adult life, a layoff would have been traumatic. I have a specialized skillset, and it takes a while to find jobs. In the meantime, I have living expenses. It's doubly hard to find a job unemployed. I don't want to be in that position. "Managed out" would be much more humane, at least to me. If I'm put in a role I don't like, I have time to find another job. Ideally, this would be explicit ("We don't like you, so we're giving you the shit work, but if you find a better offer, please take it."). If you want me out, stick me in a box writing test cases or documentation or something until I leave. Heck, cut my salary by 30%. I'll be much more happy than if I suddenly have zero income and no job. It can be good for the company too. If there's someone to do the crappy work while they do the job, no one else has to. * I've had one "it's complicated" as a founder, but that's a longer story. It didn't involve losing my salary overnight like a layoff or firing, through.

eastbound 3y ago
> "We don't like you, so we're giving you the shit work, but if you find a better offer, please take it." I’m an entrepreneur in France, and I had one employee I would have like to say that to, but it can so easily be turned against the employer… Unions and litigations have basically made honesty the worst choice in every situation. Only to discover afterwards that the person had been willing to go since 6 months already. The entire experience is stupid, stupid humans working (or not working) together.
Aeolun 3y ago
> I'll be much more happy than if I suddenly have zero income and no job. That entirely depends on whether they give you those 3-6 months of severance they’re supposed to give. I’d rather have that money without the need to spend my days killing my motivation by writing pointless docs.
- blagie 3y ago
  I've never had an employer who gave 3-6 months severance. Part of it also depends on your employability. A generalized, fungible skillset makes finding jobs relatively quick. If I were a SWE in SFO, I'd take the severance. For me, good jobs come up once every 1-2 years. When they do, they're AWESOME, but if I were ever laid off, I could expect to either: - Have no income for a long time; - Take a job which made me miserable; or - Perhaps do consulting or a startup I have a very non-fungible skill set. That means there are very rarely people who want to hire me in an appropriate role, but when they come up, they're often very desperate to hire me.
rsanek 3y ago
I don't mean to come off as aggressive but shouldn't you have enough savings not to care about this? Generally specialized skillsets mean high enough pay to have a significant portion that is discretionary savings / spending. I've tried to use at least a portion of mine to create a freedom fund (often called "fuck you money") that has enough to cover our expenses for at least a year.
- kjellsbells 3y ago
  Not necessarily, you could have specialist skills in a market that is unfashionable, and consequently doesn't pay well. Telco for example, or IoT, or (soon) VMware. Particularly dangerous for mid career people who need to decide how to pivot.
  - blagie 3y ago
    I have one skill set which has been employable for the past 2000+ years. At least pre-AI and similar technology changes, it's not something which goes into fashion or out-of-fashion. Think doctor, construction, woodworking, teacher, lawyer, military, architecture, etc. That combines with math+SWE to make a nice bundle, at least for what I enjoy. That's a path I often advise. Intersect a skillset like that with SWE + math, and there's a very nice set of niches one can slot. For each of the above: - Doctor + SWE + math = medical imaging, computational biology, etc. - Construction/engineering + SWE = industrial robotics, CAD, etc. - Teacher + SWE = edtech, e-learning, etc. - Military + SWE = a ton of hard tech However, the air gets very thin as you specialize, and especially as you move towards the top. If you intersect the above with director-level or C-suite level positions, there might be literally just a handful of jobs out there. Narrow that by geographic region is you have a family, and it becomes more and more of a problem. What's interesting is that I've seen more than a 10x spread in compensation from jobs I've applied for (which is extreme, but not as extreme as it sounds; a research scientist at FAANG might earn $600k, and $60k at a university or a non-profit for the same qualifications). The higher-paying positions also weren't better, holistically.
- blagie 3y ago
  I will give a list of reasons for why this might not be the case: 1) Specialized skills often do not necessarily equate with high-pay. For example, a school social worker specializing in a specific disability, or a laboratory glassblower (makes custom instruments for chemistry and physics labs) are almost irreplaceable, but only command slightly higher pay (if at all) 2) Many sectors (such as non-profit) do not have high pay 3) Many people don't have savings for other reasons (e.g. recent immigrant from a low-income country, recent divorce, major medical issue, graduate still paying off school debt, etc.) Etc. I thought about providing more background about my specific situation, but I prefer to remain anonymous. As a footnote, if you have a 1-2 year F-U fund, being laid off (or quitting) and being unemployed that long means your life savings are gone. That's not good. Until and unless my fund is enough to retire on, I would still rather work than not work, even if that's writing documentation, handling IT tickets, or debugging someone else's code.
sangnoir 3y ago
> If I'm put in a role I don't like, I have time to find another job. Ideally, this would be explicit ("We don't like you, so we're giving you the shit work, but if you find a better offer, please take it."). I'm not sure I quite following your argument. How is it harder to get a job when unemployed vs when being given shit work from 9-5? If it's financial anxiety, then severance is the best of both worlds: ex-employee gets paid and time to find a new job
- entropi 3y ago
  I am not the original commenter, but the way I see it, this is mainly about two things; 1) Your lack of any sort of leverage. This means the potential employers will try to take advantage of your situation, and it will take some time to find an employer who does not. 2) Prejudice against those who were laid-off.
  - blagie 3y ago
    Exactly. The second of those is huge. Unfortunately, it's well-founded prejudice too; a lot of people who are jobless are jobless for a reason. Many "layoffs" are a euphemism for being fired, and interviews are imperfect to say the least. If I don't catch the reason you're unemployable, there are two possibilities: (1) You don't have a reason, and you're perfectly employable (2) You do, and it slipped past the interview process. The longer you're jobless, the less employable you are. Employable people will snatch up new jobs very quickly. If you've sent 10,000 resumes and flunked 100 interviews, and pass mine, odds aren't that you've magically improved, but that you got lucky. If you've been unemployed for the past two years without good reason, you're very likely in that bin, so for most hiring managers, the longer you've been unemployed, the harder it is to pass an interview screen. On the other hand, shit work 9-5 looks the same on a resume or in an interview as real work. A hiring manager won't know any better. As a footnote, leverage is a real issue, but is easier to manage. Many companies will try to take advantage. However, at least as often: - The hiring manager (personally) doesn't care about how much you cost. They want a good team, and it's not their money. - The employer has fixed salary grades. There's little room to negotiate. If you do negotiate, the impact is generally transitory (if you're hired at the top of your salary grade, you can expect to have no raises for a few years without a promotion). - The company compensates fairly, since they don't want a revolving door of people. I'm not going to argue whether that's a majority or minority of companies, but it's manageable. At that kind of employer, you might get a few thousand extra with leverage than without, but it won't be a difference of tens of thousands of dollars, and nowhere near "being taken advantage of."

by blagie 3y ago

eastbound 3y ago

> "We don't like you, so we're giving you the shit work, but if you find a better offer, please take it." I’m an entrepreneur in France, and I had one employee I would have like to say that to, but it can so easily be turned against the employer… Unions and litigations have basically made honesty the worst choice in every situation. Only to discover afterwards that the person had been willing to go since 6 months already. The entire experience is stupid, stupid humans working (or not working) together.

Aeolun 3y ago

> I'll be much more happy than if I suddenly have zero income and no job. That entirely depends on whether they give you those 3-6 months of severance they’re supposed to give. I’d rather have that money without the need to spend my days killing my motivation by writing pointless docs.

blagie 3y ago
I've never had an employer who gave 3-6 months severance. Part of it also depends on your employability. A generalized, fungible skillset makes finding jobs relatively quick. If I were a SWE in SFO, I'd take the severance. For me, good jobs come up once every 1-2 years. When they do, they're AWESOME, but if I were ever laid off, I could expect to either: - Have no income for a long time; - Take a job which made me miserable; or - Perhaps do consulting or a startup I have a very non-fungible skill set. That means there are very rarely people who want to hire me in an appropriate role, but when they come up, they're often very desperate to hire me.

rsanek 3y ago

I don't mean to come off as aggressive but shouldn't you have enough savings not to care about this? Generally specialized skillsets mean high enough pay to have a significant portion that is discretionary savings / spending. I've tried to use at least a portion of mine to create a freedom fund (often called "fuck you money") that has enough to cover our expenses for at least a year.

kjellsbells 3y ago
Not necessarily, you could have specialist skills in a market that is unfashionable, and consequently doesn't pay well. Telco for example, or IoT, or (soon) VMware. Particularly dangerous for mid career people who need to decide how to pivot.
- blagie 3y ago
  I have one skill set which has been employable for the past 2000+ years. At least pre-AI and similar technology changes, it's not something which goes into fashion or out-of-fashion. Think doctor, construction, woodworking, teacher, lawyer, military, architecture, etc. That combines with math+SWE to make a nice bundle, at least for what I enjoy. That's a path I often advise. Intersect a skillset like that with SWE + math, and there's a very nice set of niches one can slot. For each of the above: - Doctor + SWE + math = medical imaging, computational biology, etc. - Construction/engineering + SWE = industrial robotics, CAD, etc. - Teacher + SWE = edtech, e-learning, etc. - Military + SWE = a ton of hard tech However, the air gets very thin as you specialize, and especially as you move towards the top. If you intersect the above with director-level or C-suite level positions, there might be literally just a handful of jobs out there. Narrow that by geographic region is you have a family, and it becomes more and more of a problem. What's interesting is that I've seen more than a 10x spread in compensation from jobs I've applied for (which is extreme, but not as extreme as it sounds; a research scientist at FAANG might earn $600k, and $60k at a university or a non-profit for the same qualifications). The higher-paying positions also weren't better, holistically.
blagie 3y ago
I will give a list of reasons for why this might not be the case: 1) Specialized skills often do not necessarily equate with high-pay. For example, a school social worker specializing in a specific disability, or a laboratory glassblower (makes custom instruments for chemistry and physics labs) are almost irreplaceable, but only command slightly higher pay (if at all) 2) Many sectors (such as non-profit) do not have high pay 3) Many people don't have savings for other reasons (e.g. recent immigrant from a low-income country, recent divorce, major medical issue, graduate still paying off school debt, etc.) Etc. I thought about providing more background about my specific situation, but I prefer to remain anonymous. As a footnote, if you have a 1-2 year F-U fund, being laid off (or quitting) and being unemployed that long means your life savings are gone. That's not good. Until and unless my fund is enough to retire on, I would still rather work than not work, even if that's writing documentation, handling IT tickets, or debugging someone else's code.

sangnoir 3y ago

> If I'm put in a role I don't like, I have time to find another job. Ideally, this would be explicit ("We don't like you, so we're giving you the shit work, but if you find a better offer, please take it."). I'm not sure I quite following your argument. How is it harder to get a job when unemployed vs when being given shit work from 9-5? If it's financial anxiety, then severance is the best of both worlds: ex-employee gets paid and time to find a new job

entropi 3y ago
I am not the original commenter, but the way I see it, this is mainly about two things; 1) Your lack of any sort of leverage. This means the potential employers will try to take advantage of your situation, and it will take some time to find an employer who does not. 2) Prejudice against those who were laid-off.
- blagie 3y ago
  Exactly. The second of those is huge. Unfortunately, it's well-founded prejudice too; a lot of people who are jobless are jobless for a reason. Many "layoffs" are a euphemism for being fired, and interviews are imperfect to say the least. If I don't catch the reason you're unemployable, there are two possibilities: (1) You don't have a reason, and you're perfectly employable (2) You do, and it slipped past the interview process. The longer you're jobless, the less employable you are. Employable people will snatch up new jobs very quickly. If you've sent 10,000 resumes and flunked 100 interviews, and pass mine, odds aren't that you've magically improved, but that you got lucky. If you've been unemployed for the past two years without good reason, you're very likely in that bin, so for most hiring managers, the longer you've been unemployed, the harder it is to pass an interview screen. On the other hand, shit work 9-5 looks the same on a resume or in an interview as real work. A hiring manager won't know any better. As a footnote, leverage is a real issue, but is easier to manage. Many companies will try to take advantage. However, at least as often: - The hiring manager (personally) doesn't care about how much you cost. They want a good team, and it's not their money. - The employer has fixed salary grades. There's little room to negotiate. If you do negotiate, the impact is generally transitory (if you're hired at the top of your salary grade, you can expect to have no raises for a few years without a promotion). - The company compensates fairly, since they don't want a revolving door of people. I'm not going to argue whether that's a majority or minority of companies, but it's manageable. At that kind of employer, you might get a few thousand extra with leverage than without, but it won't be a difference of tens of thousands of dollars, and nowhere near "being taken advantage of."