It’s been a bit of a week at my place of employment. Just finished up a “workforce reduction,” or “employee rebalancing,” or “rightsizing,” or whatever the euphemism du jour is for layoffs. And judging by my LinkedIn feed, so did everyone else. It’s been a helluva few months around these parts, and if you still have a job, congratulations. If you were one of those “impacted,” or “affected,” or “transitioned,” or whatever the euphemism du jour is for getting fired, you have my sincerest sympathy. It sucks. I’ve been there. And it sucks.
This stuff is cyclical, apparently, and necessary for the health of a company, and we’re just supposed to accept that, I guess. Every 4 or 5 or 6 years or so, people’s lives—hard-working, talented, dedicated people—are just going to have to suck it up, cross their fingers, tell their family not to worry, and hope its the coworker next to you whose number is up this time around and not you. And it sucks.
But I have questions. I don’t know, maybe I’m stupid (possible), or naive (likely), or crazy (certain), but I just don’t understand why this has to keep happening. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, we all must be mad. And it sucks.
So here, in no specific order, are the things I’m too stupid or naive or crazy enough to understand:
They fired that person? I’ve seen some shocking names in my feed telling the world that they’ve been laid off. People who I personally know and have worked with and have experienced firsthand the brilliance they bring to the table every day of their professional life. That’s the person they chose to let go? Why them? What’s the criteria? Is it random? Throwing darts at a bunch of names until some quota has been met? Sure, the PR folks put together a bunch of corporate speak sound bites about how “the business is realigning around new strategic initiatives” and the such, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s a black box in many cases. In most cases. Which in turn causes me to wonder…
How can they be so terrible at messaging these things? The boilerplate platitudes from the creative writing experts over at legal are almost worse than if they said nothing. Obviously, they can’t say nothing, though. They have to position this stuff as sound business strategy. Sure, these are hard decisions, but running a company is hard. We regular folks don’t understand this. You’d have to have the immense brain power of a C-suite executive to even possibly comprehend how these things come to pass. Keeping the company’s stock price up isn’t easy. Which in turn causes me to wonder…
Would a temporary drop in stock price be the end of the world? Being profitable isn’t enough; profits have to grow. Constantly. That’s why CEOs get paid the big bucks. That’s why CEO compensation is tied to improvements in the stock price and has nothing to do with employee satisfaction or retention rates, or metrics that measure the internal health of a company. Not to get all Karl Marx over here but how about a bit of respect for the noses at the grindstone? Which in turn causes me to wonder…
Why wouldn’t tech workers unionize? Maybe not Jimmy Hoffa Teamsters-type unionization, but a little safety in numbers might not be the worst thing. “But you’re already paid well,” they will say. Yeah, and? Let’s see the books when you decide to let a busload of us go without any real explanation. It might be interesting to know if the executive suite is sharing the pain of these decisions proportionally, no? And while we’re at it, why does the CEO make over a hundred times more than the average worker? OK, I’m starting to spiral over here. It’s just that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hard work that goes into it; let’s just do what everyone else is doing. Which in turn causes me to wonder…
Is this lemming-like behavior just easier? It’s like everyone sits around waiting for that first company to pull the trigger so the dam can break and mass layoffs across the industry can happen without question. What can you say when everyone is doing it? It just seems natural. It’s safety in numbers. Hiding in the crowd. No need to justify the details because look around. What choice did we have? Will you just look around. Gaze upon the macroeconomic climate, ye workers and despair! Which in turn causes me to wonder…
Have we learned nothing as an industry? The fact that we refuse to learn from history is the only thing we learn from history. What are the things that can be done to build more resilient companies? How can workforces be structured so that modern capitalism’s boom/bust cycle treats workers as long-term investments and not fungible assets? I certainly don’t know the answers to these questions (stupid, naive, crazy, remember?), but these are problems worth grappling with, I believe, anyway. They at least seem as important as cloud transition strategies, customer growth tactics, and stock price support policies. How can these systemic issues be addressed equitably and sustainably? I dunno. But I wonder…
So that was cathartic. I don’t think I achieved anything other than a heightened sense of self-superiority and some time killed. I still worry about and feel empathy for everyone who has been and will undoubtedly continue to be, let go from a job they may have enjoyed, separated from coworkers they may have liked, and left without a means of support they certainly needed. Hopefully, these are all temporary circumstances, and you are able to reset yourself, find your next mission, and put this all behind you as quickly as possible. You have people rooting for you and willing to help. Take advantage of that.
That said, we need to do better as an industry and remember that there are individuals behind the eye-popping numbers we see when companies “realign their labor force.” Not at all sure how we fix these problems, but I do wonder…