Their honesty should be applauded. Imagine they hired you and then had to fire you in 6 months. Keep in touch with the PM if you liked them and see how they perform in the next 12 months.
Usually it’s recent hires and people who’ve been there a long stretch who get cut first, of course with lots of exceptions.
This was a bit confusing to me.
Are you saying in your experience that it is both the most senior and most junior employees (in terms of company tenure) that get laid off?
* This is one reason why you should be sure to convey your wins to your boss; when you have 1-on-1 conversations, be sure to highlight obstacles that you've overcome. You don't have to brag, but it's okay to be realistic - humble, but proud.
That's a very optimistic take. What usually happens is that there's an obvious bottom line improvement to laying off a few very senior people, but the impact isn't so obvious, so from the business's perspective it looks like a win.
I remember the cognitive dissonance of being an employer's rep at a job fair in 2010 and telling everyone who came up to our booth that I could take resumes, but we weren't hiring! At least I got a free lunch out of it.
Businesses don't always do what makes sense from the outside.
That is the case for traditional companies, but not for tech. I worked for one company (most of the time as a manager) for almost 27 years, and never made as much as new hires at most tech companies. My company got an insane bargain with me, and my whole team, and they knew it.
I don't think that cost is the reason that companies like firing older folks.
That would be fine for single people or couples without children and enough savings to relocate or live on whilst job hunting, but absolutely devastating for everyone else.
As if there weren’t enough uncertainty already…
I can speak from experience that in our pyramid scheme economy propped up by big government and big bank money printing it's extremely difficult to support a child if you're not part of the 'inside crowd' who has access to the easy money (cheap loans, investments and subsidies). It doesn't have to be that way though. But to expect total safety is immoral because it relies on some kind of financial scheme operating behind the scenes. You can't create any real value in this world without taking a risk. If you're not taking any risks, you're not creating any value. Nobody owes it to you to support your children; especially if it means that they themselves can't afford to support their own children by participating in the free market.
Not great at all.
For anyone reading your resume in the future, it's impossible to know if you were let go due to no fault of your own, or if you were let go for cause after a probationary period expired.
I personally don't hold a single short job against people, but the reality is that having a 6-month job followed by a couple months off on your resume will have a negative impact when some hiring managers read your resume.
It's also 6 months (+ time off) that you can't accomplish much of anything because you were ramping up and then had the rug pulled out from under you. Having a 6-12 month setback in your career isn't a huge deal when you've been working for 20 years, but it can be a huge setback for juniors.
Just write why on your resume? The dates will check out or not.
Even juniors can structure their resumes as a narrative. Mine has a brief "felt stagnant and decided to try #vanlife for a year" section.
People like a story. The trick is to avoid automated hiring funnels.
What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.
Depends entirely on the job and company.
If someone is hiring average developers for average or below-average pay at a no-name company that gets 1 organic resume submission per week, they're going to overlook it and bring the person in.
If someone is hiring top developers at a hot tech company with high pay that attracts 1000s of impeccable resume submissions per week, they can't interview everyone. They might only screen 10% of resumes because that's all they can handle. At this level, competition is so fierce and the applicants are so strong that you have to look for any reason to drop someone from that 10% who get through. Having a short job followed by a resume gap could be enough of a signal to get you bumped in favor of any number of perfect resumes.
Adjust expectations accordingly for companies between the two extremes.
> What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.
I think everybody gets a mulligan and I personally wouldn't hold it against a junior. A single data point isn't a trend.
However, I would still question the candidate thoroughly about it. Unfortunately, there are many people who leave otherwise decent jobs because their expectations are too far detached from reality. When someone's definition of a "bad work environment" is being expected to participate in code review (true story), the problem wasn't with their employer. Some basic questioning can usually get to the bottom of this, but it's more common than you might expect.
With how racist and sexist many companies are now, it's getting harder to find a safe one to hire into where I can just do my job and not get involved in political stuff.
Then don't list it.
I think most people would see this as a loss for the small firm (note that the firms size matters). The cost of an employee is pretty high for small shops and salary is just one of the line items that come with OP's employment. Additionally, severance is rarely offered in positions less than 1 yr, even then it's optional.
Nah that'll torch your resume for years. Unless you're a total rockstar otherwise, I'd be terrified to explain a 6 month stint.
But one six month stint is fine, especially if you can explain it away with something pithy about how the economy tanked and the company shed a significant percentage of its workforce.