My friend just got notified he's out. He has like 12 years with the company.
He was half way through a meeting that he was driving/leading when he got the notification.
He was half way through a meeting that he was driving/leading when he got the notification.
I knew a guy who was in the middle of a consulting engagement when he got an email that he was part of a layoff. He finished the day with the customer since he had a relationship with the people there and figured he was being paid for that day anyways.
But yeah, that's a really nasty way to be let go.
My teammates (if they are still employed) can sort it out.
if required by the employer to leave immediately, then there is no choice in the matter, rendering OP's question moot. if not, and you ditch your team, then you're (editorial you, not parent poster you) the asshole. do your fellow human a kindness, as opposed to just selfishly passing along the garbage, and you'll make the world a marginally better place.
Layoffs impact everyone at the company, even those who remain. There is no "passing the garbage", it's already there, on top of everyone.
It's okay to be human, kindly wish your teammates well, and exit.
Probably no, so, I'd be out. Also a good opportunity to highlight how it's weird to be fired while leading a meeting.
Of course we understand what you mean. But on the other hand, it's kind of not relevant at all. OPs life is not that one of a coal miner. In theory this person has worked hard all his life, studied, dedicated time to companies. This is what he is doing. Then it's kind of taken away without his control.
Saying "well at least you don't work in a mine" is minimizing his real problem so much.
Should it be put in perspective? Sure. But it also doesn't really make it any better.
Infact I would argue that kind of response is kind of like "hey why should we give everyone free healthcare? At least you have access to healthcare for money, 100 years ago we barely even had medicine so you should feel lucky!". True.. but also completely misses the entire point.
Yes, it's super lame if someone loves their job somewhere and gets laid off. It's a bit less lame if that person is highly paid and can find work doing almost the exact same thing somewhere else without leaving their house.
Of course, they get mad when you tell them that.
This is the problem (not the actual problem, but the one you can control). Your job isn't your life. I used to think/act this way. Then I was eliminated in a rather soulless manner myself. I realized it was an abusive relationship. I had actual PTSD for a couple of years. I no longer define myself by anything that is so transactional. Business relationships are just that. I am happier, I make more money at job, and I've got several things prioritized over work that fulfill me.
I can totally seeing someone who joined early in their career falling for that BS
A very large number of marriages and romantic relationships are too.
Sounds like you need to step back and re-evaluate your approach. Your work for a large, soulless corporation should not be what you devoted your life to. It's work, not your life.
Having a giant corporation kill off your occupancy with no pre-warning is raw meat for union reps who would love to sue on your behave.
Why do you expect it? Large corporations have stacked the deck against workers for decades (at least). If you really want to be able to work the same job forever, you can try to get yourself a special contract, but you'd have better luck getting such worker protections by working with your state government or fellow workers.
If you're worried that too many benefits, compensation, insurance, ability to rent, etc. are tied to employment, you're right there, and we can do better as a society to expand unemployment insurance and get affordable health care that isn't tied to employment, etc. This way, when we do lose a job, not everything is taken is from us.
The other part is they want to lay everyone off at the same time, so people aren't finding out at different times and wondering if they are safe or not. An email, sent to everyone at the same time, achieves that much better than trying to rapidly schedule a lot of simultaneous meetings.
Perhaps there is a better way, but that is the conventional wisdom that I've heard from folks planning layoffs.
Managers can pick before the announcement and then HR can do the actual if not enough people left willingly.
And there's always a chance of wrongful termination lawsuits...
... the real reason this is done this way is because that's the culture of these companies, mostly due to US culture (and labor laws are a synergic manifestation of this).
If you announce layoffs before telling people who will get cut, the people who tend to leave voluntarily are often those most able to get jobs elsewhere because they are high performers in positions that are hard to staff -- so exactly who the company wants to keep.
If the goal of these layoffs is to "do more with less", then maybe we as technologists should find a way to do that ourselves.
Yeah, for the most part, asking those questions is a great way to get fired in many, many companies, especially if you ask those questions in a forum or format that makes leadership look bad. I am not sure where I stand on unions for tech workers (I grew up in a union mining town where the union saved lives by driving safety measures, but also got fined by the union on the first day of my first job for refilling an ink tray because the shop steward thought I needed a lesson), but at the end of the day, unions provide a method for engaging with the business to negotiate and ask these questions without fear of arbitrary retaliation.
This is one of many reasons to unionize because the reasons for layoffs may not be what we're being told.
I'd love to pay 5% or something like that for job insurance that would cover me if the company died, or they start laying off people in a downturn. That would be 5% you don't have though.
I want a co-op where the employee organization owns the company. Profits are bonuses for all the employees.
I don't want protection from company's goal of making the most money possible. I want the goal of the company to be the success of the employees.
US law makes this type of organization harder than it should be and a union is a good step towards what you're describing.
There are other ways to achieve what you're after: stock options, profit-sharing agreements, or even just a generous bonus structure based on hitting revenue targets are all quite common.
In case anyone is curious, at worst prices have been falling on a month-to-month basis but essentially nowhere are they falling year-over-year: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/home-prices-slip-for-f... https://www.redfin.com/city/16163/WA/Seattle/housing-market