Dealing with layoff

The layoff tsunami is lashing through the IT industry. Techies who thought they would sit forever in their seats are at its edge. Layed-off people lament that the company which they worked years, even decades, to build betrayed them. They feel something inside them died along with the loss of the job.

Indeed layoffs are hard on the economy as well as the psyche. However, thinking of it as the end of the road is dangerous. The problem, I believe, is most people develop a parasitic relationship with their job over the years. They start to identify themselves as Googlers or Microsofties. Slowly their whole existence starts revolving around their jobs.

So when they face layoff, they feel pushed out of the path and wander about.

My experience

Since my unceremonious exit from the company I toiled for years, I have given up the delusion of a secure job. Now I hesitate when people ask me where I work. I have worked for 5 organizations, some small, some huge, and some medium. However, I never tag my identity, or that of anyone I meet, to the job or the size and prestige of the organization. These are as volatile as volatile can be.

The recent layoff wave has cemented my beliefs. No matter whether you work for Google, Microsoft, or Meta for 20 years or more, there is no guarantee that you will sit on your throne forever. Hence it is better not to identify yourself with them. If you do, you have signed up for depression, dilemma, and disillusionment.

Family conundrum

Many giants boast that everyone in the company is part of a family. They give themselves cute nicknames (Googlers, Microsofties, Amazonians), go out for lunches, family outings, and so on.
However, all this didn’t stop them from excommunicating their brothers and sisters at the first sign of crisis. Even though the crisis was not their fault.

If this is not hypocrisy, the English lexicon needs a major revision.

Right approach

Our focus should be less on being part of an organization and more on delivering quality. If we have quality on our side, no matter how many times we are kicked out of our jobs, we can always land another one.

Moreover, see work place as what it is: a place to work. Nothing more, nothing less. Understand the mutualism at play. We work to get paid, the company pays because it needs our skills to flourish.

This is not to say that workplace relationships are lost on me. I still maintain good relationships with my friends and even some of my managers in previous organizations. But these friendships last, not because I am still working with or for them, but because we have a personal relationship.

It is better to adopt a detached mindset in our workplace. Instead of saying my company, it is better to say ‘the place where I work’. Likewise, stop tagging people’s identities to their organizations. So instead of asking someone, ‘what do you do?’ ask, ‘what are your hobbies?’

Let us not pin our identities to our jobs and empower the organizations to tear them up.