“When you pour your heart and soul into the work that you do, to have the gate just come down and to be so radically severed from everything you worked really, really hard for, it’s emotionally devastating,” says one of the workers who lost their job when Google parent company Alphabet laid off rougly 12,000 employees last week.
Cry me a river.
In an industry that thrives on cold efficiency, a little humanity could have gone a long way.
Oh please. Such tugging at heart strings. We weren’t subjected to such pap posing as a news story as corporations tossed the manufacturing working class into the dust bin while offshoring manufacturing jobs. That was cutting labor cost, increasing shareholder value & benefiting consumers with cheaper prices.
Yes I know you highly educated workers thought you were immune to job insecurity. That you & the top execs were simpatico. Well you aren’t. You are labor. Yes specialized labor but labor subject to lay off to protect the bottom line & increasing shareholder value.
At the end of the day, the “JCs” always go with Theory X. The young’uns haven’t learned that yet. We boomers learned, in spite of college teaching about “Theory Y” and “Theory Z”, to expect to be treated like expendable meat.
While I’m not saying that it isn’t disruptive, these folks have no idea what it’s really like when your entire industry starts getting creamed, like manufacturing plants in the 90’s, or steel in the 80’s.
These tech workers are being hired in scoops and gobs by other companies who have been desperately searching for tech workers for the past decade: auto companies, government, aerospace, health care have been beating the bushes looking for tech heads. These people will land right side up in no time. Meanwhile I invite them to read a book about Pittsburgh or Bethlehem, PA or Cleveland when US Steel was dumping workers by the zillions.
How long has it been since the economy really took a dump? 14 years. For anyone on the wrong side of 2008, but too young to experience 2002, 20 years ago, they may think 08 was a one-off. We old phartz experienced 74, 82, 92, 02, and 08. We know dumps are routine, and we can fully expect to be stabbed in the back, for the benefit of the “JC”, multiple times, during a working life.
Somebody posted on LinkedIn the same feelings. Judging by his profile he has been in hi-tech about 10 years. That has been an unusually stable time in tech. I simply replied “I’ve been in this industry since 1989. Why is this news?”
I’ve always worked on the government side of technology and usually with some kind of clearance which greatly adds to job security although lower salaries.
Fortunately I’ve never been laid off and only had one situation where a bunch of people were let go and that was back around 2010. Usually you can sense there is a problem buy how meetings are going and whether contracts are being won.
I’m lucky in that I’m retiring on Tuesday but have received offers as much as 50% higher in terms of salary than what I was making. Most likely I’ll take a lower offer and work another 6 months while figuring where to live in retirement. At 50 I had things figured out but then things change.
There is a lot of entitlement among young tech workers. Jumping at the latest big offer and wanting more and more. My first 15 years was as a government employee and I had tons of fun at work, good people and got a lot of unique stuff done. Money was never the main driver but we get people now (I"m back at the government for the 3rd and final time) who may not even stay 1 year because they want more $$$.
Sometimes the only way to learn stuff is the hard way.
This is true, well mostly true. People with skills that others are willing to pay for, will always find new jobs relatively quickly. The exception in tech, of course, is that regardless of skills, nobody wants older folks in tech. It’s just a fact of that segment of employment.
And it’s not just applicable to high education areas like tech. It also applies, for example, to experienced fast food employees. You lose your job, and you can find another one almost immediately. And usually with a pretty hefty raise in hourly rate.
That is literally the price you pay for stability. I would not work private sector at government pay because I need a reasonably large cash cushion in case of lay-off.
Silicon Valley has been that way since before 1989, when I entered tech. This is not new and not related to today’s young tech workers. If you could maximize your earnings you would too. Why else would you just stay put for years and years? Company loyalty?
