Poetic License

Yesterday I was laid off from my job. It was a very cold and strange experience. At least in the past when I was laid off, I had a conversation with my manager and a member of the HR team. I had an opportunity to discuss the reasons or at least the exit. That didn’t happen this time. Thursday evening, a meeting popped up on my calendar. I’m one of those nutty people who checks Slack and Teams and email and my work calendar on my phone. I immediately reached out to a coworker to ask if she had also gotten the Teams meeting. She had not.

From there, I went to a Discord server I’m on and pinged other coworkers. Some of us had it, some did not. We frantically chatted back and forth about what it might mean. We had heard layoffs might be on the horizon, but managers were denying it strongly, saying they had no knowledge or confirmation that any such thing was happening. We didn’t believe them, but we wanted to. We could understand how much they would want to keep it under wraps. They didn’t want a panic on their hands (meaning they didn’t want anyone sabotaging any of the corporate IP). But too many of us knew. By the time the calendar event popped up – with no corresponding invitation in email – I knew that either the group in the call would be the ones cut, or we would be the survivors, being given an update about the RIF event.

I didn’t sleep that night. I knew.

We who were invited to that strange meeting were the ones who were cut. When we joined the call, we saw a black screen, but those of us who were paying attention had seen the HR rep start the call. It was a minute or so before the department head appeared on the screen, mid sentence.

“…are affected.”

I guess it was, “If you’re in this meeting, you are affected.” Clearly he was reading from a script, but as it always is in times of great stress, the rest of his message seemed to bounce off my ears and into the ether. I had that same feeling of being inside a giant ball of cotton that I’d had in early 2020 when my doctor started speaking to me about my diagnostic mammogram and a growth that didn’t appear to be benign, as though saying malignancy would have been worse. Once the scary words are said, it’s all wah wawah wah wah, like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

At some point, this manager said to the HR rep, “[Jane Doe], please share your thoughts.”

Share your … thoughts??

You did not fool me, Chickenshit. That was a pre-recorded message from you. Only the HR rep was live. I did hear her say that we would be getting email at our personal account on record with more information about returning the equipment we had been issued for our jobs. We were told that within a few minutes after the call, we could expect that our access would be shut down and that we would then receive more information in the email to follow. I still have no idea what he said, except, “You will not be expected to work the rest of the day.”

I have to be careful here that I don’t show my cards. If I give away the company, the location, or the identity of any of these people, I could lose the little pittance of a severance and risk being sued. That’s what it has come to in America. Employees are at will and have no rights. We are expendable, particularly in tech these days, because the managers really believe that they can develop the same quality faster with AI, that they can cut the expensive staff who have all the knowledge. They will hire fresh-outs from India, base them in Bangalore, and save tons of money for their own year-end bonuses. To be clear, I have NOTHING against my counterparts in India. If I were them, I’d take the jobs, too. It’s like a gift. But take care, Chickenshit, because the minute they encounter a problem with the legacy code, guess who you’ll call? Guess who might not take your call?

My son has learned all of this about tech the hard way. He is on month 4 of job hunting. After 14 years as a project manager for a single tech company, he was cut loose early on a Friday (just like dear old Mom) with a little bit of severance and his 401k savings. He will be broke by October. Everything I’ve read about the newest CEO of the company is that he is incompetent, a flatout liar (on his resume), and destroys everything he touches. He’s a menace.

I know I have to be careful when talking about these companies, but as a writer, the words are screaming from inside me, and I need an outlet. It’s likely that I will find a way to retire or will find a job that doesn’t include nearly as much pressure, but for now, I’m grieving. I’m upset. So here is my open letter to Chickenshit, the great recorded “man”.

Dear Chickenshit,

A passel of us got your email yesterday. It must have taken you minutes to write. No – wait! With the vast amount of artificial intelligence at your fingertips, maybe it only took seconds. Your email was just as cold and detached – maybe even more so, if that’s possible – as your pre-recorded message telling us we were “affected.”

I sincerely hope this letter finds you shaking in your boots, because undoubtedly the board is coming for your head very soon. When you talk to your next executive headhunter, all you’ll have to show for the last five years are a couple of horrible acquisition decisions that resulted in huge financial losses to the company and us shareholders, and even greater losses of the good people who made up the company. You are now running with a skeleton crew of engineers and a boatload of middle-managing yes-men. Oh, and it’s mostly men, isn’t it? You couldn’t stand it when the women in the company started to organize, when our DEI groups started to celebrate who we are. You couldn’t wait to shut us down. (How on earth will you look at your daughters now, knowing what you have done?)

Rest assured, all of us former employees have managed to find each other in safe spaces where we can lick our wounds and start to put our lives back together. We are the people who built the company. We built relationships and products we actually cared about. We met each other’s families and enjoyed happy hours together, even after we were no longer working for the company. We were and are special. We deserved better.

But sure. Sit back and tell yourself you will find a way to “do more with less”. Tell yourself you’ll bring the company back strong. You won’t! You’re going to ride this pony straight into the ground, and then you’ll kick it in the head and walk away. You’ll sell your lies to another company. Some of us know your track record. Some know that disaster is what you bring with you to every company desperate enough to hire you, with all your promises of doing things to grow the business. All your talk of focus and big bets and staying the course. Your little mantras that did nothing except to put pressure on people like me, your words just walls of shale and sandstone pressing in on what could have become a diamond yet remains a smudgy lump of coal in your hand.

Let’s forget about you right now though. Let’s talk about what you lost yesterday. You lost a large group of people who are passionate about their work. You lost years and YEARS of knowledge and talent and drive. Knowing how the market has turned, you released us all without a second thought to what it might mean to us or to our families. It isn’t a world in which we can throw out a line, maybe wait a couple of months, and reel in a pretty decent job. No. We’re dealing with AI bots on LinkedIn, fake jobs and recruiters on Monster and in email, on Indeed or other such job search sites. We’re ghosted by recruiters that pressure us for our resume, only to vanish into thin air. We’re beholden to the algorithms and to a global economy that is better for India than for America. We might go hungry. We might lose our spouses. We might slide into depression. We might lose our homes, our cars. We might have to make unthinkable decisions, like giving up our pets and living in our cars, if we still have them. Do you get that? Does it matter to you?

Today I am grieving. I keep thinking, “Oh, I need to remember to send a message to the team about … No, I can no longer send messages to my team.” Or, “I need to reschedule that meeting for Thursday … No. All the meetings I had scheduled were canceled.” I am imagining the teams getting the news on Monday, because many of them were on holiday Friday. I grieve for their hurt feelings and confusion about what to do with all the tasks I’m not there to handle.

Because, you see, I’m one of those passionate workers. I gave a huge part of my life to the company over the last seven years, and I would do it again. Because even if you don’t know what you had, Chickenshit, I do. I’ll cherish the people and the relationships and the memories until the day I die.

What will YOU cherish? Do you have anything that means that much to you, or is it all just window dressing? Is it all AI slop?

Sincerely,

The Passionate Former Employee

Friends, please don’t refer to my former company in any of your responses. I now think of myself as a retired writer. If a perfect job comes along, I’ll be here. If not, time for me to get busy living.

Namaste (except for Chickenshit),
Jude