It’s been a tumultuous time when it comes to the current workplace, or at least business writers think so. From quiet quitting to the Great Resignation, writers can’t stop coining terms about pseudo quitting. So we have pieces on quit quitting, on rage applying and my new favorite, calibrated contributing. Even places like the WSJ join in with this piece on High-Earning Men Who Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours. It’s as if readers of business magazines and websites can not get enough pieces on worker unhappiness.
That was before times though. Now workers, at least IT workers, have something to be truly unhappy about: being laid off. You can read about it everywhere, from the Verge to the New York Times. It seemed like every IT company was suddenly shedding workers, from Facebook/Meta, to Microsoft, to Salesforce, to Google……even IBM, which had a decent year compared to the rest of the list. The reasons for the layoffs were varied. Facebook/Meta continues to have a bad business model. Others like Microsoft went on a hiring bender and the layoffs are almost a hangover. There’s also been talk that some of the companies were just following the others and trying to look tough or something. One tech company that did not lay anyone off: Apple.
Layoffs suck. If you get caught up in a layoff program, you can find many guides as to what to do. Here is one layoff guide: What to do before during and after getting laid off.
If you only pay attention to the tech job market, you may guess it applies to the job market in general. But if you read this, Mass Layoffs or Hiring Boom? What’s Actually Happening in the Jobs Market, you get a different picture. The job market is a jumble now due to the fallout of the pandemic. I suspect it is going to take another year to settle down.
In the meantime, good luck with your work. Things aren’t as bad as they may appear. Despite all the think pieces and the tech layoffs. Stay positive.
Smart People I Know 
