Tag: layoffs

On work in the era of AI and the pandemic

I can’t say that work is changing more in this decade than other decades. I can say two major forces have hit many workers in this decade and the impact of those forces have made work challenging for workers, to say the least.

The first major force was the pandemic. While many people have returned to office work, there are still many who prefer to work remotely. I am one of them. And while I am still a major proponent of remote work, I found this piece eye opening: We Liked Remote Work. Then We Looked at the Data. I have to agree that without a push, it is too easy to become disconnected from social contact when you work remotely. Employers and employees need to find better solutions to this problem besides dragging everyone in to a loud and crowded office via long commutes.

The second major force is AI. On one hand employers are heavily promoting employees to use AI in their work. On the other hand, employers are talking about how AI is going to result in layoffs. Here’s just three articles on the topic:

I don’t know how that will play out. I do know that workers are going to be struggling with the effect of AI for some time to come.

If anyone young who has just entered the workforce is reading this, I would like to point you to these two pieces:

Finally, I thought this piece was worth a read:  The Elusive Promise of the Four-Day Workweek. Maybe in the era of AI and remote work we will be able to achieve this. 

On Fake quitting, real layoffs, and worker unhappiness

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.