Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

Having been laid off due to downsizing, I think everyone should go through it at least once. Sure, the first time will leave you panic stricken, but you&#x27;ll come out the other side with a lot more clarity about the employee-employer relationship.<p>You are disposable. Even the CEO is disposable (as I&#x27;ve seen many times). Once you realize that, you&#x27;ll stop the BS about loyalty to your company. It&#x27;s a business arrangement, nothing more. Your job is to get the most you can (money, experience - whatever floats your boat). If it no longer works for you, leave. They&#x27;d do the same to you.

Author is 22 years old, and was <i>not</i> laid off. But, because some peers were – from Snap, a boom-times high-flyer – he&#x27;s now facing a crisis-of-confidence, first in himself, and then in what feelings of security might be available from reaching &quot;[t]he upper middle-class, the professional class, that venerable example of American wealth and mobility&quot;.<p>Well, of course working for a single hot company at 22 doesn&#x27;t mean your career is set for life. What, did he think he was going to <i>retire</i> at Snap?<p>There were idiosyncratically high expectations here... and now there&#x27;s an idiosyncratically low mood, concluding &quot;you do not have power. Remember that, always... being a well-ground cog is exactly what sustains our machine of systemic oppression, benefiting no one but those above.&quot;<p>That reads more like personal depression than an accurate extrapolation of lessons from his recent experience. Wait until he sees a dot-com crash, or a 2008-recession – then some broad despair might be (temporarily) justifiable. But even then, people with skills and creativity bounce back, and thrive. Not just in tech, but other sectors, too.<p>But to do so, you can&#x27;t let a disappointment like a layoff (of yourself or, as here, others) send you into maudlin rumination about your own inherent powerlessness, and the &#x27;systemic oppression&#x27; that sometimes paying gigs end sooner than you&#x27;d hoped. At least you can&#x27;t stay in that mindset for very long.<p>You can look at the same facts and instead focus on what power you do have – the time and ability to build skills, relationships and savings that can deliver security across many possible futures and industry cycles, without reliance on any single employer&#x27;s choices.<p>The people actually laid-off here may handle things better than this author – because they have no choice but to dust themselves off and engage with a broader world. And when a few months or a year later, they realize they&#x27;re in a <i>better</i> place than Snap, they&#x27;ll have less of the &quot;woe-is-us&quot; hopelessness expressed by this author.

The author of the article is misinformed about the true landscape of wealth and income inequality.<p>The middle class is ultimately defined by the ability and need to build your own safety net. The upper middle class is able to do this with plenty of wealth to spare for luxuries like private schooling for their kids, income security is provided by their network. Just tap your network and find another job. The upper middle class is unconcerned with skills and only concerned with leeching off of the upper class.<p>The &#x27;regular&#x27; middle class still needs to lean on their skill set and willingness to move in order to provide income security. If a layoff is enough to throw your lifestyle into disarray, you&#x27;re not upper middle class, in fact you&#x27;ll never be upper middle class because you probably spend too much time messing around with getting stuff done and not enough on greasing the political wheels.<p>The upper class doesn&#x27;t need to fool around with a network, they are networks unto themselves. At this level, enough ambient wealth is floating around that you can hire professionals to manage it for you and never have to do anything you don&#x27;t want to.<p>The difference between the lower class and the middle class boils down to whether you have enough to provide for your daily needs, much less a safety net. The lower class cannot meet expenses each month without assistance, has no ability to build a safety net and so has no safety other than what the government provides.<p>What distinguishes the lower middle class from the regular middle class is whether they have enough left over every month to save for the future or a rainy day.

I&#x27;d be curious to ask the author,<p>+ Have many of your laid off peers had trouble finding work, post-layoff?<p>+ Do you think you&#x27;d have a difficult time finding another job if you were laid off?<p>Most people in tech, who are willing to live in one of a half dozen specific cities, have job security prior generations could only have dreamed of. Tech skills are far more portable than a skilled line worker at Ford&#x27;s River Rouge plant in the 1960s, where job-hopping was nearly impossible due to union senority regulations.<p>I work at a VC firm and every company struggles with hiring enough talented people. I don&#x27;t know many, really any, people who are moderately skilled and unable to find work in this environment. That could change if there&#x27;s a big macro swing.<p>That&#x27;s not to say the broader criticism of job security is wrong. I have plenty of 50+ family members that are struggling on the finish line to retirement. Other people in my circle never had a fair shot at the start, but I don&#x27;t know that there&#x27;s ever been a better time to be a member of the professional class, even at a mid-skill level.

&gt; Fewer and fewer careers offer a stable path to the financial and personal security that underwrote the Baby Boomers’ “American Dream.” Technology is the one career that has an optimistic future, isn’t beholden by regulation and credential inflation, and actually attempts to create some sort of meritocracy, and so, those that are fortunate enough to be in it want to preserve the one island of paradise left.<p>This really resonated with me, for a number of reasons. Primarily, it&#x27;s because I am hyper aware of how delicate this &quot;tech boom&quot; really is. The good times will end, and I believe they will end sooner than most believe. I was layed off once before because the company I worked for outsourced their entire engineering department. That was a quick lesson for me early in my career that you are EASILY replaced. There are people in India, China, the Ukraine, you name it... who will do your job for half the cost.<p>There is an enormous, GLOBAL, influx of software engineers that is rapidly diluting the worker pool and is quickly reducing the implicit bargaining power that we&#x27;ve enjoyed for the last 10 years. Big &quot;thanks&quot; to all the initiatives by well meaning, but naïve, individuals and organizations who want to &quot;spread the wealth&quot; without realizing that the wealth is already spread very thin, and is being spread thinner, and thinner, every day by mechanisms outside of our control (cost of living, housing, taxes, etc.).<p>I am trying my best to save, but somehow the cost of merely existing seems to increase month over month. I don&#x27;t have kids, can&#x27;t afford them. I don&#x27;t have a car payment, I bought a junker. I have minimized my expenses down to the bare necessity and even then coming up with the down payment for a home is going to take years. At my age, my parents were already on to their second home. My wife has enormous student loans that cripple her ability to save so even our dual income seems weak in this environment.<p>So what can you do? I&#x27;m starting a business in my after-hours and weekends, desperately trying to establish a source of low-overhead income. I&#x27;m specializing within my field, attempting to learn new skills in a niché programming field that can&#x27;t be easily learned by bootcamps and YouTube videos. Above all, I&#x27;m remembering that right now things are good. This is the calm before the storm.

I just passed my 40th anniversary since college working in the valley. I&#x27;ve worked for 3 companies, the current one I&#x27;m in my 26th year. Although all 3 companies had one or more periods of downsizing, I was never a part of any of them but I did have to suffer colleagues and friends leaving because of them. It&#x27;s no more fun for those who are left than for those who are shown the door. The lesson learned from that is your employer is not your friend, not your buddy. You should never expect them to be regardless of what they say in the mission statements. You&#x27;re employed because you have some value to them. That value goes away, you&#x27;ll be out the door. Don&#x27;t ever forget that and plan accordingly.

Why is this on the front page? A recent grad, at a startup that grew too fast taking on too many employees, and didn&#x27;t even get laid off, is writing about getting laid off? This is a medium.com fluff piece if I have ever seen one.<p>Come back and talk to me when you have actually been laid off.

I don&#x27;t get why people ever thought a job was anything other than a strictly professional relationship. Your employer is not your family, and if they say you are then that&#x27;s a red flag because it means your employer will want you to give them more than they deserve.<p>If you are relying on a business to pay your living expenses indefinitely because you&#x27;ve been loyal or whatever other nonsense, that is lunacy. If you&#x27;re not producing some kind of value then you are dragging your company down, and you should be let go. In my opinion businesses aren&#x27;t proactive enough at firing non-contributors. Layoffs aren&#x27;t great for anyone because they kill the culture, but to avoid that someone really has to pull on some pants, swallow their pride, admit to hiring mistakes and rectify them.

&gt; Technology is the one career that has an optimistic future, isn’t beholden by regulation and credential inflation, and actually attempts to create some sort of meritocracy<p>One the one hand, tech might have less regulation than others - you can call yourself a &quot;software engineer&quot; and work as one without any formal credentials.<p>But on the other hand, plenty of other fields have optimistic futures and good guarantees of employment, the exact things the author is worried about (and the regulation in those fields often <i>helps</i> achieve those goals).<p>For example, nurses need to be certified but then they work in a field with good salaries and plenty of jobs in a rapidly growing market:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;ooh&#x2F;healthcare&#x2F;registered-nurses.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;ooh&#x2F;healthcare&#x2F;registered-nurses.htm</a><p>Tech is an ok industry to work in, but there are others. Anyone that says &quot;tech is the only good career&quot; is either uninformed, living in a bubble, or a snob.

Jesus, can you be more melodramatic, self-congratulatory and pointless all at the same time?

This is how it always has been in the tech industry. It is just that the last few years been very prosperous that many recent graduates have not even experienced the down sides. Best things to do is keep building your skill sets and maintain relationship and help out coworkers so that they are there when you next need referral for a job.

&gt; My first thought was relief. But that relief quickly turned back into fear. How disposable I was, I thought. How bound I was to the whims of others.<p>This is why I think we need to build more communities around cheap housing (think manufactured homes) and shared agricultural space. At least if you lose your job in that type of community you won&#x27;t have to worry as much about homelessness or starvation.<p>We&#x27;re far too dependent on others for life&#x27;s basic necessities, and that drives millions of people to work themselves to death doing jobs that make them miserable for employers who don&#x27;t care about them.

In another context I went through that same realization of powerlessness myself and even today I&#x27;m still surprised how we first-world people are raised so we think so invincible about ourselves. And it&#x27;s not just about our position in society. You could just as easily die any minute. Accident, natural disaster, world war 3, crazy coworker, jealous ex-wife. The options are unlimited.<p>It shouldn&#x27;t change that we take risks. Taking risks is important. But it should make us more aware about which risks to take (e.g. waiting might be a risk too), and how to approach risky situations.

Ugh, that layoff process sounded amateurish. Tapping people on the shoulder? So snap basically called in people one at a time leaving people who were not going to get laid off thinking they might for hours? They should have separated everyone at the beginning into two groups, those who were getting laid off and those who weren&#x27;t so that the people who stay aren&#x27;t left with such a terrible experience.<p>After layoffs the company&#x27;s priority should be to reassure their remaining workers that they&#x27;re OK because a shocked, shattered workforce is not a productive one. Employees are humans and they should be treated that way, and that should have been their priority. Snap seems terribly run based on this post. If I had experienced this I would be looking for new work. As long as the same people remain in charge who made those bad decisions, more bad decisions lie on the horizon.

I think is is maybe more of a personal realization for the author, but a job isn&#x27;t security. Saving an 6-18 month buffer of expenses is a better level of security, having a marketable skill set is some level of security.

I am one of those weirdos, that change jobs so often, I do contracting often enough, that I get fired quite often, or quit.<p>I remember when one big corp I had long term contract decided to &#x27;trim the fat&#x27; and laid us all. My neighbor felt bad and wanted to make lunch for me. I explained her that the same day, I went to another big corp (pretending to be startup) and got much higher rate I always wanted.<p>That lasted a year, then I was on my own again.<p>It really makes you stronger, your wife more stressed out, but my skills are way more awesome, I contribute way more and I don&#x27;t care if you need to fire me. It will make me sad for sure, as I care about people I work with.<p>Anyhow, this is still true. I would love to have a place I can stay for 10-15 yrs like &#x27;normal people&#x27;.

The problem is that too many people in tech think that their financial security comes from their job and don&#x27;t concentrate on learning marketable skills.<p>I was at a company from 2008-2011 that went through quite a few rounds of layoffs until they finally shut the door. Without fail, everyone who was laid off had another job within a month.<p>We all knew the writing was on the wall in 2011. Management was completely honest with us. When the day came, we all went out to lunch after our layoffs joked around and from looking at everyone&#x27;s LinkedIn profile, everyone had a job within a month - we all got a months severance.<p>I&#x27;m in my mid 40s and have no desire to start a company or go into management. I never want a job that doesn&#x27;t involve hands on coding. These days I go back and forth between contracting, full time &quot;senior software Engineer&quot; and &quot;architect&quot;. But I am aggressive about learning, I keep my resume up to date and I&#x27;m always networking.<p>I don&#x27;t expect any loyalty from a company. I do my best work while I&#x27;m there and all I expect is a check twice a month. I know they will let me go if it&#x27;s best for their business and I&#x27;ll leave if I can get a significantly better offer or if I&#x27;m not growing and keeping my skills marketable.<p>It&#x27;s never in 20 years taken me more than a little over a month to get a job making more money from the time I&#x27;ve started looking - and that includes a two week notice. I&#x27;m not bragging. In my market (not on the west coast), most developers who know current technology can say the same.

this is why i don&#x27;t move out of Bay Area - me and my acquaintances have been through lay offs here at various years, during the booms and busts, and nobody had any significant issues promptly finding a new job (with a salary increase usually :). Compare that to, for example, the next best thing in US tech - when AMZN says come to Seattle i always imagine being laid off from it few years down the road (with a non-compete on top of that :), and if for any reason i don&#x27;t get a job at the only other game in the town - MS - then what? Probably move to Bay Area :)

There is always a lack of empathy in these discussions. If the world looks different depending on the situation you personally find yourself in it can&#x27;t lead to any productive discussion.<p>A lot of decisions that can impact the lives of many are often made for short term self interest of a few. And upper management who make these decisions or run companies to the ground keep floating from one high paid job to another.<p>The 2 senior most execs of Well Fargo for instance responsible for the fraud and a $1 billion dollar fine get a golden parachute of around $250 million between them. Who is going to pay for this? Customers or job cuts? And this is not an exception. There seem to be a huge dissonance between idealized values and reality in upper segments of society.<p>Ultimately as a society you commit to a set of values. These values are reinforced by politics, media and your own experiences. Maybe you have a great life and you don&#x27;t question them, maybe you are born privileged and your perspectives and life experiences are by definition different. But as educated adults its your job to understand and define your society. You make the bed and you have to lie in it.

To comment on one of the sentiments in the last paragraph. I often find myself wondering about the people doing the bidding above them where they are the last one compensated on a middle-upper class level before the VP or CEO or whoever that makes the 100X worker salary. What motivates that person? I’m sure they are compensated very well but at an exponentially lower rate than the will they are serving.

After having worked at large companies and startups including founding a few of my own it is clear that job and financial security is about equal between the two. The last Fortune 100 company I worked for would cull thier workforce including whole teams often regardless of individual performance every March. If you had just happened to work on the wrong team for the wrong director too bad for you. All to often I saw dedicated people who had sacrificed years and long hours just get laid off seemingly out of nowhere. Directors seemed to have the worst longevity as when a VP was let go they often got rid of his or her management team as well.<p>The days of company loyalty are long gone. If you work at a large company and have been there over a year keep actively looking for the an even better position. You are expendable and therefore owe your employer nothing more than what you are paid to do today. I hate being so negative but sadly this seems to be the state of affairs these days

Not sure if any job or career exists that is impervious to some kind of replacement &#x2F; oversupply. Maybe doctors, but the barrier to entry is almost stratospheric.<p>Ultimately, to paraphrase Machiavelli, our ability to thrive rests on our own prowess. I only wish such statements were immediately useful instead of requiring lots of introspection, filed-testing, etc.

I wrote about how my experience with layoffs at Silicon Graphics in 1999 turned out, in retrospect, to be extremely lucky bad luck: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;davepeck.org&#x2F;2009&#x2F;02&#x2F;11&#x2F;the-luckiest-bad-luck&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;davepeck.org&#x2F;2009&#x2F;02&#x2F;11&#x2F;the-luckiest-bad-luck&#x2F;</a>

This was one of the reasons I made the case to my wife that, at the time, we should be in control of our own destiny. No corporation would have my families best interests at heart. No one would be looking out for them when they swung their axe.<p>So, I argued that I should form a company, start working on selling, marketing, developing, etc.<p>I used my layoff severance, loaded up credit cards to buy what I needed. Built a business that survived for 14.5 years. Generated millions a year in revenue. Had a small team working for me.<p>Until a bank came along and shot us in the head over an out-of-formula LOC.<p>So I am back working for the man. But I have so much more experience now. Much richer in business, in management, in sales and marketing, in addition to engineering and support. I would have done a number of things differently.<p>This said, having the control over your own destiny, to some degree, as much as your customers allow, was fantastic. You winning or losing was predicated on how hard and smart you worked.<p>The article is fairly accurate. Coding tests have become a thing. I&#x27;ve noticed that some places ask esoteric irrelevant questions specifically to stump people. Others are genuinely interested in your experience.<p>If only there was a way to avoid wasting time on the former to spend time with the latter.

Rich Dad Poor Dad has some interesting concepts. The book actually is really poorly written (and a bit scammy) but these video synopsis actually do a decent job of describing the concepts of passive income and differentiating between employee, self employed, business manager and investor:<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=qdtzLMrb8zQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=qdtzLMrb8zQ</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bC1ScfCny38" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bC1ScfCny38</a><p>I like to think in a small way if you own any stocks&#x2F;bonds, you are in a sense hiring employees (indirectly at arms length of course).<p>If you are buying SNAP, you are giving Evan Spiegel, the employee, his own business unit and promoting him. If you are holding SNAP and not buying more, then that&#x27;s like putting Evan Spiegel on a PIP. If you are selling it, its basically like firing Evan Spiegel for poor performance.<p>I&#x27;d recommend to the OP spending any remaining time after your side coding projects learning about businesses&#x2F;cashflow. To just blindly hold S&amp;P Index funds in your 401K is a bit a kin to hiring never doing an initial coding review and never doing an annual perf review on your employees.

Survivor Syndrome to the T. It&#x27;s a part of our modern life I&#x27;m afraid. It could be a lay off. A car crash. Any event of trauma where you didn&#x27;t feel in control. I&#x27;ve been laid off 3 times now - there&#x27;s not a lot of ways to spin it. Rather than trying to find it as an opportunity or BS any it all it&#x27;s just best to say it really sucks that are minds can mess us up that way. It just sucks. Leave it at that.

It&#x27;s good that they realized that doing your job does not guarantee anything. Going far and beyond you job description also doesn&#x27;t guarantee anything, although you may increase your changes of survival. There are probably diminishing returns here. Networking inside the company, if it is big enough, will also increase the chances of survival, as you may be able to jump ship to another group, or even get some advance warning.<p>Still, the best insurance is to stash money for rainy days and have the resumé up-to-date. As soon as the weather starts to turn (which you can detect in many, but not all cases), jump ship. Company has zero loyalty to employees, so theirs should not be much higher than zero either if they want to be fair.

Work for yourself. That&#x27;s the answer.<p>One job means you get fired and you&#x27;re looking for a new boss.<p>10 clients means if one fires you, you still have 9 you&#x27;re hopefully keeping happy.<p>I try to follow what I read about Gates starting Microsoft in some Biography. He tried to keep 2x the salary of all the employees as cash on hand, so if something went bad, they could try to weather the storm as long as possible.<p>So before hiring anyone as an employee (including myself), I do this with my startups. (I work 1099 in the beginning as well and I fire myself [work without pay] first).<p>Getting laid off lets you know where your loyalties should lie. The circle of you, is what I call it.<p>Each circle goes out from there. For me that&#x27;s the circle of my wife. Then my immediate family. Etc.

&gt;Because you do not have power. Remember that, always. When you get promoted, when you enter management, when you get a stellar performance review, you are simply fulfilling the whims of someone else.<p>I hope the author learns about labor unions some day, hopefully soon.

&gt;<i>And in that sense, I was as trapped as every other person who’s forced to work for an income. My job offered shallow perks and self-affirmation, and that gave me the feeling that somehow I deserved anything I’d achieved: that I was, in any sense of the word, “successful,” and that working at a tech company was something more than just a paycheck. I was nothing, I realized, and in my hopes of actually accomplishing something, I’d deluded myself into thinking I already had.</i><p>Well, sort of. At 22, and in IT, still way better off than any single mother, non-college educated, or 40+ yo laid off person, in any other industry.

Hmm, if only there was a way for workers to actually get power ...

The harsh truth: you may be an excellent engineer. But your company can probably make do with a mediocre engineer for half the cost. You may write superb quality thoroughly tested code. But your company just needs something that mostly works most of the time. You might be able to implement that feature in a week, your company would be happy to have it in 6 weeks or even months. Talent is no guarantee of job security.<p>A fair severance package is 1 months salary per year of employment.

I&#x27;m not certain what he expects: lifetime risk-free employment? Yeah, there&#x27;s stress involved with risk. But the risk one has as an upper-middle-class American is tech is <i>nothing</i> compared to the risks that others alive today face, and less than nothing compared to the risks that others in the past have faced.<p>Nothing last forever. Not a job — not even one&#x27;s life. Make the most of it while you can.

I can tell you exactly why they kept you and not someone else: you&#x27;re the most junior developer. The senior ones are more expensive. I&#x27;ve seen it before- to make the profit margins look better in preparation for a sale they axe all their most experienced people. It&#x27;s possible that snap is about to get purchased.

Tech and security are uneasy bedfellows. Just look at what GE is going through now, before that Nokia and before that Northern Telecom among a lot of others. If you want security find a profession that requires a license to practice.

The occupational psychologist would probably diagnose the Survivor syndrome:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Survivor_guilt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Survivor_guilt</a>

I prefer to only work with people who have been laid off. The reason is I can&#x27;t stand all these &quot;I&#x27;ll do anything for the company types.&quot;<p>Truth is they are dumb and naive.

The real myth is that your job is going to make you who you need to be and provide for you.<p>The only thing that will make you who you need to be is you, and that is going to require hard work to determine who you want to be and who you are capable of being.<p>The only entity that can provide for you is yourself, and your determination and willingness to work hard and take advantage of the environment you are in to the best of your ability.

TL;DR: a 22 year old CS grad gets a job and learns that vanila software development career is not going to be as exciting and rewarding journey as he&#x27;d imagined. Good for him; for some people, it takes much longer to figure this out.

Hm. So he didn&#x27;t get laid off? What am I reading? Why do I care what this guy has to say? He hasn&#x27;t been through it.

I can&#x27;t help but wince when I read this. This guy got laid off from his very first job. He is young -- in his twenties -- and has no family to support. He likely got some sort of bonus&#x2F;severance. He&#x27;s not the LEAST bit in any sort of dire straits...<p>Did he need to get laid off to realize that a) no job is forever and b) doing all &quot;the right things&quot; won&#x27;t ALWAYS lead to success.<p>I figured those were common sense.