And now, fast forward to 2023, they are laying me off, along with another 99 people.
In a way I’m relieved because I was planning to change jobs due to burnout (burnout that my manager referred to during my layoff meeting as being “a little bit stressed”).
However, due to the same said burnout, I couldn’t do much job searching and needed a long vacation.
I got laid off while on vacation, a vacation I took late because of the deadlines set by the company, also a vacation which I spent recovering from burnout (and doing other fun things, don’t get me wrong.)
Mainly I blame their obsession with “growth hacking”. Now this company is a TV company and have canceled a large list of programs viewers like because they aren’t making enough revenue.
And everyone does it with a smile on their face, under the guise of ‘efficiency’.
How does one increase efficiency by reducing the number of workers and not really coming up with any tools so that less workers could do the same job?
The negotiations with the union ended in disagreement about my team’s layoffs but I got the boot anyway.
So what did I get myself burnt out for? Absolutely nothing worth it. I should have just quit-quitted. This didn’t come easy to me because I place a lot of importance on product ownership. I’m early in my career and wanted to build cool stuff that people use and enjoy.
This is good insight, thank you.
It seems to me this is all a stalling tactic for unprofitable companies. Is that correct?
Not necessarily. I witnessed this firsthand at a company that was actually VERY profitable, just not as profitable as Wall Street had expected.
When a company underperforms, the first place C-suite looks to cut is headcount.