
Losing My Perfect Job - throwaway042019
https://medium.com/@iamzackwebb/losing-my-perfect-job-d9b618e934b4
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iandanforth
I've heard tell that there was a time when it made sense to expect to be in
the same job next year that you're in today.

The author seems to have slipped naturally into that mindset. I don't think we
live in that time anymore.

While HN repeatedly warns (employee) devs to maintain a mercenary mindset the
instinct toward company loyalty seems to have far outlived the loyalty of
companies toward their employees.

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sureaboutthis
> I feel sorry for him. I’m not sure he’s ever been in this position before,
> and I think I’m the first person today he has to give this news to. He looks
> a bit overwhelmed, grey-faced, perhaps a bit nervous. He is speaking slowly
> and carefully. It’s got to be tough to be the one who has to deliver this
> news to people. It must really suck for him to tell somebody they’re
> suddenly unemployed.

Long ago, I was let go, with others, by the VP of a company I worked for as
the company was faltering. He was a nice guy and I wasn't aware how much it
had affected him to do this. I stopped by to visit, some months later, and
found out he was in a mental health facility and had to be restrained from
trying to climb out a window to get out. Worse--there was no window.

When I started my business, I found it difficult to let people go who were
just not capable of doing the job. Those with attitude problems and "cancers"
within the company were easier but not really easy. As time passed, I was able
to steel myself up against these things. I wouldn't tell them they were fired
but, instead, being "let go" cause they couldn't get the job.

I admit to having some pleasure in cutting out the cancererous ones, though.

~~~
ido
In my (thankfully small set-size) experience even with attitude problems it's
not easy to fire people.

It's really seldom that you have to fire someone who is just a right asshole
with no redeeming qualities - quite often they are toxic because they have
some mental health issues, or have really bad social skills, or are just for
one reason or another really frustrated and taking it out in the wrong way
(none of these are excuses to keep them employed mind you).

You can be relieved after the fact that they are gone while still not enjoying
having to actually fire them.

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tbyehl
> Sales and marketing might be at risk, maybe. But firing developers would be
> completely illogical.

LOL. Sales and marketing bring in the money. Everyone else is just an expense.

~~~
peterlk
This is a naive way of looking at things. Your product isn't a thing that
robotic ATMs spit out cash for, because they've been told to buy it. Though
this perspective is true at some places, it creates a race to the bottom, and
will put you out of business. For example, you can sign up contracts for
vaporware and then deliver. This may make some money in up-front contract
payments, but how long is this business going to last?

~~~
IshKebab
It's a short term way of looking at things, but if you're firing 25% of your
staff you probably can't afford to think long-term.

Also sales people are much cheaper than developers.

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mcv
Locking people out of company chat and other documents during the talk is
weird. Wouldn't it make more sense to use the next two weeks or month
(whatever the standard period is) to wrap things up and hand them over to
other people? This looks like a needless destruction of knowledge.

~~~
ebiester
It seems to be a standard practice: people are afraid of sabotage.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I think a company should be afraid of sabotage if it's actively sabotaging
it's employees.

If you're holding monthly all-hands meetings and telling everyone that things
are going swimmingly, and all your employees are asking their managers -- is
it really? Should I be looking for other jobs just in case? And the script you
give to your managers is -- oh, no, you don't need a back up. Everything is
fine.

If you know you're about to go out of business in a month unless you secure
another round of funding, and you know talks are going terribly, and you're
constantly lying to your employees about everything -- yeah, I think it'd be
crazy not to expect some retaliation.

~~~
ddalex
> \-- oh, no, you don't need a back up

:wink, wink:

If you care about your team, you'll let them know what's really going on, no
matter what your exec said.

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MangezBien
> That just didn’t seem like the kind of thing the company I imagined I was
> working for would do.

In case anyone was wondering why you need a union _even_ when you like your
job and your boss, this piece is a pretty good example. Let's organize, y'all!

~~~
RHSeeger
I'm not sure I follow your statement. If the company had a choice between
laying people off and failing, a union coming in and preventing them from
laying people off doesn't sound like it would help the situation.

~~~
MangezBien
It is usually a false choice. Unions don't stop layoffs but they can help to
negotiate the terms of the layoffs and ensure that everyone is respected
during the process.

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angarg12
The article was actually better than I expected.

In my short career experience, there is no dream or perfect job. As one gains
experience, you can find better and better opportunities, but instead of a
single dream job, you end up moving along a pareto optimal border of
tradeoffs.

~~~
Balgair
The issue I see is : How do you pay for a mortgage? How do you stay in the
same school district without a 2 hour commute?

Job hopping is fine when you're young and can apartment hop every year. But
when you get hitched, have a family, want a dog and a yard for the kiddos to
play in, job hopping gets a LOT harder. Trying to pay off that mortgage
between the two of you ain't easy when your schedule is changing so often
(commuting really gets in the way of picking the kids up) and you may be out
of work for 6 months or more. Sure, maybe the Bay is job-rich, but then the
houses are $3k/mo. for the next 30 years.

Yeah, maybe the job ain't peaches then, you take the stability for the joy.
But there ain't any stability either now.

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codebeaker
Posted by an hour old throwaway account referring to a pseudonymous Medium
writer discussing an anonymous company's two year old laying off procedure.

I wonder how this made it to the front page, and what we are supposed to take
from it other than "company lays people off after assuring them it wouldn't,
employee wasn't given much notice and online accounts were locked out during
the dismissal call" all of which, in my experience on both sides of the table
is completely normal.

It is standard corporate hedging and damage control, and it doesn't make it
right, but it is pervasive.

~~~
dev1n
The point of the article was if the person didn't lose their "perfect job"
they would never have forced themselves to look for other, better, and more
enjoyable opportunities.

~~~
derekp7
I think that happens to a large number of people who have lost a job and found
something else. Specifically, if you are laid off, and assuming the entire
company / division didn't fold (i.e., they cut 15% from all departments), then
chances are that you and the company weren't a good fit for each other. And it
is during the job search process that you start to re-evaluate your skill set,
what you can do, and what you want to do. Often that will then lead to a
better opportunity in which you have improved (if from nothing else than a
change of scenery).

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OneFamousGrouse
I'm so glad I'm in a country where you can't be laid off at a moment's notice
like that, and I very much hope this is not going to change, despite our
disruptive leader™'s wishes.

~~~
jimmy1
On the flip side, imagine being a business owner, and having absolutely no
options left but to make this decision and salvage what you can left of your
business. Should the business risk bankruptcy and cause 100% of the workforce
to be jobless, or is it better if just 25% lose it? The company could rebound,
and hire an additional 50% on top of the original 100%. It's the circle of
business life.

~~~
zrail
As a person running a business it is your job to ensure that such a thing
doesn’t happen. If you have to do sudden immediate layoffs or face bankruptcy
that means somebody (probably you) massively messed up.

~~~
sokoloff
OK, and _when_ that happens should 100% of the company be reduced to ashes or
take a shot at 75% of the company surviving and reviving?

Given enough businesses and enough trials, it's a certainty that some leaders
will drive them off a cliff.

~~~
johannes1234321
The way this works in Germany is that if the company is in trouble and goes
into insolvency the employment agency pays insolvency money to cover parts of
the salary for some time (financed by a fund into which all (with exceptions)
employers pay) Thus in the extremely critical situation employees aren't the
one immediately suffering from management failure.

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zihotki
TLDR: a few screens of rumblings about how a person was informed that he/she
was laid off as part of big (25%) company laid off

~~~
m0llusk
You got distracted by the emphasis on details in recollection of this poignant
experience.

> We’ve spent the last few months tweaking the product I work on, running
> tests and trying to come up with ways of increasing engagement, because not
> enough customers are renewing their subscriptions.

So serious problems were visible to everyone, but somehow the possibility of
job loss was not made clear. This is partly management, but to some extent a
full blown sector wide social problem where we distract each other with
stories and beliefs that are false until it is too late to react with a
realistic assessment of the potential down sides.

> That was nearly two years ago now, back in the middle of 2017. It had been
> the perfect job for me. ... I spent the next couple of months job hunting.
> ... world had become a lot bigger and more complicated while I was working
> in that company, and we hadn’t kept up

And moving on was difficult, involved a lot of rejection, and didn't even
properly start until after a major career course correction.

> Looking back now, my old job wasn’t nearly as perfect as I thought it was at
> the time. ... I had stopped growing.

There is the lesson, and it is a pretty robust one that applies to many
readers here.

"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible
warning." \--Catherine Aird

~~~
shaklee3
I read the whole thing. It seemed like an article with zero content. That all
sounded perfectly normal, and happens to lots of people. I'm not sure it
really needed an entire article.

~~~
cwilkes
I think you just described all of John Updike’s novels. Maybe it seemed normal
to you as you’ve gone through it but what about the person that hasn’t? They
are probably experiencing the same fears and self doubt that the author was.
I’m not sure what you mean by zero content. What were you looking for? The
name of the company? That it failed 2 years down the road after they didn’t
develop a product as this developer was laid off?

~~~
shaklee3
None of that, but to some extent you can't fill a blog with stories like this.
It's not really original content. It's happened to so many people, and they
eventually find a job, just like this person did.

By zero content I mean a reader will come away from it with no new knowledge,
and it will be forgotten soon after.

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world32
> I was working for a well-established startup with a mission I really
> believed in, and which felt like it had the potential to be a massive
> success and shake up the industries it was doing business in.

There is your problem. You naively fell for the BS coming out of some many
startups these days..

> I didn’t accept it straight away. To be honest, I was still holding out,
> hoping that some trendier startup would come along and offer me a job

Seriously? Get real.. If you want to exclusively work for startups that have
bean bags in their offices and tell everybody that they are changing the world
with whatever silly laundry/food-delivery/ironing-on-demand app they have then
thats fine but don't put out a sob story when you realise that these startups
are no different than any other business and don't give a damn about changing
the world or helping their employees they are just there to make money.

