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by notlob 2899 days ago
What happened with the people you had to let go? Did you prioritize rehiring them once your ship was righted or help them find new positions?
2 comments

If what caused the layoff is a microeconomic issue - your company isn’t profitable and not a macroeconomic issue - the entire economy sucks- and you’re technical with marketable skills, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Between 2009-2011, I was working for a company that had three rounds of layoffs until the company finally shut down. We all knew the company was in dire straights, management was very up front with us. None of us who were left, jumped shipped because we liked our jobs, were working on resume building technology and we knew we could get a job relatively quickly.

Without fail, within a month of being laid off, every person who was laid off had another comparable or better job. This was true for developers, QA analysts, and L1 and L2 tech support. On our last day, when the company shut down and laid all of us off, we hung around, went to lunch, laughed, joked and called our recruiters for our next opportunity.

My biggest fear is never being unemployed, it’s being unemployable. If you keep your skills marketable in tech, finding a job or at least a contract is not hard. It’s been true for me for almost 25 years asa Developer - and I’m not on the west coast.

We were doing well enough to give them good severance and the tech market was good enough that it was easy for them to find jobs.
There could be a good blog post in that? Planning to do right by your employees, even when times are hard.

(Also, I can't imagine what it'd be like for jobs to be easy to find!)

Also, I can't imagine what it'd be like for jobs to be easy to find!

I’m curious. What do you mean?

I’m not in IT tech, last job search a couple years ago took about a year and I’m starting another that’ll likely take as long. It’s just fantastic to me that multiple people could simultaneously find employment on short notice. It’s a world I haven’t experienced and am frankly envious of.