https://matejlatin.com/blog/designer-layoff-stories/
"I got a raise at 3 PM, at 4 I was laid off. Exactly two months before our
twins were due and my wife and I would become parents for the first time. It
was just another Thursday afternoon, at 3 PM I spoke to my manager who told me
that I got a small raise. At 4 we were both jobless. This paints a perfect
picture of how the layoffs were organised in complete secrecy despite
“transparency” being one of the main company values. My laptop was remotely
shut down just minutes after I learned the news and that was it. After five
years, I was no longer a senior product designer at the company where I had
helped build the design department.
I felt lost. It’s like standing completely naked outside in the middle of a
blizzard — alone, sad, shocked, empty. But mostly scared. Scared because we had
two babies on the way and my job was our only regular financial income. My wife
cried when I told her: “How can they do this to someone expecting children?” I
was silent. Shame and guilt started to settle in and wreak havoc in my head. I
turned into a shell of a person.
I went to the local supermarket the day after and met an old classmate from the
university. I hadn’t seen him for more than 10 years and was surprised that he
lived in the same area.
“You live around here now?”
“Yeah, we just bought a flat not far from here”
“Oh really? We bought a house in this town last year…”
I put on a smile and kept up with the small talk, but all I could think was
“Don’t ask me what I do, please don’t ask me about my job…” We spent chatting
for five minutes and I dreaded each pause in our chat, fearing that
that
question might come up.
It didn’t. I was safe. Being jobless was shameful enough, I didn’t want to tell
anyone about it. But later I was ashamed of being ashamed. Your mind starts to
play tricks on you when something so traumatic happens.
I can’t tell you the details of my layoff, so I decided to be the voice of the
many designers who had to go through this traumatic event. I ran a survey and
received 159 answers, which is amazing, considering how hard it was to find
these laid-off designers. I even got to speak to more than 30 of them and
listened to their stories. Here they are, along with the stats from my
research. I changed the names of the designers behind these stories to protect
their privacy."
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
