I'll mention one more thing which helps: Concrete offers of help. Depending on the circumstances, those can be practical (e.g. cooking and bringing food, covering part of funeral expenses/logistics) or supportive (e.g. making yourself available to talk through things or just be there for someone).
A vague offer of help, many people will never make use of. "If there's anything I can do..." often doesn't quite signal "if there's _anything_" so much as a concrete offer of the time, effort, or money you're willing to put in to help out. Even if it's not quite what will help them, you've signalled you're e.g. willing to spend 8 hours and $1000. It's a lot easier to ask for something else, comparable, and know it's within reason. Otherwise, most people won't impose on you for anything major.
I'd edit to: “Hey, I heard about the news. I don’t have the right words and please don’t feel obligated to reply. Just know that if I can do something, big or small, now or in the future, I'd be glad to. For example, I'd be glad to ____ or ____. If you'd like to talk, I'm a phone call away, or I'd be glad to bring dinner over tomorrow, if you'd like to chat.”
Much of this has a cultural component too. Some of the above might be too much in the US and too little in more collectivist cultures.
After a recent devastating family tragedy, a friend reached out and said "we are paying a lawn service to mow for you."
It was unexpected, related to something I had posted about trying to fix our riding lawnmower, and honestly took a huge chore off of our plate at a time when we needed to focus on family.
I've appreciated so many things people have done for us, from just a message, card, shoulder to cry on, or visiting at the hospital or attending a funeral. But I was taken aback at how important and meaningful that concrete and thoughtful help was. I'm now trying to look for ways I can offer something concrete and thoughful whenever possible.
One thing I learned when my son was born is eating well is really tough to do when your mind is somewhere else.
Mealtrains -- friend sourced meal prep -- are popular for people with newborns, but I've taken to dropping off meals (or sending GrubHub gift cards for friends who live out of town) to friends when I know they're going through a tough time.
This - providing meals - is a time honored tradition in many many cultures and communities, for exactly the reasons you mention.
I think the somewhat recent focus on nuclear families and breaking of social cohesion that came with it makes this harder. If you don't even know your neighbors, you probably don't know when they need the help, or if it would be appreciated/accepted if you offer.
Interesting to see this perspective. I've always associated the focus on nuclear families with a tight-knit neighborhood, almost small-town vibe where everyone knows each other and, yes, are up in each other's business. The breaking of social cohesion I've associated with the more recent phenomenon of it becoming more common to leave one's community to go to school or for a new job.
I agree it's a combination of travel an nuclear families but those things are highly interrelated. For what it's worth most of the small-town vibe I'm familiar with from actual small towns is behind the trend to nuclear families; more likely you have multiple generations of multiple families near by who know/grow up with each other. Not uniformly, but very common. Not that I'm highly familiar or anything.
But another important impact I think is that the idea of a nuclear family is pretty much predicated on independence of your little family unit. This not needing anyone else makes it practical to move across the country on short notice, but also makes it possible to break/ignore ties locally. This is of course also affected by the creation of state level supports.
In other scenarios, part of the reason that people got more involved in local community is because they literally risked disaster if they didn't.
I've just discovered this firsthand. Meal trains are awesome, but really challenging to have done right if you and/or your partner have serious food allergies. GrubHub is definitely good, but what's worked for us is a prepared foods service that drops off pre-cooked meals twice a week. Our friends and family gave us cash to help allay the cost of the service, but it's really not much more expensive than takeout.
> Meal trains are awesome, but really challenging to have done right if you and/or your partner have serious food allergies
Maybe someone should create a meal registry. Like meal planning and a meal train combined with the concept of a gift register. I don't think I'd feel comfortable being that direct with what I will and won't eat when it's a service someone is going out of their way to provide, but on the other hand I have received meals I didn't eat so it'd be better for everyone. The idea is simple enough that I'd be surprised if it doesn't already exist.
Edit: ha, a search for "meal train" shows this solution as the first hit, so guess there's a demand after all.
Food delivery service gift cards has become my go to in these situations. It has been really well received. It can be tough to cook for other people’s families with kids.
That would rub me the wrong way if I hadn't asked for it. I am just the sort of person who does not want pity or charity. If I want help, I'll ask for it or do the hiring, thanks.
In particular, mowing the lawn is one of my "escapes" where I can kind of zone out doing something that is routine and mindless for a little while. It's almost like meditation. Shoveling snow off of the driveway in the winter is another one.
So I would say, ask the person first. "I'd like to take care of the lawn for you if that would be helpful" rather than just doing it.
>I am just the sort of person who does not want pity or charity. If I want help, I'll ask for it or do the hiring, thanks.
As someone who fights this same urge, you should know that this makes you appear as closed off and cold to people that you have no intention of being closed off and cold to.
You do this (I suspect) out of a deep seated fear of vulnerability. People pick up on the lack of vulnerability and will not see it as a virtue, but instead will see it as a kind of 'untrustworthiness' if that makes sense? The social contract is that you make yourself a bit vulnerable to other people as a show of trust, they make themselves a bit vulnerable back, and then you have a bond.
I think most people would be surprised by how often 'it's who I am' really boils down to 'I am currently comfortable with this'. Changing the deep feedback loops that we call a personality is usually very difficult because so much of the human firmware runs on autopilot and resists conscious control but we are not static patterns - we can and do change constantly. Some changes are hard and some changes are easy but it's remarkable how much a small change can sometimes make a big impact in our lives.
Then you better let people know that you love lawnmowing as a way of processing stuff. They will send you food or good wishes if you are not allergic to those.
Many people, if you ask them if they want a gift, will say no just to be polite. In this scenario, if somebody said "I'd like to take care of the lawn for you if that would be helpful," I would deny the request because I wouldn't want to impose on them.
Just going ahead and doing it for me would be amazing. The number one gift anybody could give me in a tough situation is to not force me to make one more decision.
Which is to say, I guess it comes down to knowing the person.
I'm the sort of person who only accepts help as a last resort. I don't like being a bother, but a few times in my life people have demanded to do something for me like this and I'll always remember it.
To each their own. Remember that the other person might not know it's your escape. And even then, if it's for a short time, does it really matter that much? Not like it's a lifetime subscription to lawn mowing services.
I've always tried to operate this way, loans create an obligation, but for when people are uncomfortable with a gift, I lean towards the pay-it-forward approach.
That's not to say there is no place for loans, but for me it has to be with the closest of friends, and when I've been the borrower, I sure as hell want to pay back, when I'm the lender, I'm much less concerned.
You assume that they will never forget and will be grateful to you for your help, but the opposite might happen: people will hate you instead of feeling grateful. Some people will resent being in a situation when they needed help. They'll feel inferior and will hate you for that.
Oddly enough, decades later, I can say: yes it does.
People I came through for before seem to pop up in my times of need now. And people who helped others when we were younger now have amazing support networks, which makes a huge difference.
> Put in the cash or effort. When you help someone down, they never forget.
Yep, they will never forget humiliation of depending on someone else's charity and will always hate you for it. But because it would be impolite to say it straight to your face they will find other ways to get back at you.
Also you are no savior if your fortune depends on a system(all of them, not only obvious one) that destroyed their lives.
I have friends like this. They fought super hard and sacrificed a lot to get themselves and their families where they are. Super kind and generous people. Getting unsolicited gifts like this feels like a big slap in the face of what they've accomplished. I'm not saying they're right to feel this way. But it's something that needs to be considered.
It's not really unsolicited if the friend just told you they can't pay their rent. If they were the stoic you write about, they wouldn't have mentioned it at all.
Yes this would be mortifying to some people. I noticed my friend was having trouble with their car jack and dropped off a new one for them. They felt humiliated. Not saying don't do it, but be sure you know your friend if you do this. The "and you can't pay me back" is maybe the ouchiest part. It's unfortunate because the person giving the gift is usually genuinely trying to help, only to be slapped in the face.
Indeed, I'm finding that a lot of people find a phone call scary or threatening, and are much more comfortable with a text message, or even an audio message. At the same time, a dinner offer should be great for someone close enough, but in remote work that is more rare to happen.
Writing a recommendation on LinkedIn, to me, seems like the most actionable thing one can do in such cases.
When my son was born, my friends without kids would bring food by and want to hang out, while my friends with kids would just text us after they left food on our doorstep.
My MIL died unexpectedly some years ago. We all came home from the hospital that afternoon and were just sitting around. The doorbell rang; my wife saw through the window that it was one of her longtime friends. My wife answered the door; the friend handed her a casserole and said how sorry she was, then immediately left.
As far as concrete offers of help go, if they're someone I trust professionally, I usually say something like "If there's anyone on my LinkedIn that you'd like an intro to please let me know and I'll try to make it happen."
And for friends, I'm also open to meals, walks, hugs, co-working for a couple hours in a coffee shop, whatever they would find helpful emotionally.
Embarrassed to say I'd never heard it before it was featured in Andor but "an open invitation is no invitation at all" really revealed something to me about the nature of socializing.
I once offered the following to a fired friend right in the beginning of covid:
- weekly check-in to see how their job search goes and even if they need a laptop to do their home tests (because i knew it was broken)
- my reference and recommendation when they would reach the final stage of any interview ( i got a call from a hiring manager where i told them that they were basically the most talented colleague i ever had and it should be an instant hire)
- i even asked a friend to create a job for them in his company -when the previous one got into hiring freeze- and hire them temporarily until they found something more suitable.
I believe i did almost anything beyond human possible for them.
A co-worker who was laid off recently reached out to see if I had any room on my team. It broke my heart to say that we're not hiring for the foreseeable future either. I liked him a lot and thought he did good work, and otherwise I'd certainly have considered him. I told him as much.
We made plans instead to meet up for coffee and catch up next week. I wish I had something more concrete to help him out. This feels only slightly better than the empty platitudes mentioned in the article.
Maybe something will come up in conversation! In any case having something to look forward to, even as mundane as a coffee date, is a blessing when your daily routine suddenly goes out the window. I'm sure it means more to him than you guess.
Someone on a forum I frequent lost their (90 year old) father this morning. I never know what to say in those situations so I tend to hide for a few days.
I guess posting that screenshot wouldn't be the best move...
It wouldn't. But not because it's offensive. It is making a joke about the sympathizer's awkwardness, which is making it about yourself. A straightforward sorry for your loss is always best.
I've only been laid off one time in my life. I was working in Network Operations for an oil and gas company as a sysadmin / disaster recovery specialist. Anyway, there was some industry crisis and management announced layoffs were coming. On the day the axe fell my departmental director was calling people into his office. My turn came and I went in and when I saw the expression on his face I knew something was amiss. He was like "OK here is your severance doco." I was of course shocked because I was the hotshot in my department. So I asked, "Why? Everyone knows I am THE ass kicker on my team." And he said "Oh. Um, well we thought you `wanted` to be laid off." I was like, "Huh? Wait, no, what?" All he could say was "Sorry man". Good times !
In countries with stronger labor protections, or in unionized workplaces, when layoffs are obviously on the horizon, they're often preceded by a round of voluntary layoffs, where people are actively told to ask if the want to be layed off. There are many reasons why someone might choose severance and certainty in that situation
I wish we weren't culturally in a place where a layoff is treated like the death of a family member. We need to stop tying our identities (and basic healthcare) to our job. Getting fired from Amazon should really be a reason for celebration.
Loss of revenue puts people at risk of famine and indentured servitude.
This isn't a cultural thing. Human evolution is ugly. Evolution's filter function is death. If you can't feed yourself, nature will use you for food.
You are coming from a place of extreme privilege lamenting that people get stressed about losing a job. It's not a minor inconvenience if you're working on something you think is important. Button pushers have little to mourn. People working on big projects have to establish new goals for themselves & align themselves with an entirely new professional network. These are not minor things.
He is not coming from a place of extreme privilege. He is coming to it. In good times people here on HN publicly argue about ways of squeezing every possible dollar from their employers, talking about compensation, options, bonuses and such, easily changing jobs for better money, always feeling very special and productive.
This is a reality check: if you are productive and make the company $2M per year while costing only $350k per year, your job security is fine. If you do some work that company can live without, you're probably not as productive as you thought you were. Maybe it is time to adjust your self-esteem and expectations to the market reality.
Engineers instinctively want to solve problems. You can't solve this problem. They're going to feel awful for a while.
"Hey, you'll find another job!" or "Hey, in 6 months you'll be over it!" or mentioning Kubler-Ross are the wrong "solutions." And definitely anything about you is the wrong solution.
"I'm really sorry" sounds like boilerplate, but that's a good opening. And also a good closing.
improving my relationship with my wife has roughly been figuring out "is she venting/complaining or looking for a solution", and for myself, asking the same thing.
It really is frustrating. I commented elsewhere on this post that a very good friend of mine was just laid off and his immigration status is now a question that needs an answer in the coming month(s).
His entire family is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I'm 3 states removed, so I can't physically help him with anything, either. My own employer is not hiring right now. The best that I can do is reach out to my own network on his behalf, and I am doing that, but I do not like the feeling of helplessness that I feel over his situation, let alone what he must be feeling about it. It really does feel awful, even as a bystander.
Well I mean it is an objectively solvable problem.
Personally I vacillate between fear of the future and optimism of the future. Peers expressing the opinion that there's nothing to feel bad about helps my perspective a lot more than people acting like they think someone just died when I suffer a setback.
> “Hey, I heard about the news. I don’t have the right words and please don’t feel obligated to reply. Just know that if I can do something, big or small, now or in the future, I’m just a text away.”
I don't like it personally. I feel it is exaggerated, especially the part "I don't have the right words" I would feel awkward if I were on the receiving end — I lost my job, not someone died. Maybe it is just me, I get awkward easily, for context.
It highly depends on the context. Are they 20-something single person working on a high-pay job, or someone older with a family to support and struggling? The response needs to be different.
There are no universally applicable "right words" for this (or many other situations), so sometimes "I do have the right words" are the right words because they do a good job at conveying the speaker's intent (of showing that they care and are there to help).
I don't know for me it's just not necessary. I know who has my back already. This would just feel like pandering. I'd rather people didn't act like I suffered a traumatic life event. It's just a job after all.
I went into this expecting not to like the article, but I liked it.
I personally was just laid off, and I think I'm in a unusual situation of resenting sympathy - I was already looking for a new job and I was sick of the company. The perfect response to me would be a sardonic "Well I'm sorry for their loss."
But the articles advises first asking how the other person is feeling - and that is spot on, even for my situation.
It depends on what your relationship with them, and their position in job hunting.
If it is your co-worker, they got laid off and you didn't. It is awkward. I would just say the normal thing that you would say to people who left their job like moments you cherished with them and things you learned from them, and that you are sorry to see what happened to them. if you think they don't have a problem finding another job, I won't even say the last bit of being sorry, just say it sucks what happened.
I really hate fake sympathy.
Being retained when a co-worker is laid off is a weird experience. It happened to me once, and the co-worker was also a friend. I thought his layoff was poorly handled and it appeared (at least to me) that it was based on bias and not business need or a performance problem.
Sitting someone down and walking them through your own experience without judgement or expectation is always appreciated.
I was laid off many times during the Optical Winter of 2001-2006 and developed a system for dealing with it. Handing someone the system and saying "You should do these things" is less helpful than telling the story of "The first time I got laid off I did a, b, c. The second time I had learned my lesson, and did less of a and more of c. The fourth time was different because blah blah blah"
Only do this though if you are a peer or someone they can aspire to be. If you once got laid off but your life then went on a downward spiral and you never really recovered, just keep it to yourself. It’s not comforting.
Early on I went to a support group for laid off employees, and many of them stood up to tell heartbreaking stories of emotional turmoil and bleak prospects. I walked out of there and never looked back. I had a young family and bills to pay. I didn't have time or energy to be someone else's pillar of strength.
I've never heard that term but I assume it refers to the carnage around fiber/optical/etc. investments around that period. Companies like Cisco and Intel had massive writedowns for investments they made.
I think I still don't know what not to say... the article doesn't seem to me to explicitly tell what those things I shouldn't say are... it just explains the "kinds of things", like "don't make it about yourself"... but I don't even know how anyone can make it about themselves?! What do they say to make it look like that? Perhaps I am doing that but I have no idea?! Could someone be a bit more specific?
Here’s a real example of someone making it about themselves. This is a real post from someone else from LinkedIn:
In the summer of 2008 I had just got back from an internship at Microsoft when the impacts of FC started to land. Microsoft was generous to extend me an offer (to start in 2009 fall), and as I just started negotiating my recruiter reached out to me to let me know that I have 24 hours to accept the offer due
to 18,000 employees (~18% of workforce) being let go.
It was a mind numbing number. These were people and families that we knew and had an amazing summer with. I personally knew interns who had declined offers to try and negotiate a different offer who did not have anything to show
for all the hard work put in.
I came back to campus a few week later to complete chaos. Harvard Business School, at that time, was a feeder school to Finance and Consulting. I had so many friends whose internships were yanked from under them. In some cases bankrupt banks came after part of the tuition payments that they had made on behalf of their former (now students) employees. Over the next few months we saw families and lives disrupted, mortgages, visas and plans thrown into
disarray.
I felt thankful to have a job then. And I feel thankful to have a job today.
My hope for Meta emerging from these deep, needed cuts is that (a) we telegraph clearly that we are done with cuts for now and we give teams the psychological safety to work and create impact (b) we take the moment to reevaluate who we are as a company and how we evolve systems to value
what we need in our employees to accomplish what we need going forward.
To Meta employees who have been laid off today. My network is your network. Please ping me here. I am deeply networked in the Seattle community and am happy to make introductions for you. In addition to that I am happy to make
time to do resume reviews and/or interview coaching and feedback
The article literally ends with an exact quote “Hey, I heard about the news. I don’t have the right words and please don’t feel obligated to reply. Just know that if I can do something, big or small, now or in the future, I’m just a text away.”
A couple of (former) teammates were laid off recently. In both cases I was honest and told them I didn't agree with leadership's decision, and I asked them if they had some project lined up. Both of them said they were taking some time off and not thinking about work for a while. It aligns with my personal experience when I was laid off.
A very good friend was hit by a recent BigTechCo layoff. He has the financial security to take some months off but his immigration status has rendered him scrambling. I wish there were serious efforts to reform that entire system. I'm putting feelers out on his behalf but there's really not much else I can do to help him and it's frustrating.
"Wow, that sucks. How are you holding up? Let me know if I can help, like with practice questions or whatever. If you've got time this weekend we can grab lunch."
It's not perfect, but you can go a long way with something like the above: unqualified acknowledgement, interest in their well-being, offer of support with an example, and a non-pushy offer to have some company/fun/distraction. Swap in specific phrasing as you'd like.
To someone from a more collectivist culture this sounds perfectly noncommittal - a weak reed that pierces the hand of anyone who would support himself on it. What is there to be had, except lunch expenses?
Oh wow. What would be more appropriate in a collectivist culture? Avoiding the message and instead go over to their house to do the things suggested above?
Offering to pass the name around in your circles or keeping ears open at your company, that would be actually helpful. I've always found "let me know how I can help" code for "don't bother me" in America.
Especially bad and a red flag: "If you've got time this weekend we can grab lunch." The fellow might be in crisis now, but don't bother me until the weekend.
Like I said, change the specific phrasing as you want and makes sense, every situation and person is different. The goals were "offer help with an actual example" and "offering company/fun/distraction without being pushy", it doesn't have to be a weekend lunch or looking over practice questions, it could also be sending their resume to friends and gaming together later that night, same same.
My father passed away in April of '21 just as the vaccines were coming out and everyone was getting them. He was an otherwise healthy guy who just died suddenly of a heart attack.'
The worst thing was when people would say "Did he get the vaccine?". That still makes me furious to this day. Do not politicize my father's death. Please. He's not a pawn for your agenda. The quickest way to trivialize a person's life is to turn them into a data point to support your bias. People still say that to me and it's all I can do to not punch a hole the wall every time I hear it.
I'm sorry to hear about that. When my mother died lots of people took it as an opportunity to support some idea or opinion they had, religious, political or social, it was awful.
What I’ve learned reading many of the comments on threads and most of the article is really just to keep your mouth shut.
You can comfort people in loss without saying a word. Your consistent presence through the grieving is good enough.
There’s an entire thread where people anecdotally share what others did to help them, and then two comments later someone says that it would offend them or come across wrong.
The aim shouldn’t be about perfection, helping people to make yourself seem like a good person or even to do what you would want others to do for you. It should be to selflessly offer consistent comfort. If they wanna be alone they will let you know, it the need something they can ask.
When my friends father died I said nothing, I just sat next to him and cried. I just wanted him to know I saw his pain and he was not alone.
Learning to come along side others in their pain is messy, hard and very inconvenient. But it’s the most meaningful part of humanity we have.
Very well written and so true.
For myself, I have trouble dealing with people who want (need?) to prove they're here. Most of the time, they are overdoing it, and it is clear that it's about themselves.
Just see if people are responsive to your "support". Otherwise, You're just making it worse.
"The Five Stages of Grief" from the Kubler-Ross Model seems to apply.
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
The detail most get confused with is these stages occur in no particular order.
Personally, I would likely jump from 2 to 3, then found a competing nonprofit firm with 9k people in the same situation, The real danger with talent layoffs is people wrongly assume every employee is replaceable, and will quietly go away without financial consequences. ;)
Good luck out there, and remember that the only difference between bums in suits and most CEOs is money (don't get upset, we all know this is true). =)
"empirical evidence" would likely require a breach of research ethics, but I suppose you could randomly borrow your neighbors cats to observe owner behaviors.
Just kidding, as being a "jerk" with facts is not a character flaw from my perspective. lol =)
I read that book and came away feeling underwhelmed. She went into many patient interviews with her model in mind; did she instigate patient behavior through questions? The book was often vague when it came to her interview methodology, and favored development of patient story, IMO to latch onto reader’s sympathy, while offering little detail of the authors methods.
From the authors reference frame the patients appeared to linearly accept their fate. If we randomly time traveled to their room and interviewed them which state would we encounter? Is the progress static regardless of environmental inputs or variable?
I have a hard time trusting past truth these days; editors and publishers want to sell books. There’s a huge labor market dedicated to PR and optics, tailored messaging. Sensibilities of the past were much more accepting that whatever made it on store shelves was absolutely correct and not a tailored product placement.
If one is cooking their data, it is only slightly worse than creating entire fake journals to publish self-serving content for political arguments (true story). I hold particular disdain for the chaos faction after taking 20 minutes to read nonsense:
The problem with theses is that this list was compiled from aggregated observations but individuals can go through any number or all in all different orders. Instead, it’s used as a prescriptive tool to help track where someone is in the grieving process, which is misguided.
Why is being laid off being compared to the grief related to the death of a parent?
Why would there be any grief from a layoff? It’s just a job.
Anyone in mourning because they have to job hunt probably has some bigger issues that aren’t going to be helped in any way by what friends do or do not say.
>Why would there be any grief from a layoff? It’s just a job.
While the juxtaposition seemed off to me as well, layoffs can have serious consequences. Not everyone (in all situations) can send a few emails and have another well-paying job in a few weeks. I've known especially somewhat later career people in the dot-bomb era who basically never really recovered from a layoff in terms of either career or finances. So, yes, it's just a job with the caveat that you probably want/need to get another comparable one and probably would prefer not to move across the country or even move countries (depending on visas) to do so.
As somebody who's been laid off and fired before, I think the hardest part is not always the money (though it can be), but loss of control.
People say the same thing about having their house broken into, they don't care about material loss, it's the sense of violation and not being safe in their homes that may persist for years that far outweighs money.
So the hard part can be, especially the first time when you don't expect it at all, suddenly having the routine of your daily life ripped away. All the projects, the mentoring, the presentations you were planning, all the coworkers you talked to daily, all gone in a snap.
If you're taken by surprise (which can happen a lot actually, since a lot of people in tech are incredibly awful at giving negative feedback directly and clearly) then you may for years get uncomfortable about any Friday meeting on your calendar from a manager. Or you may have trouble making yourself work at all when a pending layoff is announced.
But in a way it makes you stronger, more able to separate your identity and self-worth from your work.
>If you're taken by surprise (which can happen a lot actually, since a lot of people in tech are incredibly awful at giving negative feedback directly and clearly) then you may for years get uncomfortable about any Friday meeting on your calendar from a manager.
And, to be honest, some people can be pretty oblivious. I've known people whose work always went through multiple rounds of rework to the point where they were a complete time suck and even had projects just given to someone else to finish. And they were still in complete shock when they were eventually let go.
In addition, even in companies that don't routinely lay people off, there can still be organizational changes and sometimes someone can just be left without a metaphorical desk--especially if the company isn't doing a lot of hiring.
Eh. I get it. It can be a major event for people. Especially if it's the first time. I'm not sure how I would respond to being laid off. I've never been fired from a job. I've always quit/resigned.
So it would be a completely novel experience for me.
When I was reading through the article however, I got it. Because while I haven't lost a parent yet or lost my job, I have lost a wife. One day I got a call around 5pm Friday that she was a state away and leaving me. Like out of the blue. No idea.
And people kept trying to tell me how I felt. And none of them were right. They offered vague promises of help, but there was nothing concrete. But I knew what I needed to do and just went about the business. The worst thing, the most annoying thing, was people trying to treat you differently and tell you how you feel and ascribe your every thought, word, and action to the event. If you had a rough morning because you spilled coffee on yourself, well it's the event. If you decide to go out to a bar and see people you haven't in a while, well it's the event. Feeling bored at work, the event. Happy, the event. Sad, the event. Upset because everyone is saying everything is about the event, well it's really because of the event.
I can say in my case, I did just want to get on with things. But it's almost like I wasn't allowed to.
And I think that's what the article is trying to convey. Let people handle their internal state the way they want to.
Not every one is a higly paid software developer in a tech hub. If you live paycheck to paycheck in an area with high unemployment, have kids, and your health insurance is tied up with your employment, getting sacked can be pretty scary.
"It's just a job" is a nice idea, but since it's something I do 8 hours a day 5 days a week I try to make it something I enjoy. I enjoy meeting with my coworkers each day, and like the projects I'm doing. I also probably care the least about my job of most of the people I know. For some of my FAANG friends working at a FAANG has been a life long dream. Sure it's easy to say "work shouldn't be important!" but for some people it is.
Most obvious financial insecurity: The tech market is shrinking (I personally think it is collapsing, but that is not a necessary belief to feel grief). Many of the people being laid off right now (and in the future) will have much stiffer competition than before. I have a recently laid off friend who just had a baby. His partner doesn't have a high income job. That's a lot of added stress. To add to this most FAANG employees might not see nearly as high comp as they're used to.
Then there is the serious loss we're going to see with any of our friends that are foreign nationals. I have a few friends on H1B visas. They're a big part of my life, own a home and plan on staying in the US indefinitely. They assumed they were on the path to a green card, which is reasonable given the market when the arrived at the US. It's very possible they will be forced to go back to their home country, never to come to the US again. Not only do these people have a justified reason to grieve, but any of their friends do as well.
And big picture: we're potentially seeing a change in the entire industry, on par with the dotcom bust (maybe worse, maybe better). I'm guessing you're too young to remember but for many people getting laid off in 1999-2000 was the end of their tech career. To get a sense of how big of an impact this has, consider how many of your coworkers are from the dotcom era? I'm guessing not many. The tech industry was huge and exciting then, just like it has been recently. A lot of people got wiped out and never returned to the high times of the late dotcom period.
There's honestly a lot of grief to be felt right now, not just for those being laid off but for those impacted by it indirectly (plus I think we're all waiting for that meeting if we haven't already had it).
>A lot of people got wiped out and never returned to the high times of the late dotcom period.
I don't think (and hope) things will get to dotcom levels which--you're right--led to a lot of people exiting the industry, especially if they had skills that were fairly transferrable to other types of jobs. Personally, I was extremely lucky when I got laid off to quickly land a lower-paying but otherwise better role and the company (barely) made it through post-2001. Certainly, it was otherwise pretty much crickets otherwise looking for another position and that was the norm.
> Why would there be any grief from a layoff? It’s just a job.
For many on HN you might be right, but for people living paycheck to paycheck it causes an enormous amount of stress. My dad was a factory worker and got laid off when I was young. It was hard. I was old enough to understand the real stress my parents were under while they tried to pay the bills each month (it's fun having your water turned off which can take 48h to turn back on after you pay smh). Luckily my grandparents helped financially while my dad worked 3 jobs to make ends meet. I was working and gave them the little money I had.
For many people, being selected for a layoff can feel like you have been judged as a lower performer than your colleagues. The thinking being that the company would always want to retain their best performers. This can cause a big loss of confidence for some people. They will be stuck thinking "Why was I one of those chosen for being laid off?"
Often though, the decision on who to lay off also considers who might be close to retirement, who might cost more to make redundant (redundancy pay in many places is based on years of service and there might also be long service leave owed), and the mixture of skills and knowledge the company thinks it will need going forward.
Also some people will have built up strong relationships with colleagues, teams and clients through their work. Their potential to continue these relationships typically drops dramatically without it being a regular part of work. That can make some people quite sad personally and frustrated that all of the work developing those relationships will suddenly not be very useful anymore.
There is a loss, and people (especially more recently it seems?) sometimes are unable to cope at all with loss. I do agree it's unhealthy and extreme to put it that way. A dead loved-one is never coming back. That is a pain you must learn to live with. But you can get another job, perhaps even the same one again.
There’s many reasons. A job is a social place. You build relationships and bonds and your work is a part of your identity. It is suddenly gone and you haven’t had time to prepare for that reality.
If you have a family that relies on your income it can be very stressful. Especially if you don’t have a fund. Uncertainty breeds anxiety.
I agree, but maybe we're the weird ones? I'm not a very emotional person, and the death of my father hasn't thrown me off balance, so maybe that's just a fundamental thing, either you're strongly affected by such things or you're not?
I suppose it depends on how well off you are. A job is how most people feed themselves. If you have a hard time finding work, getting laid off is devastating. Unless you’re a dependent, the death of a parent is not financially devastating.
as someone who went through the 2001 period without a job for a very very long time, never ask how their job search is doing. If it was going well, I would have told you. talk about other things unless you have something meaningful to offer or they bring it up.
Tell your friends that you're there for them before shit hits the fan.
Stop and take a moment - who of your friends and family do you know has your back right now? And who of your friends and family knows you have their back?
If those lists aren't what they should be, NOW is the time to work on fixing that, not when all hell has broken loose.
This is good advice, but it shouldn't stop you from reaching out to people during and after a crisis. Sometimes you don't find out who your allies are until the road gets bumpy.
I wasn't aware of the "IT crowd" comedy tv show. It definitely lifted my spirit up, perhaps in a similar way that layoff episode of "office space" would.
It is black humor, but humor nonetheless, and some people do appreciate such form.
Censoring comedy doesn't seem right.
The same thing happens after elections. The 'winners' (some, not all) prance around with fake compassion, using the moment to signal their virtues, and their 'good' choices. If they only knew how ugly it is.
A vague offer of help, many people will never make use of. "If there's anything I can do..." often doesn't quite signal "if there's _anything_" so much as a concrete offer of the time, effort, or money you're willing to put in to help out. Even if it's not quite what will help them, you've signalled you're e.g. willing to spend 8 hours and $1000. It's a lot easier to ask for something else, comparable, and know it's within reason. Otherwise, most people won't impose on you for anything major.
I'd edit to: “Hey, I heard about the news. I don’t have the right words and please don’t feel obligated to reply. Just know that if I can do something, big or small, now or in the future, I'd be glad to. For example, I'd be glad to ____ or ____. If you'd like to talk, I'm a phone call away, or I'd be glad to bring dinner over tomorrow, if you'd like to chat.”
Much of this has a cultural component too. Some of the above might be too much in the US and too little in more collectivist cultures.