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Surviving the Chopping Block?
2names asks: "Having been involved in cutbacks at several companies, I am finding it more difficult to remain focused on my job tasks even when I am not the subject of the cutback. For those of you who have survived the chopping block (sometimes repeatedly), how do you continue to produce quality work in the face of constant staff reductions?"
... work my ass off and hope for the best. I refuse to suck up. I just treat everyone like an equal, which many "higher-ups" appreciate. They like it when their employees say "Hi" and crack jokes and ask about their kids' soccer games. Some of them don't, I'm just polite to them.
I haven't been laid off yet.
Bull shit.
Oh, I'm sure you feel thats why you still have a job.
But it is simple justification after the fact.
It's like the guy standing amongst a crowd of people, half die from some bizzar accident. The ones that live either: spend the next 20 years asking themselves how they survived when others didn't and feeling guilty, or spend the next 20 years telling everyone they deserved to live and they have a destiny.
typically the correct answer is neither. Random chance, luck of the draw, fluke.
But hey, maybe your the exception and the company you work for actually is trying to retain the people it needs... but I doubt it.
Quit. Think about the assholes you will never be forced to listen to ever again. Always remember the pent-up aggression and frustration. Gone. Sure, replaced with a large amount of anxiety but anything is better than the soul-sucking dread and constant pinkslip juggernaut.
Move on. Don't hang on. Don't ride the gravy train. Don't be a yes-man kowtowing to the axeman. Staying only serves to destroy your soul piece by piece. Stand up and reclaim your sense of self-worth.
Corporate culture promotes a hothoused atmosphere where you are deliberately blinkered to believe things suck all over. They don't.
Retrain, flex your intellect, rediscover yourself. The world is now your oyster for the first time since you left school. This is an opportunity, not a setback. Seize the opportunity to live again.
I made it enough rounds of layoffs that I lost count, and I knew my time would come.
Know why you're there. If it's only terror of being out of work, you're in trouble. Find a good reason to stick around.
One good reason is to help your remaining coworkers out, even if you expect to be in the next round. This includes those who are doomed. This will also help you out when it's time to start looking for work.
Don't encourage the whiners, but don't treat them badly. It does suck, and some people will be hit harder by it than others. You just don't want to get dragged down.
Figure out how to have a good attitude, otherwise you'll hate and or lose you job. Don't whine, don't pass idle rumors, and don't read Fucked Company (maybe a very little bit) but keep your ear to the ground. Pay attention!
Work hard, but don't kill yourself. You've still got to have limits, and if your company is the least bit competent, they'll be willing to treat you with some respect.
Keep the negative attitude BS to a minimum, but don't be a cheerleader. You won't earn anybody's respect by pretending that nothing is wrong.
Find out who could be a reference for you if you get the axe, or who might be doing something interesting. You can talk with people about it, once it's publically acknowledged.
This sucks for everyone. Think of it like death. Unavoidable, and horrible, but inevitable. There's no point in dwelling on it, although being prepared is helpful. Act well, and be remembered well.
Think about a career change. Even if you don't change careers, you may be freelancing soon, like it or not.
If the company was _____ it could be avoided, but it ain't so. So now you've got to deal with it. So does everybody else. If they're not bastards, you're in it together.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
how do you continue to produce quality work in the face of constant staff reductions?
You can't.
Constant staff reductions cause a high stress environment. Most people have a hard time preforming their best when stressed[1]. Some workers burn themselves out by working longer hours in a futile attempt to reach goals made unobtainable by the stressfull environment. Narturally, this leads to more stress.
A reverse approach is to dedicate more time to yourself and stress reducing activities. Pick your activities wishly. Your goal is to not simply relax, it is to reduce your stress. Try new activities. Consider trying those activities that you have put off "until you are more settled." Many people find that physcial activity is an excellent way to reduce stress. As a bonus physcial activity will improve your health which helps combat stress. Along the same lines, get a good night's sleep everynight.
By reduceing your overall stress level you will be able to better manage your working stress. You will have more focus. You will be able to produce better work. You may not perform at your peak level, but you will be closer.
[1] Some people work best under pressure. But not under this kind of stress.
This is not how it worked in what I have seen. The way it happens in larger organizations is a law firm specializing in RIFs gets hired, who then weeds through lists of employees and comes up with a recomendation that is legally least troublesome. There is some negotiation in those lists, but generally they are used as is, and the law firm will also write all the necessary notices, memos, severance agreements, etc.
Since the law firm knows little about the organization, it is pretty much a coin toss.
I ran into one of these "org consultants" at the pub once. He'd finished carving up a local firm earlier in the week (or week prior). He tried to present himself as something beneficial, but three or four otherwise random people figured it out, and started thanking him for the layoffs. "Thanks for the layoffs," "On behalf of all the people on unemployment now, I'd like to say thanks," etc. The consultant didn't actually start crying, but it was close. It took an hour for the consultant's friends to talk him out of the tree. That was slightly sad, but still one of the funniest things I saw the whole year.
But, the good news was what I learned. I should have jumped ship earlier, maybe a year or two before I got laid off. It was the downturn in the defense market that got me, but I found there were still jobs available. I had to look for a few months, but the jobs are there. Plus the feeling of productivity and usefulness is far, Far, FAR, greater than the horrible atmosphere at my first job. Plus, I now look out for myself better and leave a company before the layoff start affecting people and attitudes. Don't get me wrong, some lay offs are useful, particularly in today's litigous atmosphere. I'm subsequently been at two companies that have had minor lay-offs and have stayed for years after because the situation wasn't the same as my first employer. Nice to get rid of some deadweight sometimes. Plus some people just shouldn't be engineers or programmers and a lay off notice is the right kick in the pants with the clue-by-four.
If your facing the negative environment, I say it's time to move on. You stand a very, very low chance of performing in that environment and your satisfaction, salary, family, etc will suffer. The only good out of those situations are for the company itself and rarely for the individuals. Even most companies don't fair well, but are sometimes backed into the situation - ie defense companies are ALWAYS cyclical.
Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.