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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?"
You realize that you're doomed and start looking for another job.
Just continue doing your work and focus on what matters. Sure it's hard, and you do need to give yourself time to grieve and be pissed off. But, if you let yourself wallow in it and get distracted, you just increase your chances for being chopped soon. Focus on the interesting stuff and stuff that needs some mental thought so that you don't have enough time to wallow.
It does help to avoid getting into a bitching session with coworkers. Black topics and moods tend to multiply when you and others pay attention to them.
All that said, it's still a good idea to keep your resume polished and your ear to the ground.
... 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.
Fear is the mind-killer...
<grrr>
I work for a well known telecommunications company. We're not well known because we are a huge company that is in every household in the country...we're well known because we had a large bankruptcy shortly after the Enron debacle.
In the past 5 years, I have watched about 8 different "lay-off" periods (situations in which over a hundred people (sometimes a few thousand) were given their walking papers) and survived each of them.
The interesting part to me is that about 80% of the people who were let go were no surprise to most of the people who worked with them. Several of them spent most of their time worrying about how to protect their job rather than actually doing their job. In fact, if some of them put as much energy into doing their job rather than fearing their lay-off, they'd probably still be employed.
I'm not saying that everyone who got laid off deserved it (several good folks were lost due to whole department eliminations).
During two years there was (significant) uncertainty that we would survive as a company, relegating all of us to the unemployment line. The way to survive a lay-off is to ensure that you are focusing on the company's goals. If you're not, don't wait to be chopped. Start hunting now and get out.
I will say that if you look at who remained and still remains at my place of employment, you will find that 99% of those folks did their job to the best of their abilities, never complained, took on more work than they were asked to take on, and most of them never feared being let go.
I have to chock it up to attitude. I watched several folks with better degrees, more experience, more technical knowledge, and more skill than I get let go. But I remained because I work well on a team and am willing to take any task with a smile on my face.
I apologize if this sounds like a "buck up, camper" kind of speech, or if I come off not sympathizing with those who have been let go (I really do. I've been there!). But if you go to work worried about getting fired...you're probably going to get fired.
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
I've been in both situations: the one passed over for getting the axe, and one of several who did get the axe. All I can say is that no matter how secure you think you job is, always have a few tricks up your sleeve. Keep up with your professional contacts, maintain the skills that your current job doesn't use.
Waiting until farmer comes out to the henhouse is way, way too late. Companies today are less adverse to firing people no matter how long they've been working there. Often it's not even a manager's decision, it's bean-counter's decision somewhere that ten people will need to be laid off here and there to make year-end budgets.
Also, just because a company is large and appears stable, there's no guarantee that anyone will be working there a month from now. It's like playing Russian Roulette; somewhere out there, someone is falsifying financial statements. Are they in your company? Is it going to turn up tomorrow in headline news, sending the stocks through the floor? You just can't guarantee anything.
If you have no options elsewhere, the only chance you have is to just be a good employee, don't ruffle anyone's feathers. Never accept an upcoming slack period in the schedule; always seek out interleaving projects if your managers aren't finding you any. If you're always in the middle of two or three projects, you're more likely to be put on the "needs to stay for now" pile. But there is no surefire way to stay.
Just keep up your contacts and be on the lookout for any positions elsewhere. Investigate what it takes to become a consultant in your area. Companies no longer feel the need to offer loyal employees any long-term job security, so we should no longer have to feel guilty for jumping ship to suit our own needs.
...
Here in India, we are not having any layoffs! We are getting fat cat American job by dozen!
So move here. We give you free vindaloo on arrival.
-psy
I tend to concentrate on my work, rather than slacking around and posting inane questions to Slashdot.
;>
Heavy drinking, incessant womanizing, and general debauchery also answer quite nicely, I've found.
There are three rules for keeping your job when times are tough:
1) Be a profit center. Make sure management can associate you and your actions with revenue or with big time "profit recovery" (saving money). Do not spend money unless that money will make money for the company and it is crystal clear that is the case. Ask "how does this help the bottom line" before you ask for a resource. If errors loose money in your job, then don't screw up (easy to say).
2) Be a rock of stability. Don't get caught up in change. Focus on being profitable, saving money and not making money loosing mistakes. Make sure customers are taken care of. And always be nice.
3) Stay away from cancer. People who are negative or are creating disention are cancer and will be removed by management. If you are to close to the cancer, they'll remove you with the tumor.
Finally, one thing that will make the biggest difference of all: don't be aloof from management. Talk to you seniors regularly about things that matter to them. Ask how you can help the bottom line. Be an idea source - just don't be a spending source.
-- $G
Your spending your time creating quality work at a company that is downsizing.
Don't know about the company you work for, but when I worked for a company like that quality work wouldn't save anybody. Politics does.
sad but true.
Look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!
I for one welcome our new unemployment office overloards......
-=-=-=-
HOWTO: write bad documentation
In every tech's life, there comes a time when management starts to insist on better documentation.
Perhaps a round of layoffs or outsourcing is imminent. Perhaps the simmering disdain between techs and management has escalated into open hatred. Either way, you are clearly on the way out, and management wants to grease the wheels for your successor.
Objectives
You wish to produce documentation that:
First of all, update your resume. No matter what you do, how good you are, sometimes you will end up out of work anyway. Take any reasonable offer, even if you would have stayed on, someone else can be transfered to your position who would otherwise be out of work.
I know one person who handed her 2 weeks into her boss. He closed the door, and told her to tear it up. One week latter she was laid off, with 2 months severance. Thats your best case. (Note that she was in management, most of you don't have a boss high enough in the chain to help you like this)
Make sure your boss knows you are willing to do other things. Another person I know survived a couple rounds because the department was eliminated, but another department was hiring, and a few people got transfered. If the boss doesn't know you are willing to do work for that department he might not suggest you for a position. (these positions were not posted)
Keep contact with those who are let go. Hard to do for some I know, but it is a good plan. When they get a job, odds are it is with a company that is looking for more people. When you are hit, send them your resume. One place I worked hired a lot of people by the manager going to one person and asking who would be good for a position. That guy gave them a name, and position was 90% filled before the person named even knew it existed.
Don't worry about it. Worry affects your job performance. If worry motivates you, worry about getting your current job done, at least your are seen as worrying about the right things.
Save your money! Pay off dept, and don't take on more. If the worst case strikes and you end up flipping burgers to make ends meet, your savings might have to fill in. Take the burger job after unemployment ends, and well before you run out of money, better to have some income than none. You can make good money (not great, but enough to live comfortably) if you move up in the burger world, but it takes time, so start before you are out of savings.
If you are laid off, consider volunteer work. You can often meet the spouses of important people this way, making it a good path to a job. If nothing else you generally meet people in other areas, and they can show you more about life. If you have kids, chaperon their field trips, a good way to see museams and things that you didn't apprecate as a kid.
Re-evaluate your life. Are you married with kids? Perhaps you should be a stay-at-home dad/mom. If nothing else remember that when you are not working you don't have to pay for day-care.
If you are single, can you pack up and leave? Europe is beautiful and worth seeing, sell just about everything, store the few things you can't live without at the parents, pack a bag and disappear for a while. You might or might not come back. If you live in Europe, substitute North America. Actually anyone can substitute any other area they have never been. Asia, Africa, New Zealand (you can spend a long time in that tiny country and not see it all), South America... If you can't pack up and leave, there are nice areas close to home that you should explore.
Check the local library. Get those books on starting your own business, even if you don't want to run one. Get books on tatting (making lace) and start a new hobby. And get books in your own field and update your skills. Not the word "and" above, do all of the above. If your local library is small they often can borrow from other libraries if you ask them to. You can buy the books you like of course.
Get religion. (or re-get if you have it) It may or may not help with any other part of life, but it can answer some other need you have. Obviously this is personal, but you should be giving it a thought anyway just in case. Don't make this a primary goal, but once you have one, you have a bunch of contacts who can help with a job search.
Do not fear losing your job. It will happen. It may or may not be your fault. How you deal with is up to you though. MIT says their graduates switch careers 7 times in their life. I've already had 3 and I'm not yet 30. (though I love the one enough that I'm trying to stay in it) Don't be afraid to switch.
it's not the end of the world. I spent a long period looking for tech world while trying to keep things together with independent consulting work.
Last week I found myself being paid to fly (actually pilot the plane) across the state to deliver a machine and make a service call for my new employer. I've always wanted to fly and thanks to being laid off I'm being taught how and being paid in the process.
Take heart. The economy may be sucking, tech work being imported from India, but there's always options.
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.
Unemployment insurance in volitile businesses like IT are a smart move, with so many tallented and smart people unemployed due to layoffs, find a new job can be tough.
Having some unemployment insurance really can save your butt.
Invest in ramen noodles while you're at it. Never know when the doorknob is looking for love in all the wrong places.
I've worked in telecom for a while as well. Wireless for a stint, even more unstable. How did I make it through the countless "reductions in force?" simple:
0800: Bailys and a triple mocha
0900: Rum and Coke
1000: 2nd Bailys and quad mocha
1100: Light lunch
1200: Couple of rails of trailerpark snow as a pick me up
1300: 2 shots of Vodka to level out, couple of percoset as needed
1500: One more line of trucker speed or some Twinkies
1645: Sneek out and head home, I really need a drink after such a long day.
.-=Wit is educated insolence=-. -Aristotle
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.
So start looking now. You have no future at your current job. Even if you stay on, you career will stall. Time to move up and out.
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.
One cannot produce quality work in the face of constant staff reduction. Having seen one too many RIF situations in the past 3 years, one thing that I learned is that reduction in force and downsizing is in itself an enormous amount of effort which consumes all of organizational resources. It requires a whole lot of strategic planning on the management side, a lot of extra work on the employees (shifting projects, transferring knwoledge, locking down accounts, figuring stuff others did, etc), all producing nothing in the end. It also creates an enormous amount of tension and sets off the panicky types which results in a very counter-creative athmosphere.
I think a good analogy would be severe weather - when there is a hurricane or a snow storm outside, people don't go to work, watch their house, stock up on candles, board up windows, etc, etc, until the storm is over. Or ilness - when you're sick, your body is all consumed with fighting the infection and you simply cannot do anything else but sleep.
I've tried my hardest to maintain the level of productivity that I once had before the .bomb, but lately I've resigned to the idea that I should just take it easy until things stabilize again (which, I have no doubt, they will, but probably not until 2005).
To counteract it, instead of concentrating on the gargantuan tasks ahead, I try to force myself to simply work for 15 minutes at a time. If the task is interesting and I get in a good stride, I wind up building momentum and have a productive day. If I fail to get fired up, I take five minutes for a quick break and change my focus to another task or equal priority or go at the same task from a different angle (e.g. tackle this other routine instead of all those variables).
Obviously, it doesn't always work. Still, I find I'm not dreading status meetings as I used to because I can say I've actually done something.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."