Pylimitics

I was kicked to the curb by my suddenly-previous employer. Along with a large chunk of my suddenly-previous department. This is not uncommon in the technology industry where I’ve worked for decades, and it’s not the first time for me. It’s always annoying, though, and for some it can be devastating. It’s always life-changing in various ways. A years-long routine is suddenly gone. The tasks and responsibilities taking up so much mental space are suddenly gone. At least, no longer my concern. Some of those things are still a concern for the organization, but somebody else will have to tend to them. Figure out how a process works and where the right resources can be found. And yet another person will have to decide who is going to do that tending and figuring.

This is the same situation my suddenly-previous colleagues are experiencing. Anyone whose “role” was not eliminated is facing a different situation. The work we all did was not optional or invisible, and none of the products we were working on were canceled. Thus a significantly fewer number of people will have to figure out how to add tasks and responsibilities to what they already do. The department was already understaffed before this, and it was rare than any of us were able to get a week’s tasks done in just 40 hours.

This particular “reduction in force” was announced at the same time the company revealed historically high quarterly revenue results and its stock price soared to record after record. As is always the case, the layoff was explained as a “strategic move” by the executives, and as is also always the case, the business press swallowed that line without question. As is often the case, it was almost certainly a lie. “Strategy” means thinking long term, but a layoff by a company experiencing nearly-unprecedented success and revenue is evidence of short-term thinking. Strategically, the layoff will require more work to repair the damage management has just done. They may claim they’re “prepping for an AI future,” but in fact a number of the layoff victims were working on AI projects. It’s most likely that they’re simply going to replace the relatively expensive US people with less expensive contract workers in someplace like India. And in the very short term, one of the motivations for the layoff was likely simple greed among the executive class, who are richly rewarded when the company stock goes up. Which it has.

The timing of yesterday’s layoff was fortuitous for the company. Either that or the culmination of a very clever plan instituted far in advance — but I don’t think company management is that clever or far-thinking. It came on the day just before a company-wide day off and 3-day weekend. Thus ensuring that any expressions of frustration or disgruntlement would most likely be ignored because there was nobody online. Three days hence, you can expect feelings to have calmed, resignation to have set in, and attention to have wandered on to something else.

The specific targeting of the department I was part of is, perhaps, a bit suspect. We had only this year been moved, organizationally, away from the functional product unit we had reported to for years and into a “central services” department.Our tools and processes were different, and demonstrably better in terms of customer response. Even the director of our group was eliminated. I don’t have any way to know whether this was due to vindictiveness on the part of the higher-level manager of our new organizational home, but I can certainly imagine that being true. My one and only meeting with that higher-level manager was when they informed me my position was eliminated, so I don’t know much about them at all. But they have always seemed to me to be odd and awkward in meetings. There is just something “off” about them. But maybe I’m overreacting.

I have reached an age where I am now considered by US employment law to be a member of a protected class. As such, the company was required to share with me a report about the ages and roles of the eliminated group as well as those remaining. I gather this is information to be used in case I want to sue the company for age discrimination. I don’t have any intention to do that and I don’t think there’s any discrimination here, but I did find something in the report that surprised me. The average age in the department, both before and after the layoff, is about a decade older than I would have expected. The average ages of the two groups are not too far off, and there’s no evidence that the idea was to replace older workers with younger ones. Still, I didn’t know we were as old, in general, as we are.

The next step for me is to decide what to do next. I have a couple months to make up my mind. The tech industry has acquired a bit of an unpleasant odor over the past few years, and I’m thinking about maybe trying a new direction. After all, I’ve always changed careers every ten to fifteen years, so I’m due. No new ideas yet, but stay tuned.