I’ve Been Laid Off
Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash
I’ve been laid off, and my job is to be outsourced to and serviced in India.
If I wanted to lay off the entire engineering department via a Zoom call, I would ensure a clear message and show the minimum decency to those involved.
So, when I got laid off and told my job was outsourced, I felt disrespected, confused and told if I had issues to look at the consultation hub website. What a way to “realign strategic priorities” and completely disrespect me in the process.
How Not to Start
We were called into a morning meeting, and due to the fact we couldn’t see all the attendees on the invite I realized that this meant layoffs (we’d had a few in previous years).
I knew my time being employed by this company was over but I needed to wait five minutes for them to bother starting the meeting. I dislike being kept waiting, especially for my own funeral.
Confusing? You Decide
From the message initially by the CIO you’d be hard-pressed to know they were destroying the lives of some on the call. It was confusing and unclear.
They spoke of moving to strong profitability (after the previous layoffs) and becoming a simpler and more efficient business for their vision in 2025.
I guess nobody could understand what they were getting at until the crunch of the meeting.
“We are going to create efficiency and redesign in our IT area. We’re going to work with a market leading third-party supplier to deliver that activity. They will provide a more consistent customer experience and add value to our customers. We’ll utilize their capability to add this value.”
Now if you can get through this confusing text, you’re better than I. During the call I got so bored I stopped listening, even though I knew I was being laid off.
It took nearly 10 minutes for the main part of the call.
“The majority of activities will be completed in India. Some of our colleagues will be impacted by this through termination of employment.”
Great, not only am I being offshored to India, but I’m bored to (almost) tears hearing about it.
It Will Be Difficult for Many of You
The CIO explained that some employees would join an exclusive club of “retained specialists” responsible for cleaning up after the new third-party contractors in India. Like a lifeguard at a beach that’s already underwater, that wasn’t a job I fancied (but more on that situation in a later blog post).
The lack of simple human decency was stark. I’d hear more about what was happening “throughout the day”, but it was the reasoning for terminating us, that really got me.
“I appreciate that today’s announcement will be very difficult for many of you. And we haven’t taken any of these measures really lightly. It’s all part of restructuring for growth going forwards.”
For growth? As you’ll see if you read more about my termination from this company, the reason they gave for these job losses changed over time and were not consistent. And to be told it’s “difficult” to lose your job, you’re right about that. It would just be nice to have had some interest from HR, my boss or anyone in the company (again, more on that later).
The Final Irony
Imagine if the efficiency had been applied to this call. The final insult was the sign off.
“Thank you very much for joining this call. And thank you for your…”
They cut themselves off at the end of the call. Just gone from the call. I still wonder what I might have got thanked for, as I entered a spell of unemployment
Conclusion
Being late to your own meeting about the end of someone else’s career? It’s peak “don’t care” energy and quite spectacular. When the CIO abruptly cut themselves off mid-sentence, it felt like the perfect summary of their respect for the people on the call: incomplete, careless and dismissive.
I guess you should be mindful of which company you ultimately work for.
This is the first in a number of articles about my termination, what happened during the process and what came of my job hunt. Stay tuned for all of the information, thanks for reading!