Once upon a time, in the world that my mom once worked in, people expected to join the workforce and stay at a company for 20-30-plus years. Job security was just a given. Once they hit a certain number of years of employment, they were guaranteed a pension until the day they (or their potential spouse) died. Both my parents were employed by their respective employers for 20-plus years and now are lucky to collect a pension. That world is quite foreign to me, as since before I even entered the workforce full time, I never expected to get any pension at all; in fact, I was repeatedly told that I not only would never get any pension at any job in my lifetime (unless I chose the government route), but I’d even be unlikely to collect any Social Security payments once I turned age 65. How fun for me and my generation!

My mom never experienced endless cycles of layoffs at her company the way I have at all my employers since I started working full time at age 22. My dad did have occasional layoffs based on demand (he worked in the glazing trade), but those layoffs were always temporary, and he’d get his job back once the demand picked up. So when I reflect back on my first job out of college and how I got laid off during the 2008-2009 financial crisis after just nine months of full-time employment, I recall speaking to my dad within an hour of being terminated. I called my dad while sitting on a bench in Union Square here in New York to tell him I was unemployed. And the first words out of his mouth, after a long pause, were, “Well, are they going to hire you back later?” To this, I slowly responded, “I don’t think so, Daddy.”

The only “good” way of losing your job is if you voluntarily quit or leave for whatever is the next step in your life or career. There’s no “good” way of getting laid off or fired. I’ve long debated in my head whether the “rip the bandaid off” situation in the U.S. (which I consider pretty terrible, inhumane, and abrupt, because it IS) with layoffs is better than layoffs that happen in countries like Singapore or France, where the employees have more rights and need far advanced notice. Regardless of which way a layoff happens, it’s always demoralizing for those who are directly impacted and those who remain.

At my current company, we’ve had two layoffs in the entire history of the company’s existence. The first happened in February 2023, when about 10 percent of my colleagues were let go. Just yesterday, we had our second layoff (with a pending restructure), during which about 15% of my teammates were let go. It’s unclear how many people were impacted across the whole company. But it’s been a sad and stressful period even when I haven’t been directly impacted. It’s made me relive the misery of getting laid off in my two prior times. It’s just tiring to always expect a layoff to be right around the corner. It’s exhausting and mentally taxing to always wonder if your job is safe. The “tech-pocalypse” as people are calling it has been pretty terrible the last two years for those who work in the technology industry. Once upon a time, everyone wanted to work in tech, and now, it’s probably one of the worst industries to be in when trying to find your next role. The market is too saturated with those who are unemployed who are in need of jobs. And there probably are not enough roles for all of them. Is this going to be how it will always be during the remainder of my working life: always waiting for the next layoff to drop? This is why working for someone else will always suck, just as my dad always told me.