Dang FAANG!

It's been awhile since I dropped an article. I've been exceptionally busy.

Yesterday, I read an interesting and heartfelt post by ???♀?Katy Fernelius , one of my first degree connections, expressing her empathy and support for all those FAANG and other technology employees that have been laid off in the past several months. My perception is that her post was prompted by the second round of Amazon layoffs bringing the total Amazon layoffs to about 27,000 people. Add all the other technology layoffs and you have the population of a good sized city.

There seem to be two factors at play. According to an article I read some time ago on Yahoo Finance (I miss Andy Serwer, who did not write the article), the pandemic brought a glut of hiring to the tech industry. Like other bubbles, the conventional wisdom (ptui!), was that the ride would never end. But rides end at Disney World, why not in markets?

Second, they might have deployed some way to engage their workforce in a way as to develop ways to save money that come from the engineering production teams, rather than from the C-Suite. As an advisor for the Shingo Model, this seems like it could have been a way to at least minimize layoffs, especially if the FAANG and other tech companies had such a mentality embedded in their cultures. But, that is another article.

This article is not about what FAANG and other tech companies could have done differently. This article is about a statement I read in a book by Michael J. Fox. It seems that before Christopher Reeve passed away, he and "Alex P. Keaton" somehow became fast friends. In a conversation the two had sometime before Christopher Reeve's passing, they were talking about the hand fate had dealt them. Christopher Reeve became paralyzed after falling off a horse and breaking his neck. Michael J. Fox has early onset Parkinson's disease, and hid it successfully from the public for years. Their conclusion - and I've had this written on my whiteboard in big block purple letters for some time - was that "What happened is not nearly as important as what next."

Here are two men that were stricken with a severe blow to what they considered before as "normal." But rather than dwell on the past, they looked to the future and what opportunities these new challenges brought. I am inspired by that. Truly!

That is not to say they did not have a lot of pain in figuring things out with the "new normal." But it is the challenges we overcome that make us grow, that make us stronger, that make us better.

So today, I got news of an immediate revenue cliff to our business, not of my own making. At first I was dumbfounded, then I was angry and then I was bummed. I remembered Katy's post from the other day and I went back to look at it. Clearly it was addressed directly to the thousands of her software engineering compatriots who've found themselves abruptly unemployed. I read it again and her encouragement at the end helped me to dry my eyes, cinch up my big boy pants and set my jaw. Her last words in the post were, "Stay strong my friends!"

Between that and "What happened is not nearly as important as what next." I resolved to be better. To be more proactive about my own issue. I put together a list of pros and cons. There was only one con, bundled up with the imminent and unavoidable revenue cliff, not of my making. But on the "pros" side there were revealed a plethora of possibilities.

I don't know what I can say to console Katy's software engi-peers, but, her words gave me encouragement regarding my own troubles and made me think of Christpher Reeve and Michael J. Fox, two men I admire incredibly for rising far above the challenges life gave them and not only embraced, but eagerly sought after what their challenges could give them in terms of opportunity.

I wish all who have been laid off, the very best. The uncertainty from losing a stable job can be overwhelming, but I think maybe you too can learn from Christopher Reeve and Michael J. Fox. I hope and pray that you can, and do.

To quote the indefatigably empathetic and optimistic Katy Fernelius, "Stay strong my friends."