Is There An Upside to Being Downsized?

Google, Amazon, Meta, Pinterest, Hubspot, Microsoft, Intel, PayPal, Twitter, even Tik Tok, the hottest company on the planet… The list of tech companies laying off employees is growing daily - over 200,000 people as of January. Social media is filled with announcements from people who have just received the news that they have been let go, including many former colleagues. My Linkedin feed is starting to resemble a Civil War battlefield, but for those who have recently received the unfortunate news that their “position has been eliminated,” I’d like to offer encouragement from someone who’s been through this more than he’d like to admit.

I started my marketing career at a digital agency in 1999. When the “dot com bubble burst” in 2001 into 2002, I didn’t suffer or really experience the impact in any way. All of the companies I had as clients were “brick and mortars” and, if anything, increased their digital ad spending during that time. A stroke of good luck.

Same deal with the financial crisis in 2008. ?Despite US households losing over $11 trillion and unemployment hitting 11%, I never felt my job was in jeopardy. In an effort to be more efficient, my clients just allocated more of their marketing budgets to digital and plowed right on through. With more and more people coming online every day, doing more shopping, consuming and creating more content and generally incorporating more digital into their lives, the digital marketing pie actually grew between 2008 and 2010. Again, I was fortunate to be part of an industry that was bucking the larger economic trends.

What’s my point? Am I bragging? No. Have I been fortunate? Immensely. However, over the past 23 years, I have faced unemployed three times and all three were scary.

The first time was a huge blow. I started out very successfully at the company, quickly receiving a couple of significant promotions, getting a big raise, and being handed a ton of responsibility. Unfortunately, nobody told me how to handle all of this. It was just assumed that my past success would equate to future success. It didn’t. So, as the company began to experience a rough patch, I was one of those let go during the first round of layoffs. However, I learned a lot about the challenges of leadership, working in a multi-location company, managing people remotely, and working with multicultural teams.

The second time, I did a terrible job of confirming what the expectations of my role would be. I was enamored with the company’s founder and saw an opportunity to work in a specific area I’d always been drawn to, plus a few former colleagues worked there and had nothing but good things to say. I allowed myself to get recruited away from a company I liked, and a role I was good at, without doing the due diligence on where I was going. I quickly found myself being held accountable for delivering in several areas where I had little to no experience and even less interest. It was also a terrible commute. Over an hour and a half in the car, each way, on a good day. I tightened the belt, rolled up my sleeves, and refused to fail…for a year. Then, hello unemployment. From this, I learned the importance of being extremely clear about expectations and just how important it was to me to be home for dinner with my family, at least a few nights a week.

The third time was the worst. I got stars in my eyes about working for a world-renowned global organization with a stellar reputation that bragged that its acceptance rate was lower than Harvard. Once again, I let myself be lured away from a good job where I was performing well and enjoying the work. This time I knew within six weeks it was a terrible fit. It was a dog-eat-dog culture, where success came at the expense of your colleagues and the pressure was relentless, but support was non-existent. But it paid well and there was that prestige thing. Somehow, I managed to tread water for over two years, but I was miserable for the last year and a half. However, I walked away with a real sense of clarity about what I did and did not want to do next, and, really, with the remainder of my working years. ?

In September of 2019, I finally did what my clients had been telling me to do for ten years. I launched my own company with my business partner. Three months later, the COVID-19 pandemic swept over the US and the rest of the world. Nice timing, right? This started a two-year period of global quarantining and economic slowdown, but in my world, this was actually a boon for many tech companies who suddenly saw their digital business pick up dramatically. Why risk going out in public when you can stream movies and order your groceries from the safety of your phone? In 2021 the “Big Four” of tech (Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft) generated more than $1.4 trillion in revenue and saw a 55% increase in profits to $320 billion. Over the past several years we’ve seen “digital transformation” morph from a buzzword to an early adopter trend, to a necessary initiative for any company to survive. Since my company specializes in working with growing SaaS businesses, we’ve been a beneficiary of this unprecedented growth in digital solutions. Good planning or good luck? I like to think it’s been a little of both.

So, what does my personal story have to do with the recent wave of layoffs in the tech industry? I don’t know. Maybe nothing, but if you’ve worked in tech over the past 20 years, you’ve been part of a boom the likes of which are rarely seen, and whether you’re one of the ones who have been affected by layoffs or not, it’s probably still a little unsettling if you haven’t been through this before. Waking up one morning and suddenly not having a routine to follow can come as a shock. Constantly worrying if today is the day your team is downsized, can really take its toll. Not having a dependable source of income can be stressful, although I hope most of you have received some sort of severance package. Dealing with the loss of health benefits is a huge headache and can be catastrophic for some. It’s hard to find a silver lining and, frankly, those “just look on the bright side” comments can feel really patronizing. You don’t want to look for any silver linings. It’s not fair. It’s not your fault the company over-hired, or that Russia decided to invade Ukraine, or that supply chain disruption (whatever the hell that is) is driving inflation (is it?). You lost your job and it sucks.

But (there’s always a but), if you have been working for a technology company, you have a skill set that is in demand. You know how to do something that someone, somewhere, will be willing to pay you to do. Will it take some time to find your next job? Probably. My longest stint on unemployment was six months. During that time I taught myself a whole new suite of skills (anyone remember Flash homepage takeover ads?), I taught senior citizens how to use the internet, and I spent a lot of time with my kids. Most importantly, I realized the importance of finding purpose in your work. It was arguably the most productive six months of my life.

Will you be as happy in your new job as you were in your old job? Maybe. Maybe not. You might be even happier. Maybe now is a good time to think about what parts of working you enjoy and use this insight to make sure your next job makes you happy, or happier.

Will you have to relocate for your next job? It’s possible. Is this a bad thing? Who knows? Maybe you will and it will mean leaving behind a set of good friends and familiar places. Change is scary, even changes that turn out to be for the best. But it’s also inevitable, so don’t fight it. You don’t have to embrace it, but don’t run away from it. You’ll just exhaust yourself and increase the risk that you’ll be too tired to take advantage of all the opportunities that change might present you with.

The point is, if you’ve lost your job, it probably wasn’t your fault and there wasn’t anything you could have done about it, so you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself. Scared, anxious, pissed off? Absolutely. Ashamed or embarrassed? No way.

And as annoying as cliches like “Every time one door closes another opens” can be, they’re used so frequently and have stuck around so long because they usually contain some truth. Three times in my career I’ve left a job of my own volition and each time the company I went to laid me off. Each time I got laid off, I did the work to find a new position I really believed I could thrive in, and I did. So now you have some time. Do the work. Find your purpose. And if you want to work in digital marketing or need some Flash work done, please reach out.

#downsizing #techlayoffs #findingyourpurpose