113: Surviving A Layoff
Lay-offs are trending in the technology world. And, it's not just the scrappy start-ups being hit - goliaths such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have all recently announced large reductions in force (RIF). Getting laid-off can pose a serious financial burden on an individual; but, there's also the psychological burden of self-doubt: Why did this happen to me? Did I deserve this? Will I ever find another tech job? On today's show, we talk about the state of the industry, share tips on becoming more resilient in uncertain time, and talk about what do if and when the pink slip commeth.
ASIDE: In this episode, Adam makes a few comments about what it means to take responsibility as a leader (See comic by Threddy). And, accidentally misspoke about a few CEOs not taking a pay-cut (which apparently they did).
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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Transcript
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[00:00:00] Adam: Cold open to the cold open. You know what that means? We said something dumb. Sorry about that. So here's a correction in advance. Later on in this episode, we're going to just sort of casually mention that when big companies like Google and Microsoft and Apple layoff people, typically they don't, take any.
[00:00:17] Adam: cuts at the top. They just accept the blame, even though that means nothing. Um, well, as it turns out, and thanks to one of our patrons who gets early access because he's a patron, for pointing this out, Tim Cook from Apple did, take about a 50% pay cut. He's down from approximately 50 million to approximately 25 million of total compensation.
[00:00:36] Adam: Still gets all of his cash salary, but hey, if that's important to you, here's your correction. it did actually happen. It is the truth. So, there's that, sorry in advance, but also hey, fixed it in advance, so you're welcome. I don't know. Anyway, on with the cold open.
[00:00:51] Ben: We had a guy here at work, I don't even remember why he was so upset. I, I think he was having a lot of trouble with his manager and trouble finding work that he wanted do anyway, he was really unhappy he confided in me, he's like, Hey, I just want you to know I'm, I'm gonna put my notice tomorrow.
[00:01:07] Ben: And I said, okay. You know, I understand. Just, you know, whatever you do, don't, don't burn any bridges, cuz you never know. You might want to come back. Goes, oh, oh, no, I'm burning it all to the ground.
[00:01:39] Intro
[00:01:39] Adam: okay, here we go. It is show number 113, and on today's show we are going to talk about layoffs. There's a lot of that going around. It's like a Covid 23, right? It's just, it's just layoffs apparently. we're gonna take our stab at that. but first we'll start with our triumphs and fails before we get there.
[00:01:56] Adam: Carol couldn't be with us tonight. She's got other stuff going on, so it's her turn for a night off, I guess. just the guys tonight, I'm gonna go first.
[00:02:02] Adam's Triumph
[00:02:02] Adam: I'm gonna start us off with a triumph. it's a bit of a personal triumph, but, so my oldest son is, 14 years old and likes to read, but he tends to only like, you know, graphic novels and Minecraft books and stuff like that.
[00:02:17] Adam: It's hard to get him interested in anything else. We've tried fiction and non-fiction and choose your adventure and you know, like everything you could think to throw at a 14 year old kid, I gave him, wrinkle and Time and, you know, whatever. Lots of stuff he game and nothing really sticks. and I've been driving him at two and from school occasionally lately, and I like to listen to audiobooks in the car.
[00:02:39] Adam: And, he was listening to one with me the other day and got really into it. And so now he's like, don't listen without me. So we're, we're, I, I got maybe about halfway through the book before he heard, but I caught him up, you know, I gave him the, the, the TLDR on the book. and, so, so he is really interested and, and I'm just, I, I'm trying not to say anything directly to him about it.
[00:03:02] Adam: I don't wanna like, you know, scare him away, but I'm so glad that he's like interested in something other than YouTube shorts, and. you know, and, and it's an interest that we share. So it's fun. The, the only problem is, you know, I'm driving him to school and then I have to, you know, he, I drop him off at school and then I turn around and leave and I can't listen to the book without him anymore.
[00:03:23] Adam: So now I have to have like two books going at the same time, or I listen to podcasts or something. So it, it's tough cuz I'm really into the book too. what we're reading actually, it's called, Columbus Day. It's Expeditionary Force Book one.
[00:03:35] Tim: Oh, that's a good book. I enjoy. Yeah, I've got that too.
[00:03:40] Adam: so it is written by Craig Allison, Allison, and narrated by Archie Bray.
[00:03:43] Adam: Aie Bray has read a whole bunch of books that I really like. He's, I guess, real big narrator in the, sci-fi space, and he does a lot of good voices, so we're really enjoying it.
[00:03:51] Tim: It that, that book's, it's funny too. That whole series is funny.
[00:03:54] Adam: yeah, it's a long series.
[00:03:56] Tim: Yeah. It's like 15 books. Like the guy doesn't know how to end the story. I don't think
[00:03:59] Adam: it's a, it's the New Game of Thrones, I guess.
[00:04:02] Tim: It's like, just finish it already.
[00:04:05] Adam: Yep. So, you know, personal, but, I'm calling it a triumph. I'm looking forward to getting back in the car with them again soon. So,
[00:04:11] Tim: That's cool.
[00:04:12] Adam: yeah. How about you, Ben?
[00:04:13] Ben's Triumph
[00:04:13] Ben: I'm gonna go with the triumph, but first I just wanna comment on the, on the. Prevalence of, of shorts and reels and, and tos and everything. I, I, I have several times tried to hide reels in my Facebook feed and for whatever reason they keep coming back. I'm, I'm always so angry at them, like, I'll, I'll start watching them and I'm just like, well, this one was awful.
[00:04:32] Ben: And then I'll be like, well, maybe the next one won't be awful, so I'll go to the next one. And it's awful. Also, they're like, all of the ones that I click on are awful. And then there's so many where someone took a regular size video and clearly just recut it to be tall and narrow. And it's like half the time the person who is the main shot is like, barely even in the frame.
[00:04:52] Ben: And it just, it makes me so angry. Yeah. I'm just like, Ugh.
[00:04:56] Tim: This would, this would be a hot, an old, a hot take from an old man
[00:05:00] Adam: Yeah,
[00:05:01] Tim: brought to you by D
[00:05:04] Adam: I'm just waiting for like, you know, Microsoft teams to add, shorts or whatever,
[00:05:08] Tim: Oh God,
[00:05:09] Adam: reels,
[00:05:10] Tim: Briles.
[00:05:11] Ben: I don't know. I just, I, it feels, it feels like such a, a tension suck to me. Like I, I feel myself slipping into it and it makes me angry that I'm slipping into it.
[00:05:21] Adam: it's a whole different mode of interacting with a social media site, right? Like on, on everything else, YouTube, Facebook, whatever. You tend to go look for something. I guess on Facebook you kind of just, the default mode is, scroll through the feed, but they have, you know, videos and stuff too. But on TikTok and on YouTube shorts and stuff, you don't necessarily choose what to watch.
[00:05:42] Adam: I mean, you can, but it's a lot more work. instead you just kind of go in and you say, okay, start feeding my eyeballs and I'll tell you when to stop.
[00:05:50] Adam: and
[00:05:52] Tim: Yeah.
[00:05:54] Ben: Yeah. Well, actually on, I think it was the Gadget Lab podcast this morning. They were just talking about, Kids use TikTok to search more than they do at Google,
[00:06:05] Adam: Wow,
[00:06:06] Ben: just blows my mind. I, I, I don't know, it's just a whole new world.
[00:06:10] Adam: That doesn't make sense to me. But I'm not that surprised. Like I, you know, I, I remember being on the other end of that situation where people are like, why would you search for things on YouTube first? But that's, you know, that's where I go to learn stuff most of the time now.
[00:06:24] Ben: I hear you. Anyway, so I was gonna talk about my triumph for fail. I'm gonna go with triumph and, that's that. six weeks ago, I, I took a chunk of work at work and I estimated it out at six weeks, which we'll put it for January 27th, which is tomorrow at the time of this recording. And, six weeks is, is a very long period of time for me when it comes to estimation.
[00:06:46] Ben: Most of the, stuff that I bite off at work, it's like a couple of days to maybe a week. and that I'm, I'm pretty much always spot on in terms of estimations. So the six weeks, it turns out that I'm not gonna quite make it under the wire. I've had some interrupt driven things come up at work. I've had, some family emergency stuff come up that sent me back a couple of days, but for the most part, I feel like I'm gonna come in pretty close on that six weeks.
[00:07:11] Ben: you know, I anticipate probably being able to deliver maybe midweek next week. And, I'm just pretty proud of that. I think, I, I was hoping to have under promised and over-delivered, and I didn't quite pull through with that, but, hey, I mean, that's why you pad stuff for the
[00:07:28] Ben: unexpected.
[00:07:29] Adam: are you, gonna miss it by like a day or two or are we talking like a week
[00:07:33] Ben: I, I, I think like as of the end of day today, which is the day before I estimated the due, I, I, I think it's only gonna take me maybe another two or three days. So I'm gonna be pretty close.
[00:07:44] Adam: Okay.
[00:07:45] Ben: Yeah.
[00:07:46] Adam: I would not be upset with that much, slip
[00:07:48] Ben: Yeah. And, and, and I don't know. I like to think that my estimating abilities are getting better and better over time.
[00:07:55] Ben: And I, and I, and I do honestly believe that's true, mostly because I just assume everything is more complicated than it's gonna be. And, and I, and I build the estimate based on that. My estimations take like 30 seconds though. It's not like I'm spending , it's not like I'm spending like four hours away in the pros and cons.
[00:08:14] Tim: it's a gut check,
[00:08:15] Ben: Yeah, it's totally a gut check.
[00:08:17] Adam: yeah, it's, it's like, you know how we talk about if you don't have tests, that you're not refactoring, you're just changing You're not actually estimating, you're just guessing.
[00:08:26] Ben: I look at it and, and it, it's like my brain basically goes, that's way more than a week of work. that's probably not quite two months. Let's go six weeks.
[00:08:38] Tim: T T-shirt size it.
[00:08:40] Ben: Yeah, but I do think, I mean, maybe I'm just blowing smoke up my own hiny here, but, I do feel
[00:08:46] Ben: like
[00:08:46] Tim: like to see that
[00:08:49] Ben: I do feel like
[00:08:49] Adam: like tubes or
[00:08:51] Ben: it's a, it's a complicated, series of contraptions. I do feel like you get better at this stuff and I'm, and I just, I'm excited to see my estimations come in pretty close to target.
[00:09:04] Adam: Good for you, man.
[00:09:05] Ben: yeah, that's me. That's me. Tim, what about you?
[00:09:08] Tim's Triumph
[00:09:08] Tim: Yeah, so I gotta try have all three of us got triumphs. That's, that's great. Yeah. I, I got, I got two of them. One work-related, one personal, so on the Workfront. So I do a lot of SMS messaging, sending messages, reminding people your bills due, or here's your receipt, or whatever. And there's just, United States says some rather convoluted, rules when it comes to sending SMS messages. So if you, if you're sending from a 10 digit phone number, so that's just your regular local, you know, phone number. You can do one SMS message, one text message every four seconds. That's, you know, when you have to send tens of thousands, that's just, it's not gonna
[00:09:47] Ben: it's crazy.
[00:09:48] Tim: and then if you have a toll-free number, it's a little bit better and it's 10 messages per se, per second, that's, that's better, but still not quite good enough.
[00:09:56] Tim: And you have to, there's this. Convoluted, verification process where you have to submit your use case. And I get what they're doing. They're trying to stop these spammers, but they're not doing a very good job, cuz I get tons of spam all the time. But, mine's a legitimate use case. You know, these are people that have a insurance policy and they need to be notified about stuff that's happening in their policy and they've, they've opted into it.
[00:10:18] Tim: The problem is that, that the process that to, to get it verified, the, the, the telecoms are so backed up. It's like I've had them sitting out there for six months
[00:10:28] Ben: Oh.
[00:10:29] Tim: and they've not gotten to them, and there's no way, there's no way to contact them. No way to find out the status. You can ask, but no one ever responds.
[00:10:37] Tim: So it's, it's quite, it's quite, annoying. And then you can do short codes. So short codes is like, not a phone number. It's like the, I dunno if you
[00:10:44] Adam: like a five digit number.
[00:10:45] Tim: yeah. Five digit number or whatever. and you can do a hundred, but that is super expensive. I mean, that's really super expensive to, to get a short code.
[00:10:53] Tim: So I've been playing around with pooling. So I have a pool of, you know, about 50 different local numbers that I just rotate through and rate limit. So it's one for a second and it actually works out cheaper than, than getting the tollfree number. and, but the thing is, I gotta track, you know, when people opt out because it's a different number, so I gotta make sure I'm blacklisting and not sending, cuz you don't wanna get in trouble for, for, so worked on that today and got it pretty well working.
[00:11:19] Tim: So tomorrow we're gonna test it out and, and, and pop it in production for a little bit and see how that runs. So,
[00:11:26] Adam: That's pretty.
[00:11:27] Ben: Yeah, that's really cool.
[00:11:29] Tim: So, so setting that, and then also you have to have, you know, regulations about certain states. There's like certain times you can or not, you know, it's like if they're in, you know, Kansas or whatever, you can't send them a message at 2:00 AM It's gotta be between, between like nine and nine, 8:00 AM and I think 9:00 PM something like that.
[00:11:49] Tim: So you, so you gotta track where they are located. Of course you don't know where they physically are. They could be in France, you know, visiting . So, but whatever the number's located, that's what you do. So, but yeah, got that working in the day. I was super happy with that. and so, yeah, we'll see how that, how that works now cuz started getting a lot of, I'm coming from an 800 number that I ha I had the, one of the 800 numbers.
[00:12:09] Tim: I have toll free numbers. I have was grandfathered in because before they started putting these rules in place, I already had that number. So it's grandfathered, but still I get like 50% of some of the texts I sent are blocked by the carrier and they don't tell you why.
[00:12:25] Ben: Oh,
[00:12:26] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. It just says prohibitive a carrier.
[00:12:28] Tim: Well, why? No, there's no way you can know. So having these different num pool of numbers, and if those start get blocked, I'll just delete that number G. Grab another one. just keep, keep rotating
[00:12:38] Ben: Yo, not. Man, I, I've never thought about this. if, if what I'm about to say has any legal ramifications, then I am 100% making it up. but if it doesn't have legal ramifications, then this may may not be true. we use Twilio at work and I've like literally never thought about anything that you just said, um, which makes me a little un uncomfortable.
[00:12:57] Ben: But, I do know that Twilio, especially over the last six months or something, has sent us, a bunch of notifications where it's like, we see that you send numbers in Uganda. Now in Uganda, you have to register your campaigns like two weeks ahead of time and get approval. And we always just be like, do we send, do we have customers?
[00:13:16] Ben: There is this just like someone spamming, and then we decide whether or not we care. But, I mean, the idea of only sending text messages during certain times of the day, that's, I didn't even, that's not on my radar at all. I didn't know that was a thing.
[00:13:29] Tim: yeah, yeah. And the registration, they have to give an example of what is it? You're texting and, you know, are you, are, are these like advertisements? None of, for us, none of them are. but it's like, you never, and it's like the, the thing where they deny you. Now what do you do now? My 800 number no.
[00:13:45] Tim: Good. I gotta delete it. Grab a new one. so, but fortunately I've separated out, like we have a, the, the only thing I use with these numbers is texting, right? So it doesn't, there we have other numbers that are for their phone tree and their IVR and all that stuff. Cause I don't want them to shut that off.
[00:13:59] Tim: And then, you know, now someone who's sent out, you know, everywhere on their website, everywhere on their bill, this 800 numbers on there, and now it's no good. And they gotta update that. That'll be a nightmare. So I'm glad that's segmented out and it's not tied to that. Anyway, that's my, that's my work related for. Why'd you delete my,
[00:14:18] Adam: I moved it down here to the bottom of the document. I was thinking maybe that would be a good thing to, to say for the afters.
[00:14:23] Tim: okay? I'll save it for the after show. We're gonna talk. So,
[00:14:25] Adam: Go ahead and tease it
[00:14:26] Tim: I'll tease, I won't tease it. Now I do the wild game party. So today I met with my, my former boss who we, we do that for and, got the, got the menu ready for, for this year. So going eating some really Never had this one.
[00:14:40] Tim: I'm excited. It's gonna be really, really weird.
[00:14:41] Adam: and just got a list of animals and you just assume like lungs and testicles for all of them, or
[00:14:47] Tim: yep, yep, yep. So if, if you want to hear what weird, wacky thing I'll be cooking in March, become a Patron and join the after show.
[00:14:57] Adam: All right. You.
[00:15:02] Ben: No, I just, we've been watching this, show, this p b s show called, I think it's called All Creatures Great and Small.
[00:15:08] Tim: Yeah. Love that.
[00:15:09] Ben: yeah. And, it's like every other episode, this farm vet basically is, is shoulder deep in some sort of orifice . And they have, they have like proper anuses and prop vaginas and stuff.
[00:15:24] Ben: I mean, it's, I mean, I assume they're props
[00:15:29] Tim: one would hope
[00:15:32] Adam: Oh, is this a fictional show?
[00:15:34] Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's
[00:15:35] Ben: no. Well, no, no. It's actually based on, I think it's based on that guy's life. Well, it's based on the books by James Harriet and I. Yeah. And I guess they're based on his life.
[00:15:43] Tim: they're kind of loosely based on his life.
[00:15:45] Tim: Yeah.
[00:15:45] Adam: It's said in the thirties and forties.
[00:15:47] Adam: Gotcha.
[00:15:48] Tim: World War II area, era,
[00:15:50] Adam: Okay, so
[00:15:52] Tim: what we talking about?
[00:15:53] What's Driving The Layoffs?
[00:15:53] Adam: you're all fired.
[00:15:55] Tim: Uh,
[00:15:57] Ben: Oh.
[00:15:58] Tim: how will I survive without this salary? You never give.
[00:16:02] Adam: I'm cutting your salary in half. Half of zero.
[00:16:05] Tim: Yeah. Divide by zero.
[00:16:06] Adam: Yeah. so, you know, it's been, as I mentioned earlier, it's like a, a virus going around. Just it feels like everybody's laying off. There was Microsoft and Meta and you know, I dunno who else guys? The,
[00:16:18] Ben: A apple. I think even
[00:16:19] Tim: Go Google.
[00:16:20] Adam: Yeah, Google did a big one.
[00:16:22] Tim: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:23] Adam: Microsoft. Yeah. Microsoft announced that they were doing like, what was it, 10,000 or something and it was, less than 5% of their workforce, which was crazy. Like 200,000 people. anyway,
[00:16:35] Ben: it seems like there's a lot of conspiracy theory, not conspiracy theory, that's not the right term, but it, there's a lot of, you know, after, Elon Musk fired like most of the company, there was, there were people talking about, well, now that all these other, now all these other companies are just seeing what they can get away with in terms of firing people and then blaming it.
[00:16:55] Adam: do you think that Twitter counts as layoffs or is that just an idiot coming in and doing idiot things?
[00:17:02] Tim: Yeah.
[00:17:03] Ben: I think it's, it's just an epidemic of people not being extreme enough.
[00:17:07] Tim: Yeah. I, I, I'm, I'm trying to figure out what, what is driving the layoffs. I, I think part of it is, you know, borrowing money is not cheap anymore. that's gone up a lot. I think part and other part of it is just, you know, tech has gotten to the point where they need, you know, it's been in growth mode pretty much since the.com bust, right?
[00:17:27] Tim: So it's been grow, grow, grow, grow, grow profits, you know, and that people have been profitable. Now it's like, They're still trying to get more profit out. Right? And so at some point when you're kind of at your zenith, the only way you can start making more profit is cutting costs. And the biggest cost in any tech thing is gonna be people.
[00:17:45] Tim: So yeah, I don't, I don't quite get it, why it's happening right now, but yeah, it's, it definitely seems to be going on even, even locally around here. There's some, some tech companies have, have been, been laying people, well I don't say locally, people that are local here that work at companies that they might be located elsewhere but are, are being let go.
[00:18:03] Ben: One, thing that doesn't connect with me necessarily is I've, I've seen some people theorize, or even some companies say that they had staffed up pretty aggressively during the pandemic when it looked like, I dunno, they were gonna need more people to fuel more systems. Which, which I get if you're running something like Zoom or MS Teams or something where it's suddenly a lot of online activity.
[00:18:30] Ben: But if you've been building,
[00:18:32] Adam: I mean, nobody's, somebody's gotta build, you know, reels for Microsoft teams, right? You need people
[00:18:38] Ben: but I just, I just can't imagine that, the pandemic wildly changed so many different businesses. You know, I understand things were driving people online, but if your business built a product that was already providing an online service, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how much you'd actually have to staff up for that because of the pandemic.
[00:18:58] Tim: Yeah, I mean, I don't know either. I, I think part of that might be that there was huge boom boosts right at during the pandemic. And so Wall Street being what they are got like used to that and now they're not getting that same right. So that, that sort of pushback of, well you, you know, wall Street doesn't care, they only care quarter to quarter, what happens.
[00:19:16] Tim: you know, so they're having to find ways. Prove themselves. I, I don't know it, it does confuse me. I don't see any concrete reason, but it definitely, definitely is happening.
[00:19:30] Adam: We have a, a company chat room where we share like tech news, you know, whether it's, you know, last pass had another security breach or more details came out about their security breach or whatever. and then, you know, obviously layoffs makes the, makes the cut for things that we're gonna talk about there.
[00:19:45] Adam: And, I'm, I'm sharing a link with you guys now. There's a Mastodon post with a, a web web comic in it that we'll put in the show notes and it's a, a dinosaur and a raccoon talking to each other. And basically the raccoon is standing there saying, like, I take responsibility for, for, you know, the, the things that led to this layoff or, and, and, and it's like it means nothing, right?
[00:20:07] Tim: It's just you can point the finger at me. That's all that it means, you know, like, I'm not gonna take a pay cut. I'm not, because I guess that was probably inspired because. In Google's layoff announcement, Sunar Sunar Pacha, I'm sorry if I mispronounce his name. He's gonna be mad at you.
[00:20:23] Adam: the, the CEO of, of Alphabet. you know, he is like, I take full responsibility for this.
[00:20:29] Adam: Meanwhile, that's, it's just a sentence in the announcement. Like, that's, that's all it is. You know, he's not taking a pay cut, he's not giving up Benny's. He's not nothing.
[00:20:37] Tim: yeah. It, it basically means, Hey, you guys wanna be upset, be upset at me, but I'm still keeping my job. And you're , you're hitting unemployment line.
[00:20:45] Tim: So, so be mad at me, but I don't care.
[00:20:49] Adam: Yeah. So,
[00:20:51] Ben: Well, the Facebook guy, what's his name? All of a sudden I'm drawing a blank. Zuckerberg, I think he sort of said the same thing. He was like, sorry, we overstaffed my bad.
[00:21:00] Adam: yeah.
[00:21:01] Tim: we over, we overspent on stupid headsets and, and no legs.
[00:21:08] Tim:
[00:21:08] What's It Like To Be Layed Off?
[00:21:08] Tim: so have any of us here ever been laid off or fired?
[00:21:11] Adam: I, I actually, I've been fired one time. it was from my first real job, which was not a tech job. I got fired from T C B Y,
[00:21:19] Tim: This can't be yogurt.
[00:21:21] Adam: Yeah. Hey, it's the, the country's best Yogurt is what it
[00:21:25] Tim: what were you, what were you, what were you putting in that yogurt
[00:21:29] Adam: I got fired for having a whipped cream fight in the store with the other person I was working with.
[00:21:34] Ben: This is how every, porn video
[00:21:37] Adam: Yeah.
[00:21:38] Tim: And you seen them all? I guess Ben. Huh?
[00:21:40] Adam: Yeah. The, sure, I'll, why not? I'll get into it a little bit. so I. I had a whipped cream fight with a, a, a more senior employee in the store. Like she started it. She had been there for years more than I had. She started it. And so, yeah, sure, I played along and then, you know, like a day or two later, the, the store owner called my house and I wasn't there.
[00:22:00] Adam: She had, I guess she was calling to, to fire me. I wasn't there. My dad answered the phone. So she just told my dad, she's like, tell him don't bother coming back in. He's fired.
[00:22:08] Adam: Which, that's a super professional move right
[00:22:09] Adam: there, Right.
[00:22:11] Adam: but, and, and so the reasoning she gave was that the cameras in the store recorded it.
[00:22:16] Adam: Well, there were no, there. I mean there were camera, you know, little, things that looked like cameras in the store, you know, simulated cameras, but they didn't, there was no recordings. There was nothing like, you know, it was, security by posturing or whatever.
[00:22:28] Tim: you sound like you never got over it.
[00:22:31] Adam: I'm fine. I don't care. I had a great time.
[00:22:34] Adam: I, I, I probably ate my weight in waffle cones there. so, the thing that pissed me off about it was that since there were no cameras, and I know we did a really good job of cleaning up after the mess, that means that the girl that was working there turned me in.
[00:22:47] Adam: like she, she basically ratted me out. And, I
[00:22:50] Adam: also happen to know, I, I don't know about that, but I also happen to know that she, would occasionally steal from the register
[00:22:56] Tim: So
[00:22:57] Tim: yeah. Yeah,
[00:22:58] Ben: got caught and then had to take you down.
[00:23:00] Adam: maybe, yeah, I don't know.
[00:23:02] Tim: yeah. Yeah. I've, I've never, never been fired or, or laid off. I mean, sure. At some point in my life, we'll see. But, I imagine it's gotta be an awful, awful feeling and people that I've known who've been let. Fire. Well, I, I, I see Fired is different. Fired is basically, Hey, this isn't working out, laid off.
[00:23:20] Tim: What's going on right now is sort of, Hey, the company's not doing so great. you know, and so we're gonna have to cut some expenses. And, you guys are at, and, you know, they, they, 10 people, a hundred people, 10,000 people, however million is, and that's gotta feel awful because I imagine you just think, why me?
[00:23:36] Tim: Right? Why was, why, why was I chosen? What, what was it about me that I wasn't important enough? And that person was
[00:23:44] Adam: Right. And it, it's, so often it's not even about your skills. It's about we've decided that this particular arm of the business, like this product, we're gon, we're not gonna continue investing in or whatever. And, and instead of, can we keep this person and find, you know, a, a job for them in a profitable area of the business, they're just like, well, let's, let's just cut the person because that's the expensive part.
[00:24:07] Adam: And, and that way we can keep posting records, shareholder profits, or whatever, you know.
[00:24:13] Tim: Yeah. And that's what it's driven by. I mean, ultimately the company, if it's traded is, you know, is their responsibility is to the shareholders. But I remember, uh, Nintendo when we, you basically tanked, it was, you know, didn't do very well. The executives all took pay cuts rather than having to, to lay people off.
[00:24:30] Tim: Right. And so we don't see that here a whole lot. You know, the, you talked about the guy from Alphabet haven't read that he's taking a pay cut. right. So I, I think it, it feels awful. It feels personal, I imagine. But I think the first thing to do is know it's not your fault, right? If, if we're your fault they would've fired you.
[00:24:48] Tim: They wouldn't have, you wouldn't have been part of a group of layoffs. It's not your fault, it's the company made a decision and you are just part of the friendly fire
[00:24:56] Adam: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not, yeah, they're not, getting rid of people that are doing a bad job. They're getting rid of people that work on a thing that no longer is a, a productive thing for the company to invest in.
[00:25:06] Tim: Right. And I imagine, I mean, that's easy to say, right? Not having gone through that to, to say, Hey, it's not my fault, whatever. But I imagine it, it just gotta feel like such a, a gut punch to go through.
[00:25:19] Which Departments?
[00:25:19] Ben: Has there, have you seen any data on the types of jobs that are being included in these layoffs? Meaning like managerial, engineering support, quality assurance? You know, it's, I immediately, of course, go into full panic. you know, imposter syndrome, like, oh, I'm so lucky I got this job. I'll never be able to find another engineering job.
[00:25:40] Ben: But like, I don't know, I don't know if there's any concentration around the types of jobs.
[00:25:44] Adam: I, I have not seen any, like, aggregate data. It subjectively feels like when I do read these announcements that most of the time they're saying like, it, it cuts across all areas of the organization. So,
[00:25:58] Ben: that's what we had at work when we had our reduction in force to put it nicely last year.
[00:26:03] Ben: Um, yeah, it, it was across all departments basically that we were at, at both trying to flatten the organization. There was a lot of middle management and I think we got rid of a lot of the middle management.
[00:26:16] Ben: But then there was also just every department got slashed as well.
[00:26:20] Tim: I, I did read something. It was yesterday morning, one of the newsletters that I get. it just basically said that, you know, all these people that are getting fired from tech jobs are, are usually finding new work at sometimes at better pay pretty quickly. Cuz the job market is still really, really good right now in the United States.
[00:26:37] Adam: you just gotta find something that people are, are interested in investing in right now.
[00:26:41] Tim: Yeah, for sure. So I, I think, you know, the, what we need to focus on is, you know, how do you survive that? How do you survive that, that layoff because it's, it's like everything in life. Ha you know, your, your job had a beginning and it had an end. Your time being unemployed had a beginning and it will have an end.
[00:27:00] Tim: So, you know, what do you do in the meantime? And, and I'll just give you a, a story. So yesterday a guy who used to work for, for us got laid off, in
[00:27:10] Tim: part of a, you. Not from our company. No. He was, he was with us and he went to another company and he'd been there for coup about a year, year and a half.
[00:27:18] Tim: And he, he got laid off yesterday and he immediately picked up the phone, called our company . And and, you know, we, we liked having him. He was a great guy. We didn't want him to leave in the first place and immediately he got hired. So he's starting Monday. So I, I think probably one of the, you know, lesson from that is if you do leave a company, even if you weren't, you're not a hundred percent happy or, you know, whatever.
[00:27:39] Tim: if you leave a company for whatever reason, don't burn your bridges.
[00:27:42] Ben: Mm.
[00:27:43] Tim: Cuz you might, you might need to come back over that bridge. Right. So, and, and you know, from our standpoint, f from our standpoint, it's like, yeah, we're gonna hire you. You're already trained. You know, you, he was here for, he was, he was in our company like 14 years I think.
[00:27:57] Tim: And so it's like he's got, he's got plenty of knowledge that he can just jump right back in. We'd rather have that than hire some person off the street and spend six months training him up. And maybe he'll work out, maybe it won't. So,
[00:28:11] Ben: We had a guy here at work, this is probably likes. Six years ago. And, I don't even remember why he was so upset. I, I think he was having a lot of trouble with his manager and trouble finding work that he wanted do anyway, he was really unhappy and he told me, he confided in me, he's like, Hey, I just want you to know I'm, I'm gonna put my notice tomorrow.
[00:28:31] Ben: And I said, okay. You know, I understand. Just, you know, whatever you do, don't, don't burn any bridges, cuz you never know. You might want to come back. Goes, oh, oh, no, I'm burning it all to the ground.
[00:28:43] Adam: Did you Jerry McGuire on his way out?
[00:28:47] Tim: Wow. Did he
[00:28:49] Ben: I think so, yeah, I, I, I think he basically just made it very clear why he was so unhappy with a lot of the managers that he had,
[00:28:58] Tim: Yeah. what happens though, you know, years later, a couple years later when those managers are gone? Right. If he felt that way, maybe other people did.
[00:29:03] Ben: right.
[00:29:04] Tim: right?
[00:29:05] Ben: Yeah. He just needed the catharsis, I guess.
[00:29:08] Tim: Yeah, I guess so. I I get that. I get that.
[00:29:11] Surviving A Layoff
[00:29:11] Adam: All right. So I, if the angle that we're trying to take on this discussion is advice that we can provide having never been laid off, like what, what can you possibly do to set yourself up to survive a layoff? Like if you do get laid off, how are you gonna, you know, make the best of the situation and make it to your next job?
[00:29:29] Adam: I think the first thing that comes to mind for me is, you know, high salaries are great, but, you know, you gotta consciously choose to live below your means so that you have money that you can put away in savings. And also so that you don't expect caviar every night at dinner. You know, just cuz you can afford it doesn't mean you should eat it.
[00:29:47] Adam: Right. Like,
[00:29:49] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. You gotta have a nest egg, right? You gotta have a plan, you know, for when things dry up. And if you don't, I mean, You're kind of living on the edge, and maybe if you're single, you can live that way. But it's like if you got responsibilities and you know, you're, you're providing for your family, it's like you don't wanna leave them in the lurch, you know, unemploy, unemployment, you know, only pays so much so.
[00:30:10] Ben: Uh, yeah, it does make me very nervous to think about it. I, I used to feel like I had a better sense of my finances because I would, every month I would have to log into my bank account and pay the credit card bill. and then we put that on autopay and, and like ever since then, I feel completely disconnected. From like where we could be cutting money or where we're spending too much. Cause, and my, my, the financial organization in our family basically gets my wife's taken over all of that stuff, which has been great for me. but I'm, I'm like, it's this black box now. It makes me very nervous. I'm constantly like in this state of fear that we're, we're eating into our savings too much or we're, I, I dunno, living dangerously, it's very, it makes me very nervous, but I don't know.
[00:30:57] Ben: I dunno. I, I, I mean, I love that she's taken that responsibility. Like, I don't want to take that responsibility back just to make myself comfortable. I don't, I never know how to approach it.
[00:31:06] Adam: It, it's, it's, I'm gonna say it, it's funny. the, I'm in a very similar situation. My, my wife has always been better with money than I, have been. Like, you know, when I was in college, I got a credit card and immediately, like, racked up a whole bunch of debt and all that. And, and when we got married, she had savings and I had debt.
[00:31:23] Adam: And we were like, it doesn't make sense for, you know, her to inherit my debt and we have to start making all these payments for, you know, the next 20 years. So she just took some of her money and paid off my credit card debt. And at that moment I was like, You clearly are better at money than me. So whatever you say goes.
[00:31:41] Adam: And so she, she by default became like the, the house budget, guru and all that. And, you know, we, we set the budget for the year together and everything, but she manages the money, just like you're talking about. You know, like she's, she's got her finger on the pulse of the, the family purse strings and I get an allowance that I always go over, And, it's, it's, I think it's good for me, right? Like as long as I know where I'm at with my allowance and yes, I go over, but I try really hard to stay close to it. I know we're doing okay cuz I know that, you know, like you're saying, we've got a nest egg, we've got our, we've got our cash savings, you know, emergency fund, we've got investments for ourselves, we've got investments for our kids and other stuff.
[00:32:18] Adam: And I'm like, and, and our 401ks and all that. So,
[00:32:22] Tim: Yeah,
[00:32:24] Adam: I, I'm, I don't know. I feel like I'm starting to become less relatable. Sorry for being, marrying somebody who's very responsible with money, but it's worked well for me.
[00:32:34] Tim: Some of the best advice someone gave me when I first started working was to have, so we had multiple accounts. One, we have like paychecks divided up into, I have one bank account that is strictly this, these are your bills you have to pay, right? So automatically it comes out of there. I barely ever log into it.
[00:32:51] Tim: The only thing it does is these, you know, your mortgage, your utilities, all these other things, fixed, fixed amounts. And then if it's not a fixed amount, I kind of average it out over the year. And, you know, my, my electric bill has a $200 credit on it. My internet has a credit, you know, so I'm slightly overpaying, but I, I just to make sure I
[00:33:06] Tim: don't get behind.
[00:33:08] Tim: And then you have another fund that you actually have your debit card for, that's your discretionary money, and you can run that to zero if you want. but that's your discretionary funds. and that really helped out. And then out of the fixed funds also is, you know, it goes to investments and, you know, going with the Fidelity account and, and, company I work for, you know, fortunately they have a really good bonus program.
[00:33:27] Tim: So all that goes into savings and nest egg and retirement, and. Part of that's cash, part of its stock, and the stock does extremely well. So, yeah, I, I think just, just being conscious about, you know, making it hard for you to spend every penny that you earn, make, put, put barriers there so that if you do lose your job, you know, you, you, you don't have to go, oh my God, I gotta go sell plasma or something.
[00:33:51] Tim: Yeah. If you don't have a, a, a significant other that's better with money than you are to, to put up those guardrails, then I think that sounds like a great idea. Like separating bank accounts or something.
[00:34:03] Tim: Yeah.
[00:34:04] Ben: Well that, that is the thing that I get nervous about too because I, I do feel like we're running up against that. We're spending everything that we make right now, and, and that's not, you know, if it's like, that's fine if everything's running smoothly, but the moment there's a bump,
[00:34:20] Ben: such as losing your job or you know, some sort of unexpected cost of anything, then it's you, you.
[00:34:26] Adam: eats a button and you gotta get it out. Or
[00:34:27] Ben: Yeah, exactly. Then, then it's like you radically have to adjust and that's, I I, I wish we could do it more incrementally, so it's more of a lifestyle choice than it is an emergency.
[00:34:39] Tim: Yeah,
[00:34:40] Ben: It's tough once there's other people involved, you know, if it was like just me on my own, I could, you know, stand in the dark at my kitchen counter eating peanut butter and jellies, but like, you know, you know, you, you have other people now that, that have lifestyles.
[00:34:53] Ben: They wanna live and dogs and it's really tough.
[00:34:57] Adam: I just couldn't imagine Ben's, you know, eating peanut butter and jelly in the dark so that he can see an extra movie every month
[00:35:02] Adam: in the
[00:35:02] Ben: I I, when my wife is not here, I literally eat every meal standing up I, I got time to sit down , I just stand at the counter and I hunch over whatever plate or bowl, and I eat as fast as I can so I can get back to whatever I was doing. That's, that's my every meal when I'm alone.
[00:35:21] Adam: When, yeah. So I, I work, I guess, I think we all on this podcast work from home right now. the, my usual approach to like lunch is, you know, I go down and I make whatever I'm going to eat, and while I'm making whatever I'm gonna eat, I'm listening to my current audiobook or
[00:35:35] Ben: Yo, a hundred percent
[00:35:36] Adam: and then I sit at the table and I eat my food and it takes like five to 10 minutes.
[00:35:42] Adam: And then I'm like, okay, well for my own mental wellbeing, my own mental health, I get an hour lunch break and I'm gonna take that hour lunch break and I'll sit there and I will continue to read. Maybe I'll snuggle with the dog. Maybe, you know, maybe I'll play a video game or watch YouTube or something, but like, that's my, my time and,
[00:35:59] Adam: uh, you
[00:36:00] Ben: Can I 1000% agree with you. For the last 20 years, I have been taking an hour lunch break, and I've never regretted it whatsoever. It's been, it's been such a key ingredient to, I think, the sustainability of my work and my mental San.
[00:36:17] Adam: Yep. And you know what, the other thing that I don't feel, the, the other reason that I don't feel bad about taking my full hour is like, I don't smoke. I don't take smoke breaks. Like,
[00:36:25] Adam: you know, somebody who smokes is gonna take what, 4, 5, 6, 10 minute breaks every day, so, yeah.
[00:36:33] Ben: a hundred percent.
[00:36:34] Support System
[00:36:34] Tim: For sure. And I was thinking, you know, sad thing, I guess because people are so mobile these days, a lot, a lot of folks might not have a, a, a social support network,
[00:36:45] Tim: right? so if you can build, build that, or you know, I don't know. You know, some people, like for instance, if everything just went completely to crap, I know that I have family members.
[00:36:55] Tim: I could say, Hey, we're homeless. Can we come live with you and bum off you for a couple months? , you know, they'd be fine. But, you know, not everyone has that. So like building up sort of a social group of, of people some sort of, you know, safety net o of, of human support that can help you emotionally, even financially maybe when you go through that.
[00:37:17] Tim: I is kind of important to think about now rather than later.
[00:37:20] Adam: So instead of Amazon S3, it should be Human S3
[00:37:23] Adam: social Support system.
[00:37:25] Tim: yeah. Acronym. Yeah.
[00:37:28] Adam: Yeah, I, I totally agree. you know, that's part of the reason that my wife and I live where we do is because we are 20 minutes from my sister-in-law's house and less than an hour from her parents' house. and we're only like an hour and a half from my mom's house and my brother lives like an hour and a half away.
[00:37:47] Adam: And you know, so we support them and they support us. You know, we get together for holidays, but also like if something comes up, like my brother's wife was in a car accident and he called me at 11 o'clock at night one night. It's like, I need you to come pick me up and this, you know, I need you to bring X, Y, and Z and I need you to come right now.
[00:38:02] Adam: I'm really sorry, but hit the road. And I was like, I've already got my shoes on. Let's go
[00:38:07] Tim: Yeah. Yeah, that's good to have. Not everybody has that, but if, if you can find a way to build that, that, that's awesome.
[00:38:14] Networking
[00:38:14] Adam: Yeah. So then sort of in a similar vein, you know, having that. Support system around you that you can fall back on on hard times is good. the other, sort of, the other side of that coin is networking is like, you know, it is such an important part of getting a new job, right? If you do get laid off, you want to have some idea of, you know, where you should start sniffing around for your next job.
[00:38:37] Adam: And I think that, you know, knowing that, you know, you met certain people at conferences or you talked to them in, you know, on social media or whatever, then, you know, networking is important, right? You, you build up relationships with people and they're more likely to trust you already and hire you because trust is an important part of that hiring transaction.
[00:38:59] Adam: And so you don't want to wait until you've been laid off to build that network, right? You gotta be networking all the time. And, just like you were saying earlier, Tim, you know, you guys rehired that guy and I'm sure that it wasn't because. It wasn't just because you knew he was a, a fine previous worker and that, he, you know, he was already trained, but also you guys had trust with him cuz you've spent some time with him and he didn't burn the bridge on the way out and he, you know, wa did kind of keep lines of communication open,
[00:39:27] Tim: Yeah. as far as networking, I, you know, it's like I go to. A lot of industry conferences and, you know, I, I run up against people that are effectively competitors, but I, I, you know, I'm always nice to the competitors, right? One, I wanna learn from them, right? Because they're, I wanna find out about them. But number two, it's like, you know, who's gonna be most likely to hire me?
[00:39:47] Tim: You know, a competitor definitely wants another competitor's person, right? they, they definitely won't because they're, you know, they have, there's value in knowing what the other person knows. I try to hire competitors all the time.
[00:39:59] Adam: Yeah.
[00:40:02] Tim: So, but yeah, so competitors could be networks, you know, people that used to work with, you know, even maybe years ago, networking.
[00:40:10] Tim: This podcast could be basically a network, right? Yeah. I got a podcast, you know? Oh yeah. And then just, you know, asking anybody and everyone you know. Do you know anyone who's hiring? Just, just shamelessly. Ask anybody and everybody, and you'll find it, it'll, it'll turn up.
[00:40:26] Adam: Yeah. I mean, that's a, the other thing, so the, one of the business things that I follow, is more of a woodworking, entrepreneurship sort of thing. But one of the pieces of advice that they give constantly is like, you know, you run into people all the time. You probably, if you're not, you know, at, at home hermit, if you're actually going out into the world, you're running into people that you know from various things and like, Hey, I haven't seen you in a while.
[00:40:44] Adam: What's you up to? And people are always just like, oh, you know, busy, good, whatever. If you flip that script and you say, actually, I'm starting a business, or actually I'm looking for a job, or whatever, then you know, if you, if you mention that to people, they can go, oh, actually we're hiring, you know?
[00:40:59] Tim: Yeah. Or they know someone who
[00:41:01] Adam: Yeah.
[00:41:02] Ben: I used to have a, a lot of anxiety about the concept of networking cuz whenever, whenever anyone ever mentioned, oh, work in your network, I always had this mental image of like schmoozing at dinner parties and like being a salesperson. And as an introvert, that's like a very high. Kind of context. And I was listening to a podcast, I can't remember which one it was a couple of weeks ago, and someone, you know, made all this layoffs.
[00:41:30] Ben: People were talking about the network stuff and and someone said, oh, you know, I'm not really good at, at, growing my network. And, and one of the other hosts was like, do you ever talk to anyone about tech? And they were like, well, yeah, of course. He goes, you're networking. That's what networking is like.
[00:41:43] Ben: It's, it's, it's not as much as you think it is. Like you run into someone and you ask 'em a question done. You built a network,
[00:41:49] Adam: Yeah, you're just building relationships.
[00:41:51] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. So that, it, it, you know, just like historically it's always seemed like much more of a, of an actively engaged kind of thing, which made me so nervous. Like, oh, I'm not doing that.
[00:42:00] Ben: I'm falling behind. But that it can be more, pass is not the right word, but just maybe not so active in the networking sense, but just like I'm being a people and I'm connecting with other people, like that's enough. And that, that gives me comfort.
[00:42:16] Adam: Do you guys ever, like talk to somebody who you haven't talked to in a long, long time and they remember details about like you and your family and your life that. Nobody has any like right. To, to be able to remember, oh, my, and I, I can't tell. There's this one person that I talked to like maybe every three to five years, like one time every three to five years.
[00:42:37] Adam: And every single time they pull out like my kids' names and, you know, how's this and that going? And I'm like, I barely remember your last name,
[00:42:49] Ben: Yo. That's like a superpower. Some people are just so good at that.
[00:42:52] Adam: it makes me wonder if they have like a c R M that they consult before they call me or something. They're like, alright, these are his kids' names. This is the stuff that I know about him.
[00:43:02] Tim: Yeah. Some people are just wired that way. Right? They just, they just, they like information about people. I, I was thinking so if, if you're in a situation where there's a, a significant number of people that are also laid off the same time as you, you sort of have this cohort of people that are also looking for jobs that are very similar to the background that you're from.
[00:43:21] Tim: And so, you know, make a pact with, with folks, you know, say, you know, commiserate over, oh, it sucks that we, that we got laid off, but hey, if you find anything, let me know. Or, you know, if you get hired somewhere or, or you know, whatever you're looking, and I'll do the same Right. And that I can vouch for you, you can vouch for me.
[00:43:35] Tim: And that that kind of like, you know, spreads your net a little bit wider.
[00:43:40] Adam: Yeah. Put in a good word for each other.
[00:43:42] Tim: Yep.
[00:43:42] Side Hustles
[00:43:42] Adam: That's a good idea. What about, like side hustles and other ways that you can not be so dependent on your, your, like your primary nine to five job? What other,
[00:43:55] Ben: That, that's a
[00:43:56] Adam: obviously having a side hustle by itself can, can be helpful. Cause then if you need to, you can spend your newfound free time trying to expand that. But, what else?
[00:44:06] Tim: well, I'm still waiting. Get paid for this side hustle on this podcast,
[00:44:12] Ben: did you not get those stickers?
[00:44:15] Adam: Yeah, you got a desk mat. What do you want?
[00:44:17] Tim: to pay for elr.
[00:44:21] Ben: I, the, the idea of side hustle is, I mean, I feel like in good times I can't come up with a good side hustle, let alone when I'm stressed or feeling overburdened.
[00:44:32] Adam: Yeah. I mean, it's not for everybody.
[00:44:34] Tim: I'm just gonna go work at Wendy.
[00:44:36] Adam: Nobody. Haven't you heard nobody wants to work anymore, Tim.
[00:44:40] Tim: Well, yeah. Not for what they're paying.
[00:44:43] Adam: Exactly.
[00:44:43] Quiet Quitting
[00:44:43] Ben: up the term quiet, quitting the other day. That was getting thrown around a lot. Have you, have you guys guys ever heard of that?
[00:44:49] Adam: I've heard it. I, I don't know that I know a hundred percent what it means. Why don't you go ahead and,
[00:44:53] Ben: Fr from what I, I Googled, it's that you're not explicitly quitting, you're just doing the absolute bare minimum work to not get fired. So I think
[00:45:02] Tim: mo that's most people I know.
[00:45:06] Adam: I
[00:45:06] Ben: I don't
[00:45:06] Ben: know.
[00:45:06] Tim: new thing.
[00:45:07] Adam: I, I thought you were, you were like halfway through that explanation. I was thinking like, what? So they're just ghosting their employer. They just stop showing up, or
[00:45:15] Ben: Yeah. So I don't, I don't, I I don't know anything about the origin of this movement or, or what trend it was or when it started to happen. I don't, I don't know. I just had to look it up the other day.
[00:45:23] Adam: if that's what it is, I think it's poorly named.
[00:45:26] Tim: Hmm. I, I've noticed it's, it's kind of took off like post, like, you know, main covid. And I think a lot of it is, you know, a lot of people working remotely. You got a lot of man, you know, employees love working remotely from what most people say, but managers seem to dislike it cuz they assume nobody's
[00:45:44] Tim: working. But then you have these, some people who are like, you know what, don't really like this job, but I can't be bothered to quit right now, so I'm gonna make 'em fire me. They're gonna have to fire me. Right. I'm not gonna quit. I'm just gonna like, I'm, you know, I'll do the bare minimum show up to the meetings, but like, not really do any
[00:46:01] Tim: work. Yeah,
[00:46:03] Adam: It makes a certain amount of sense, right? Like if, if companies are gonna be extremely, business-like, right, like, sorry for your luck, but the company can't afford to keep you on, and also at the same time post record profits, so we're gonna cut
[00:46:19] Adam: you. Then you shouldn't feel so bad about, you know, like doing the bare minimum so that they don't cut you.
[00:46:25] Tim: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:28] Adam: Yeah, I don't, I don't think I have a problem with that. I mean, it's a, I think it, it probably comes into play a lot more in, you know, like entry level jobs, fast food, you know,
[00:46:38] Ben: would think
[00:46:38] Adam: sort of, Yeah. than I, I don't think that that is probably as common in tech and in our type of jobs.
[00:46:47] Hirability
[00:46:47] Adam: So if, if you were gonna be job hunting now, I guess the thing, or, or maybe let me rephrase this.
[00:46:55] Adam: So if, if you are currently employed and you are trying to set yourself up for surviving layoffs or, you know, if you were to get laid off, how could you rebound from that quickly? I think I would be thinking about, you know, what skills do I have or almost have, or what could I, you know, hone, sharpen my sword on that would make me even more hireable and employable.
[00:47:19] Adam: so that, you know, if I do get laid off, I can bounce back quickly. Like for me, I'm thinking, okay, like I could brush, brush up on my react skills, that I'm, you know, I'm a little rusty there or, you know, I, I need to do better on my testing stuff, so let me, let me brush up on that. Or maybe I'll spend some time on leak code to just, you know, refresh my algorithms and data structures knowledge or something like,
[00:47:41] Ben: Well, this one makes me the most nervous, obviously, because I spend most of my day in ColdFusion, angular js, and less CSS.
[00:47:49] Adam: so
[00:47:50] Adam: three dead technologies.
[00:47:54] Ben: but I, this is, I don't know if this is def definitely on point with what you're saying, but I have seen a couple of people say that while the sort of fast-paced tech industry has been hit hard, there's a lot of parts of the tech industry that you might not consider.
[00:48:11] Ben: That are just less exciting. Like they don't care about the latest front end frameworks. Like they don't care about whatever the new hot Bundler is. They've been building an enterprise system for the last 15 years and they have a solid, customer base that's making them money. And, and there's always, or not always, but like people say, like there's, there's a lot more growth opportunity for people in those parts of the industry that you just never think to look for.
[00:48:33] Ben: So I'm, I might adjust what I think is gonna be a good job from a perspective standpoint, in, in addition to trying to brush up on some skills.
[00:48:43] Tim: Yeah. I don't know what, what I wanna brush up on. I, I do know that I, I.
[00:48:48] Contracting and Consulting
[00:48:48] Tim: Another place where you can get some money, maybe in the meantime, is so all your customers, if particularly, you know, if, if you know who your customers are, hopefully probably have some sort of need that's not being filled by the company that you worked for, particularly smaller companies.
[00:49:04] Tim: you can always go to your customers that, or used to be your customers and say, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm, I've been laid off. But, you know, do you, do you need me as a consultant for anything or, you know, any kind of things I can do. I, I mean, I imagine if, you know, I, I was looking for a job immediately three or four customers would reach out to me and say, can you come work for us tomorrow?
[00:49:24] Adam: right? Yeah.
[00:49:25] Tim: we'd need you
[00:49:26] Adam: I hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it, but yeah, I can think of easily three or four customers that I have a, you know, existing personal relationship with. You know, we we're a little bit chatty, a little bit personal on the side. We talk about woodworking stuff or whatever. that like, you know, if I were to get laid off, I could, I would, it would be a good idea for me to call them and be like, you know, I'm looking for work.
[00:49:44] Adam: Can, can I help you out with something? Is there, you know, you know, I'm, I'm capable of programmers. Is there something I can do to help out?
[00:49:49] Tim: Yeah.
[00:49:51] Tim: And as far as contracting goes, you can actually, I mean, sometimes be, typically a layoff session is financially motivated, but you can, you know, if, if you absolutely cannot survive without another paycheck in two weeks, talk, talk to the company that laid you off and say, listen, I realize you laid me off.
[00:50:08] Tim: Nothing personal, it's business. But you know, is there anything I can do for you as a contractor, right?
[00:50:14] Tim: Does, doesn't have to be full-time, you know, just part-time, but you know, I can do some contract work for you. Just, you know, you know, send me a 10 99 or whatever and, and I'll do some contract work for you and as needed.
[00:50:26] Tim: And a lot of times that cause of the crunch that they're in, that is a very. Attractive offer because now, I mean honestly when they people off, you know, I haven't been laid off, but I've been through rounds of having to get rid of people. And it's painful to do because you realize you're not just, you know, yes, you're like cutting corners as far as your budget goes, but you're losing brain power that you hope is not like the only person who is really good at one system, right.
[00:50:57] Tim: Right. And you, you lay off the wrong person. And I was like all of a sudden, oh great, this service isn't gonna work. I have no clue what's gonna happen if that thing breaks. So to, to have an employee come back and say, listen, no hard feelings, can I just contract with you? and then you just give me work a as needed and you know, I'll be available and here's my rates.
[00:51:13] Tim: And make sure you charge,
[00:51:15] Adam: charge what you're worth cuz they're, yeah. I mean, if you're coming back as a contractor, they're not having to pay any, any benefits for you.
[00:51:22] Adam: Taxes are pretty much on you, so yeah, you're, you're, I would say almost double what you're, we're being charge, you know, if you were being paid, you know, you know, what worked out to like a hundred dollars an hour before you need to be charging leak.
[00:51:34] Adam: At least a hundred fifty, a hundred seventy five,
[00:51:36] Adam: if not 200.
[00:51:38] Tim: Exactly.
[00:51:40] Ben: Yeah, that's pretty good. I would never have, that. Would never have occurred to.
[00:51:44] Adam: Oh yeah. I think it would take a, a special, you know, we talked about stoicism not long ago. I think it would take, you know, that type of like, okay, you know, just sort of let it roll off your back. you know, that, that has come, that has happened. It's in the past. What can I do to, to recover from this situation?
[00:52:00] Adam: That's a, that's a special attitude. I don't think that, you know, I think certainly a minority of people would be able to pull that off just
[00:52:07] Adam: emotionally
[00:52:08] Tim: known in our company, I've known three people that have done that. And it worked out. I mean, it worked. We had a salesperson who did that. We had a, a developer, who, who, who left, and he had just bought a really big house. So even though he is making really good money at his, at his new job, he needed a little bit more.
[00:52:26] Tim: So he is like, Hey, I can contract for you guys if you want. Okay. So, yeah, I, I think, you know, the worst they can do is say no. Right? So
[00:52:36] Recruiters
[00:52:36] Ben: The scariest part of all of this for. Is that I haven't looked for a new job in like 15 years. and it's like, I just, I, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I think I, I'd like not, I, I just, I don't know what tools are available to me. Do I get a, head hunter? You know, do I go to hire.com or Indeed is, is there something on LinkedIn that can help me?
[00:52:58] Ben: And I, I, it's just like, it, it'd be like, you know, being married for 20 years and then getting divorced and now you're like, what are the kids using these days to find mates?
[00:53:08] Adam: How do I date?
[00:53:11] Tim: Yeah, talking about head hunters, I think it, it is particularly for tech jobs, kidding with the recruiter and saying, Hey, I'm looking for a job. because I mean, it doesn't cost you anything, right? To have a recruiter. The, the, the cost of, we use recruiters all the time to get people, the cost of recruiting comes from the, when you get hired.
[00:53:29] Tim: So they are financially motivated to, to find you a position, but just make sure it's, you know, it's not like a, like a puppy mill kind of recruiting system. It, it's gotta be, you know, someone who's like, find, you know, talk to them about what people have you placed in jobs that are similar to what I do.
[00:53:48] Tim: Here's what I do. You know, how, how have you placed them and get, and then try to get a reference. You know, those people say, can I talk to those people? And, and so that, you know that they're, you know, oh yeah. Yeah. We, I mean, for a recruiter, they don't understand programming. They don't realize the nuance of, you know, what Ben does with ColdFusion and Angular.
[00:54:06] Tim: Right. So he's gonna have to, if, if you can say, have you, have you placed any ColdFusion developers in the past five years? Cause can I talk to them about how it went? But yeah, it, it's worth having a recruiter on your side is, is, is big rather than just going on Indeed. Right.
[00:54:20] Adam: Yeah.
[00:54:21] Tim: Because you, because you know, if they, if a company is engaging a recruiter, you know that they've been looking for people and haven't been able to find them.
[00:54:29] Tim: Cuz, cuz they're gonna pay. Typically it's like 25% of your annual salary is what a recruiter makes for placing you. Yeah.
[00:54:36] Adam: We should, we should get a recruiter on the show to talk. I'm sure we could have an interesting conversation with them.
[00:54:41] Tim: that would
[00:54:42] Ben: That would be cool. Yeah. Cause I know nothing about that.
[00:54:45] Adam: Yeah, and I mean, I, you know, I, I say this to acknowledge my own ignorance, not because I believe it to be true, but I just. Have such a negative opinion, a baseline opinion of recruiters, right? Like there's like stereotypes of, of really bad recruiters, and I'm sure that they're based on truth, like of lazy recruiters or whatever.
[00:55:04] Adam: Just like throwing everything at everything and seeing what sticks. But, you know, I, I'm sure that the people that are good at recruiting are good at it for a reason, and then I bet you that there's some really interesting stuff that we could learn from
[00:55:15] Tim: Yeah. I, I've used multiple ones I could talk to. He doesn't specialize in programming. It's more, somewhat the insurance world. But if we can't find a, a good programming like headhunter recruiter, I could talk to him. I, I, I think that'd be an interesting show. If nothing else, he, he could, he could, he could pull back the veil a little bit on the, on how recruiters
[00:55:33] Tim: work and.
[00:55:34] Adam: The industry. All right. Well, that, that seems like a good place to wrap up for tonight. we're gonna, after we get off, the line here, we're gonna go record our after show tonight on the after show, Tim is gonna regale us with stories of, perfectly cooked testicles and brains.
[00:55:50] Adam: And, uh,
[00:55:51] Adam: and I'm going to share with, my friends here and the audience, the, the only mobile game I have installed on my phone in like the last five to 10 years.
[00:55:59] Adam: I, you know, I'm not much of a, I'm not much of a game on the phone type of person.
[00:56:04] Adam: Um, I guess, well that's not true. So I remember playing 2048 for a few weeks on my phone. But other than that,I've never really been into until the phone games, but I finally found one that I'm really enjoying, so I'm gonna talk about it a little bit anyway.
[00:56:15] Patreon
[00:56:15] Adam: this episode of Working Code was brought to you by Human S3 . That's your, social support system. And listeners like you, if you're enjoying the show and you wanna make sure that we can keep putting more of whatever this happens to be out into the universe, then you should consider supporting us on Patreon.
[00:56:30] Adam: Our patrons cover our recording and editing costs, and we couldn't do this every week without them. So thank you all very much. And special thanks to our top patrons, Monte and Giancarlo. if you would like to help us out, you can go to patreon.com/WorkingCodePod.
[00:56:45] Thanks For Listening!
[00:56:45] Adam: let's see. We had somebody join our Discord this week, and she specifically said that she's been listening for a long time, but that they.
[00:56:55] Adam: This moment in the podcast last week, was when she was like, oh yeah, I should do that. So I'm gonna remind you again, join our Discord. It's a great place to hang out. It's a great place to network with other people in the tech community to set up your social support network for when you fall on hard times.
[00:57:11] Adam: Come join our Discord workingcode.dev/discord. Great place to hang out, ask questions, talk about tech, get to know some people. that's gonna do it for us this week. We'll catch you next week. And until then,
[00:57:21] Tim: Remember, your heart matters, but we need to let you go. I take full responsibility. It means nothing, but I, Tim Cunningham, take full responsibility. heart matters.
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