Check On Your Laid-Off Friends
They may not be doing so well...
Getting laid off sucks. It’s been happening plenty in the last 12-18 months, especially in tech and tech-adjacent fields, so odds are you know someone who’s been let go. Check in on them. For real. Not just the default “what’s up?” or “how’s it going?” rhetorical greeting we use that we don’t expect an answer to - really check in. Ask how their job search is going. Ask how they’re feeling about the situation, if they need any support or even just to vent.
Why? Because this shit is hard, folks. First off, you lose your primary (possibly only) source of income. Second, the job market in tech sucks right now, so it’s taking people a lot longer than normal to find new roles. But it’s more than just that. For most people a job gives us a sense of purpose and a community of people to engage with regularly.
It’s no real secret that we don’t socialize as much in this new high-tech era. We’re on our phones and social media and streaming stuff but we don’t tend to go out to meet people. There are plenty of studies out there showing the number of friends adults report having is decreasing. For many of us, our work colleagues form a large chunk of our social circle, and when people get laid off, it’s easy for that social circle to just dry up. People don’t tend to contact their ex-colleagues (if you don’t believe me, just go look on LinkedIn - you’ll find plenty of people musing about this and wondering why). It’s not out of any sense of maliciousness, I’m sure…we’re just relieved to have not been let go ourselves and we’re busy (after all, the work doesn’t tend to decrease after a layoff, there are just fewer people to do it). So, we get on with our lives.
This just makes layoffs even more devastating. You’ve lost your income, which is bad enough, but you’ve also likely lost a large chunk of your social support system. Guess what helps us get through tough times? Ah yes…a social support system. Friends. People who can listen, who can be there for us, be a shoulder to cry on or give advice or do something to take our mind off things. It’s easy for this to spiral to dark places. In the past year or so I’ve known several people who were laid off, didn’t find a new job as quickly as hoped, and ended up just sort of giving up…I’m talking not even able to get out of bed some days because it all just feels so impossible and they don’t know what to do. There’s a name for this: it’s called depression (and yes, I’m aware it may not meet the clinical definition if it isn’t caused by an actual chemical imbalance - but I’m sure it still feels like fucking depression to people who are going through it). I’m so sorry to say I’ve even heard of two people in my second-degree network who have ended their lives in the past year after being laid off and unable to find another job.
You probably can’t give people in this situation a job. But you can give them your time, your attention, your empathy. And for many of them, that’s just what they need.