A recent Tweet (or X-crement, or whatever they’re calling posts on that platform) from Sesame Street’s Elmo got way more attention than it would have in less stressful times:
It’s not every day that a social media post from a cutesy character from a children’s show sparks a discussion on mental health, but these are the times we live in.
And I “get” it — as I write this, it’s been only a week since I and 400 co-workers were laid off, and I’m still feeling a lingering apprehension. As I’ve written before, this is my fifth layoff, so while the experience is unsettling, I at least have come up with ways to deal with it. I’ve talked with people facing this for the first time, and they’re stunned by the combination of feelings that come with it: shock, sadness, anxiety, fear, and probably worst of all, betrayal.
If you’ve been laid off…
Let me remind you of an important truth: if you’ve been laid off, it’s okay to not be okay.
There’s a thing called the Life Events Inventory (LEI), which is a ranked list of stressful life moments devised by the research psychologists Raymond Cochrane and Alex Robertson in a paper they published in the early 1970s. An updated version of the LEI is still used today.
Losing your job is the 7th most stressful item on the LEI. To get a sense of just how stressful it is, it ranks higher than finding out your partner cheated on you (14), a close friend dying (13), an immediate family member going to jail (11), and even divorce (9, but I would disagree, as mine damn near killed me).
Let me drive home the point by listing the LEI top ten:
The other thing you should know is that the effects of a layoff linger. Here’s the key paragraph from a 2013 Wall Street Journal article titled After Divorce or Job Loss Comes the Good Identity Crisis (with added emphasis from me):
Experts say most people should give themselves a good two years to recover from an emotional trauma such as a breakup or the loss of a job. And if you were blindsided by the event—your spouse left abruptly, you were fired unexpectedly—it could take longer.
A layoff isn’t something that you can easily shrug off, and you shouldn’t feel shame for feeling the way you do. You need to acknowledge that being laid off is one of modern life’s most stressful situations, and then do the things to help you deal with that stress.
If you haven’t been laid off…
If you haven’t been laid off, but you know someone who’s been laid off, please reach out to them and ask how they’re doing. If you’re in a position to offer help, do so, but even the act of checking in is a great help.
It’s nice to get congratulatory messages when things are going particularly well, but you’ll find that what really makes an impact and what you really remember are the friends who reached out to you when things were rough. Those people’s names are etched forever in my heart, and they have my eternal gratitude. Be one of those people for someone.
I’ll close with the advice of Florida’s own “Tommy the Tech Recruiter,” who posted this excellent suggestion on LinkedIn:
If you know someone who is on the job search…
No, no they’re not okay. Especially in these times. They are tired. Exhausted. Frustrated. Scared.
Each passing day brings a rollercoaster of emotions. Each rejection or time they never hear anything back leaves them questioning or doubting themselves.
It’s a soul crushing process.
If you are on a job search… I am here for you and making it my mission to help shorten how long that search takes.
And if you see someone who was just laid off or has that green banner, comment on their posts for visibility. Share it. Leave a kind and uplifting comment or send them a DM of support.
Here’s the “official unofficial” list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for Monday, February 12 through Sunday, February 18, 2024 — the first week of the lunar new year, the Year of the Dragon!
How do I put this list together? It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.
In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.
What goes into this list? I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:
Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
Tech project management / agile processes
Video, board, and role-playing games
Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
April 2017 from the RFID chip/label company SMARTRAC, when the project I worked on was canceled.
April 2020 from the mobile CMS company Lilypad, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
…and the most recent one — February 1, 2024 from the identity management company Okta, in a 7% reduction of staff.
Because this isn’t my first rodeo — and because there are a lot of people in the same situation — I’m putting together a series of articles that I hope you’ll find helpful and useful.
I knew layoffs were coming
Blind, as seen on my iPhone, with my finger and “googly-eyes” ring in the foreground. The ring’s from Flying Tiger Copenhagen.
I knew there was a chance that layoffs would be announced on February 1st. For weeks, there’d been a lot of talk on Blind’s discussion board for my now-former employer on that topic and specifying that date.
The Blind app will kill your soul if you use it too often. It’s an ugly agglomeration of late-stage capitalist cynicism, career despair, envy-inducing discussions of total compensation, and occasionally a place for sexually frustrated tech bros to vent.
But like that lemonade they’ve been serving at Panera, while it’s toxic if you consume the full serving, Blind is useful for keeping you awake and aware if you keep your dosage small. As nasty as its content can get, if you really want to get a sense of what’s going on in the business world or get the inside scoop on what it’s like inside a given company, you should download Blind and peruse it occasionally.
Because I’d been following the discussion about my now-former on Blind, I wasn’t completely (ahem) blindsided by the layoff announcement on Thursday. While some predictions and analyses on Blind turn out to be wrong, most of the posts about my now-former employer have been spot-on. So I took the rumors seriously.
In anticipation of possible upcoming layoffs, I’d been doing a little extra work — writing extra articles (including one that got a lot of praise from the security awareness group), updating old ones, doing additional reviews of my teammates’ articles, writing a “state of mobile development” report, and even recording four videos in a week.
It’s a shame all that extra effort was wasted.
The “first worst” 15 minutes
“Your fate will be determined in the next fifteen minutes.”
On Thursday, February 1st at 8:27 a.m., an ominous email was sent to everyone who worked at my now-former employer. Here’s the key part of the email:
If you work in the US, you will receive an email in the next 15 minutes notifying you if your role is impacted or not. If your role is impacted, your leadership will schedule a meeting this morning to discuss next steps. For employees outside the US, the notification process may be different due to local laws and practices.
I’ve been in the game long enough to know that the worst possible thing to do would be to sit at the computer and constantly refresh the Gmail screen. I got up from my desk, set a 15-minute timer on my phone, and walked away to get some coffee.
My coffee wasn’t this fancy. Mine was two parts Stok cold brew, one part mik.
There was a new email, timestamped 8:37 a.m. — ten minutes after the ominous email. It started with this:
Today, [my now-former employer] made the decision to eliminate a number of positions across multiple organizations. Unfortunately, your position has been eliminated as part of this reduction.
Helluva way to start the month, I thought.
That’s when I noticed that a new appointment had spawned on my calendar. A 15-minute appointment with the VP of Developer Engagement and an HR person scheduled for 9:30. I had 45 minutes to prepare.
💡 Here’s a suggestion for anyone planning a layoff: Don’t do this “You’ll find out in the next 15 minutes” thing. Just rip the band-aid off and let us know with a single email.
The “second worst” 15 minutes
If you’ve been invited to a meeting to discuss your layoff, do whatever it takes to steel yourself. Whether it’s deep breathing, counting to ten, reciting your personal mantra, or firing up your “poker face”, you want to get ready to conduct yourself at the meeting with as much grace, aplomb, and professionalism as you can muster.
This is because this meeting is the second most important meeting you’ll ever have at this job. (In case you were wondering, the most important one was the interview that landed you the job in the first place.) No matter what you’re feeling at the meeting, you want your termination to be as good a breakup as possible. This means that you must handle it professionally.
The way you behave and your demeanor at this meeting will set the tone for your departure. If it is full of bitterness, acrimony, and the gnashing of teeth, they won’t be inclined to do you any favors. On the other hand, if you conduct yourself with grace and decorum, you may gain some extra concessions and a willingness on their part to do what they can for you.
Just as regular guitar playing will build calluses on your fingers that enable you to repeatedly press down on those strings without feeling like you’re running them through a wire cheese slicer, having been laid off four times previously gives you the necessary “mental calluses” to handle the meeting with stoic grace. I was mentally prepared when the call started.
I felt bad for the VP and HR person — both were in the Pacific time zone, which meant that it was 6:30 a.m. for them. On instinct, I greeted them by saying “I’m sorry you have to do this so early in the morning. I’ll try and make this easy.”
It wasn’t just the oddest Zoom call I’ve had in a while, but the oddest layoff meeting I’ve ever had. That’s probably because I was prepared and had plenty of rest, while the VP and HR person were sleep-deprived and probably had a full morning of these calls. I met regularly with the VP and have even met the HR person a couple of times, so I knew them as people rather than as randos who happened to work at the same place as me. They were more misty-eyed than I was, which while awkward, showed that they empathized.
At one point, the HR person was tearing up, and I felt for them. I stopped and took a moment to say “Everything will be all right. Don’t worry.” And I meant it.
Your first instinct might be to immediately take all the standard job search actions the moment after you’ve been laid off. Fight it. You need a little time to deal with what just happened.
This is going to sound terribly woo-woo new-agey, but I’m going to say it because it’s an important step: at your first opportunity, get away from whatever you’re doing, get out and go for a walk. Physical activity is a key part of this step, so don’t get into a motorized vehicle. You want to get moving, and you want to do it outside, preferably in your own neighborhood.
The walk is important because it gets you away from anything work-like and gives you a chance to clear your head. It gives you a chance to come down from one of the most stressful experiences you’ll ever face in your working life and come to terms with what’s happened. It is not the time for figuring out what your immediate next steps are. It’s the time to collect yourself so that you’re in a better position to figure out what your next steps are.
Don’t do the walk in a fugue state. Take note of your surroundings. Chances are you’ll see things that you passed by every day but never noticed before. This is good, because it’s preparation for what you’re going to be doing for the next little while: seeing things differently.
I went on a ride — this time, without a podcast or audiobook playing; just me and the outside world. I made my way to Spaddy’s Coffee to sit and enjoy the scenery:
I also enjoyed a coffee and checked my messages, which were beginning to come in:
I also found out who else got cut, which included a number of superstars on my team.
It was then that I noticed that because it was a chilly day, I’d put on a fleece that had been shipped to me only the week before — by my now-former employer:
As I said, it had arrived only the week before, so this was my first time wearing it. It’s nice and warm, it looks good, and hey, it’s a Patagonia! Maybe I won’t include it in the upcoming “swag purge.” Maybe I can cover the now-former employer’s logo with a patch. Does anyone have a patch they’d like to send me?
It was a far more productive way to spend the evening, and far more fun than wallowing in self-pity at home. It also gave me a chance to let some key people know that I was back on the market, which is one of the most important things to do after getting laid off.
A sleepless night
I will confess that after going to bed that evening, I woke up at 4:36 a.m. and was unable to get back to sleep. Even a five-timer isn’t immune to the stress and anxiety that comes with a layoff. I very quietly got out of bed, went to my office and…
Did a little housekeeping on my personal computers (a PowerBook, a Wintel gaming laptop, and a couple of Raspberry Pis),
Unfollowed the now-former employer on various social media, unsubscribed from their newsletters, and put their swag into a big bag that I’ll drop off at Goodwill next week, and
Here’s the “official unofficial” list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for Monday, February 5 through Sunday, February 11, 2024!
On Monday at 5:30 p.m. at Brick House Tavern and Tap, there’ll be an in-person session about volunteering at the Synapse Summit conference (taking place on Wednesday, February 28 at Amelie Arena). It’s a way to attend Tampa Bay’s largest tech conference for free! Find out more and register here.
On Wednesday at 6:00 p.m., the Data Analytics Tampa Bay meetup will take place at the Entrepreneur Collaborative Center.Find out more and register here.
At 6:30 p.m. at OCC Road House & Museum in St. Pete, there’ll be an Agile Lean Beer. They say: “Whether you’re a Scrum enthusiast or just curious about Agile practices, this is the perfect platform to exchange experiences, network, vent, and foster your Agile knowledge. All this while drinking beer together!” Find out more and register here.
Also at 6:30 p.m., Tampa Devs will hold a meetup at Kforce on Webflow, a visual, low-code tool for building websites. Tampa Devs says “This isn’t just about simplifying web design for non-devs; it’s about unlocking new potentials for seasoned developers like you, too.” The speaker will be veteran web developer Dan Denney. Find out more and register here.
On Thursday at noon, join Computer Coach’s online session, Your Journey: The Confident Coach’s Approach to Unlocking Your Potential. It will feature Confidence Coach Christy Howard, who’ll cover these topics:
Strategies to unlock your hidden potential, both personally and professionally.
Personal branding suggestions to enhance your career progression.
Insights into the power of confidence for career and life success.
Job search strategies, stress management, and tips to avoid imposter syndrome.
At 6:30 p.m., Tampa Bay Women in Agile will host the online session “Never Would I Ever! Examining Your Agile Non-negotiables.” Using a new agile game adapted from the popular game “Never Would I Ever,” moderator Jenny Tarwater will help you tap into the diversity of participants’ experiences and beliefs to examine circumstances where a NEVER might become an experiment in MAYBE. Find out more and register here.
On Saturday, Tampa Bay Techies is holding their monthly study group at Joffrey’s Coffee in Midtown. a space to socialize, show off your current projects, ask questions with others studying or working, and enjoy a nice cup of coffee! Find out more and register here.
How do I put this list together? It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.
In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.
What goes into this list? I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:
Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
Tech project management / agile processes
Video, board, and role-playing games
Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
Here’s the “official unofficial” list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for Monday, January 29 through Sunday, February 4, 2024!
How do I put this list together? It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.
In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.
What goes into this list? I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:
Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
Tech project management / agile processes
Video, board, and role-playing games
Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
Here’s the “official unofficial” list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for Monday, January 22 through Sunday, January 28, 2024!
How do I put this list together? It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.
In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.
What goes into this list? I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:
Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
Tech project management / agile processes
Video, board, and role-playing games
Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies