I can't believe they're hiring again!!

Resources of the Week

1. About 300 jobs on the job board here!

2. To my TA friends, check out this panel on global TA/hiring in a remote environment!

3. Y’all I give the advice I give because it’s good practical advice that works for real people. Here’s a comment someone dropped on a post earlier today! Expand your search, get results!!
   

   

Why are companies doing layoffs anyway?!

I normally use your questions for the section below, but I thought this was a really robust topic and I wanted to address it as the main topic of the week as I think there are some actionable takeaways for folks.

So here’s the question:

Hard truth: Layoffs aren’t ONLY about cutting budget

Layoffs are usually a move to cut unnecessary employees, but it doesn’t mean that a company cannot afford those employees. It can also be a move to simply free up that budget for other roles they deem more important.

For example, a home builder may employee a team of architects to design floor plans. Once that’s done, they no longer need those architects, but they do need construction workers so they layoff the architects and hire the construction workers. Next they’ll cycle in the landscapers. Of course hopefully they have lots of builds so someone is working at any given point but that’s not always realistic for how they operate.

Our employers are the same and if they don’t have work that aligns to the skills of one set of employees, they are going to move them out, and hire a different skill set. Often these companies have already considered their internal employees and made moves where they can (I’ve personally witnessed this at several employers before layoffs even take place!), or they are considering them but aren’t confident they have a strong match which is why they will also post the role externally.

They may also be hiring at a lower volume. They may hire more junior staff to do work done by more senior staff, or they may hire a smaller number of more senior folks they believe can get more done than the junior staff.

Many companies are simply shifting their strategies and this requires a different type of talent so layoffs are about reshaping their workforce vs decreasing the total workforce.

Sometimes companies simply need to reduce the budget. But other times, it’s about reallocating that budget.

So is there anything we can do to predict this, or protect ourselves?

There are a couple of things I’d be on the look out for:

1. Is your workload decreasing? Recruiting is the clearest example here - when companies hire less, they will lay off recruiting team members. If the total headcount decreases significantly, they will need fewer people who support those employees - this could mean cuts of HR or finance functions (for example, payroll, HRBPs, etc.)

2. Has your company announced a strategic shift that will impact your work streams? Perhaps you build or support a software that’s being sunset, and your company is building AI products you know nothing about. Well, there’s a chance your job could be at risk. Maybe your company has been focused heavily on marketing, blog, and SEO to drive traffic and customers, but now they are building out a bigger sales team to bring in leads. Well, it’s possible they’ll cut back on some of those content marketing roles.

3. Are you doing work that’s below/above your pay grade? If you’re in a more senior role but doing work that’s really more junior, than your employer may eventually realize they can just hire someone more junior and cheaper to do the work. Similarly, if you’re doing more senior work, it could open up a path to promotion (yay!) or it could signal to them that actually they need someone who can take on that more advanced work, but you may not be that person (boo!)

If I were to find myself in these positions, I would be:

1. Having open, honest conversations with my manager to try to feel out whether layoffs or re-orgs were coming.

2. Preparing for a potential job search (and realistically, applying for jobs).

🙋Answering Your Questions🙋

Each week, I’ll answer one (or more!) of your questions in this section. You can submit your questions here.

Oh wow, I’m so sorry! Yes, I absolutely would! You can note, “the restaurant closed due to a fire”, and hopefully the manager can be serve as a reference!

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