Is it normal to be disgruntled after a layoff?
I got laid off my IT role for a biggish MSP firm, they just called some people to say they had difficult measures to take, I was one of those people…
So a month and so later, I’m still searching and I just feel bitter and jaded, I’m not getting calls back.
Is it perfectly normal for me to feel this way about companies? I’m still confident I can try to get back into it from this setback but I just feel these firms no matter what industry they are, are utterly void of any camaderie.
Am I going insane?
(TLDR - Bitter Bri’ish guy who’s just asking if being infuriated with this isn’t like a mental disease)
Totally sane. Most layoffs are an effort to boost stock prices because some executives made a dumb fucking decision.
Being laid off is absolutely not a comment on your worth as an employee or a human being. You should give companies as much of your blood sweat and tears as they’d give you - none. With some extremely rare exceptions being an employee is just a transaction.
Most layoffs are an effort to boost stock prices because some executives made a dumb fucking decision.
…what? You want to elaborate on that a bit?
Executives need to present company forecasts to shareholders at annual business meetings. If they mess up the forecast so the business plan doesn’t match the reality, they scramble to make the books balance somehow — the easiest place to do this is by cutting staff so that expenditures line up with earnings. Modern accounting means that even though they still have payouts to employees, they can count this in a separate loss bucket so that the bottom line item that investors watch still comes out where they “predicted” it would, which props up the stock price, making investors happy and preventing them from replacing the executives.
That is one part - the other half is just simply that the market expects a response to any perceived failure. If a publicly traded company has a bad quarter the market wants to see some corrective action and it wants it now (long term plans don’t mesh with the constant news cycle of the market). Layoffs are a way to lower your expenses and cause a sudden shift in profit numbers… even though they nearly always result in long term damage to the company.
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Mate I’d be worried if you were anything but disgruntled. Companies are shit, layoffs are shit, feeling like shit after being through shit is pretty normal.
Completely normal to be bitter. You were doing your job and had your life in order, then your company disrupted all that by laying you off.
But that’s the past and now you need to put on a positive face and work smart and hard to find another job. Don’t let your bitterness cloud your attitude. You’ve got to show the best you to potential employers, not the disgruntled you.
Word of mouth is often a good way to find positions, ask friends and acquaintances if they know of any positions.
Universities need a lot of staff and tend to be more stable than businesses. Also I’ve heard many times that working for temp agencies often leads to permanent jobs when the temp job is over.
Yeah it’s normal. It will pass, this is temporary. Good luck in your search, the right thing is coming for you
I’ve worked somewhere that they laid of some of the best employees in the department, simply because they were higher seniority and “made too much money” and had to cut costs. There were plenty of better candidates to let go, if the focus had been productivity, but it wasn’t. They just wanted a short-term solution to balance the books.
So a month and so later, I’m still searching and I just feel bitter and jaded, I’m not getting calls back.
The past few months I have put in some applications for jobs I am qualified or slightly over-qualified for, and same thing - 0 calls back. Best I’ve had is a rare rejection email.
Yes, I would say that is a fairly typical reaction.
Try to get some fresh air, or go out with friends, or whatever, clear your head a little bit from time to time. There’s only so much that can be done at once, and it’s good to try and get a break from dwelling on it too much. Changing your immediate scenery for a short span can aid in this.
I was never gruntled in the first place.
Disgruntled yes. Gruntled, not so much.
Yes.
Absolutely. I worked my way out of my existential lay-off crisis by volunteering. It got my mind re-focused on cool stuff, which in turn lead to a much better job.
This is what I was taught.
You’ve got 24 hours in a day. The time you spend being angry is time you’re not doing something constructive.
If being upset actually helps motivate you, then revel in it.
If it hinders you, realize that being productive is the best way to screw the ones who fired you.
