Laid Off: And Posting a Crying Video On Finsta
Also: while dropping their husband off at their vasectomy.
I was laid off like most of the people who took the survey – working from home. It’s hard for me to imagine an in-person layoff in the presence of my colleagues. I didn’t have to pack up my desk or find a private place to cry. I didn’t have to be perceived at all – I was just one of many faces on a Zoom call, and I turned my camera off.
A Senior Manager at a healthcare company said her colleagues were the first people she told when she got laid off because it happened in the office first thing in the morning. On the way back to her desk, she pointed at herself and made a neck slash motion.
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A Social Media Director at a marketing firm said she would have preferred to have been laid off on a remote day. “It was humiliating to sit crying in a conference room and then go back to my desk and pack up mid-day in an open floor office in front of my coworkers.”
A Senior Art Director at Meta laid off in 2023 was tipped off about layoffs from a Wall Street Journal article, so she drove to her family’s house. “I wanted to be with people I love, knowing I could receive bad news. They also don’t work in tech, which is great for an equalizing perspective.”
For the second Trend Report issue, I looked at where people were when they found out they were laid off, who they told, and what they did in the immediate aftermath.
Let’s dive in:
I surveyed 856 people who have been laid off. The top industries where people worked were tech (40.7%), multiple industries (12%), news and media (8.2%), marketing and advertising (6.7%), healthcare and pharma (5%), entertainment (4.7%), and finance (4.2%).
It was the first layoff for 56.1% of those surveyed.