jakebe | Kidney Punch

I got notice of being laid off last Thursday. The company is eliminating my position to create new ones that do the same work in Mexico for a fraction of the labor cost. My last day is October 24th, and if I'm still employed in good standing with the company by then I'm entitled to eight weeks' severance. Basically, I run out of money on Christmas Eve if I don't find another job.

It was a pretty big shock. I had been anticipating a smaller-than-desired pay raise based on what I had heard from a few friends (they had both received 1 - 1.5%), with a possible best-case-scenario that my pay was being raised to match what my colleagues were making. Instead, they cut five people from QA and QC after cutting six people or so earlier this year.

And they've made no secret of staffing the office in Mexico with reconfigured positions that do what we do, only with significantly lower labor. It's a really shitty way to lose a job; I can't fault the folks in Mexico for doing the same thing for lower costs, and I can't fault my managers who are only doing what they're told while being forced to absorb the immediate blowback. Still, it's radicalizing to know you could do your best work for less than you're worth and still be told you don't deserve the pay you get.

I went numb at the meeting where I was told, and cried a lot Thursday evening. I barely got anything done on Friday; just doing the work would set off a fresh wave of tears and I'd have to go somewhere else to collect myself all over again. I'm still emotionally fragile today, but I'm also in a headspace where the most important thing is to keep it moving. I have to absorb the blow and find another job somewhere, and being depressed isn't going to get that done. I guess being an adult is learning that the world doesn't stop when you feel like you can't go on and it's important to give the impression of being well-adjusted even when you're all but dead inside.

I'm trying to be more honest about my mental state here, but I also realize how important it is to manage my own emotional state. I...don't think I can fall apart the way I want to. There's no one to pick up the slack.

Falling apart doesn't really make the situation better, either. I'm just tired of having to eat shit and smile about it. Especially since everything happening this year feels like it's geared toward push people like me out of society completely. I don't have many credentials or certifications or degrees, but I'm pretty good lubricant for any team I find myself in. There are all these ways that I work to make things run more smoothly and that's hard to quantify on paper. Now that local tech companies are abandoning any pretense of DEI and also purging workers like crazy, any possible safe haven is flushed with better-qualified, younger candidates with fewer personal boundaries around work-life balance. It's going to be really, really hard finding something that pays enough for me to feel OK about working there.

Other friends I've known a long time, slightly older than I am, have been out of work for months without finding something. There are so many open positions for garbage pay that senior-level workers are applying for just because the market's that brutal. And when you add the impossibility of beating AI screeners so your resume can be seen by a human being, it...feels like I might never find work again.

But what else can I do but try? What else can I do but pretend things will be OK and I'll land on my feet somehow? If I give in to the sense of doom in my heart, I might as well disappear entirely. I can't do that, so trying it is.

Still, it would be nice if it felt like society wasn't forcing me to circle the drain so billionaires could make impossible amounts of money even more easily.