Obligatory throwaway account.
So I work… or I guess *worked* for a support desk supporting the roll out of company wide software for a large healthcare network. The software is a major EHR system (think Epic and Cerner, if you're familiar). And it was meant to replace all of the existing systems across the dozen or so hospitals in the network. Because the company had thousands of employees and dozens of locations, the roll out happened in waves. The first wave was a nightmare with the wait time on our desk getting up to 3+ hours. This is because they didn't hire nearly enough people to handle the demand. So with the second wave, which just happened, they hired quite a few more. And wait times managed to stay rather low.
Last week, everyone on my team received an email stating that the second wave went very well, beyond expectations. In fact, it had gone so well that they clearly don't need so many support desk agents and they would begin laying off most of the team, effective immediately.
What's really fucked about this (aside from the obvious) is that, according to the numbers, demand for the second wave was about the same as the first wave. In the email they made out like demand was much lower than anticipated… but no, it just went smoother because they learned from the first wave and hired more people. So now, with more waves incoming, they're back to the situation they were in with the first wave.
Most people on the team are contract workers. So this was never supposed to be a permanent job. But we did have contracts with a set start and end date. And have been told all along that our contracts are likely to continue to be renewed throughout the duration of the project. But not only are our contracts not being renewed, they're being voided before their end dates. Before the dates that we all expected to have a job until.
Now myself and my colleagues are without work, suddenly. All in the span of a single email.