I work at a startup. We were surprised this week that more than 10% of the company was being let go immediately and there’s going to be a big reorganization. I’m 36 and have seen this type shitshow at most jobs I’ve had. I’m tired of it. I was talking to a younger guy in his mid 20s about it. He mentioned how much it sucks to have your friends at work kicked to the curb so suddenly, and frustration that so much of the work he had done and was currently doing is now useless with the changes being announced.
I did my best to be as empathetic as I could in the moment while still behaving professionally. But I really wanted to loudly rant about how this shit has been normalized. Even with a severance package, it’s insanely stressful having this axe hanging above our heads at all times. Any moment, for reasons far beyond your control, your life can be turned upside down, left to fend for yourself with no guarantee of a soft landing, where the risks of stumbling just a little bit could send you tumbling down the economic ladder, and punished in one way or another with every step you take, where the reward for successfully navigating unemployment is yet another shitty job where you resume your life living with the threat of paying the price for other peoples fuck ups consumes your life again.
We could do better than this. We should do better than this. I’m tired of living like this.