I know, it's an off topic title for here, but hear me out. It will all make the turn to the antiwork tone we know and love.
Five-ish years ago, I had the joy of being a part of a massive layoff for the second time in my life. The message had been sent at 3am, 12 hours before my shift the next day. I was desperate for work and a friend hooked me up with a place he had landed. It was to be my very first office job. I was nervous, but got it. It took a bit of time for things to settle, but after a year, I had essentially created my own position in a company that was focused entirely on connecting people to various social services they needed.
The company was fairly new, so everyone was in a learn as we go mindset, but also heavy on learning lessons from mistakes and listening to anyone, no matter what job title, for ways to improve. It was the first job where I not only felt like my opinion mattered, but I could watch my opinions actually be enacted.
But then the downside. So, I can't give many details or names, since the industry is extremely small, but the fact that only a handful of companies were doing the same thing made it very competitive. Our process was (bias included), easily the best, but it was also the most expensive. But it resulted in detail and accuracy that our industry had never seen. Which led to one of our competitors (the one that got all the venture capital money but didn't have the best tool or accuracy), to make an offer for us. We assumed they were buying us out to get the tool, data, & experience. Or at least that was the Copium most available.
Within the first month of acquisition, they come out, do some meetings, and promise everyone will get brought on to their company. They state that there are always openings and people will be given a spot long term. Its all happiness and handshakes, but they also won't answer any difficult questions. Like how paid lunch hours were gone. Or why, per hour, everyone is making less, but you're bragging we all got raises? And why are we being forced to sign employment agreements without these questions being answered, but suddenly the answers to those questions are immediate once the signing deadline is past?
Admittedly, we all signed them, figuring if we wanted to quit we still could. Turns out this helped them to say they were keeping 99% of the people during the merger. Yay for PR.
When the switch became official, I started to have questions. How are we going to integrate tools? Are we going to be sharing processes? Why are people getting impatient when I ask tough questions about how they do things or advocate for adopting our way of doing things? Also, why hasn't anyone had any formal training process?
There was no welcome or introduction to the company. Just an online dashboard that had some training, but most was out of date & full of typos. I maybe met five people from this new company of more than a 1000, and never once got the idea that they wanted to learn from us. From other people I talked to, every department, with a few exceptions, got siloed into their own work and were never given projects related to the new company. About 3/4 of the people who came over were quarantined. But we all got to enjoy this company's new culture “do everything quickly and have no plan.” Which was a very good motto to have if you want to stop people from asking questions about the long term. And also great an making folks feel like your employment only exists to make them look like a good and benevolent company.
That benevolence ran out this morning. No idea how many are suddenly fired, but its sizable. And all from the old company.
We had been doing such amazing work before all of this. It was the first job where I didn't just feel like I was putting a net good into the world, but actually had people writing in to tell us how it helped people in the greatest of need. We worked our asses off to build what we did, and now these people are just going to bury all that work and have one less competitor to deal with. And it hurts because I know people aren't going to be able to get the help they need during one of the most uncertain times in American history.
We were good people striving for a difficult goal, making headway, and doing the work people hadn't done in over a decade. But, hey, fuck that. You're expensive. And hard problems should be cheap to solve. Which is why capitalists will never solve them.