In a previous post, I wrote that management at my place of employment told us that some people on my team would be affected by layoffs and they would make those layoffs happen within the next thirty days. Today, we had a team meeting that was scheduled with twenty minutes notice. Now if you’ve been around as long as I have, you know that meetings that involve the whole team, scheduled with short notice, near the end of the day are not meetings that usually end up with good news.
I didn’t know it at the time, but if at the beginning of the meeting no one had already given you bad news, you were not affected. For me, it was very much a normal day, until I got the meeting invite, so I was luckily ok. I won’t divulge many details from the meeting but I will say management was very honest and forthcoming. They told us why the cuts had to be made. Also, we were told that they’d do their best to place people in other parts of the company, so for some people, they wouldn’t actually be laid off. Though, there’s no guarantee that would happen for everyone. Indeed, some people might just decide to leave no matter what.
When the meeting ended, I wasn’t sure who got affected but in the days to come, I’m guessing the news will start to filter out. It’s a total bummer that some of my co-workers will be out of a job. Our industry has been rocked with layoffs for more than a year now and we’re all wondering when the cuts are going to end.