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It's the holidays and many people are feeling cheerful, but if you're feeling Grinch-like instead this one's for you:
If you've been around for a while, the time will eventually come when a company you work for is in unfortunate shape and will need to "downsize." Having witnessed this at a client of mine this week, I've noticed a pattern and a few warning signs you may find useful...
Here are several warning signs you're about to be laid-off. If you've noticed more than perhaps one of these, your Spidey-Sense should be tingling—it's time to start polishing that resume/CV!
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I. Backups
"Have you backed-up all your work to XYZ?"
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II. Training
"Please train your co-worker on X, we need everyone up to speed on these components."
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III. Important Project or Person MIA
Just like the old Christmas movie, It's a Wonderful Life, where the very existence of the main character is erased from history, a similar fate will happen to $BIG_PROJECT or important people.
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IV. Mandatory Meeting
Subject: Moving Forward in $YEAR+1Content-free meeting invitations or email focused on date periods, especially late-in the year (a nod to tax purposes). "Let's discuss our plan for 2016." **gulp**
That's my list for now, please chime in with any others you can think of.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @06:38PM
The number one cause of being laid off: someone is in a position to lay you off.
If you work for yourself, you might give up, you might go bust, you might get hit by a bus but the only person who can lay yourself off is you.
"But Uncle Coward," I hear you cry "we have no capital nor any means of starting our own business, we will always be laid off when the company should be keeping us on forever so that we can be rich at retirement!"
No, kiddies. First off, the business of any company is not to make you rich. It's to make money. Making you rich was never in there. If you want to be rich, you have to work for yourself. Now granted, working for yourself might take the form of consulting, or living like a pauper to accumulate capital so that you can go independent, but even if you take conventional jobs for conventional wages, your mindset is wrong if you think of yourself as theirs, to be laid off or rewarded at their pleasure. It's a gig. It might last a year; it might last five years. But it's just a gig and you should be open to the next thing that will pay better, or you will forever be the puppy whimpering at the master's table for a bone, and hoping that you don't get a kick instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:45PM
You will forever be that puppy anyways; only the master changes. Some puppies rove from table to table, piecemeal, but vanishingly few go into the woods alone; more survive off detriutus, open like all garbage-castes to kicks from all quarters. Even those few puppies who self-master are at the capricious whims of a puppy.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:11PM
No, kiddies. First off, the business of any company is not to make you rich. It's to make money. Making you rich was never in there. If you want to be rich, you have to work for yourself.
Almost 100% true but not quite. There are still some partnerships around, like John Lewis [johnlewis.com], that are effectively owned by their staff. All staff share in the profits. The staff to very well.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].