Diana Alt [00:00:02]:
Hey there everybody. Diana Alt here or Work should feel good. The show where your career growth meets your real life. Today we're going to talk about my very first layoff. It happened 25 years ago this week, the same exact week that I turned 26 years old and that the Bush versus Gore presidential election showdown was ended because the Supreme Court decided to to stop the recounts in the handful of counties in Florida that were going on. As a matter of fact, all of that happened on the same day. My last day in the office at my job was on my birthday and that Supreme Court decision was on my birthday. And it struck me just a couple of days ago that, wow, that is a whole quarter century ago.

Diana Alt [00:00:48]:
So I've been reflecting on what is the same about getting laid off in the year 2000 as in the year 2025. Now I've run my own business for six years, so I have not personally gotten laid off in some time. I've had three layoffs. The last one was in 2012. But I work with people every single month who are layoff victims. And I work with even more people that still have jobs but are worried about the job market. They are worried about whether they are going to get laid off. So it's part of my day to day life for sure.

Diana Alt [00:01:25]:
So let's start with my layoff story. I began my career as a technology consultant. I had gotten a chemistry undergraduate degree and a master's degree in engineering management from University of Missouri Rollo, which is now called Missouri University of Science and Technology, which is a huge mouthful. Tech consulting was one of the top things that friends of mine that were in my departments and similar departments were going to. It was exciting, exciting because we got to work with people. So the extroverts and the people, people among us like the idea of working in that field. We got to travel on somebody else's dime. Like there's just all kinds of goodness about it.

Diana Alt [00:02:06]:
Many people associate that Internet bubble bursting thing from the early 2000s as starting sometime in 2001 and mostly being in 2001 and 2002, but it actually began earlier than that. We were not necessarily getting laid off because of the bubble bursting, but it was starting to wobble for sure. And everybody that was in my consulting firm anyway felt it because our projects were getting shorter or they were getting canceled or things that we thought were a sure thing that we're going to sign did not sign people. More people were on the bench in between projects, things like that. So it was not necessarily a surprise to me. Whenever the practice manager came to me in the middle of November and said, we're so sorry, but you're going to be laid off. We don't have the work to support all the consultants on our staff. And I was on the bench, so I was one of the easiest people to lay off.

Diana Alt [00:03:06]:
Myself and a handful of other people that were on the bench. We got four more weeks to use any company resource that we wanted towards our job search, including the ability to look at whether other divisions outside the technology consulting division of the company might have roles that were suitable for us, get introductions for those roles, that kind of thing. So they supported us pretty well. Especially. I had worked there just under two years whenever I got laid off. And you know, a lot of people when they get laid off, they get handed a box, shown the door, and they don't even get any severance pay. I didn't really get severance pay, but I got those four extra paid weeks where I was not expected to do anything for the company. I could just focus entirely on my job search.

Diana Alt [00:03:52]:
At the time I got laid off, it was jarring, but not because I didn't think a layoff could happen. It was more that it was weird that it happened to me. And I also wasn't naive enough to think it couldn't happen to me. But until you experience something, it's all in your head. It's not like in your body, in your heart, in your reality. Now, 25 years later, I can look at how I recovered from that layoff and how I've worked with others and just related to other friends and clients and colleagues that have gone through layoffs to see what's the same and what's different. So what hasn't changed is, first off, the identity shake. People who get laid off, one of the top things that I hear from them, whether they are 25 or 55, is, am I still valuable? Are my skills still valuable, Am I still employable? Some flavor of that.

Diana Alt [00:04:52]:
And it does happen all up and down the experience level. When people are at the higher levels, they worry, am I valuable enough to command my salary, or am I basically aged out of my industry? When they're earlier in their career, a lot of times they're wondering, well, if I just had gotten this certification, would I have not gotten laid off? If I go and get another three letters behind my name, will that fix problems? That's a whole other episode of the podcast, whether you need to get different more credentials after a layoff. But those are things that go through people's mind. Another thing is who am I without this job? I see this a lot with people who worked at a company for a very long time. So I didn't really have this feeling only having been at the company two years before I got laid off. But there were people that had been there for 10, 15, 20 years. And I've had clients that have been 20 plus years at the same company before a layoff that have definitely felt this way. Who am I without this job? That is a dangerous place to be.

Diana Alt [00:05:55]:
One of the reasons that I do the work that I do is so that people can figure out how to have a great work life so that their the rest of their life can also be great. Because when you're stressed about work, you're it's going to kind of ruin a lot of the rest of your life. Or at least for most people it is. The last thing that people worry about from the identity standpoint is what does this say about me. They worry are people are going to think that I am not good at my job, that I deserved to be laid off in some way. The next thing that hits people, and these are not necessarily in order. Everybody processes this stuff in different orders. But there's kind of a panic, shame, betrayal.

Diana Alt [00:06:33]:
How the, how, how the hell am I going to pay the bills? What the hell am I going to do? Next thing that goes on for some people, they report feeling this is grief, especially people who were at the same company for a long time. But in my case I felt more embarrassment. I thought I had done a good job there. But at the time that I got laid off, basically people thought of layoffs as something that were was done to low performers. One of the reasons for that is that this was kind of in The Jack Welch GE cuts the bottom 5% of their workforce in terms of performance every single year. And so there was just this assumption that people that were getting laid off were in the bottom 5 to 10% of performers. It took me a long time to accept that that wasn't true. And one of the things that helped was a boss of mine at the company or you know, like boss, but he was a program manager that I had worked under, also got laid off.

Diana Alt [00:07:33]:
And he said, you know, you were such a value add on the projects we worked together. Don't worry that you're not good at what you do. And there's a sense of a loss of safety. So in my case I had a better safety net than a lot of people did. I had a little bit of savings, I had Some a little bit of school debt. But it wasn't like a lot of my friends that had to borrow almost every dime to go to college. And I had parents that had financial resources and I surely didn't want to take them up on it. But I know that if the worst had come to worst, I would have somewhere to live.

Diana Alt [00:08:06]:
My dad always said, I want you to be self sufficient, I want you to stand on your own financially. But the one thing that I never one bill I never want you to let go unpaid is your health insurance because this was before HIPAA and you had to prove that you had continuous health insurance or you would be excluded for pre existing conditions. So I had more safety than some other people, but it still felt like a lack of safety. And then the last thing that has not changed is the things that help you land the fastest. So we have a lot of narrative around oh AI this and bulk apply that and have chat GPT write your resume and ATS is screening you out. Like all these things are noise that we hear whenever people are mired in job searches. But the things that help land the fastest are actually clarity about what your skills are, why you're in the market and where you're going, where you want to go and why you're a good fit for that. Curiosity about the problems that the companies you might go to work for need to have solved so that you can explain clearly how you match that and relationships that will help open doors for you or serve as an emotional support for you as you're going through the process.

Diana Alt [00:09:27]:
I landed fast, actually. I had my job offer before the end of the year and I started a new job in January because I leveraged relationships with people that I had both worked with and gone to college with. And my next job was actually at another consulting firm that one of my sorority sisters from college worked at. So that's three things that haven't changed. So what has changed? One of the biggest things that's changed is the stigma shift around layoffs. And this is a change for the better. Unquestionably in 2000, the tech field didn't understand layoffs, how most of America did not understand layoffs, especially as it pertained to salaried white collar knowledge work. If you thought about layoffs, you thought about someone down at the Chrysler plant who was laid off and it was related to union agreements type stuff.

Diana Alt [00:10:26]:
Oh, we don't have a contract right now, we're not going to work without a contract or we don't have enough work. So I'm laid off, but I'm at home and I'm still collecting partial pay. Like that's what we knew of layoffs, at least in my community and in my family at that time. Now we hear about layoffs quite a lot. And right now, tech, of course, is one of the sectors that's the hardest hit. People tended to assume you were the problem back in 2002, and recruiters would side eye you, your family would side eye you. And a lot of people didn't know anybody that had been laid off back 25 years ago. It wasn't normalized as a thing that could happen to people and that they could come through okay.

Diana Alt [00:11:08]:
Now layoffs are much more common, which kind of sucks. I mean, nobody wants to be laid off, go through the hard work of getting a job and realize that they could get laid off again a year or two or whatever later. Like, it's not awesome that layoffs are more common when it comes to building career stability, but it is kind of good that it's destigmatized. People now understand much better that you're not laid off necessarily because of a performance problem. You're more likely to be laid off because entire programs have been cut within your company. And so they're just letting go of entire teams, from the top performer in that team to the bottom performer in that team. Layoffs are also discussed much more openly than they were in 2000, especially among industries that are experiencing layoffs together, like tech is right now. And there's more of a sense of people rallying around each other, whether it's online or in person, than there was back in the day.

Diana Alt [00:12:10]:
In 2000, a layoff was almost like a warning sign on an employee. And now it's viewed more like a badge of survival. Most people I know, they don't know of anybody that they don't. They could not name a single person in their industry or in their circle that has not been laid off at some point. The next thing that's different is the noise and intensity around layoffs. So yes, it's good that people are talking about it, but we are bombarded with constant messages about it because we have this 24.7news cycle that is coming at us through our phones, through social media apps and the TV and all the things. We have layoff trackers now. We have endless social media feeds that are people talking about their layoffs or they're afraid they're going to get laid off, or they've been searching for a job for nine months and can't get an interview and there's a lot of the AI is taking our jobs.

Diana Alt [00:13:09]:
Apocalyptic headlines which Fun fact in 2000 there were the Internet is coming to take your job and make you obsolete. Doom scrolling wasn't even a term in 2000 either. So now the layoffs and announcements tend to go viral. You feel the emotional impact of thousands of people when a layoff happens and you feel it even whenever it's not your company doing the laying off. That's kind of the wildest part about the whole thing. Career panic is ambient everywhere. It takes a special person to live in our current society. Listening to these messages and feel like I have what it takes to continue having a good career.

Diana Alt [00:13:56]:
There's opinion overload everywhere. There's tons of misinformation about why layoffs are happening and what to do about it and what to do in your job search. And it's just this massive confusion. So that's some of the things. So right now I wouldn't say like part of me feels psychological load is heavier, but it's not because it's inherently harder to get laid off today than it is in 2000. It's because it's the conversation around it is ubiquitous and there's not very many people talking about the positive sides of making a career change. Whenever the mark the job market feels weird, there's lots of layoffs, the environment is louder and you feel every layoff. So what's the core lesson here? The core lesson is basically a layoff Shakespeare identity.

Diana Alt [00:14:46]:
That's the human experience. A layoff causes fear. That is part of the human experience. That is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People worrying about am I going to be able to have food, clothing, shelter, the things I need to stay safe. But also the ability to turn towards the basics. Your relationships with other people, your ability to learn, your curiosity, the clarity around what skills you have and what you bring to the table. Those things were valuable 25 years ago and they're still valuable now.

Diana Alt [00:15:22]:
You cannot control the noise that is happening all over online and in in person conversations about the job market and about the country in general. But what you can control is the stories that you tell yourself and the stories that you develop about yourself to tell others so that you can move forward and land on your feet as quickly as possible. If this episode hit for you or you're navigating something career shaking, I really would love to hear from you. All of my socials are in the show notes. You can email me at diana diana dianaianaalt.com. and if you need some coaching help to get you through your own layoff experience or your own career transition, I'd love to talk to you. Have a great day and may you be clear, curious and have good relationships in your career.