Diana Alt [00:00:01]:
Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Work Should Feel Good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host, Diana Alt, and today my guest Steve Jaffe and I are going to talk about the aftermath of layoffs, particularly the process of grieving the job that you lost, which is completely underrated. Steve is an author, a speaker, and a marketing strategist who helps people navigate the emotional and practical realities of job loss. A 1, 2, 3, 4 time layoff survivor, he's seen some shit and come through on the other side. His debut book, the Layoff Journey From Dismissal to Discovery, Navigating the Stages of Grief After a Job Loss, is not only one of the longest book titles I've ever seen, but it reframes the layoff experience through seven stages of grief, giving readers a roadmap to process, rebuild, and renew after a layoff. Welcome to the party, Steve. Hey.

Steve Jaffe [00:00:57]:
Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Diana Alt [00:01:01]:
I'm so glad we finally connected because I think it was like, you're doing your pub tour for this book, and one of the members of your team reached out to me, and I have mostly interviewed people I already knew. My podcast is about nine months old, and I have a lot of people in my network, and at first I was like, who is this person? And then the second I saw the name of your book, I was like, oh, we. We have to talk. We absolutely have to talk. So thank you. There was one thing that was in your. Some of the materials you sent me that I really want to hit, though, because you were part of a freaking marketing tagline campaign thing that is now a core part of American culture.

Steve Jaffe [00:01:47]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:01:47]:
Which is what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Steve Jaffe [00:01:50]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:01:51]:
So I would just love to hear a little bit about that project and you're part of it before we jump into the. To the rest of this layoff stuff.

Steve Jaffe [00:02:00]:
Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. Highlight of my career. Absolutely. One of the things I'm probably most proud of.

Diana Alt [00:02:05]:
You peaked early.

Steve Jaffe [00:02:07]:
I did. It was fantastic. So I. I joined the agency as an ad agency in Las Vegas.

Diana Alt [00:02:16]:
Okay.

Steve Jaffe [00:02:16]:
And I joined that agency right before that campaign launched, and I was there for the first five years of its life, and it was a rocket ship like no other. We came out of the gate, and from day one, that thing lit fire, and there was no looking back.

Diana Alt [00:02:36]:
So they already had it established and were launching it. Were you part of the creative team?

Steve Jaffe [00:02:42]:
So I was on the media team, and I was responsible for, like, if you ever saw an ad anywhere? I planned and bought that ad. Billboard, tv, radio, newspaper, magazine. This was all back, like, traditional media. And when I joined the agency, we were putting the final touches on the tagline, doing all the research, focus group, testing it, testing the spots. So, like, the strategist had come in and come up with the tagline. It had been written into the spots and things were getting tested, and we knew we were taking a pretty big risk. And we thought it was what the city needed to turn the tables on what had been perceived as a family destination and buffets and 99 cent shirt cocktail. And it was definitely the precursor to Vegas becoming what it is now.

Diana Alt [00:03:47]:
What year was that, that. That launched?

Steve Jaffe [00:03:50]:
2002.

Diana Alt [00:03:51]:
Wow. It feels like it's always been.

Steve Jaffe [00:03:55]:
Yeah, I mean, it captured a zeitgeist. It became part of, like, culture and. Yeah. I mean, now you see that slogan on everything from what happens at grandma's house, stays at grandma's house.

Diana Alt [00:04:09]:
Exactly.

Steve Jaffe [00:04:09]:
You know, it's everywhere.

Diana Alt [00:04:10]:
Right. It's on Etsy, on Ra.

Steve Jaffe [00:04:12]:
Them. Yeah, right.

Diana Alt [00:04:13]:
Like sweatshirts for grandma. Yeah.

Steve Jaffe [00:04:16]:
But, you know, we struck a chord and, you know, like other famous taglines, whether it's like, where's the beef? Or Nike, just do it. Like, these are iconic advertising taglines that will live on forever. Now.

Diana Alt [00:04:34]:
What. How'd you get into advertising?

Steve Jaffe [00:04:38]:
So my major was journalism with emphasis in advertising. And I wanted to. I really liked, like, the creative process. And I stumbled into an internship in an agency in San Diego and it was in the media department. And I found that, like, media was this really interesting hybrid of creativity and analytics. It was like left brain, right brain.

Diana Alt [00:05:03]:
And.

Steve Jaffe [00:05:04]:
And that was really the way my brain naturally operates is like, creative, yet analytical. And I stayed in it for about 10 years. Half of that time was on the what happens here campaign. And then I moved over to client side into broader marketing roles. But it was a great place to begin my career and learn, like, really the importance of marketing and messaging and target audience and demographics and research and all of this stuff that I would draw from later in my career. But yeah, that. That was a really, really fun time.

Diana Alt [00:05:45]:
What a cool time, I feel like. So I was raised by teachers, junior college level, actually. My mom was like, English, all things English. My dad was pre engineering, so physics and math and chemistry and all that. He didn't do chemistry, actually. He didn't do chemistry, but he did a lot of that stuff. And so we were this academic health household. My parents were also both raised on farms.

Diana Alt [00:06:11]:
And so, like, business and Marketing was not something we knew about. And when you're like, straight A student, mostly straight a student that has teachers for parents, like, they don't think very much of business school. So, like, marketing, what's that? Or they'd be like, you're not majoring in business. That's not for the kid. That's not for you. You're too smart to major in business. And now all I do is go find those people that got, like, an associate's degree in marketing, and I'm like, how do I run my business? What am I when I tell my mom now? Like, a lot of my business mentors, especially in this creative, small thing that we do as authors or coaches, have GEDs or high school degrees, she's like, what? Like, I don't care what your education is. You teach me how to make some money.

Diana Alt [00:07:01]:
And I'm into it.

Steve Jaffe [00:07:02]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:07:04]:
So you went from advertiser to marketer. Fast forward us to how did you end up becoming an author and a speaker? Because that's where a lot of your focus is now.

Steve Jaffe [00:07:14]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I always had a passion for writing. Like I mentioned, my major in college was journalism, and I had done. I was in journalism in high school, too. So I was always doing, like, writing. And I thought I was a decent writer. People would tell me they thought I was a pretty good writer. And in the back of my mind, I always had this goal of, someday I want to write a book.

Steve Jaffe [00:07:36]:
And I toyed around with a lot of different ideas, but nothing stuck. And then after my fourth layoff.

Diana Alt [00:07:46]:
I.

Steve Jaffe [00:07:46]:
Found that I had learned this set of skills and how to navigate the stages of grief after job loss. And I wanted to communicate that to the people I was laid off with and tell them, listen, everything's going to be okay. Here's the things I've learned after four layoffs. And this could help you in your own journey through the grief. And that's when I had this light bulb moment. And I thought, oh, my gosh, if I turn this into a book, I could help more than just the people I was laid off with at this one company. I could help so many more people. And then from that moment forward, it was like, this is it.

Steve Jaffe [00:08:25]:
I'm going to write this book. It's going to be about how to get through a layoff. And I never looked back.

Diana Alt [00:08:32]:
Well, I love the principle of it. I'm full disclosure to the people listening. I usually try to read the whole book before I bring an off. You know, I'm bringing an author on and talking to him about it. But I booked like four authors, five authors within about six weeks. I read a lot, but I don't read that much. I did, however, read basically like the first quarter to a third of the book where you outline a lot of the basic stuff. And I'm just, I can't wait to read the rest of it because it's like less than 150 pages.

Diana Alt [00:09:02]:
It's just like practical, actionable.

Steve Jaffe [00:09:04]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:09:05]:
And I love books like that. I love a well researched like PhD wrote the book, which I have an interview with one of those people later this week. But man, just the thing that feels like you're sitting down and telling your best friend, like, I know you got laid off from your job you've had for 10 years, but this is what you're experiencing and it's so valuable because you're not jumping directly into go immediately and find a job. So right, you're jump, you're going through like, let's process this thing before we get into like what that stages of grief is because I think it's fascinating. It's based on Elizabeth Kubler's work from the book on death and Dying. I want to get there, but I thought we could swap some more stories about layoffs because I've got three, you've got four. Yeah, let's talk about it. So I do remember from the first part of your book, your first one was during the tech wreck, right?

Steve Jaffe [00:10:03]:
Yeah, yeah. The first dot com bubble that burst in 2001.

Diana Alt [00:10:07]:
What were you doing? Were you in, were you at that agency or talk?

Steve Jaffe [00:10:12]:
I was at a different agency. I was in San Francisco at the time. I was at a great agency working on a great account and the writing was on the wall. With companies starting to crash and the client that we had, that I worked on went bankrupt. Huge, huge company. Their parent company was WorldCom and they lost all their money and. Yeah. So ad agencies have this thing where they test the concepts in focus groups and they'll have a one way mirror so that in another room you could look into the focus group room and observe and listen.

Steve Jaffe [00:10:55]:
Right. And I was in that focus group room meeting with a vendor, planning our next campaign and. And I could look through the mirror and see what was happening in the conference room. I could see like agency leadership and somebody from hr. I could see people walk in and I could read the expression on their face. I could see like papers getting passed across the conference room table. I could see they were very quick, short meetings. I could see it was Very serious.

Steve Jaffe [00:11:29]:
People were not happy, right? And so I'm watching all of this happen while I'm meeting with the vendor, and I'm like, God, this is really weird. What's going on? And there's a knock on the door. It's somebody from hr and they ask me to join them in the conference room. And I'm like, well, I'm in a meeting right now. And I said, no, this is really important. You need to come to the conference room.

Diana Alt [00:11:51]:
That is the weirdest decision, right? Like, I, I understand, like, ripping the band aid off, but pulling you out of a vendor meeting.

Steve Jaffe [00:11:58]:
Yeah. Yeah. So then, so I, so I'm on the other side of the mirror, right? And now the vendor that I'm meeting with is watching me in the conference room. And now I walk in, and now suddenly I realize why it's all somber and what's going on, because guess what? Everybody's getting laid off. And now I'm one of the, one of the people that gets to get laid off, right? And so short meeting, right? I get past cobra severance. Thank you. It's time to clean out your desk. You have five minutes.

Steve Jaffe [00:12:29]:
And meanwhile, this vendor is still there. And I'm now leaving the agency. They're in there wondering if I'm going to come back to the meeting, right? And I'm like, never coming back again. It was like to say it was traumatic. And then here's the other thing. So ad agencies are like, they have these open plan offices, right? So everybody can see everything. So now, and it's hushed, quiet, because by this time, the rumor had made it around the agency that there's layoffs going on, right? And everybody's wondering, okay, am I going to get called in the conference room? Am I safe? Did my friend just get laid off? So now I have a box, I'm cleaning up my desk, everybody's watching me, and I'm kind of like, okay, well, bye, guys. I'll see you later.

Steve Jaffe [00:13:21]:
It was embarrassing. It was humiliating. It was painful. It was, it was a. No understatement to say it was a traumatic experience.

Diana Alt [00:13:32]:
I got laid off. I'm sure it was. And like, that whole doing it in front of everybody heart is so wild. So my first layoff was, it sounds like just a few months before yours, because I was working. My first job out of college was with an IT consulting firm and I was in the Midwest. So a lot of our clients were not like, you know, the crazy unicorn, but they made $0. They made negative zillions of Dollars, like a lot of the Bay Area stuff. But consulting always gets hit first because people are going to trim whatever optional projects they have.

Diana Alt [00:14:08]:
So I'm a little baby consultant who traveled four days a week. But on Fridays we would go in the office and do our expense reports or sometimes there would be training or whatever. And what's interesting about that is like, I didn't have anything at the office because I wasn't usually there. So I had like a laptop and my purse and like a notebook and they were pulling people in to let us go. We did not get told, you know, get the heck out. We actually were a consulting arm of a much bigger company. So we got told you have four weeks. There are roles open in like some of these other areas of the broader company.

Diana Alt [00:14:49]:
You're welcome to apply. Like, we'll try to help you with that. But it was all like this stuff that I don't. It was like government outsourcing crap. And I'm like, that is not me. So. But I managed to find a job fairly quickly through a gal that I went to college with took that job. I got laid off in November.

Diana Alt [00:15:11]:
So right at the end of the year, was able to start mine in January and then that company laid off too. But I learned a skill set in six months at that second company that served me for years afterwards. So, yeah, I was. And I basically went and learned Siebel, which was a big CRM tool at the time. It's kind of like Salesforce. No, you know, Siebel's Bye bye now. But it's like a Salesforce CRM platform kind of thing. And I learned that a bunch of it, especially around reporting in that six months.

Diana Alt [00:15:47]:
And that kept me going for a while because I contracted through a weird period until I could find a full time job. So. Yeah, what are, what, what else happened? Like, did you have, did you get hit a lot during the tech wreck? Because a lot of people got in that cycle where it's like everybody was doing last in, first out. So it's like you get laid off and then you get the next job and you're like, great, I have a new job. And then they would have to lay off, last in, first out. So then you're out again. Did you experience that or was your experience different?

Steve Jaffe [00:16:19]:
Well, it was a little different, but it was no less difficult. So this layoff happened. It was like maybe March, April, right. And then my wife gets laid off. So now we're both laid off.

Diana Alt [00:16:33]:
And.

Steve Jaffe [00:16:33]:
And San Francisco is like, layoffs are happening Everywhere and there's U Hauls and it's like rats leaving the ship. So I thought, well, let's go to la. Because LA is less about tech and more about, like, film and TV and, like, theatrical releases. I could probably get a job doing media for, like, a studio. So we move to LA and then 911 happens, and the entire thing just vaporizes, like, up, like, every job prospect gone. Yeah. And she decided to go back to school. And I ended up being out of work total for about 18 months.

Diana Alt [00:17:18]:
Wow.

Steve Jaffe [00:17:19]:
And then I landed that job in Vegas on what happens here stays here.

Diana Alt [00:17:23]:
Got it.

Steve Jaffe [00:17:23]:
And it was this very strange, like, go from nothing to this, like, rocket ship. Like, in the book, I tell the story about how in that layoff experience I was like, home alone in sweats, and I'm watching the super bowl. And the very next year I was at the super bowl because of what happens here stays here.

Diana Alt [00:17:49]:
Yeah.

Steve Jaffe [00:17:50]:
That's a very interesting. Like, you. You never know what the future holds. You never know what's at the end of your journey.

Diana Alt [00:17:58]:
Yeah. I love. And that. I think that that openness of attitude, like, whether you learned it in retrospect or whether you had it while that was going on is so important. Because what I see so often, whether we're in a weird job market with a recession or geopolitical nonsense or any of that, or whether it's just good times, people will decide that they know, and they just. The thing that they decide that they know is that it's impossible, everything's terrible and all that kind of stuff. So I've been coaching for a long time. Kind of the origin of me being a career coach, actually, was that all the baby consultants, almost all the baby consultants, unless they were directly staffed at that time, got laid off in that Q4 2000 layoff that I mentioned earlier.

Diana Alt [00:18:49]:
And we didn't know what the hell we were doing. Like, our. Our career centers in our colleges didn't teach us any better in 1998, 99 what to do than they do now. They're kind of out of date on things. And so we were figuring it out together, and I really quickly realized that, oh, my gosh, like, I know people that are willing to work for the same money that I am, that have 10 more years of experience, and it's because they have a mortgage and kids, like, their financial situation is more desperate than mine is. So I just started figuring out how do I stand out from somebody with more experience? And that's the very baby beginning of when I was coaching and then I just helped friends with that for a long time. And then eventually someone said, I'd like you to help me and I'll give you money. Wait, I can get money for this.

Diana Alt [00:19:43]:
What? Sounds good? So what was the most recent layoff?

Steve Jaffe [00:19:49]:
Most recent layoff, June 2023. I was at a SaaS startup Series A round, and they were going through their first round of layoffs. About 20% of the company got let go.

Diana Alt [00:20:05]:
Yeah.

Steve Jaffe [00:20:05]:
And this one was over zoom, you know, and it was like a very short five minute zoom thing. And then, you know, boom. Your laptop shuts down.

Diana Alt [00:20:18]:
Yeah.

Steve Jaffe [00:20:18]:
And that's it. Okay. But that was that. That's kind of the. The story arc in the book is going from that first layoff where I was just a total wreck, totally traumatized. Stages of grief took a long, long time to get through. And then in that last layoff, now, like almost 25 years later, after four layoffs, this is my fourth. It's like water off a duck's back.

Steve Jaffe [00:20:52]:
It doesn't really affect me in any way. That's when I'm like, wait a minute, what's going on here? And I'm like, I learned a set of skills that, you know, you wouldn't really wish on anyone. You wouldn't. You wouldn't wish somebody to be an expert at getting laid off and figuring out how to emotionally cope with that in a way that, like, it's very healthy and it's productive and you come out of it feeling almost like a sense of renewal. But that's what I had learned. I had learned kind of, I guess, to see the silver lining or to create systems of self care that would help me not only get through a layoff, but any difficult or traumatic thing that I was going through because I had managed, like, good mental health, good spiritual health, all of these different kind of mind, body, spirit baselines that I didn't have in place in that first layoff. Yeah, I didn't. You know, one of the things I didn't understand was the importance of a network and community.

Steve Jaffe [00:21:59]:
So when I moved to la, I lost all of the relationships in. In, in San Francisco. And this was back.

Diana Alt [00:22:07]:
Yeah, we were still buying minutes on our cell phones, like, for people that are like, why would you lose anything? Especially younger listeners.

Steve Jaffe [00:22:15]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:22:15]:
We were literally rationing minutes on our cell phones in that period of our life. And we were waiting until 9:00pM to call people, which you don't want to call your friends in San Francisco at 9 o', clock, you know, Your colleague. Right. Just felt weird. Right.

Steve Jaffe [00:22:35]:
So now you can get up and move to any city and you still have your network, right?

Diana Alt [00:22:38]:
Yes.

Steve Jaffe [00:22:39]:
And this time moving from San Francisco to LA was like, might as well move from New York to San Francisco. Like.

Diana Alt [00:22:46]:
Yeah.

Steve Jaffe [00:22:48]:
You had no social media. You, you barely maybe had cell phones, maybe not too much, but it was, this was all analog and, you know, even resumes. I think you were still printing out physical copies of a resume.

Diana Alt [00:23:06]:
So at that time. Yeah, I think I was right in the, in the line. Like we were definitely taking printed resumes to all job interviews on that cream colored paper that we spent extra money on at Office Map.

Steve Jaffe [00:23:20]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:23:20]:
There you go. Yeah, yeah, we were, we were springing for the fancy paper after we got the resume. Good. But I do remember somewhere in that, that phase of my career, I discovered dice.com because I was in tech. In that early, in that early phase of my career, I ran across Dice, which was a tech job board. It's still around. It kind of looks a little bit differently. But that was the only game in town.

Diana Alt [00:23:44]:
This, this was pre LinkedIn. LinkedIn did not exist when you and I first had our first layoffs. So.

Steve Jaffe [00:23:51]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:23:52]:
I feel like the same thing though. So when I had my. My third layoff was in 2012, and so the first two were six months apart. My third layoff was in 212. I was working as a product manager for a large tech company and I was absolutely burned out because for 10 years I'd never taken more than about 10 days off of work, maybe two weeks over Christmas or something, but I had never gotten to rest. And I also had lost my husband and my dad while I was working at that company a couple years before. And I just like, I just worked through it because I like to work. That is one of my things.

Diana Alt [00:24:33]:
But I didn't like the direction the company was going. I was plotting my exit. So I'm sure I was the weirdest layoff conversation they had that day. And it was a very surgical layoff where they got let go of five people in my local office and it was just like a trim, you know, it wasn't a 20% of people. So I have to go into the office with the VP of Product and the HR director and they tell me this and I look happy and they're confused. My direct boss was on vacation and he was pissed because he knew it was coming, but they were going to wait till the week after he got back and then they changed their mind because they wanted to get the Head count off the books by the end of the quarter.

Steve Jaffe [00:25:17]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:25:17]:
And he would have been back on like April 3rd or something. So you're out. Yeah. And I, I was ready. I was in the same place because I was like, I've done this. I'd also change jobs a couple more times in between. And I'm like, I, I learned so early on that job security is the biggest fiction that people chase. Like, it is like leprechauns are about as real as job security.

Steve Jaffe [00:25:45]:
Right, right. So, yeah.

Diana Alt [00:25:48]:
So when you think about, we've talked, we've touched on it. The main purpose of your book is the seven Stages of Grief, which is like we said earlier, it's based off of Elizabeth Kubler Ross work. What was the light bulb that made you go to the five stages of grief that you turn into seven for layoffs? Like, how did that light bulb come to you?

Steve Jaffe [00:26:13]:
Well, as I was thinking about my own journey over the course of these four layoffs and my feelings and emotions that I saw through line. So each layoff there was some element of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then ultimately acceptance. Right. And the more I researched her practice and approach and her understanding, it's like a common kind of, you know, for the human condition, any traumatic life experience, life event, whether it's divorce, death of a loved one, and certainly a layoff, they follow this way of processing these emotions, so they're sort of transcendent. And as I researched it further, I learned that in time, additional researchers have come in and added on these additional stages of reconstruction and renewal.

Diana Alt [00:27:21]:
Oh, I wondered where those came from. I didn't know if that was a Steve thing or if there was additional research. So.

Steve Jaffe [00:27:28]:
Yeah, yeah, so now they're there and sometimes they get worded or rewritten differently. But, and I liked the, I liked the arc of, you know, the early stages are very dark. You know, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, those are difficult where you're doing a lot of heavy lifting every day to get up and manage and, and keep yourself in good headspace. I liked really double down, doubling down on the light at the end of the tunnel because that's where the growth happens and that's where the discovery happens. So not just thinking about accepting this because it's like, yeah, I accept I've been laid off, but now what do I do with that? And it leaves it kind of open ended if you don't close with the reconstruction and then ultimately the renewal. And that for me is where the, the, the learning, the growth, the protein, productivity happen. Where you you discover something in yourself, whether it's resilience or grit or.

Diana Alt [00:28:42]:
A.

Steve Jaffe [00:28:43]:
Redefinition of your, your values and how they align with your professional career. Or maybe you learn, you really love what you've been doing and you want to continue to do it. Whatever that answer is for you, it only comes at the end of that ultimate renewal. And so.

Diana Alt [00:29:03]:
It'S also cyclical too. Or maybe not cyclical, but like it's not clean. Steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Like, you can go back and forth on this recipe a lot. I do in, in my work, I work with, you know, executives on kind of like performance management and growth and kind of career development with other people. And I do a lot of work on job search, which has been even more work the last two years, of course. But watching people, they can intellectually accept the layoff, they can intellectually accept that the average job search is around eight months for white collar professionals that I serve. But man, when they are in it and they are getting the rejection or their, the second place again at the final interview, it just takes you right back to everything else that you were processing.

Diana Alt [00:29:59]:
So.

Steve Jaffe [00:29:59]:
Right, right, right. Two things I want to, I want to just drill into. You're absolutely right, is the stages aren't linear. You pass through them sometimes all at once, sometimes not at all on any given day. And they're really unique to your life experience. So you may feel some more than others based on your background. But one of the things that I like about talking about the stages of grief after a layoff is that if you do this well and, and productively, you then can move on to that job search aspect without carrying this baggage. Because your job search is going to be met with a lot of disappointment and a lot of rejection.

Steve Jaffe [00:30:50]:
And if you're carrying this grief and then you're going to be met with the grief of the job hunt, it's just going to have a compounding effect. And it's talking about, yeah, I mean, talk about depression. You've got a lot to be depressed about after you've been laid off and now you can't find another job because you've been rejected for the hundredth time.

Diana Alt [00:31:10]:
Right.

Steve Jaffe [00:31:11]:
So it's really important to kind of do this step and do this work before you get to your resume and you go on that interview. Because what's great about this is in that rediscovery phase where you're, you're getting back in touch with what do I want to do, why do I want to do it, what's valuable to me, what's important, what fulfills me, what brings me joy. You're able to understand what career path you should be on. And with that realization, then when a hiring manager says to you, why do you want this job? You're able to give a really genuine, sincere answer that, I love this work and I want to continue to do this work. Or, you know, what I've learned in this layoff experience. I would really like to pivot into a new area. This area really matches where my passions and joy lives, and I really would like to, you know, move into this area.

Diana Alt [00:32:10]:
But you want to take the opportunity. That kind of language matters to people because, you know, I, I so many people don't understand that checking off all the box, checking the boxes on the job description is the start of landing the job is not the end of landing the job. When you do that, especially in a market where there's a lot of competition, there are a hundred other people that check the same damn box as you are. So you have to check them harder or highlight them or something, make it really freaking obvious. And then when you walk in the door, people want someone that is qualified, can get the results that's needed, is good to work with, and freaking wants to be there because they don't want to turn around six months later and do it all again. So here's a question for you, though, because, you know, an insanely large percentage of Americans, I've seen different numbers, 40% as that range is one of the most common ones, are like, they're like one pay, one or two paychecks away from the street. They can't handle a $500 emergency, that kind of thing. And some of those people are, look like they're loaded.

Diana Alt [00:33:28]:
So it's not all just the people that, you know, live in the modest house, in the duplex, driving the beater car. Like, people at every pay grade can be in that bucket. So my question for you is, sometimes you have to get after it.

Steve Jaffe [00:33:44]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:33:44]:
You have to get after it.

Steve Jaffe [00:33:46]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:33:46]:
And the processing of grief, especially for people that have been in a job for a long time, maybe they're angry. A whole topic we're going to get into is like, I worked my ass off. Why did I make the layoff last? They're, they're in that space. What is your guidance to those people when they have to get after the job search for various reasons, but they still need to process. They can't wait four or six weeks to try to get, you know, through a lot of the steps.

Steve Jaffe [00:34:17]:
Right, right, right. It's really, really important. And a healthy outlet means a lot of different things. It means talking about this with people, finding a community, finding those resources, the friends, mentors, family. Talking about what you're going through is important and you can do that while you're still on the job hunt. Like a really healthy self care routine. So good exercise, getting outside, some type of physical movement is really great to fight off depression and to clear your mind. So there's a lot of really healthy chemicals that get released in your body when you exercise.

Steve Jaffe [00:35:03]:
Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. Those will help you fight depression in a really natural way. And you'd be amazed at how clear your thinking can become after some exercise. And that will help you put some things into perspective. Important sleep. Sleep is really, really important. Getting plenty of rest is a great way to give yourself some self care. Good diet, healthy, healthy food, limiting alcohol intake is really important.

Steve Jaffe [00:35:44]:
I would also recommend people create a gratitude practice. So much has been taken from you during the layoff. So your job, your title, your, your paycheck, your health insurance, these are things that, yes, they've been taken, but you want to try and focus on what you still have that's positive. You know, the one that grows is the one that you feed. And if you spend a few minutes each day thinking about what you have that you're grateful for, you'd be amazed at how you can develop some resiliency and a positive mindset that's going to help you get through this.

Diana Alt [00:36:26]:
So yeah, and I, I think I, I love everything you're saying, especially things about trying to maintain your physical health, because that is the thing that a lot of people put to the bottom of the list before they got laid off anyway. If they know their company is struggling, they, you know, they are that person that just tried like hell to make it work. And maybe we're compromising on their health. So some things that I tell people are, number one, let yourself be pissed, but give it a time cap. Especially when the anger phase comes back at you. Like if you are just you, you thought you were moving through and you're giving me the vocabulary with the grief stages, I didn't say it exactly this way, but now maybe I will. But if you are kind of progressing and then all of a sudden something slaps you and your back, get pissed off. Like let yourself be pissed off for the afternoon or for 10 minutes or something and then say, okay, what is now? It's very, very easy to roll over into toxic positivity with this as well.

Diana Alt [00:37:25]:
Like, yes, all this self care is important. Yes, having a positive mindset is important. But I live in the real world where that doesn't always work. I also tell people, don't cancel the gym.

Steve Jaffe [00:37:36]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Diana Alt [00:37:37]:
If you have a vacation coming up, don't cancel the vacation. You might downgrade it. Like if you were gonna go deluxe first class, like maybe you're gonna see if you can, you know, stay at a place that's less expensive or go for five days instead of eight or whatever. But don't deprive yourself of making memories with family or friends because you lost your job. Yeah, dignity is the biggest thing I think people lose. What do you think?

Steve Jaffe [00:38:11]:
I think, Yeah, I think, I think dignity goes hand in hand with shame and embarrassment. And that's, I think the number one emotion people feel after they've been laid off is the shame and embarrassment. And what I hope people gain from my book and from hearing me speak is that you can let go of the shame and embarrassment. This is a no fault termination. Layoffs are. You've done nothing wrong. Right. And now if you're fired, that's a different situation.

Steve Jaffe [00:38:42]:
But at a layoff, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. The company is doing a budget exercise and you were a name on a spreadsheet that they needed to free up budget because they couldn't find another way to generate revenue to the bottom line. It's simple as that.

Diana Alt [00:38:59]:
Or they're preparing for sale or something like that.

Steve Jaffe [00:39:03]:
Yeah, I've seen employee of the year in January, get laid off in June. You can work as hard as you can all hours of the day and be a high performer and still get laid off.

Diana Alt [00:39:15]:
So let's talk about that because that is one of those things. I watch people all the time that I need to get a new job. I don't like this job, or it's all consuming or whatever those reasons are that someone might want to leave, but they are taking no action because they're trying to bail water out of the leaky rowboat and then they get slapped with the layoff. Do you have insight? What's your perspective on why those people are sometimes ending up laid off? Because that's the biggest question they ask. Have you, like, what are your thoughts on that?

Steve Jaffe [00:39:56]:
Well, you know, everybody's situation is unique, but if you hate a job, right. And yeah, I mean, you could be manifesting that. You could be manifesting. But more often than not, layoffs are somewhat faceless. And nameless. So somebody is making a decision and they don't necessarily know you or work with you. Every day they see salary and maybe some tenure and title. But, you know, in layoffs at large scale, like let's say Facebook laid off 14,000 people.

Steve Jaffe [00:40:36]:
That's just a pure budget exercise. There's nothing more than that.

Diana Alt [00:40:40]:
And that is we're cutting entire departments because we've decided not to invest in that anymore. So you could be the top person in that whole department of thousand people. And they're like pulling the plug. You're gone.

Steve Jaffe [00:40:53]:
So I've seen layoffs where a new president comes in and the president just wants to clean house. A new CMO comes in. The new CMO gets rid of everybody and replaces them with people that they used to work with at another company. You know, mergers. They merged with another company, people at the old company are gone. There's so many reasons behind a layoff, none of which have to do with the individual employee and how they showed up. And I'll say, But I do think that, you know, the universe hears what you're putting out and. And if you're unhappy and you hate your job and you hate what you're doing and you're putting that out there, sometimes what you get back is a get out of jail free card.

Steve Jaffe [00:41:43]:
You know, you get laid off from a company you hate, that's a get out of jail free card that allows you.

Diana Alt [00:41:48]:
I call it whis. Like, one of the principles I believe in is like, if you don't listen to the universe or God or whatever is outside you, if you don't listen to the whispers, eventually they yell at you.

Steve Jaffe [00:42:01]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:42:02]:
And what my third layoff was really interesting because I wanted that. Like, I wanted to leave there. But I also had anger because there was a healthy dose of gaslighting along with this. I was part of a smaller company that got bought by a large tech company. And so the decisions were made at kind of the headquarters type level. And what was so interesting is, number one, when they laid me off, they were told to tell me that the reason I was being laid off is because I came into the company as a business analyst because the title of product manager didn't really exist. But then when we were bought, you know, now it's product management, and I wasn't qualified for that. And meanwhile, my boss had been like, you're one of the most talented product managers that I've ever had.

Diana Alt [00:42:54]:
I found out later that he fought for me up until the point where his own job Was threatened because he wanted to keep me. And I'm like, okay, that's good. The people that actually know my skills are kind of on my side, but, you know, I can't control. The real deal is that I was friends with the CEO and his wife, who was an exec vice president, and they were 80 of the people that they cut out of our business units. Layoffs were people that were perceived as being loyal to the old regime.

Steve Jaffe [00:43:23]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:43:23]:
So, okay, I'm not gonna not be friends with somebody to keep. To not get laid off. It was 2012. Like, yeah, we had a good market. I was turning down offers every week. But yeah, but that did catch me sometimes where I was just like those MFers. Like, who are you to tell me I'm not a good product manager? I know I'm a good product manager.

Steve Jaffe [00:43:45]:
So, yeah, I can. I can relate. I was at a company working for coo. It was my direct line to the CEO, and he was putting me on a path to be cmo.

Diana Alt [00:43:57]:
Oh, wow. And nice.

Steve Jaffe [00:43:59]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then he left. And the person that I ended up reporting to had a big beef with that guy and as a result, had a big beef with anybody that reported into him and showed alliance to him and never trusted me and, you know, redlined me after that. And I went from in line for CMO on a long. On a long Runway. Right.

Diana Alt [00:44:29]:
Yeah.

Steve Jaffe [00:44:29]:
Anytime soon. But I went from. From that to being redlined within, you know, two or three months after the CEO left because. Because of my alliance, my perceived alliance.

Diana Alt [00:44:41]:
I met with someone. I met with a potential client a few weeks ago who had been laid off. And when I dug into the story, I found out that they basically had had a leadership change. And he ended up reporting to a guy that had been a peer. And they kind of like, he thought they respected each other, but they were at loggerheads. And so he actually went to that guy, to his new boss. That was previously appearance that I think you should fire me because we clearly do not align on values and you're the one that's in the chair. So like, he basically crafted a one man layoff for himself out of that, which went pretty well for him.

Diana Alt [00:45:24]:
I think he was still angry because why did that, like, why did that guy get promoted? Like, the company has struggled under it. So I have a couple more questions before I go into my kind of questions I ask everybody.

Steve Jaffe [00:45:37]:
Okay.

Diana Alt [00:45:38]:
One of them that you, you had suggested as a cool topic to talk about on your little form you sent me was how can Leaders and companies handle layoffs more humanely. And I'm really interested in your thoughts when we're dealing with those layoffs at scale. Because, like, there's no way to call 14,000 people individually in a room.

Steve Jaffe [00:45:59]:
Right, Right.

Diana Alt [00:46:00]:
You know, what are your thoughts on that?

Steve Jaffe [00:46:05]:
Here's my answer. And this answer can scale. So don't think about it as it being only applicable to small companies. It's more in its application and philosophical approach. If companies laid off people the way they would want their son or daughter to get laid off, it would probably add a lot more humanity. Right. So if your son or daughter came home one day and said, I got laid off today, and you said, God, I'm really sorry to hear that, and then they told you their layoff experience, how would you want that to happen? Would you want there to be a fair severance agreement? Would you want there to be maybe fair health care during the time of separation? How is it communicated? Are they communicated by email? Are they communicated by some sort of a Zoom meeting in a town hall? Or do they just shut off their computer? Which happens to a lot of people. Some people will have their credit card turned off on a business trip and they'll won't even.

Diana Alt [00:47:21]:
I've known multiple people that happen, too. And that is just embarrassing.

Steve Jaffe [00:47:26]:
Right?

Diana Alt [00:47:27]:
Like, I'm stranded in Poughkeepsie. What, what, what are we doing? I think that's a really good lens, because if you can think about that lens, like whenever some of these large companies that have had the ten plus thousand layoffs, Facebook is one of the top ones because they had one. They've. They've had a couple of those over the last four years. And when I look at them, you know, it's all over the news. Oh, they're terrible. They sent it via email or they did it on Zoom or whatever they did. And when I dug into it, I found out that actually they were one of the most humane layoffs that anybody has ever done in large tech because they had extremely generous severance, they covered medical benefits for a long time, and they also explained, here's how you're going to get notified.

Diana Alt [00:48:18]:
So people knew what was what. But there were a lot of people like, well, every single person should get an individual meeting. And what I found so interesting in a lot of those discussions online is how many people are like, I don't need to talk to anybody, Just tell me what's up. So I think if I was designing for a large one, I might have a cadre of people that's like, if you want to speak to somebody, here's your path.

Steve Jaffe [00:48:43]:
Right, Right.

Diana Alt [00:48:44]:
We're gonna do it this way. But if you want to talk to somebody about it, here's your path.

Steve Jaffe [00:48:49]:
So many people, they'll learn about it by watching the news, you know, because they'll talk about.

Diana Alt [00:48:54]:
I was off that day, I did logged into my email and now it's on now, like Nora o' Donnell is telling me about it.

Steve Jaffe [00:49:01]:
Right, Right. So at the heart of it is some humanity, some compassion, some empathy, you know, if, if a loved one or a friend got laid off, how would you want to do that? And that would be your guiding light.

Diana Alt [00:49:18]:
I do some small business consulting as part of my work too. Because like the executive coaching side, when you're working with people that are, that have a 10 man office, like you're in their business too. And I've helped some people with small businesses design severance that had never, you know, they hire once every three years. Like people stay and then if they've got to let somebody go, they don't know how to do it. Yeah, they have no idea how to do it. So. And then the last thing I wanted to talk about before my other questions is what is the thing about a layoff that is really hard that people do not expect? I think that so many people are used to thinking about, you know, I don't have anything to do the next day. A little bit.

Diana Alt [00:50:04]:
They're definitely thinking about the money. But what are some of the top things that just people get blindsided by, don't expect?

Steve Jaffe [00:50:12]:
You know, I've done a poll on this and I've asked a lot of people and it's, you know, one of the things people talk a lot about is the relationships. Those people that you work with, that you're in the foxhole with, that you probably spend more time with than your family. You don't get to say a proper goodbye to them. You also don't get any kind of recognition or appreciation for your work. So if you leave on your own accord, right. A lot of times people do some sort of a going away. Right. They'll take your lunch, say, oh, Diana, you were so wonderful.

Steve Jaffe [00:50:43]:
We appreciate all your hard work. Right. You get laid off, you don't get that. It's a, yeah, it's a, just a hard stop and there's no closure. Right. So the relationships and the way those relationships end, that's really, really difficult. The, the, the, the routine is really difficult, you know. Yeah.

Steve Jaffe [00:51:07]:
You have nothing, nothing that's going to fill your day. Now all those projects that you were incredibly either passionate about or you're working long hours and long days trying to push forward. Those are all gone. You have to let go of those.

Diana Alt [00:51:21]:
They're gone for you. Like, what's really hard is when you watch somebody else release it, especially if it's somebody public. But that's a really good point. Like, what are you doing? The other thing that comes to mind for me is I'm thinking about how in the pandemic when we all kind of went home and tons of people were furloughed or laid off or whatever, there was this thing where, you know, all. Everybody has a project. If I had time, if I had three months to myself, if I could take a 30 day vacation altogether, I would do X. And then most of us didn't do those things.

Steve Jaffe [00:51:55]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:51:56]:
And it's because we were actually processing grief, which is worse. It's work and we were doing it collectively.

Steve Jaffe [00:52:02]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:52:03]:
But like, no, I did not learn how to make sourdough. I feel like I can YouTube that and figure it out. But we did not do that. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for that. I'm gonna put Steve's website back up. Basically buy the book. It's a good book.

Diana Alt [00:52:21]:
It's going to be a quick read. You can access it from his website and you can also look it up on Amazon. The, the book name is 10 miles long. Beginning of it is the Layoff Journey. If you just put Layoff Journey and Steve Jaffe in to Amazon, you're going to find it. So my lightning round that sometimes is not a lightning round because we sometimes get into it is the first question is what is the worst piece of career advice you have ever received?

Steve Jaffe [00:52:55]:
Ooh, there's, there's this new trend right now where people are saying like, it's okay to kind of like badmouth your employee, your employer online or a glassdoor or whatever. Like, like, I, I disagree. Don't like keep that to yourself. Don't, don't go there. It's not going to serve you well.

Diana Alt [00:53:19]:
I think, I think when there is, it's, it's interesting. Like when do you name names? The question of one of my naming names and I think the big, the big thing a person has to ask themselves is what do I hope to achieve by this? Like if you hope to call attention, that's going to change behavior. That's different than I just need to about it.

Steve Jaffe [00:53:42]:
So yeah, keep all that stuff offline. That's, that's the Recommendation people are getting a little loose with like how they want to vent.

Diana Alt [00:53:52]:
Well, my like one of the ones that. The tick tock career stuff is very interesting.

Steve Jaffe [00:53:59]:
Right, right.

Diana Alt [00:54:00]:
And there's people that are like recording with their phone.

Steve Jaffe [00:54:04]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:54:05]:
Meetings with their boss where their boss is a jackass. They're putting it on TikTok and people love it. So they have 53,000 followers. Yeah. They get fired.

Steve Jaffe [00:54:14]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Diana Alt [00:54:15]:
What is a personal habit that has helped you to be successful?

Steve Jaffe [00:54:21]:
Honestly, all that self care stuff really, really gave me a much better baseline to manage all of this grief, especially like depression. That was one thing that got triggered for me. I didn't really realize I had a propensity for depression until after that first layoff. And I needed to build a self care routine to get through the day and those things now become non negotiables. Yeah, that, that self care routine is that that keeps me going. Without that I wouldn't have what I needed to.

Diana Alt [00:54:55]:
You're not talking bubble baths either. You're talking like eat a vegetable, go to bed on time. Yeah.

Steve Jaffe [00:55:02]:
I mean the things that your body needs to recharge and recoup the resources necessary for like heavy grief and like traumatic things, you know, like a death of a loved one. You know, this last year my father died, my sister died, my grandmother in law died. I live in a place in Altadena where there were fires that burned down the neighborhood. I was able to get through that because of coping strategies that I've developed.

Diana Alt [00:55:36]:
But it also reminds me like this is a little bit of a rabbit trail, but it reminds me of something really important. That's the difference between, between when I got laid off at 26 or however old I was and whenever it was 12 years later. And that is at the time that I got my first and second layoffs. Losing my job was probably the worst thing that had directly happened to me. And by the time I hit 10 years later, there's a bunch of shit that was worse than that that has happened to me, which gives some perspective. So the last one I have is what's something you've changed your mind about recently? Doesn't have to be like last week, but like, you know.

Steve Jaffe [00:56:24]:
I'll tell you what. So we're day before we're recording this actually day of November elections.

Diana Alt [00:56:32]:
Yeah. November 4th, 2025. We're recording.

Steve Jaffe [00:56:35]:
Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna say that it's okay to gerrymander. I've. I've changed my mind on gerrymandering. State of California has to gerrymander. And I voted yes on Prop 50. So, yeah, I, that's gonna date this episode. We cut it if you want.

Diana Alt [00:56:54]:
I'm in Kansas and, like, we don't have anything big, you know, that's meeting the news. And so I'm like paying attention to California with that. And then the New York City mayor.

Steve Jaffe [00:57:05]:
Like, yeah, that's big.

Diana Alt [00:57:06]:
I just want to watch Dancing to the Star doing so. And Kansas is not too bad, but I'm from Missouri and my mom and brother still live in Missouri and they did a number on Missouri, so.

Steve Jaffe [00:57:20]:
All right, I'll give you, I'll give you a light hearted one.

Diana Alt [00:57:22]:
Yeah, give me a.

Steve Jaffe [00:57:23]:
Okay, here's a light hearted one. You know what I'm rethinking? I'm rethinking my opinion of Domino's pizza. It's actually not that bad.

Diana Alt [00:57:30]:
Did it get better?

Steve Jaffe [00:57:32]:
I think it did. If you get the New York crust, Domino's, it's not too bad. I'm, I'm, I'm kind of on board with it.

Diana Alt [00:57:41]:
I like, I like thin pizza, so.

Steve Jaffe [00:57:45]:
This is pretty good. There's sauce, the whole thing, I'm telling you. But I'm, I'm of the opinion that there's no such thing as bad pizza. So you could throw anything at me that resembles a pizza and I'm gonna like it.

Diana Alt [00:57:58]:
I, I probably, I'm, I don't know that I would like it, but I'll eat it. There's not very much pizza I won't eat. But also, you kind of have to know what you're getting. Like, if you have your mind set on, like, the gourmet fancy pizza place and then someone hands you Domino's, that hits different than if, you know, I'm just getting my bargain New York pizza tonight, so.

Steve Jaffe [00:58:19]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:58:20]:
Well, I so appreciate you coming on the show today. It's been a great pleasure to talk to you. I think it's so important for people to think about these factors, these kind of emotional processing factors for their layoff if they want to successfully move forward. So can't wait, can't wait to finish reading your book and passing along to some of my clients.

Steve Jaffe [00:58:44]:
Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it.

Diana Alt [00:58:47]:
You're welcome.