I don't know. When I was laid off, I had no questions about my identity or self worth. I knew it wasn't any fault of mine, the company was just failing because the business plan was bad.
My worry was how I was going to manage my budget, how long my savings would last, etc. It was 100% practical concerns. I didn't worry about my identity, I worried about my mortgage. I knew I had savings to last many months, but not savings to last many years.
My concerns could not be helped by taking time for hobbies or my kids. That wasn't going to pay my bills.
It seems strange to me that this article seems to imply that once you come to terms with being unemployed, your life will be fine. This is completely counter to my own, and I think most people's reality.
I’ve been in software development since 2003. I’d never been layed off until Jan 2024. I had some dodged several. The signs were all there, company acquired about a year before, product didn’t really fit in their vision. That’s when the layoffs usually happen, a year or so into it. Yet I was still surprised. They got me, they finally got me! At first I thought it was a blessing. I had changed jobs fairly regularly but I hadn’t had any time off aside from the usually week or so here and there for 20 years. I casually started leetcoding and applying. Nothing. My network finally came through after 3 months of time off. The vacation was nice but I was low key starting to worry.
The situation is even worse now. Personally I think there will be a rebound in hiring eventually. Wrangling ai if nothing else. Otherwise, Vernor Vinge once said long term technical unemployment would be a sign of the singularity; just pray for a soft take off!
In my opinion that does not quite explain it completely. I recently read Mind over Grind by Guy Winch and he tries to explain it with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and that losing our job costs us security, social structure, status, accomplishment, as well as a sense of our identity.
There’s a key distinction you’re intentionally ignoring with this comment… retirees don’t need the job they gave up to satisfy their pyramid. Employed people often do.
Humans are very sensitive to being ostracized, and modern layoffs in aggregate are at least partially (~20%) intended and communicated as being ways to get rid of 'low performers', so we know that even when we get laidoff simply due to not making a cut line on a spreadsheet we still think it may be due to our own performance and also that others may think that as well.
vibe layoffs are bad practice due to fundamental attribution error (line managers don't necessarily have any idea who their low performers are even if they think they do) and ultimately expose the company to discrimination lawsuits if hr doesn't enforce a fair and consistent selection criteria
I follow an informal rule of "never be the first person in a conversation to bring up work/career" (or weather, or family/kids).
If you play the rule like a game, it's kind of fun.
After starting with a personal trainer, I made it 10 sessions (10 hours) of small talk before he finally asked me something that led to a conversation about work.
It's a lot more challenging (but way more rewarding I find) to initiate conversation topics relevant to the context you're meeting the person in, and waiting for the other person to bring up the boilerplate conversation topics if it's important to them.
You can never get into any kind of detail with people from a different career path.
Like, "I'm a software engineer" is the most people understand. If I say "I write tests for the GPU factory to improve semiconductor yield and screen parts" then launch into something about product binning, there's only 1% of people who'll be interested. The typical marketing person or government bureaucrat won't care.
Meanwhile "how do you know x" launches into a story about 'x', a person we both know and care about. Then we can swap stories.
> We are so conditioned to believe that we have no inherent worth in capitalism unless we are EARNING.
This is a fabulation, right. What kind of POS parent would instill self-worth on money and career into their kids?
Apart from being amoral and flawed at the core, it would often lead to mental issues since amount of people that like (not even love) their work is in low single digit %
> This is a fabulation, right. What kind of POS parent would instill self-worth on money and career into their kids?
They are not POS, they're trapped in systems and perspectives that push them to do this. Often they are the same kind of parent who had that instilled in them as kids and never had to self-examine those values or the systems that drove them.
If not a majority of parents, I'd guess a huge percentage fit this. It's a characteristic of the anxious middle class, some of whom still have the inter-generational memory of poverty. And yes, some of them are just that shallow but often it's a mix of both.
Ironically, the inclusion of career as a signal of self-worth is a relatively new and "progressive" change in the context of history, where in aristocratic or landlord-ruled societies, inherited or conquered (AKA stolen) wealth was primary signifier of self-worth.
In such societies, not having to work because of your wealth was the marker of honor and even moral superiority, to the point of being tautological.
Within the turbulence of recent technological advancements, we're now struggling to evolve to the next stage where self worth isn't attached to wealth or career, and we're potentially regressing.
The entire school system, even going through to University league tables (graduate employment/earnings), is geared around this. Everything is increasingly difficult for young people, and there's very little we can do to improve things for them.
I don't know. When I was laid off, I had no questions about my identity or self worth. I knew it wasn't any fault of mine, the company was just failing because the business plan was bad.
My worry was how I was going to manage my budget, how long my savings would last, etc. It was 100% practical concerns. I didn't worry about my identity, I worried about my mortgage. I knew I had savings to last many months, but not savings to last many years.
My concerns could not be helped by taking time for hobbies or my kids. That wasn't going to pay my bills.
It seems strange to me that this article seems to imply that once you come to terms with being unemployed, your life will be fine. This is completely counter to my own, and I think most people's reality.
Our primary concern is money, not self image.
I’ve been in software development since 2003. I’d never been layed off until Jan 2024. I had some dodged several. The signs were all there, company acquired about a year before, product didn’t really fit in their vision. That’s when the layoffs usually happen, a year or so into it. Yet I was still surprised. They got me, they finally got me! At first I thought it was a blessing. I had changed jobs fairly regularly but I hadn’t had any time off aside from the usually week or so here and there for 20 years. I casually started leetcoding and applying. Nothing. My network finally came through after 3 months of time off. The vacation was nice but I was low key starting to worry.
The situation is even worse now. Personally I think there will be a rebound in hiring eventually. Wrangling ai if nothing else. Otherwise, Vernor Vinge once said long term technical unemployment would be a sign of the singularity; just pray for a soft take off!
In my opinion that does not quite explain it completely. I recently read Mind over Grind by Guy Winch and he tries to explain it with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and that losing our job costs us security, social structure, status, accomplishment, as well as a sense of our identity.
I suspect most retirees would disagree.
There’s a key distinction you’re intentionally ignoring with this comment… retirees don’t need the job they gave up to satisfy their pyramid. Employed people often do.
> security, social structure, status, accomplishment, as well as a sense of our identity.
It's almost like staking all of this to a single gameable resource is an issue.
Humans are very sensitive to being ostracized, and modern layoffs in aggregate are at least partially (~20%) intended and communicated as being ways to get rid of 'low performers', so we know that even when we get laidoff simply due to not making a cut line on a spreadsheet we still think it may be due to our own performance and also that others may think that as well.
vibe layoffs are bad practice due to fundamental attribution error (line managers don't necessarily have any idea who their low performers are even if they think they do) and ultimately expose the company to discrimination lawsuits if hr doesn't enforce a fair and consistent selection criteria
I don't understand the American "what do you do?" as first introduction.
It's more fun to ask "how do you know 'x'" where 'x' is the host of the party or event or whatever. Although I'm Canadian.
I follow an informal rule of "never be the first person in a conversation to bring up work/career" (or weather, or family/kids).
If you play the rule like a game, it's kind of fun.
After starting with a personal trainer, I made it 10 sessions (10 hours) of small talk before he finally asked me something that led to a conversation about work.
It's a lot more challenging (but way more rewarding I find) to initiate conversation topics relevant to the context you're meeting the person in, and waiting for the other person to bring up the boilerplate conversation topics if it's important to them.
"What you do" seems more sympathetic than "who you are" and "who you know". American culture might be more meritocratic at a basic level.
I would say it's pretty rare to hear, "What do you do?" as a first introduction in the wild in America.
"How do you know x?" is in fact much more common.
What about it don’t you understand?
You can never get into any kind of detail with people from a different career path.
Like, "I'm a software engineer" is the most people understand. If I say "I write tests for the GPU factory to improve semiconductor yield and screen parts" then launch into something about product binning, there's only 1% of people who'll be interested. The typical marketing person or government bureaucrat won't care.
Meanwhile "how do you know x" launches into a story about 'x', a person we both know and care about. Then we can swap stories.
> We are so conditioned to believe that we have no inherent worth in capitalism unless we are EARNING.
This is a fabulation, right. What kind of POS parent would instill self-worth on money and career into their kids?
Apart from being amoral and flawed at the core, it would often lead to mental issues since amount of people that like (not even love) their work is in low single digit %
> This is a fabulation, right. What kind of POS parent would instill self-worth on money and career into their kids?
They are not POS, they're trapped in systems and perspectives that push them to do this. Often they are the same kind of parent who had that instilled in them as kids and never had to self-examine those values or the systems that drove them.
If not a majority of parents, I'd guess a huge percentage fit this. It's a characteristic of the anxious middle class, some of whom still have the inter-generational memory of poverty. And yes, some of them are just that shallow but often it's a mix of both.
Ironically, the inclusion of career as a signal of self-worth is a relatively new and "progressive" change in the context of history, where in aristocratic or landlord-ruled societies, inherited or conquered (AKA stolen) wealth was primary signifier of self-worth.
In such societies, not having to work because of your wealth was the marker of honor and even moral superiority, to the point of being tautological.
Within the turbulence of recent technological advancements, we're now struggling to evolve to the next stage where self worth isn't attached to wealth or career, and we're potentially regressing.
The entire school system, even going through to University league tables (graduate employment/earnings), is geared around this. Everything is increasingly difficult for young people, and there's very little we can do to improve things for them.
to aspire to be a cancer is essentially evil
humans who cannot or do not contribute to the greater process of life will be rapidly buffered out of existence by AGI
to survive you must become a world eater