Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Last year, in January, Sylvia Duran woke up to something strange.
Speaker 3: It was a Friday, and I was going to have
Speaker 3: a really busy day, so I immediately checked my phone
Speaker 3: to see what meetings I had that day, and I
Speaker 3: couldn't access my calendar.
Speaker 2: Sylvia worked at Google. She had a high level role
Speaker 2: on a YouTube marketing team and had been there for
Speaker 2: nearly a decade. She assumed something was wrong with her phone.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I thought that there was a bug, some kind
Speaker 3: of bug on my phone. It's happened sometimes.
Speaker 2: Sylvia mentioned the issue to her husband at the time,
Speaker 2: who had a different take.
Speaker 3: He told me, WHOA, isn't that a sign? And I said,
Speaker 3: a sign of what? And he said that you were
Speaker 3: laid off.
Speaker 2: There had been some rumors about layoffs at YouTube, but
Speaker 2: Sylvia wasn't too worried. After all, the company was doing
Speaker 2: well money. Why would they lay people off?
Speaker 3: I laughed it off. I said, no, that's not what's happening.
Speaker 2: But that was exactly what was happening. Sylvia, along with
Speaker 2: twelve thousand of her colleagues across Google, had been let go.
Speaker 2: Sylvia says She was in shock.
Speaker 3: It felt unreal and at the same time like all
Speaker 3: of my worst thoughts about myself had come true. That,
Speaker 3: of course I was selected to be laid off because
Speaker 3: I never belonged there in the first place.
Speaker 2: Sylvia loved her job. She worked hard at it, and
Speaker 2: being part of the company with such a central part
Speaker 2: of her identity. Her mom even called her my mini Google.
Speaker 3: They were really really proud of me, and I think
Speaker 3: that they were surprised because in theory, I was a
Speaker 3: strong performer, and so why does a strong performer lose
Speaker 3: their job.
Speaker 2: As she started to process what had happened, she began
Speaker 2: cycling through emotions shock, sadness, shame.
Speaker 3: I started a question for myself, why am I feeling
Speaker 3: this way? Why am I feeling so ashamed? And I
Speaker 3: wanted to talk about it. I'm someone who processes verbally,
Speaker 3: so I asked my brother, who has his own podcast.
Speaker 3: I told him would he be gained to record an
Speaker 3: episode where I just processed my feelings? Welcome to the
Speaker 3: One of a Kind Podcast. I recorded the first episode
Speaker 3: three days after I got laid off. I didn't think
Speaker 3: I was going to share it with the world.
Speaker 1: But she did.
Speaker 2: In her very first episode where she talked about her
Speaker 2: layoff and how it affected her.
Speaker 3: After like almost a decade of my life there and
Speaker 3: the way that I went down, it was not a
Speaker 3: good experience, and I'm trying to process that.
Speaker 2: Used to be if you got laid off, you didn't
Speaker 2: talk about it, You hit it, fibbed about it. Even
Speaker 2: not anymore. Now you start a podcast today on the show,
Speaker 2: the hottest new job market trend is posting publicly about
Speaker 2: your layoff, owning it, sharing it, and feeling your feelings
Speaker 2: in real time for the world to see what the
Speaker 2: shift in how we approach layoffs means for employees and
Speaker 2: employers everywhere. This is the big take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder. Getting laid off isn't a new phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg reporter Joe Constant says that's thanks to one very
Speaker 2: famous American CEO.
Speaker 1: Jack Welch, just kind of made the practice routine as
Speaker 1: a way to meet quarterly earnings targets and for financial reasons.
Speaker 2: Jack Welch became the CEO of General Electric in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one, and when he started there, layoffs were pretty
Speaker 2: much a last resort for most companies. They were seen
Speaker 2: as a sign that a company was struggling or even failing.
Speaker 2: For Welch, though, layoffs became part of a proactive strategy.
Speaker 2: He would have all his employees ranked every year, and
Speaker 2: every year he would fire the bottom ten percent. He
Speaker 2: called it the vitality curve, and in his first few
Speaker 2: years at GE he laid off more than one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand workers. The practice caught on it became known as
Speaker 2: the Jack Welch rule, and since then layoffs have been
Speaker 2: seen as a good way to signal fiscal prudence for companies.
Speaker 1: The cost of labor is one of the highest costs
Speaker 1: on their balance sheet, and so it's something that executives
Speaker 1: are thinking about a lot in terms of how much
Speaker 1: they're spending on their workforce.
Speaker 2: Layoffs are now just a reality of the American corporate workplace.
Speaker 1: A professor that I talked to at Harvard Business School
Speaker 1: mentioned that part of the point of some of the
Speaker 1: layoffs now is to signal to investors that a company
Speaker 1: is serious about their cost cutting. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: they're signaling publicly as well, versus oftentimes in previous decades
Speaker 1: it was less so the case.
Speaker 2: But how workers grappled with that reality change during COVID
Speaker 2: when layoffs hit their highest level in decades.
Speaker 1: So, I mean the pandemic was a huge shift in
Speaker 1: this dynamic. We saw millions of people who were thrown
Speaker 1: out of work and it wasn't their fault, whereas you
Speaker 1: know in the before times, there was always kind of
Speaker 1: this idea that if you were laid off, it really
Speaker 1: was your fault in some way, even if it was
Speaker 1: a business driven decision and didn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with you directly as a person in your performance at work.
Speaker 1: And so that I think was a massive change.
Speaker 2: There was also the way people got laid off during
Speaker 2: the pandemic.
Speaker 1: In decades past, you were in an office, you had
Speaker 1: to pack up your things, put them in a box,
Speaker 1: kind of walk out of the building or be walked out.
Speaker 1: It was public in a different way in front of
Speaker 1: your coworkers. Now sperience is completely different. You know, often
Speaker 1: it is on zoom and when you get that announcement
Speaker 1: and you shut your laptop, it's over, and you kind
Speaker 1: of don't have the same visceral feeling of closure that
Speaker 1: you might have had if you were in a physical office.
Speaker 1: It feels a little bit more surreal and removed.
Speaker 2: One way to combat that disembodied feeling was to share
Speaker 2: the experience with others, not just with your former work
Speaker 2: from home coworkers, but with the world. What were some
Speaker 2: of the signs that we were thinking about layoffs differently
Speaker 2: in the pandemic?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know. On LinkedIn, we started to
Speaker 1: see so many people posting about getting laid off, they
Speaker 1: were looking for work. LinkedIn released their open to Work banner,
Speaker 1: the kind of green banner that you see on people's profiles.
Speaker 2: LinkedIn introduced it's green open to Work banner in June
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and since then thirty three million people have
Speaker 2: used it. Suddenly, what could have once been seen as
Speaker 2: an embarrassment started to be publicly portrayed as something else entirely.
Speaker 1: It was more maybe a badge of solidarity. It was
Speaker 1: we are all in this together, or so many of
Speaker 1: us are in this together, and those of us who
Speaker 1: are in that position. It became something that was collective
Speaker 1: in a way.
Speaker 2: There it was the slim silver lining of all this
Speaker 2: workplace blood letting. The stigma around being laid off was fading.
Speaker 2: People weren't hiding it. They were talking about it, sharing struggles,
Speaker 2: asking for advice and connections.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of showing what used to be
Speaker 1: a very very private, shameful moment and putting it out
Speaker 1: there to say, you know, this is what happened, and
Speaker 1: you know, implicitly it says, this isn't my fall.
Speaker 2: The pandemic eventually ended and the economy came roaring back,
Speaker 2: but layoffs haven't gone away. What's different now is that
Speaker 2: layoff culture has been fundamentally changed. The stigma around layoffs
Speaker 2: is largely gone, and laid off workers are now eagerly
Speaker 2: bringing their stories and their frustration to social media. Workers
Speaker 2: like Britney Peach.
Speaker 1: Hi Brittany Hi.
Speaker 2: You may have seen Britney's video when it went viral
Speaker 2: in January. It starts with a caption POV You're about
Speaker 2: to get laid.
Speaker 4: Off, thanks for meeting with me.
Speaker 2: In the video, Brittany is sitting at home, leaning over
Speaker 2: her computer, listening as an HR rep for cloud Flare,
Speaker 2: the company where she worked, tells her she's being laid off.
Speaker 2: But instead of just listening in shock the way some
Speaker 2: people might do, Britney starts to push back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm stay right there.
Speaker 2: Brittany asks the HR rep some pretty direct questions, Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, can you explain for me why Britney Peach
Speaker 1: is getting let go? Do you guys even know? Like why?
Speaker 3: Like who you're talking to?
Speaker 1: Each day?
Speaker 2: She posted the video online and it got millions of
Speaker 2: us and thousands of comments, many cheering her on for
Speaker 2: standing up to the man.
Speaker 1: So am I getting let go for no reason?
Speaker 2: Which Joe says is how a lot of these TikTok
Speaker 2: layoff videos are getting received.
Speaker 1: There is kind of a power that's being taken back
Speaker 1: there in terms of you know, I'm gonna own my story.
Speaker 4: This morning at eight am, I got a last minute
Speaker 4: meeting invite titled business Update with my whole team, my manager,
Speaker 4: my manager's manager, and someone from HR. So I think
Speaker 4: we're all about to be laid off.
Speaker 1: And this is what happened. Hello, I just got laid off.
Speaker 1: It wasn't anything personal, they said. It feels personal, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep moving forward and you can follow
Speaker 1: along on my journey and like and subscribe. Just overall
Speaker 1: really grateful for this experience and wish you guys the best.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys. Guess I'm a full time influencer now.
Speaker 2: Like, subscribe and maybe hire me? What employers think of
Speaker 2: all this after the break. So far this year, more
Speaker 2: than eleven million people have been laid off in the US,
Speaker 2: and the job market they're entering isn't easy. Friday's jobs
Speaker 2: report showed the economy added just one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: two thousand jobs in August, and recently, when the New
Speaker 2: York Fed asked workers if they expected to be unemployed
Speaker 2: in the next four months, more people than at any
Speaker 2: time in the last decade said yes. So I asked
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Joe Constance how employers are viewing this new genre
Speaker 2: of layoff video.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think talking to recruiters, my sense
Speaker 1: is that it really depends on the nature of the
Speaker 1: things that you post. If you are posting about the
Speaker 1: fact that you were laid off, but you were framing
Speaker 1: it in a way, you know, this is what happened,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking for new opportunities, kind of spinning it
Speaker 1: in a positive way.
Speaker 2: It could be like a cover letter itself.
Speaker 1: It could be a cover letter. Yeah, you could use
Speaker 1: it as an opportunity to re engage and connect with
Speaker 1: your network and you know, just kind of showing this
Speaker 1: is what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2: But Joe also says there's sometimes such a thing as
Speaker 2: too much honesty, and not all hiring managers view pass
Speaker 2: layoffs the same way.
Speaker 1: There are other recruiters who feel very strongly that you
Speaker 1: should never admit that you've been laid off, that you
Speaker 1: should come up with another story, and it should be
Speaker 1: you know, I'm taking a career break, I'm taking a
Speaker 1: break to travel, and just don't use the L word
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: The other thing about layoffs is that for many companies,
Speaker 2: it's not just a way to signal fiscal prudence to investors.
Speaker 2: It's also a way to avoid firing people for cause.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason some companies will kind of couch
Speaker 1: it as a layoff is because there's a little bit
Speaker 1: more legal protection. If you fire somebody, it's easier for
Speaker 1: them to sue for you know, if they're part of
Speaker 1: a protected class, that sort of thing, if they feel
Speaker 1: like they've been discriminated against.
Speaker 2: But Joe says that there is some evidence that the
Speaker 2: attitude towards letting go of workers for any reason is
Speaker 2: starting to shift for companies too.
Speaker 1: There's research that says that companies that are quick to
Speaker 1: lay people off for financial reasons don't do as well
Speaker 1: as other companies that wait longer and do everything that
Speaker 1: they can to keep people because it's very expensive to
Speaker 1: replace people, especially folks who are trained, who are good
Speaker 1: at their jobs. So are layoffs bad for business Oftentimes yes?
Speaker 1: Oftentimes yes. I mean there are times, of course, when
Speaker 1: business executives have no choice. They truly don't for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they've exhausted all options. And this is the only way
Speaker 1: to say afloat. But I think there are a lot
Speaker 1: of cases is where it's the first option in it
Speaker 1: really shouldn't be. There are other ways to cut costs
Speaker 1: that can be considered.
Speaker 2: And as for Sylvia, the former YouTube employee, she says
Speaker 2: she was lucky enough to get a good severance package,
Speaker 2: so she was able to take her time looking for
Speaker 2: new gigs, and as she was sending out applications, she
Speaker 2: kept making podcast episodes.
Speaker 3: I can't believe this marks twenty conversations with incredible people
Speaker 3: in my life. Thank you to everyone who continues listening.
Speaker 2: When an executive at Into It came across Sylvia's resume,
Speaker 2: he started listening.
Speaker 3: And so he said that at first he listened to
Speaker 3: the first few to get to know me, but then
Speaker 3: he enjoyed them, and then they became part of his routine.
Speaker 3: I was concerned that it was going to be a
Speaker 3: red flag. It ended up being a grain flag.
Speaker 2: Sylvia went in for an interview in this past January.
Speaker 2: She started in a new role at Into It, but
Speaker 2: she's returning to the workforce with a slightly different mindset.
Speaker 2: Did your layoff change the way you tie your identify
Speaker 2: to work at all?
Speaker 3: First starters, my mom stopped calling me Mini Google felt
Speaker 3: they definitely have. I have, Sarah. I try to be
Speaker 3: very purposeful to say I have other identities outside of work.
Speaker 3: Obviously a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and
Speaker 3: I also have a relationship with myself right and I
Speaker 3: now believe that by taking care of these other aspects
Speaker 3: of my life, I will be a better employee overall.
Speaker 3: So I have definitely.
Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Thomas lou and Jessica Beck.
Speaker 2: It was mixed by Blake Maples. It was fact checked
Speaker 2: by Adrian Atapia. It was edited by Stacy Vannicksmith and
Speaker 2: Raehan harmanci. Our senior producers are Kim Gittlson and Naomi Shaven.
Speaker 2: Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso, Nicole Beemsterbor is our
Speaker 2: executive producer. Sat Bowman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If
Speaker 2: you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review
Speaker 2: The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps
Speaker 2: people find the show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll
Speaker 2: be back on Monday.