Attention – it’s layoff time again!

LayoffThis is the time of year when companies finally face up the the fact
that they need to make changes. Unfortunately, too many make the wrong
changes and never recover.

You are the ideal employee…

You are one dedicated, hard driving employee and you haven’t got time for gossip and speculation. You have a backlog of work and you bring it home at times. You wish you had more contacts in the industry so you could see how other companies are doing, but, between work and your family, you don’t have a second to spare. Maybe when the quarter is over, you will have some time to spare.

It is the end of the quarter and there are rumors in the cubicles….

Your company has stoutly denied any plans for layoffs, but you have not seen any salesmen high-fiving it for many months now.

Your friends in tech support have been doing the hot suitcase trick for weeks on end and they don’t smile either. When you ask how things are going with their customers, their eyes dart nervously around and they say, "We’re working on it."

You are very busy with a killer workload, because you are covering for the people who were laid off last year, but it seems like the product releases are slowing down.

You are somewhat afraid to ask your manager how things are going because you have not seen your manager smile, except nervously, since Christmas.

So you keep your head down like a good soldier, and work to the best of your ability. If they are planning layoffs, you want to look as busy as possible.

While you are working, you receive an email from your manager. It is a notification of an unscheduled department meeting at 4:00pm…

And so it begins…

All of the plans for a vacation in the islands start to crumble around you. You were planning to put your trip on your credit cards and pay them off over the next six months.

The payments on the new motorcycle or SUV suddenly loom like an impassible roadblock to your future mobility.

You are just as bright and talented as ever, but something has occurred which will prevent you from generating any income, perhaps for a long time. Your lifestyle is likely to undergo an irreversable change of altitude.

You can and will survive this threat!

When you are waiting for the axe to fall, any preparation at all will help. The first step is to be emotionally prepared, the second step is to be financially prepared. If you are not emotionally prepared, you will find good reasons not to do anything until it is too late. If you make the necessary changes, you will go on to new and better jobs with a renewed sense of worth. If you don’t, you won’t. It is as brutally simple as that.

I wrote Danger Quicksand – Have A Nice Day to help anyone through the trauma of being fired or laid off. TIP: Reading it before termination is far better than reading it afterwards.

If you take the time to read page 52 and continue for awhile, you may find the inspiration you need to look for a better job. If you want help finding the Ideal Job, go to page 124. if you want to feel better immediately, read the whole book.

There are better jobs waiting for you, believe me. All you need to know is how to find them. This book will help you, but you have to read it!

Prepare yourself for the realities of 21st century employment so you
can make decisions that lead to a less stressful corporate career. Your
corporate career can be followed by stable and profitable long-term
self-employment if you plan for it early enough. More people are doing
that every day. It may be your turn soon.

The illustration is The Layoff, a tarot card from the Silicon Valley Tarot by Thomas Scoville.

Note: This post was revised several times. The subject matter is so intense that it affected my ability to write. Thanks for bearing with me.

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