Not really sure. I’ve been in a couple places where they’ve eliminated my position but gave me like a month’s notice. One was a contract role though, so basically it was just they didn’t have budget to renew the contract when it ended. Most most places shut off your access immediately so you can’t steal any IP
BMCRA sent people to our desks, who watched us pack up our personal belongings and escorted us out of the building. Two weeks’ pay in lieu of notice.
My experience also. One place even shut off a person’s access the moment he presented his resignation letter. He was moving to a competitor.
That was pretty stupid of them since if he was going to rip off the company he’d do it before announcing that he was quitting. But it was the reason that it became standard practice that people never said where they were going until after they quit.
I was laid off back in July. It wasn’t completely unexpected. For the past 2 years, the consulting firm I was working for seemed like it was struggling (as a lot of them seem to be). Client projects kept getting cancelled due to budget and lots of turnover. So instead of focusing on the work (which I mostly like) it feels more like rats scrambling to cling to debris from a sinking ship.
But yeah, there’s all the rage, anger, disappointment, and bitterness that comes with it. Not so much a hit to my sense of self worth. I know I’m smart and capable. I just can’t figure out why and how half these other fucking morons still have their jobs.
And quite frankly, this environment sucks for job hunting. I firmly believe (based on my understanding of basic Econ 101 principles) that Trump has royally fucked the economy with all his tariffs and Federal layoffs and other austerity measures and general craziness. Other consulting firms like Accenture, Mckinsey, and the Big-4 as well as tech companies like Amazon and Verizon and non-tech companies like P&G and UPS have had large scale layoffs so the market is flooded with talent. Everyone is blaming “AI for taking jobs” but honestly I haven’t seen AI take shit. The only thing I’ve seen AI do (and I’ve been studying up a bit on AI and interviewing for a few AI related jobs) is churn out crappy resumes which people have been using to flood job boards with 1000 applications per listing. Presumably to be evaluated by AI-based ATS systems, but no one seems to really know how those systems actually work. But that hasn’t stopped LinkedIn from producing a glut of resume / career coaches.
Anyhow, the point is it seems like kind of a shitty market and more to the point, the actual mechanism for finding a new job seems fundamentally broken.
Which then has the potential to create a whole new wave of emotional problems. Ideally once you get past the initial anger and disappointment over losing your job, you settle into your job search routine and after some ups and downs you land a new job in a few months. But I find that as a job search gets prolonged you get to experience a whole new rainbow of shitty emotions.
I was laid off in 2024, at age 60. I had hoped to ride that job until retirement but it was not to be. Job hunting at that age is difficult, but not impossible, and I found a wonderful job in about 6 months.
I’ve been laid off twice plus once when my company went under. I had little or no heads up, the most recent I was told on Tuesday that Friday was my last day. It doesn’t get easier, but learning the lesson that you don’t owe your company much is a good one to learn.
You mentioned that you don’t want to hurt the member businesses - you aren’t hurting anyone. Your company laid you off and any pain the members feel is because of that, not your decision to take care of yourself.
Oops. Meant to be a PM.
On of our members is a staffing agency, and I get a lot of report correction requests from them. After receiving a completion notice from BMCRA, I replied to his request and attached the new report… and told him about my impending departure. I asked him to keep me in mind if they have anything for me in the Bellingham area.
I also sent an email from one of my personal addresses to a member with whom I have had a very cordial relationship with over the years, to let her know. (And of course, ‘If you hear of any openings…’ 
)
That’s correct. There are people at the company in this transaction responsible for looking after the operations. There are people at the company responsible for looking after the clients. There is no one at the company responsible for looking after the laid off person.
I have a link to a Zoom webinar that I would like to keep around for reference. I don’t know if I’ll have access after I’m gone. Would anyone with Zoom be willing to click the link to see if it can be watched from the outside? I’ll PM it to you.
I’ve heard there’s a way of downloading Zoom videos, but I was unable to do it.
PM me and I’ll take a look. I’m Zoom master for my club.
When I record meetings I can put the recording on the Zoom cloud (never tried that) or on my computer, where I can put it in Dropbox for people. If they recorded the webinar and wanted to make it available they can, but you as a watcher can’t.
Thank you, @Voyager. @puzzlegal checked the link, and was able to watch it without opening Zoom. I’ll PM you the link in case you want to check it out too.
I signed the agreement. Holding off doesn’t make ‘La Jefa’ ‘sweat’, end either way I’m out of a job. She said thank you, and then set up a Teams meeting for Thursday to discuss:
- Your priorities for the remainder of November
- How to structure training time for you with [Coworker 1] and [Coworker 2], starting in December
- How to handle the data transition to [Database location] during the first week of December
I’ve contacted a few of our members to let them know I’ll be leaving.
My suggestion (and maybe you’ve done this already) is that when you reach out to your various contacts, you be as specific as possible about the type of role you are looking for. If there is a specific posting you are interested in, forward that as well. You want to make it as easy as possible for your network to help you out.
Just remember, you signed a business contract, not a holy oath signed in blood or anything like that. If a great opportunity comes up but requires you to leave before the agreed upon date, examine the options with your own well-being as the sole priority. Don’t feel the slightest hesitation in walking away immediately if that’s the best option for you.
And because of the thirteenth amendment, you can always walk away from an employment contract. You’d obviously lose unearned wages and that fu $1000 if you did so in this case, but that would be it.
Use your remaining employment to find a new job. Do whatever tasks you are assigned in the time you don’t need to spend looking for a new job. If you find a good offer that wants you to start now, take it, and say goodbye to the old one. Really, no decent person at your old job will begrudge you that.
I’ve emailed two members who are local (one very local) to ask if they have any open positions. Heck, I’ve even applied to be a box boy (I mean ‘Cashier Assistant) at CostCo.
I heard back from the ‘very local’ place quickly. They posted two jobs just yesterday.
They’re entry-level positions, so they only pay about ¾ of what I’m making now. But they’re five miles from the house. And at this stage of my life, I’d like to have some easy work.
A friend of mine was laid-off a few months ago. She had a doctor’s appointment at a new facility in town, and really liked the new digs. She went home and found they were hiring a receptionist, and decided to apply. She is well over-qualified, but has the same sentiment after working for years at the corporate management level - “ I just want to do something simple!”
I just got off of a Teams beating with La Jefa (and a cow-orker for half of it). La Jefa said, ‘We don’t really know data.’ I refrained from saying, ‘Duh!’ or ‘Yeah, I can tell; because you’re laying me off.’ Anyway, we went over transitioning our data to the Tampa office, and touched a little on BMCRA interactions. She took lots of notes. By the end of an hour, she said her head hurts. I’ve been organising things for easy retrieval for years; but my job has a lot of parts. There are things you ‘just know’. I’m working on a document that details them. It’s a work in progress.
La Jefa said that when the datalanche starts on December 1st, to not do anything with the data. She’s going to schedule a meeting between us and the Tampa programmer. I mentioned we have some ‘high priority’ members, and cow-orker said, ‘Yes. We need that loaded for the group meetings.’
Wow. If new hire salaries are that close to what you’re currently making, you’ve been drastically underpaid by your employer for a long time.