I live in a constant state of fear and misery
And employers love keeping you in that state
“Why are my employees not respecting me? Why are they unproductive?”
“Maybe treat them with a modicum of respect?”
“Must be something in the water.”
"No, no it's everyone else who's the problem, not me!"
Don't wait for a layoff, start organizing a union for that juicy 'represented' employment status (as opposed to at-will). Unions can't stop layoffs, but they can minimize the impact, negotiate a higher severance, and provide advanced notice. I highly recommend the good folks at CODE-CWA, they specialize in organizing tech workers
My dad has been a server engineer for a single company for my entire life and he lived like this up until quite recently. His fear oscillates in magnitude with the success of the industry the company is a part of course so it isn't always severe but I remember every few years as a kid I'd hear him and my mother murmering about lay offs. These days he just jokes about it being an early retirement
thank you for your input, sharkfucker420
Sharkfucker420 just knows what's up.
rimjobsteve?
Yeah this post hit me different than was probably the intent. I've been expecting to get laid off for the past 6 months ago, initially it was fear, eventually it was desire. Didn't happen though and I've since found a new job, but I would have welcomed it if it did.
My company has a 6 month probation period. It also has a 6 month password expiry. Because of all the SSO nonsense, it's quite possible for it to lapse without warning.
It's now a running joke that get locked out on the last day of probation, and you're expecting a call from HR any minute.
You might want to let your IT department that 6 months is a really long time
You might wanna read up on the most current NIST guidelines
The current thinking as I understand it is expiry policies make most types of accounts less secure because users just cycle through the same predictable pattern of adding increasing numbers of exclamation points or incrementing the last digit at each required password change, and if you require new passwords to be too substantially dissimilar from x number of previous ones then users can't remember them at all. Policies that make people use minimally complex passwords because they have too many to remember and don't understand how password managers work inevitably increase password reuse between services and devices which does the opposite of improving security. Especially with MFA enforced, which I've been known to do as aggressively as I can get away with, there's just no sense in requiring regular password resets -- as long as the password remains complex, unique, and uncompromised. I'm not a network security expert but I am responsible for managing these sorts of things in my role and that's the rationale I use for the group policies in a typical customer's environment.
When is someone going to find a password but somehow be stopped because it expires in as many as six months? What is it mitigating?
I got canned from my last job and thr way I found out was my work Gmail was locked out, fuckin class acts them.
Getting fired from my current gig would be a relief tbh.
Im at a perfect equilibrium of indifference for being laid off. Some jobs suck.
same here
I haven't been laid off since April. I haven't had a job since then though, so that's not exactly ideal.
I got my best IT Job off of Craigs list so don't count out that option.
Upside: not fired.
Downside: have to do work.
Upside: make money
Downside: not enough money
The frogurt is also cursed
I live in a constant state of fear and misery
Do ya miss me anymore?
Glad someone noticed
AND I DON'T EVEN NOTICE WHEN IT HURTS ANYMORE
Just hit 5 months with no work. It's been tough
Just hit 5 months with 3 works. It's been tough.
Edit: not trying to mock your suffering comrade. The point was that no matter what happens while we live a capitalist way of life, the working class will suffer.
I went one year and six months. It was bad. I'm wishing you the best.
Out of interest, what do you do and where are you based? It's a shitty place to work, but if you're near an Amazon office and you do Amazony things I'm happy to send a reference your way.
I work in IT. We get notified when people leave.
The cruelest thing in my company is when we get to know before the person in question…
While WFH is amazing, your colleagues just going poof and never knowing what happened to them is a big downside.
The randomly fired 2 people on my team one morning. I think we're doing the evil shit Amazon does with stack ranking. It's so toxic. Fuck this place, you only get the bare minimum now. Anyone know of any software engineering unions?
I think someone mentioned CWA (Communication Workers of America) in another thread? Assuming you're American which on Lemmy is statistically likely.
Anyone else see the back of the chair as the person's hair in the first two panels?
Yes, it wasn't until the third panel did I notice the arms of the chair and suddenly the person was bald
Could still be hair!
In third panel those are the person's arms ;)
You just captured the daily life of a UK academic after the catastrophically low recruitment numbers this year.
Yeah same here in NL
I know the feeling. A few months ago I randomly got a video call from my boss. Both he and the owner of the company were in the line. They let me know that they unfortunately had to let go of almost everyone on the dev team. Some funding had fell through (gotta love startups). Fortunately, I got to keep my job that day, but I can't shake the feeling that another layoff is right around the corner.
Don't let that fear cow you into accepting marginal raises or career stagnation (assuming you're not happy at your current level). Severance (outside the US) is usually generous enough to skate into your next opportunity and, tbh, working in constant fear is fucking awful for your mental health.
Would probably say in your contract if you have any sort of severance regardless of where you live? Or is there some sort of mandatory severance in some places?
In most of the developed world there is a mandatory level of severance (and companies can obviously exceed that if they want but the base amount is guaranteed). In BC it's one week after three months (the probationary period) a second week after one year and then one additional week per year up to a maximum of eight weeks.
Ah but I love in the US, so I'll just continue in constant fear. On the bright side, those marginal raises go towards the hilariously high cost of therapy.
At my last job, every time they added or removed someone’s key card access, the system would reboot and everyone would be locked out for like two minutes.
We also had two floors that were connected by a fire stairwell, so you needed a card to re-enter the next floor.
At least twice my card stopped working in the middle of the word day while I was standing in the stairwell and I assumed that they just fired me and assumed I’d see my own way out.
Survived three layoffs at that company.
Way too stressful. I worked at a company that was bought by a hedge fund and they were always downsizing, even if it was key employees. It made me under perform and caused insomnia that I never quite got over and it was 11 years ago.
I don't even notice when it hurts anymore.
Anymore.
Anymore.
Anymore.
ey b0ss
Why this expression? This guy just needs to spent a year homeless on the beach or so, if being fired: https://www.businessinsider.com/chris-deering-playstation-sony-laid-off-staff-beach-uber-2024-9 It definitely isn't greed on side of the CEO who earnes millions for nothing while so many get fired, right? RIGHT?
Paywall
An ex-Sony exec said laid-off employees should 'go to the beach for a year' or 'drive an Uber' Lian Kit Wee Sep 11, 2024, 7:15 AM MESZ
Chris Deering Sony Former Sony Entertainment president, Chris Deering, told recently laid-off employees to take a break for a year and wait for opportunities to return. Reuters
Ex-Sony Entertainment president Chris Deering said laid-off employees should take time off. Deering said that he doesn't believe the recent Sony layoffs result from corporate greed. In February, Sony said it would lay off 900 employees from its PlayStation division.
Former Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Chris Deering has a blunt message for recently laid-off game developers: They should "go to the beach for a year" or "drive an Uber" until the job market improves.
Deering, who led Sony's European PlayStation division during the launch of the iconic game console and its successor, PlayStation 2, acknowledged the pain of Sony's recent cuts.
The company said in February it would lay off about 900 people globally and close PlayStation Studios' London studio, amid a slowing gaming market. Deering dismissed the notion that the layoffs were purely driven by corporate motives.
"I don't think it's fair to say that the resulting layoffs have been greed," Deering said on journalist Simon Parkin's "My Perfect Console" podcast. "I always tried to minimize the speed in which we added staff because I always knew there would be a cycle.
Fluctuations in consumer spending and recent games' diminishing sales impact the company's ability to "justify spending the money for the next game," making some staffing cuts inevitable, said Deering.
Deering offered some unconventional advice for game developers affected by the layoffs. He suggested workers take time off or find temporary work, like driving for Uber, while the industry stabilizes.
"It's like the pandemic," Deering told Parkin. "You're going to have to figure out how to get through it, drive an Uber, or whatever. Find a cheap place to live and go to the beach for a year."
His remarks come at a time when layoffs have hit the gaming industry hard.
Other game developers, including Microsoft and Unity, have similarly downsized their studios this year, cutting over 3,000 jobs at the start of the year, BI reported in February.
This series of layoffs in the game industry stemmed from slumping game sales and a shrinking gaming demographic, BI previously reported. Revenue from video game sales in the US in 2023 fell by 2.3% from the previous year, and the average time spent gaming fell from 16.5 hours to 13 hours from 2021 to 2022. Related stories
However, Deering seemed optimistic about the prospects for game developers. He told Parkin that laid-off workers should take advantage of the time off to recharge but keep an eye out for any opportunities to return to the industry.
Game development skill is not going to "be a lifetime of poverty or limitation. It's still where the action is," said Deering.
Deering is currently an advisor for Cudo Ventures, a company specializing in monetization applications.
Sony Interactive Entertainment and Deering did not respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside business hours.
Perhaps the head of the corporation that abuses you should be the one that lives in fear.
I do this exact same expression when I'm forced to gain knowledge of something potentially personally catastrophic...
Me, turning on my PC every day after my main PC was bricked while rebooting for a Win10 update...
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it
ouch. this hits to close.
Dude, my company has just been acquired by another one. This is me every day now for the next couple of months.
Same
