The 5 Stages of Being Laid Off: When things couldn't get any worse, but they did, and here we are…
Late August this year, I had a rude awakening. What was expected to be a routine company-wide standup, turned out to be a two-minute Zoom call declaring a mass layoff — the urban nightmare that we’ve all read of on LinkedIn, but never expect to happen to us. This blog will take you through the 5 stages of being laid off, albeit with the attempt to be humorous, because isn’t that the best known defense response to pain?
Stage 1- Denial
You spend the first week finding reasons to diss your job. “It was just business at the end of the day, why take things personally?”, “You already knew this wasn’t your dream job”, “You even saw this coming, so why are you shocked now?”…
Retrospective tip:
Layoffs are not personal. They are usually done when a company, whose main goal was to create revenue, hasn’t been doing so well, so they switch their goal to cutting immediate costs. If you receive 2–3 months’ severance pay, consider yourself lucky.
When searching for jobs, look for companies that are solving a crucial gap in the market, have well-recognized customers, and work on a business model that is viable for the current economic conditions.
