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Tools To Deal With Layoff Anxiety

Summary

The host, Jonathan Cutrell, returns from a break and shares a personal update about experiencing a large layoff at his company, Guild Education. He acknowledges that many listeners in 2023 may have gone through similar experiences, whether directly affected, surviving a round, or anxiously watching from the sidelines. The episode aims to provide mental tools to deal with the anxiety accompanying such events.

He begins by validating the complex emotions involved—guilt, fear, relief, imposter syndrome—and emphasizes that these feelings are a normal part of the process but are not reliable guides for direction. The core of the episode presents two key principles for navigating layoff-related anxiety, applicable whether one was laid off, remains at the company, or is an observer.

The first principle is to focus exclusively on things you can control today, not past decisions or future outcomes. This means directing energy toward actionable steps like updating a resume, reaching out to connections, or improving candidacy, rather than ruminating on what could have been or trying to control an uncertain future. The host warns against misapplying this principle to either regret over the past or excessive planning for the future.

The second principle is to remember that people are inherently resilient. Studies show humans tend to return to a baseline of happiness after adverse events. The host encourages listeners to challenge catastrophic thinking about job loss by recognizing that the worst-case scenario is unlikely and that they possess the same mental fortitude used in their work to bounce back. Combining a focus on controllable actions with the knowledge of one’s resilience provides a practical framework for managing anxiety during turbulent times in the tech industry.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction and personal layoff experience — Jonathan Cutrell welcomes listeners back and shares that his company, Guild Education, went through a large layoff. He acknowledges that many in the 2023 audience may have experienced layoffs directly or indirectly. He states the episode’s goal is to provide mental tools to deal with the accompanying anxiety.
  • 00:02:20 — The varied nature of layoffs and common emotions — The host explains that layoffs can take different forms (individual, team-based, reduction in force) but the result feels similar for the affected person. He outlines the litany of valid emotions for those laid off (fear, imposter syndrome) and for those who remain (guilt, fear, relief). He stresses that while these feelings are part of the process, they are not good guides for direction.
  • 00:05:09 — First principle: Focus on what you can control — Jonathan introduces the first key principle: focus on things you can control. He clarifies this does not mean ruminating on past decisions you could have controlled, nor does it mean trying to meticulously plan or control the future. Instead, it means identifying and taking action on things you can do today, such as reaching out to people or reviewing your resume, without attaching your self-worth to uncontrollable outcomes like job application results.
  • 00:10:23 — Second principle: People are resilient — The host presents the second principle: people are resilient, backed by studies. He advises listeners to challenge the ‘horror story’ or worst-case scenario playing in their minds about job loss, as humans are good at bouncing back. The reality likely lies between nothing changing and the absolute worst outcome. Recognizing this resilience, combined with focusing on controllable actions, prepares you for employment uncertainties.
  • 00:13:34 — Practical exercise: Listing worries and identifying agency — Jonathan suggests a practical exercise for those feeling anxiety: write a list of worries and circle the items you have some agency or influence over. This makes explicit to your brain what is a waste of energy (worrying about the uncontrollable) and what is instructive (pointing to where you can take action). He frames anxiety as a signal to act, and taking action on controllable items can help relieve it.
  • 00:15:48 — Conclusion and combining the tools — The host concludes by reiterating that combining the focus on controllable actions with the knowledge of human resilience provides tools to navigate anxiety during layoff seasons, whether you lose your job or are affected indirectly. He thanks the listeners and invites them to join the free Developer Tea Discord community for further discussion.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2023-06-03T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:17:16

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to Developer T. After our short break, two things happened on this

[00:00:17] longer than normal delay.

[00:00:21] The first was, I went on vacation with my family, and I’m excited to be back and actually

[00:00:28] recording episodes.

[00:00:29] The second is a little bit more of a somber update.

[00:00:34] At the company that I’m currently working, Guild Education, we unfortunately went through

[00:00:41] a fairly large layoff.

[00:00:44] If you’re listening to this in 2023, then there’s a good portion of you who have gone

[00:00:51] through this yourselves.

[00:00:53] Whether you are experiencing the layoff yourself, maybe you’ve lost a job in the past year or

[00:01:01] you have in the past at some point, or maybe you’re at a company who has done layoffs recently,

[00:01:11] or maybe you’re like me and you were watching companies all around you doing layoffs and

[00:01:16] wondering, is this ever going to happen at my company?

[00:01:21] And then it did.

[00:01:24] In today’s episode, I want to spend a little bit of time hopefully giving you some tools,

[00:01:31] some mental tools to deal with the anxiety that accompanies this kind of event.

[00:01:41] First I want to say that I have a tremendous amount of respect for any person who has gone

[00:01:48] through this experience.

[00:01:51] I’ve been fortunate in my career to not have gone through this experience, but I think

[00:01:57] the people who have gone through it once they are on the other side would say that they

[00:02:01] are fortunate as well.

[00:02:03] Not in every case, but in most cases, people learn to deal with adversity.

[00:02:12] And I have a tremendous amount of respect for those people because they have dealt with

[00:02:17] that adversity.

[00:02:20] The truth is, not all layoffs look the same.

[00:02:24] You may have been let go from a job and you were the only one.

[00:02:28] There may have been a small layoff.

[00:02:30] Maybe your team was cut because the project you were working on was defunded, or maybe

[00:02:36] you were, like many others, part of a reduction in force, a percentage headcount cut.

[00:02:44] Usually those are made for budget reasons, but that’s not always the case.

[00:02:49] Sometimes there is a reorganization.

[00:02:52] Whatever the case is, the result tends to feel the same for the person being laid off.

[00:03:00] That is, yesterday I had a job, and today, by some series of circumstances, I don’t.

[00:03:08] And for the people looking on, that experience can feel scary.

[00:03:14] In fact, there’s a whole litany of emotions that may accompany this experience, no matter

[00:03:21] what seat you’re in.

[00:03:23] If you’re in the company that just performed the layoffs, you may have a strange mixture

[00:03:28] of guilt, maybe a feeling of fear that it might happen to you next, or maybe you have

[00:03:35] a feeling of relief that since the layoffs finally did happen, you weren’t a part of

[00:03:41] it, so you’re safe for a little while.

[00:03:44] All of these emotions are totally valid.

[00:03:47] You might even feel guilty about your relief, for example.

[00:03:53] For people who were laid off, you may feel a sense of fear over that, over what might

[00:04:00] happen in the coming months.

[00:04:01] You might feel a sense of imposter syndrome that is stronger than ever, especially if

[00:04:07] the job market is not as hot as it was maybe when you got your job.

[00:04:12] The last time you may feel a sense of, well, am I ever going to be able to break back into

[00:04:16] the industry that I was just let go out of?

[00:04:19] All of these, once again, are valid feelings.

[00:04:25] But I want you to pay attention to these feelings, not because they’re guiding you, but because

[00:04:34] they’re a part of the process of the experience.

[00:04:37] It’s a part of the process of dealing with that adversity.

[00:04:41] Your feelings are not necessarily going to give you good direction.

[00:04:47] This is very important to understand no matter where you are in this chain.

[00:04:52] Your feelings typically do not give you good direction.

[00:04:57] Now they may line up with a direction that is good, but the feelings themselves are not

[00:05:03] usually right in a turbulent situation like this.

[00:05:09] I want to give you a set of principles that you can use in situations like this that are

[00:05:14] applicable no matter where you sit.

[00:05:17] Maybe you’re the one that’s having to execute on a layoff.

[00:05:21] That comes with its own set of complications and it comes with its own set of feelings.

[00:05:27] But in every seat, the same principles will still apply.

[00:05:32] The first principle is one that you’ve heard on the show many times before.

[00:05:37] Focus on things that you can control.

[00:05:40] Focus on the things that you can control.

[00:05:44] You may have a tendency to change this principle or to adjust this principle to look at the

[00:05:52] past and ruminate on things that you think you could have controlled.

[00:05:59] That is not what this principle is talking about.

[00:06:03] We are not talking about revisiting the actions that you took three months ago that maybe

[00:06:08] put you on this list of people who were going to get laid off.

[00:06:13] Or if you’re on the layoff side, maybe you’re feeling guilty that the layoff has to happen

[00:06:18] and you’re trying to look back at maybe we could have taken the business in a different

[00:06:22] direction to avoid this.

[00:06:26] It’s important to recognize some of these things through some kind of retrospective

[00:06:31] so you can learn.

[00:06:33] But the important thing looking forward, the things that you can act on now are the things

[00:06:40] that you can control today.

[00:06:43] You’re not going to be able to change any of the actions that you took in the past even

[00:06:47] if you had agency over those decisions back then.

[00:06:53] Of course, you’ve heard the phrase, hindsight is 2020.

[00:06:58] You didn’t know where this was leading.

[00:07:01] You didn’t know that you were headed for a layoff.

[00:07:03] Maybe you had your suspicions.

[00:07:05] You didn’t know that you were about to lose your job.

[00:07:08] You didn’t know exactly what percentage of the company was going to be let go and where

[00:07:14] that percentage was going to focus.

[00:07:18] If you did, you probably would have taken different actions.

[00:07:23] And so we tend to be harsher on our previous selves and we tend to ignore the action that

[00:07:30] we can take today.

[00:07:33] Think about this for a second.

[00:07:34] If you spent all of the same energy that you spend ruminating on decisions that you made

[00:07:39] in the past and instead you focus on what you can do to improve your current situation,

[00:07:46] things are going to actually change for the better.

[00:07:50] Things will actually change for the better.

[00:07:51] If you just got laid off and you could spend a bunch of time trying to understand what

[00:07:56] you could have done better in that job, there’s some worthwhile energy spent in understanding

[00:08:03] how to improve, but a lot of times these layoffs have nothing to do with performance at all.

[00:08:09] So it’s an exercise in vanity or in some kind of unnecessary expenditure of energy

[00:08:19] towards the past.

[00:08:22] Focus instead on what you can do today.

[00:08:26] Importantly, we’re not saying try to control your future.

[00:08:31] This is where the principle gets thwarted again.

[00:08:36] People may mistakenly believe that focusing on the things that they can control means

[00:08:42] planning out their next five years or ten years, trying to control exactly what their

[00:08:48] next job will be.

[00:08:50] This is not what we’re talking about here either.

[00:08:53] Instead, we’re talking about things that you can do right now.

[00:08:59] What is it that you can start today?

[00:09:03] That is what is under your control.

[00:09:06] Now again, this doesn’t mean don’t plan.

[00:09:09] This doesn’t mean don’t think about the future.

[00:09:11] Instead, it means instead of trying to attach all of your worth, instead of trying to attach

[00:09:18] all of your energy and your thoughts and your emotions to some future state, attach that

[00:09:26] sense of progress or that sense of worth or that sense of purpose to the things that are

[00:09:33] right in front of you.

[00:09:36] If you got laid off yesterday, today something you can control is the people you reach out

[00:09:41] to.

[00:09:43] You can review what your current resume looks like.

[00:09:48] You can start making connections with your former colleagues and see if they have connections

[00:09:53] that they can make for you.

[00:09:55] Those are the things that are under your control.

[00:09:58] You can’t decide exactly where you’re going to work next.

[00:10:03] Maybe you can apply.

[00:10:05] That’s under your control, but don’t attach your self-worth or sense of progress to whether

[00:10:11] or not that application gets denied.

[00:10:14] That is not in your control.

[00:10:18] The second principle that I want to reiterate, we kind of touched on it very briefly at the

[00:10:23] beginning of this discussion.

[00:10:27] People are resilient.

[00:10:30] This is proven in study after study.

[00:10:32] People are resilient.

[00:10:35] You may have a nightmare in your head.

[00:10:39] If you haven’t been laid off and you’ve experienced it around you, you may have a horror story

[00:10:45] that prevails in your mind and keeps you awake at night of how terrible your life will be

[00:10:51] if you do get laid off.

[00:10:54] Now understand me clearly, many of you who have gotten laid off have experienced difficult

[00:11:00] times as a result of it, but humans are resilient.

[00:11:06] People are good at bouncing back from these kinds of events.

[00:11:12] And so if you imagine that your whole life is going to fall apart, that you’ll never

[00:11:15] be happy again, that you’ll never have a good job, or somehow everything you have you’re

[00:11:20] going to lose and that’s going to ruin your life, well, you’re probably not right.

[00:11:29] This is probably not how you will actually deal with losing your current employment.

[00:11:36] Instead, somewhere between nothing at all changing and the absolute worst possible outcome,

[00:11:45] something in between is more likely.

[00:11:49] And so it makes sense to spend some time focusing on the reality that no matter what happens,

[00:11:56] you are resilient.

[00:12:00] You can approach losing a job with the same level of clarity and the same mental fortitude

[00:12:08] that you approach your work already.

[00:12:11] The studies on this subject show that people tend to return to a baseline of happiness

[00:12:18] after adverse events, sometimes after permanent adverse events.

[00:12:24] While the interim may be a little uncomfortable, your ability to rebound is still intact.

[00:12:33] So as you ruminate on that horror story, remind yourself just how likely it is that the worst

[00:12:39] case scenario is going to occur.

[00:12:43] This combined with focusing on what you can control today will have you more prepared

[00:12:49] for almost any event that could occur with your employment.

[00:12:54] If you focus, for example, on improving your candidacy for future jobs, even though you’re

[00:13:00] not losing your job today, that’s something you can control today.

[00:13:05] It takes action on this problem because that is under your control.

[00:13:12] You can improve your resume now before you experience a layoff.

[00:13:18] Or if you’ve already experienced that layoff, if you aren’t spending your time doing things

[00:13:22] like improving your resume, then what are you controlling?

[00:13:27] If you have experienced some strong emotions around this topic, around the layoffs that

[00:13:34] have happened, whether it’s in your company, in a company that you know about, that you’ve

[00:13:38] seen in the news, maybe you know someone else who has been laid off, if this has caused

[00:13:43] anxiety or fear or guilt or any of those emotions to a degree that this episode is

[00:13:50] resonating with you, then I encourage you to take a few minutes and write out a list

[00:13:55] of things that you’re worried about and then circle the things that you have some agency

[00:14:01] over that you can influence.

[00:14:04] What you’re doing here is you’re making it explicit to your brain.

[00:14:07] You’re saying, okay, I’m worrying about something that I have no influence or control over,

[00:14:13] or, so there’s an either or situation here, either you’re worrying about something that

[00:14:17] you have no influence or control over, so it’s wasted energy, right?

[00:14:22] Or you are worrying about something that you do have some influence or control over, and

[00:14:28] that is instructive as well.

[00:14:31] That tells you, okay, this is where I can put my energy.

[00:14:34] This is where I can focus on the things that I can control.

[00:14:37] It’s in this category right here.

[00:14:40] Now notice that I’m not saying that just because you know that you’re worrying about something

[00:14:45] you can’t control that suddenly the worry will disappear and all of your anxiety will

[00:14:50] go away, but if you do validate to yourself that, hey, you know what, this worry that

[00:14:56] I have or this anxiety, anxiety is a mechanism to move us towards action, and so it makes

[00:15:05] sense that, at least for some people, myself included, that taking action tends to relieve

[00:15:11] some of that anxiety.

[00:15:13] Your anxiety is a signal to you that, hey, you need to do something about this, right?

[00:15:17] And so if you go and do something about it, then you’ve taken action and that anxiety

[00:15:22] could possibly relent a little bit as a result of the action that you’ve taken.

[00:15:28] But if you tell your brain, hey, there’s no action to be taken, then there may be a route

[00:15:34] to relieving that anxiety there as well, because you know that there’s nothing that

[00:15:39] you can do that’s going to satisfy that particular anxiety, ultimately focusing on the things

[00:15:48] that we can control today and reflecting on the fact that humans are resilient, that you

[00:15:55] have the tools, you have the capacity to deal with adverse events like other humans do.

[00:16:03] These two things combined can help you navigate seasons where layoffs are happening around

[00:16:10] you in your company, maybe you lose a job, even not as a part of a layoff necessarily.

[00:16:17] If you have this anxiety, these are tools that will help you navigate that anxiety.

[00:16:22] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:16:25] If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love to talk to you in the Developer Tea Discord community.

[00:16:29] Head over to developertea.com slash discord to get started with that for free today.

[00:16:34] It’s always free.

[00:16:36] So it’s not just getting started.

[00:16:37] It’s not like we have plans or anything like that.

[00:16:40] It is totally free for engineers like you and non-engineers as well to come and discuss

[00:16:46] the topics like what we talk about on the show.

[00:16:48] We can talk about other things in there.

[00:16:50] We can talk about questions that you have in your job.

[00:16:54] We have people helping each other out with engineering problems.

[00:16:58] We have discussions about tooling, a book club, there’s all sorts of stuff happening

[00:17:03] in there.

[00:17:04] Go check it out.

[00:17:05] developertea.com slash discord.

[00:17:06] Thanks so much for listening and until next time, enjoy your tea.

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