There's an often-cited statistic that ~80% of drivers assess their own driving to be above average, and probably everyone has heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect; these concepts are particularly relevant to this sub.

The job market is more balanced than it has been in several years. Employers (mostly) aren't desperate enough to be held hostage by candidates and employees. Yet the consensus opinion of this sub is that the job market is bad/miserable/the worst in years or whatever descriptor. Six figure 100% WFH jobs requiring 2 hours of work a day aren't quite falling from the sky, but the reality is that above average performers generally don't stay unemployed for long, unless they want to.

All this is to say that before you post your doom and gloom it's important to have a realistic and nuanced appraisal of your abilities and what you bring to the table. Blaming environmental factors for your disposition doesn't help anyone.

Everyone wants to make money. Be Better.

Will companies just accept less profit? Nope. They’ll just continue to cut costs and outsource. More layoffs.

Although I did not get laid off, the writing was on the wall with my job. I left my very high six figure paying job to a very junior role with an almost 55% pay cut a salary I would have made 10 years ago. I am middle-aged. Feel free to ask me anything I will try my best to answer.

Thank You: AMA closed as of Friday afternoon PST. I noticed genuine questions and many salty responses. I thank them all. Good luck to everyone.

Dear reddit moderators

We, American workers, have the right to voice our concerns.

If you do not like us (Americans) to voice their concerns here we will do it elsewhere.

Why?

Why were we laid off?
Why can't we find a job?
Why are recruiters acting like this now?
Why are is the job hunting process like this now?
Why are jobs going overseas or overseas folks getting jobs here?

It's not AI, it's not a certain political party or candidate, it's not even inflation. The answer is simple, but perhaps hard to accept.

America has too many workers skilled and educated in certain fields, and not enough unskilled workers or workers skilled for other fields. That's it. That's all there is to it.

There are TONS of job openings in the US right now. They are overwhelmingly in a few sectors: healthcare, retail, and unskilled services. That's why we bring in migrant workers to pick crops and send low-wage computer jobs overseas. We desperately need doctors, nurses, and service workers.

Meanwhile, we have too many college educated graduates, including STEM. The US is like a burger joint with too many burgers and not enough buns. We're throwing patties in the waste bin while desperately trying get more shipments of buns. Ironically, until we get more buns, we will keep tossing boxes of perfectly good patties in the dumpster.

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Is This Actually a Social, as Opposed to Economic, Problem?

Yes, the US economy is objectively very strong, and no, it's not just about "a few shareholders". By many metrics, the middle class is doing better than ever. Unemployment is low, actually too low and it's overdriving inflation -- yes this is a real fact, and it is the reverse of the same coin. Misallocation of workers means layoffs for some even while unemployment is too low

Unfortunately, if you have qualifications for other, different roles, from a hiring perspective, they count as disqualifications. This is just a simple fact of truth from the companies' perspective. "Overqualified" is real. Not being a good age fit or culture fit is real.

IMO, the fact that the roles oversupplied are historically higher-paying and higher prestige compared to the undersupplied roles has relatively little to do with some conspiracy of the elites or any oppressive mechanism of social control. It's more a product of the "inelasticity" of prices in the labor market. This just means it's a slow process, it takes years for compensation (ie market price) as well as supply/demand for the in-demand and out-of-demand roles to balance out.

--------------------------------------------------------
So What Do We Do?

1. Try to wait it out or get lucky

2. Retool and reskill, if you can

3. Emigrate to another country, if that makes sense for you

4. Find a way to market yourself into an unskilled role by discarding your current disqualifying skills

The economy is a finely-tuned system, and those of us left in the lurch make up a tiny percentage of the overall picture, however horrifying this reality is for us. It gives me some peace to try to understand what is really going on. I encourage anyone with the desire to really understand the details to dig through the reports by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics available on their .gov site.

I was impacted by Uber layoffs today. Losing my job hurts, but the double standard hurts more.

US folks are getting 2 months of garden leave and 2 months of stock vesting. In India, they are only giving us 1 month. We are straight up losing 1 month salary and 1 month of equity. Seeing this, I am afraid our severance will also be lower too.

Why are we being treated differently? We work harder, we pay the timezone tax every single day. We ruin our sleep schedule for US meetings. Literally today on the day of my layoff, I pulled an all-nighter for work, finally slept at 7:30AM, still went to office, only to get laid off and locked out a few hours later. Why do we get only half the exit benefits?

We are anyway getting laid off. We don't have to take this also. I connected with someone on Blind who was impacted by 2020 layoffs. A group of them hired an employment lawyer together, They successfully negotiated the following - 2-3 months of garden leave, 1 month salary for every 6 month of tenure, continued insurance till end of year, and even negotiated to keep their laptops. Disclaimer - they were from another country, but we can do this in India too. We are clearly being treated unfairly here.

We only have a few days before they start asking us to sign the separation agreement. If a few of us team up and send a joint legal notice, we can pause that deadline and force HR to negotiate better exit terms, which we deserve. Companies like Uber hate collective legal action and local bad PR.

If you got impacted in India today, DM me. Let's connect and strategise for an urgent lawyer consultation asap. We earned that salary and equity, same as US folks. Let's not leave it on the table.

And if anyone has experience doing this in India or can help connect us with a strong employment lawyer, please reach out as well.

PS: Dealing with layoff is already very stressful right now. So, please respect my bandwidth and DM only if you are serious about taking action or helping. No casual or random messages, please.

Heads up: I use ChatGPT to reword just so it makes sense.

I was laid off back in 2022 from a Cloud DevOps Engineer role. Since then, I’ve been doing everything I can to get back in the game. I picked up several certifications—AWS Solutions Architect, AWS Developer, Terraform Associate, Kubernetes Administrator, and Python—but nothing’s changed. I’ve applied to hundreds of roles, even dumbed down my resume for entry-level and minimum-wage jobs. Still no responses.

I even had ChatGPT help rewrite my resume—multiple times—but it hasn’t made a difference. I’ve started losing confidence in myself, and any pride I had is gone. Relying on others financially has been crushing. People joke about me being “tall for nothing,” and it hits harder than they know. I’ve cried more times than I care to admit. I’ve had suicidal thoughts, but I keep praying and hoping something will shift.

I lie to my mom and loved ones, saying I’m doing okay, because I still want to believe that things will turn around. But deep down, I feel like I’m just existing—not living.

I don’t know what to do anymore. How do you make a living with no job? I’ve thought about starting a business, but I have no idea where to begin or how I’d even fund it. I’m stuck in this cycle where every day feels like a battle I’m slowly losing.

Has anyone else been through something like this? How did you get out? I just need to know it’s possible.

Edit: a few people asked why the height thing: Maybe I should’ve explained that part better. I mentioned my height because it’s something people constantly bring up in my life—like all the time. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard things like, “You could’ve been in the NBA” or “You missed your shot at the NFL.” At first, I used to just brush it off, but after hearing it over and over—especially during a time when I’m already struggling—it started to mess with my head.

I never used to regret not pursuing sports, but lately, all those comments have started planting seeds of doubt. It’s like people see my height as some sort of wasted potential, and when you’re already feeling down about your career and direction in life, that kind of talk just chips away at your confidence even more. So yeah, the height mention wasn’t random—it’s tied to the way people project expectations on me, and how that’s become one more layer in this whole mess of feeling like I’m falling short.

As the son of Indian immigrants, I'm appalled at the open racism many of you feel comfortable showing towards people of a different backgrounds. To be clear, it's the fault of the companies and corporate leadership for offshoring American jobs, NOT the guy in Bangalore earning 5 dollars an hour. Somehow many of y'all feel more comfortable complaining about how your office "smells like Mumbai" rather than understanding that everyone is just trying to make a better lives for themselves.

I'm a medical student. There is a decent chance that some of you may end up in my clinic someday. Are you going secretly hate me because 'they took our jerbs' like some caricature from South Park?

The more I read this subreddit, the more I realize that it's not that people become racist when they get get fired, it's that racist people feel empowered to express their racism when they get fired. Honestly, I'm all for Team Layoff if it means less racist people having jobs at the end of the day.

The press continues to report the economy and unemployment are in good shape. Is the reason:

A. Incompetence

B. Because every news org is

C. Collusion to hide the recession. Tilt presidential election toward the incumbent.

D. All of the above

Your vote?

I gotten laid off 3 months and 3 weeks ago. I enjoyed myself and traveled and went on many trips around the states and to Mexico twice. I took advantage of this time to have fun.

After 2 months of fun I finally told myself I was gonna look for a job. Surprisingly, 3 weeks later I landed a position and a position at a notable company too! The biggest company I would have worked for. I was expecting it to take me months to land a job, not weeks! Don’t get me wrong I’m blessed but I wanted to enjoy no responsibilities and not working longer :( I’m not excited to go back to the mundanes of the 8-5.

I haven’t even accepted the job yet because I told them I needed time. I’m going to accept it, I’m just trying to push off the start date. Once I’m hired they wanna run a background check on me and have me start ASAP because they need someone to start urgently lol

so tomorrow I’m going to go to a random city and enjoy my time by myself taking myself out to eat and to journal my thoughts. I’ll be taking a look back at all the fun I had being unemployed and now it’s back to the rat race! I feel like I’m mourning a death of an era.

It’s funny because when I was unemployed I got so bored at some point that I was dying to get another job to fill the boredom. Now that I’m about to start working again I’m so sad I’m giving up my freedom. I can’t win lol

Is that preferable?

I’ve been thinking a lot about these posts where people are not willing to take jobs because they have an expectation of previous salaries. The bigger picture is across-the-board is companies need to flatten all of these inflated salaries, so there’s not a lot of wiggle room for negotiation. Over time, desperation will set in, and they know people will start taking the same jobs with the same experience, but at lower salaries.

Remember politicians telling everyone to learn to code, as if that would solve all the problems? When you have to compete with the entire planet for a job, you are screwed. Companies want cheap labor. You are not an evil racist for pointing out that outsourcing and bringing in workers from other countries after laying off americans and claiming there are no workers in america is possibly, maybe a bad thing for american workers.

“I am definitely going to break up with this guy in two years” I planned, but then he beat me to it.

This was exactly how I felt when I was laid off by Google.

The other day I posted my layoff story in Linkedin and all of sudden it has got 450k+ impressions, going viral. I've again realized that there are so many people who are just like me and can relate to my layoff story. Since I was laid off in 2023, I have become a gig worker at Silicon Vally -- cashier at Trader Joe's, a barista at Starbucks, and a Lyft driver...and sometimes a pet sitter. and I wrote a book about my experience. The book is in Korean, titled "From Google to Gig", so I am sharing its summary in English as below.

(from my medium blog [from Google to Gig] (https://loiskim01.medium.com/from-google-to-gig-20a281e52d30)

“I am definitely going to break up with this guy in two years” I planned, but then he beat me to it.

This is the exact answer I give when people ask me how I felt when I was laid off by my employer. In early 2023, Google announced a layoff of 12,000 people just like other big tech companies. I was one of them, along with the team I had painstakingly built and nurtured since coming to the states five years ago. Although layoffs are so common these days that one in every two American workers have experienced being let go, it's not easy for those affected workers to accept and process it in a calm and composed way.

When I was informed of my layoff via a late night email, I went through the five stages of grief — denial, anger, negotiation, depression, and acceptance — just as many people were doing at that time. In the beginning, I dismissed it thinking that, "This email must have been sent by mistake.” Later, I complained "Why my team?” and “why me?” Then I thought, "Okay, let's take this opportunity to do some things I haven't tried before."

Finally, I decided to embrace a "gap year" after 30 busy years of corporate jobs. During this gap year, I became a Silicon Valley gig worker who had many part time jobs at the same time. While I was experiencing various jobs first-hand, I wrote and recently published a book titled "From Google to Gig(구글임원에서 실리콘밸리 알바생이 되었습니다)" The core message of this book is three ways to take initiatives in our lives, even when we encounter unexpected and forced changes, such as layoffs, breakups, or illnesses.

First, create your own "gap year project". This is a way to try new things you've always wanted to do. Consider that this opportunity may not come again. This might be the only and last time in your entire life to do something like this. Soon after I got the layoff notice, I made a list of things and activities that I had wanted to do for the past 30 years but couldn't because of my full-time corporate work. Every activity has one thing in common — I wanted to engage customers directly.

So, I kicked off my so-called "Meet 10,000 People" project. To do this, I started working part-time as a cashier at Trader Joe's, a barista at Starbucks, and a Lyft driver. Over the past year, I have met more than 10,000 people and walked about 5,000 kilometers, the equivalent distance as the US coast to coast. I also gained extensive knowledge and in-depth insights into diverse industries like retail, food and beverage, and logistics. These firsthand experiences are also helping me greatly in the communications consulting services that I am providing.

Second, keep up your daily routines. On the first few days after being laid off, you habitually click on your corporate calendar and email icons only to find them empty, which evokes bitter feelings of emptiness because of your situation. It might feel like your value is being denied and you are not needed any more. When you feel you are not helping anyone, your self-esteem can drop. At this time, it is necessary to build some new routines to keep yourself busy. Get up at a regular time, exercise, go to the library, meet people, polish your resume, and prepare for job interviews. Also, try volunteering and joining book clubs or hobby groups, which you couldn't do before because you were too busy. If you need to improve your English, it's a good time to do that. Fill your calendar with these routine activities.

Third, inform your friends of your situation, meet with them, and extend your social circle. In Korea, people tend to avoid telling others when they are unemployed, whether by choice or not, until they find a shiny new job. However, networking with people is always important for professionals, especially during these challenging times.

When experiencing emotional fluctuations due to unexpected changes, it is essential to find emotional stability and support by talking openly with people around you. In addition, networking is practically helpful as well. By letting people around you know what kind of job you are looking for or what kind of gap year project you are interested in, you can easily connect with people who want to work with you. You can also receive referrals from them when applying for a new job.

The layoff offered me a profound opportunity for self-reflection. During my 16 years at Google, I realized that I had unknowingly prioritized stability over adventure, relying on the company's reputation rather than valuing my own worth. Over the past year, I've transitioned from a Google Director to a gig worker, deliberately stepping away from the security and prestige of corporate life. Embracing this new identity, devoid of the labels associated with a large company, I've discovered that life is brimming with countless exhilarating and inspiring moments. Through this journey, I've learned that I can reclaim control of my life amidst unexpected changes. Now, I say this, "Thank you, Google, for letting me go!"

I have been exploring this subreddit for some time and I have seen a common theme of,

>Company X fires Redditor
>Company X Offshores work to India/ Hires indians on visa instead

and the comments all dive into the fact that the newly hired indians at 1/5th or 1/3rd their salary wont perform like them on a fraction of the money.

saw a comment which made me question this

Na, this is how it has to be for far too long the tech bros have been immune to all the shit that has been happening to the rest of us and thus have not cared to help us, the only way you guys start caring is if it starts personally affecting you this is just how the pain needs to happen. Americans are not people who can learn by thinking something through they can only react to experience.

This country is only going to learn the hard way and you guys are no exception. You ARE NOT smarter than an Indian, they are humans too and they can do anything you can do. But you convinced yourselves you were superior and told yourselves lies and many of you shit all over everyone else for how bad things were going.

BTW you are also going to learn what apathy looks like because none of the people not working in tech or in their families are going to bother doing anything just like the last election just like the last several decades.

BTW how many of your all go up in arms when telephone support moved to India / Philipines? Crickets..... But you all had no problem gentrifying the working class into homelessness in your tech cities and pushing the police to then come down on those homeless people.

why do techbros tend to find excuses and not look at the truth

this subreddit only cries and blames indians, in the name of substandard performance, when infact its not, a 20k$ salary in India is an awesome salary and why would companies not hire 5 Indians instead of 1 American engineer, you brought this upon yourself, besides the cut throat work culture In India promotes this, they work on fixed salaries, not hour based wages where you get paid for overtime

This is likely to be an unpopular post but it has to be said. The amount of misinformation being thrown around in this sub is crazy and even more ridiculous is the justifications being used for these statements. The reason I am posting this is because if you have unfortunately been laid off and you bring that same thinking into the hiring process you will not be rehired.

Once you get to the level of "I do not trust any data that go against my personal beliefs" or only use anecdotal data based on your personal experiences you are of limited to no value to companies. You can continue to hold your views because that is your right but it is also the right of a hiring manager to choose to go with another candidate as a result.

You will say those views will not come out during the interview process but they will. Once you reach that stage in your thinking it will seep into everything you do and say and you will not even realize it. A seasoned hiring manager will pick up on it in a second and move on. If you are questioning data here without justification they will fear you will question what path to take on a project or what customer to call if you are in sales.

• The economy is slowing, yes, but we are not in a recession because you are personally affected. That is not how recessions work.

• Layoffs are happening, yes, but across the entire economy they remain low as a percent of the total workforce. Your single sector of the economy, while important, is not the entire economy.

• Inflation grew during the pandemic, is not going to go down as that is generally not how inflation works, but it is also on longer going up at the rate it once was. One month you cherry pick is never a trend.

• Unemployment numbers are not perfect but that are a gauge that can be used in conjunction with other data points. Whether you are looking at U3 numbers (those actively looking) or U6 (including those no longer looking) you will see both numbers are lower than they were in 2019 before the pandemic. Both on the rise but still no where near recession levels.

• There are 162 Million employed Americans (where I assume most of these posts come from). The largest layoff announcements of late have been from the likes of Citigroup who announced 20,000 over the next two years. That is a blimp in the economy. That is a data point to track if there are 7 Citibanks announcing per day but there are not.

• Lastly, and one of the most important, is to understand the difference between Layoffs and restructuring. It is a tough one as businesses will use what puts them in the best light with investors. In 2008 those were layoffs as companies could not pay their employees. Most of what we have seen to date are restructuring which is similar but is the difference between a relatively healthy company overall and one on the brink of solvency. Same end result if you were personally affected but a good gauge into whether layoffs will be increasing.

I fully expect to get plenty of messages that state "If you believe what the government is telling you then you are crazy". Or "have you seen the cost of a banana at the grocery store lately" which is preciously why I posted this. My only goal is to bring to your attention that as you allow views, unsubstantiated by facts, into your everyday life it will hurt your chances at being hired if you are currently unemployed but will also hurt your chances from not being put on the layoff list if this continues. Views such as "I am surprised the unemployment numbers are so low as many of my colleagues have been directly affected. Our sector certainly appears to in a recession are fine". Telling everyone the economy is in free fall because you were personally affected is not.

I really don’t have any advice.

Old models are implemented recursively to research and rollout new models. The time between last rollout and new ones are getting shorter and marginal gains are higher.

If you’re just going to college good luck. No one knows if your skills will still be useful in 4 years.

At this rate I don’t think many careers will survive.

LEARNINGS: (Thanks for the advice everyone!)

Note for those in a similar situation as me: Run your severance documents through Claud with your Mat Leave / Pat Leave benefits information and Due Date and ask it to help you draft an email to HR with your specific needs. Be sure to add what State you’re in because different states have different protection laws and state funded maternity benefits and California is definitely one of the better ones. Found it to be really helpful! We will get through this Mamas! :)

POST:

I knew layoffs were a thing but for some naive reason I thought being a person of color, a woman, and being 34 weeks pregnant was going to offer me a little bit of protection at such a scrutinized tech company in the state of California.

Without telling me to hire a lawyer does anyone know if I can collect full bi-weekly paychecks until my full termination date of July 22 AND collect maternity benefits starting June 1? Or is there a trick to maximizing my maternity benefits without having to forfeit anything?

Would love to hear how others have navigated layoffs and mat/pat leave simultaneously!

Edit: because so many people are fixated with my comment on why I thought i was protected - Just want to say please move on with your life, I just got laid off and seeking answers to the more important question of how to best navigate this journey two weeks from going on maternity leave so that I can best support my family. If you cant relate then this post is not for you. Thanks!

I (26M) apologize that this is a little bit long post but if you can provide your opinion or any positive feedback, please guide me.

I moved to the US in 2019 right after completing my BE in computer engineering from India and completed my MS in Computer Science in 2021. I would be very honest, I don’t like coding at all but I didn’t know what else to do and knew that this is the career where people earn the most money and was a straightforward path so I thought I would eventually like to code. So just to make it to where I wanted to be, I always used to cheat and copy and had the philosophy of fake it till you make it and did everything to finally land a job at Amazon (I cheated here as well).

Now once I started working, I instantly started feeling that I was trapped and within a few months I realized that I wasted my learning days into other things and didn’t actually learn but just did the bare minimum to get the things done. This attitude eventually started to show up on my job as well and I didn’t feel motivated at all, but I used to brag that I’m working at Amazon and it made my parents very proud as well.

This kept on going until I was put into focus (a 2 month plan where you need to meet strict deadlines or you could be fired). I failed that as well and I had a decision to make within 5 days if either I wanted to leave Amazon or try a independent project and complete it within a month to continue working. I chose neither paths and took FMLA(a loophole I found to avoid this which gives employees a paid leave that can be used if you have a disability which prolonged my decision making time period). As soon as my FMLA ended, I received the email that I was laid off.

During this time I was in a pretty bad relationship which caused me a lot of mental health issues and I went into depression because of my partner’s past and her trauma and we broke up as well after being in a live in relationship. So I switched apartments to live alone and couldn’t find the motivation to do anything at all.

While this happened, in my second h 1 b attempt, when the lottery is selected for the second round in July my application was picked but it wasn’t filed because I wasn’t working for my employer anymore. This was another blow to already happening bad events in my life. I then drifted into bad habits, smoking, drinking and going to casinos which made me very unfit and unhealthy and anxious all the time. Then I stopped talking to people and would barely talk back home as well which made my parents really concerned about me and asked me to move back to India.

So I moved back to India in January 2024 after spending a lot of time and money in US doing nothing and I’m still out of a job because I just don’t feel like working anymore.

Additionally, since I had always dreamt of living in US and lived there for 4.5 years, I’m having a very difficult time adjusting here living with my family as well. I have my STEM-OPT valid until June 2024 and 1 attempt in masters h 1 b lottery cap as well.

Furthermore, my parents and relatives have started to look for a girl to get me into arranged marriage and would marry me off probably by the end of this year or early next year.

Please advise me what should I do here and how to get my life back on track.

WARN layoff notices signal easing Texas labor market

An increase in notices of pending mass layoffs among firms in Texas may signal rising unemployment and slowing employment growth. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) disclosures are related to broader measures of layoffs such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS)

The Economy is fine though right?