Life in the age of layoffs

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When Arthi Raghu was suddenly laid off from her sales development job the other week, she went straight to LinkedIn to write a guide to survivor the first crushing 48 hours of losing your job.

So far, all normal, except for one thing: the company fired Raghu, and more than 700 from his colleagues — it was LinkedIn.

As one of the thousands of people who saw her story wrote, getting fired from LinkedIn and posting about it on LinkedIn was “kind of a boss move.”

I guess it was, but your case is just one in a disgusting wave of mass layoffs that has been wrecking industries. Only tech companies have cut 194,000 jobs so far this year by one estimate, more than in all of 2022.

This raises two big questions: how are these losses shaping the workforce of the future, and what are the odds that being jobless has any remotely plausible advantage?

Of course, there is plenty of evidence that the human cost of being fired can be terrible. Research shows that it can increase the chances of disease and even suicidewhile those who are saved from the hatchet often face more work with less help, plus the anxiety of wondering if their head will be next.

But what if layoffs have become such a standard business practice that they are changing the nature of the workforce? That’s what academics at the University of Wisconsin suggested in a 2015 paper that raised what they called the “new, and rather sinister, concern” of a more pro-quit workforce.

“Our study suggests, all other things being equal, that common layoffs may be contributing to a large population of employees who are less likely to stay with their subsequent employers,” they said.

In other words, getting rid of hundreds of people at once could offer short-term cost savings for an individual company, but broader problems for others trying to hang on to a more fickle staff.

That finding is consistent with the work of others, such as Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer. He has written widely about the evidence showing that layoffs are toxic for workers and not necessarily good for business because they often don’t cut costs, raise stock prices, or increase productivity.

Layoffs persist, however, so it’s somewhat encouraging to see signs that for some workers, suddenly losing their job or suffering other bad luck at work might not be the disaster one might think.

This is what researchers at the French business school Audencia discovered when they recently asked almost 700 managers who had studied at an elite business school how chance had affected their careers.

Academics tend not to study the role of luck in career paths, but the French academics found that the careers of most of the managers they surveyed had been strongly affected by some kind of chance event.

This had been mostly positive. Someone bumped into his CEO and showed her the work that led to a promotion. Another had chatted with a neighbor in the stairwell whose niece offered valuable career advice.

But a significant portion had also been unlucky: a toxic new manager, or the loss of a job due to a company restructuring, downsizing, or closure.

Unexpectedly, more than 70 percent of those unlucky said the coup had a positive outcome.

A man sacked from a prestigious finance job in London during the financial crisis has taken a more humble job in leafy Aix-en-Provence, where he was promoted to a bigger role and a salary “I would never have expected in London.”

A woman whose business suddenly closed decided to change course and passed a national exam that opened up a host of new opportunities.

Research co-author Professor Christine Naschberger cautions that this study is based on a select group of highly-skilled managers and that others may find it more difficult to find a new job, especially older workers.

Still, for those who suddenly find themselves drawn into the ranks of the redundant, two things are worth remembering: It’s harder than ever to manage a career today, but an unexpected setback at work may not be a permanent disaster.

As Naschberger says, “a career is not always linear, things can turn out differently.”