I was laid off on October 17, 2012, exactly ten years ago from today.
I was working for a thin film solar cell startup of around 100 employees at the time. It was my first "real job" after my PhD. I still remember the day of the layoff like it was yesterday - it was a brisk autumn day that started out like any other; I got to work thinking about the experiments I wanted to run that day. A few hours after the day started, we started hearing rumors that some of the coworkers in the neighboring building were let go, and we were all secretly wondering whether our job will be safe. The waiting part was hard, and people in our building were eerily quiet. I kept trying to distract myself with work, thinking that will somehow make myself immune from decisions that were already made weeks or months ago. Finally it was my turn - my manager knocked on my cubicle wall and said, "I-Kang, can I talk to you for a minute?" I turned around and saw my manager and our HR director behind him. At that moment, I knew that I was going to lose my job that day.
This was the picture of my cubicle on the day of the layoff.
The rest of the conversation went through in a blur - I was told that I, along with 25% of the company, would lose our job that day, and we were to finish packing our belongings within two hours and be escorted out of the building. The day started just like a normal day, but by 1pm that day, I was sitting at the curb, holding my belongings in a cardboard box, and waiting for my wife to pick me up (I biked to work that day and couldn't transport the cardboard box in a safe manner).
The layoff was totally unexpected, and really could not have happened at a worse timing. A week before the layoff, my wife and I found out that she was pregnant; two days after the layoff, we were supposed to be closing on our purchase of our first home, so at that point we weren't sure if the transaction will close. Will we lose our escrow? Will we have a place to live if the transaction didn't go through? Will I be able to find another job before we exhaust our savings? All these resulted in extremely stressful days and weeks afterwards. Fortunately, this story did have a happy ending - we did close the purchase of our home, and I landed another industry job around 1.5 months after I was laid off.
Even though the financial impact of this layoff was relatively minor (I didn't have to move out of the country because of my immigration status; I got back to the workforce shortly after my severance package ran out; and my new job paid roughly the same as my previous one), I was still deeply shaped by this event, even to this day. Some PTSD-like symptoms linger - I have been "watching my back", constantly worrying about losing my job since that day, and it can be triggered by the most inconsequential stuff. When my boss schedules an unexpected meeting without agenda; when my boss pings me on slack and ask "do you have a minute for a quick chat"; when I had issue logging in to my work computer, or even when my employee badge didn't work in getting me through security, my immediate thought is often "OMG did I lose my job? What did I do wrong?" I don't know anyone else who thinks that way, but that is how the layoff has impacted me to this day.
I decided to share this personal story not because I love to wallow in self-pity; rather, I'd like to fill in more color on the circumstances, and let folks know that it is okay to be scared and frustrated when being let go. I have been there myself. Now let me switch gears and share about what the experience of being laid-off has taught me about career development.
1. It pays to be versatile
Being versatile and able to acquire new skills in new domains is an under-appreciated asset. Furthermore, once you have had the experience of "climbing up the learning curve" across several domains, you begin to see common patterns of problem solving across different domains, and may be able to propose out-of-the-box solutions that domain experts themselves cannot see.
One of the books that I really enjoyed on this topic was "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World".
In the beginning of the book, author David Epstein argued that there are two kinds of problem solving environments: kind vs wicked.
In kind learning environments, patterns repeat over and over, and feedback is extremely accurate and usually rapid. In wicked domains, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may or may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both.
Another study referenced by David Epstein mentioned that, professionals who were remarkably adept at expanding their careers often "had broader training and kept multiple 'career streams' open even as they pursued a primary speciality". These professionals had range and were "excellent at taking knowledge from one pursuit and applying it creatively to another."
I really took this advice to heart after being laid off once - it drove me to be versatile and pick up skills that could be applied to multiple domains, and I strive not to be pigeon-holed into an "expert who only knows that domain".
2. You ignore industry trends at your own peril
Had I been more diligent at paying attention to the industry trends, I would have picked up warning signs of my own job security in 2012. Solar cell manufacturing was going through a rough cycle in the early 2010s - once high-flying solar cell startups were folding left and right, and one of the highest profile failures in the U.S., Solyndra, happened just a year prior. I was foolish to think that just because my startup made high-efficiency solar cells, it will somehow be immune from the albatross dragging down the industry. To make things worse, when I was laid off from one solar job, I had problems getting another solar job because many job applicants are now chasing fewer and fewer openings.
Recognizing the industry trend can also position yourself to be the first comer to an emerging wave too. Xiaomi founder, Lei Jun, famously said: "Even a pig can fly if it stands at the center of a whirlwind". For individuals, recognizing and capitalizing industry trends could mean founding or joining a new startup, transitioning to a new job function that didn't exist before, or switching to a rapidly-expanding team within the same company. I was glad that I was able to recognize the industry trends and transition myself from materials scientist to data scientist in 2012-2015, and switched domains when optoelectronic component business became more and more challenging.
3. Company don't really owe you career developments
Companies may have various stated missions, but at the end of the day, they are profit-seeking entities. This may be a cynical way to view the world, but without revenue (or fundraising to work toward the goal of generating revenue), companies will not be able to exist. To that end, companies may help employees develop their careers when it helps their business. However, companies don't really owe employees the development of their own careers, and no one will care more about your own career development other than yourself.
When I was laid off, one of the directors (who has been through many layoffs in more than two decades in the semiconductor industry) said something that stuck with me - "In this day and age, everyone is a free agent". Because of the "at-will" employment that is very common in the U.S., that sentence is true in every sense of the word. Therefore, it is very important that you take your own career development into your own hands and actively plan for it, as opposed to just "go with the flow". No one else will care about your own career development as much as yourself do.
Final Thoughts
Both of my parents worked for the same institution in their entire career. But that era of "same job for life" is long gone. The average tenure of S&P 500 listed companies has decreased considerably in the past few decades, and chances are that we will outlive many companies we work for; in this environment, going through layoffs in our career (even if we personally weren't impacted) is all but guaranteed.
All that is to say, being laid-off was part of the ups-and-downs of one's career, there's no stigma attached to it and it is nothing to be ashamed of, and it matters much more how you learn from this experience and bounce back!
Comments
comments powered by Disqus