I've been thinking about this because I've now been on both sides of it. I've made the calls. I've been the person on Zoom or the phone telling someone their job was being eliminated. And then last year I got the call myself. I thought I understood what that felt like because I'd watched people go through it and I'd had some really difficult conversations with people I cared about. I didn't. Not completely.
One day you're working. Your calendar is full, you're in the middle of projects, people are calling you, and you're thinking about what needs to happen next week or next quarter. Then suddenly you're not part of any of it. The company keeps moving, your meetings still happen, your work gets reassigned and eventually people you talked to every day stop calling. That's not a criticism of them. They still have jobs to do and you're simply not part of their working lives anymore. It takes some time to get your head around how quickly that happens.
That's why I have a hard time with some of the survivor posts immediately after a RIF. We lost great people, we'll raise a glass to them tonight, tomorrow we rebuild, we push on, we continue the mission. I know most people who write this stuff mean well, but think for a second about the people who just got cut. The company just told them they're no longer part of the mission. Trust me, they already know you're going to push on without them. They don't need you to tell them.
There's something else I think people who survive these things need to understand. If you've survived five RIFs, don't convince yourself you've somehow gotten good at surviving RIFs, or that continuing to survive means you're special or safe. I've been involved in making these decisions and that's simply not how it works.
Sometimes a product goes away. Sometimes the strategy changes. Sometimes they need to take cost out of one organization and not another. Sometimes two groups get combined and suddenly there are two people for one job. And when you get down into the list, HR and the lawyers are looking at it too. They're looking at age, gender and other protected groups because the company needs to understand whether the RIF creates an adverse-impact or discrimination problem. I've actually participated in this process. When you get into close decisions, factors other than who is the better employee can absolutely become part of reviewing that list.
So maybe your product survived. Maybe your particular job was needed in the new organization. Maybe you ended up on the right side of the ledger this time. Or maybe you just got lucky. None of that means you aren't good at your job. It just means you shouldn't assume the person who got cut wasn't every bit as good at theirs.
If you really want to help the people who lost their jobs, help them. Make the introduction, send the resume, pick up the phone, write the recommendation. Then go back to work. You don't need to post about how you're going to carry on with the mission. They already know.
And if you've survived five RIFs, maybe the lesson isn't that you're safe.
Maybe it's that you've been lucky five times.