Lay Off Stories

[Roadrunner53]

I worked for a research company (my last job) that was pretty small. We never reached more than 50 employees and people were fired right and left and quit or moved on. It was a swinging door for sure. I managed to work there 4 years. The guy who ran the company had no business acumen and would order his project manager and engineers around and change his mind 50 times in a day. It made for a terrible work environment. This company had a lot of financial issues going on and everyone was on pins and needles as to when the hatchet would come down. Well, that day came for me. The typical, I was called in on a Friday 3 pm  and handed my walking papers and a small package to go. As I was leaving the building with a box of my crap, I saw another person leaving too. I found out later that there were a total of 5 of us let go. Two full timers including me and three part timers. Four of us were in our early to late 50's and one token 20 year old. The clincher to this story is that right after all 5 of us were let go, they hired one high paid engineer. So, my guess is that they wanted to hire this guy but were teeter tottering with money so they got rid of 5 of us to hire one expensive person! What a raw deal!

[Sibley]

Well, that sucks. Hopefully everyone is able to land on their feet without difficulty, however that looks.

You're probably better off out of there though. If the owner is that bad at running the business, eventually it'll fold.

[GuitarStv]

I've been through two kinds of layoffs.

The kind of lay-off where the people with the least seniority were axed, and the kind where the people with the most seniority were axed.  :P

[Roadrunner53]

Yes, in a weird way it was meant to happen to me. My Mom got sick a little over a year later and I spent a lot of time taking her to medical appointments. I would have never been able to do so if I was still working. It would have really been a dilemma if I had to quit.

The jerkhead who owns the company is still in business but it is still functioning as a swinging door. This is a place for a young college graduate to spend about a year and then get a real job in a real company. The projects were pretty interesting but the jerkhead didn't have any customers or very limited customers. He had money coming in from something he did years ago and was getting enough to operate the company on shoe string. However, like all buildings they need maintenance and he despised hiring anyone until all hell broke loose. Like a giant pipe breaking and water spewing like a volcano. Then he gets insurance adjustors to pay up and he fixes the stuff.

I was in my late 50's and just wanted to stay on till I wanted to retire. They had a 401K but the company didn't match anything. I put in 22% of my pay so I left with a nice nest egg. Would have been nicer had they matched anything! The best part is that I was able to collect 73 weeks unemployment; that was when the economy was in dire straights. I looked for work but never found anything.

Previously, I had worked for a 'real' company that had all the bells and whistles for bennies. I had 6 weeks vacation plus all the holidays and PTO. They had a 401K with a very generous match. It sure was a slap in the face to work for such a great company and end up in a ghetto company. Unfortunately, my previous company moved to another state.

[Gone_Hiking]

I sympathize with anyone whose rug was pulled from underneath them.

I was served a layoff notice a year and half ago.  I couldn't complain: the notice was given 60 days before the cut, the company added some outplacement services, and severance pay was generous.  But it was still a layoff that affected predominantly older and more experienced workers, and the company insisted they didn't discriminate by age, which is baloney, and that's why I have no particular desire to return back to that company, even though their pay scale and benefits are awesome.  I found another job with a lower-level responsibilities and lower salary and skimpier benefits, and have recently changed jobs to something more aligned with my set of skills, benefits at the level of the company that had laid me off, and more stability.