I was affected some time ago, and I can't emphasize enough how important it is to reach out to the people you were in touch with, just for a simple "sorry to hear the news."
I really appreciated the folks who did reach out - some of whom I honestly didn't expect to. But I was deeply disappointed that others I've worked more closely with didn't bother. I was already in shock, and that just made things worse.
Hard to imagine; you don't really get it until it happens to you - hopefully never.
> Hard to imagine; you don't really get it until it happens to you - hopefully never.
100% this. It rocked my world when it happened to me. I took a day to recover then hopped back in the job market. But it took a year for the anger to fade.
I probably identified too closely with my job at the time. I've tried to dial that back.
I'm trying to count the rounds of major layoffs in my career (e.g. 10% or more of the company let go at once). I _think_ it's 5, but it might be a bit more. I've been lucky each time, but that also means I wasn't one of the ones taking risks. Layoffs cut from both sides of the performance curve and leave the middle, in my experience.
I wish I'd done this more.
In some cases there was no way to. For example, we once woke up to find that the European half of our team had been laid off as part of huge cuts that weren't announced and even our manager had no idea were coming. There's no good way to do layoffs, but I think that "sudden shock" approach is worst of all, personally. You don't get to say goodbye in any way and people don't get to plan for contingencies at all. (The other extreme of knowing it's coming for a year and applying for your own job and then having 2 months to sit around after you didn't get it also sucks, and I've done that as well. You can at least make plans in that case, though.)
On the other hand, in a _lot_ of other cases, you do have a chance to say goodbye. Take it. This is really excellent advice. It's worth saying something, at very least to the people you really did enjoy working with.
There's a decent chance you work with some of those folks in the future, and even if you don't, it really does mean something to be a kind human.
> Don’t trash your employer, nor respond if they do. If they start that, say “I’m sorry, I can imagine why you’d feel that way, but I can’t continue this conversation.”
This is so bizarre. I would show a huge lack of empathy as well.
So it's "be a good person," but with then absolutely no follow-through or obligation attached: don't offer help, respond like an LLM when someone says something negative about the company that just sacked them, and don't even feel compelled to continue the conversation that you started if the person replies. Sounds to me like these goodbyes are more for the personal feelings of moral rectitude of the person making them, rather than anything related to the person who is departing. So it's really how to pretend to be a good person well enough to fool someone looking casually, a.k.a. instructions for being a passing sociopath.
I was laid off, and only a couple of my former colleagues reached out to me. People I had talked to for years and helped, some significantly, didn't even send me a message.
Consider that at one point, I had put myself out there to ask for more promotions and higher compensation for my colleagues.
I didn't feel particularly offended, but in my next job, I will definitely not help my colleagues as much and will think about myself 99% of the time.
It's disappointing to see grown adults who are so fearful, ungrateful, and reveal themselves to be rather miserable people, but that's the way the world works.
Funny thing is that i had a negative experience helping someone who was laid off. I reached out, offered help, provided excellent reference for them, covid hit and hiring froze for that particular company, followed up a few times, ghosted, never talked again.
It's you last phrase, that's the way the world and people works. It's people with their own troubles, insecurities and character. The most important bit is be yourself. If you are "built" to think and help others, keep doing it. If not, whatever.
Those goodbyes feel so corporate. After being laid off, the last thing I would want is to hear more corporate speak. It's the sort of thing a manager would send to an employee, not something employees at similar levels would send one another.
In this hypothetical situation I was just about to commit at least half the sins mentioned at the end. I think I might not be the best person to be saying goodbye at work.
I've never seen layoffs where the ones who survived the layoff weren't equally willing to slag-off the corporation.
Rather than sending "hallmark™ layoff greetings", maybe make friends with whomever of your coworkers is interested, and if/when they get laid off, try buying them a beer and actually listening to their grievances...
This post feels like it was lifted straight from a corporate HR Layoffs FAQ section.
Most people don't want to hear from old co-workers, from a job they just got laid off from, especially those that are there to offer fake, self-serving sentiment with a bunch of rules attached. Unless you already have a relationship with the person, you would probably have already talked anyway and it would be natural without all these weird rules of engagement.
People who do this are fake and its amazing to me they think this kind of thing isn't perceived as anything other than fake. There is a time and place for everything, networking with recently laid off co-workers is not one of them.
Please do not end your messages with an exclamation point.
“I wish you the best!” is fine if they are moving on to some better job.
“I wish you the best.” is more appropriate for the gravity of the situation if they just got fired and thrown into the shittiest job market in recent history.
Let me write up the professional version the way only I can.
Start with the formula described in the article but call rather than send an email.
Call them again 12 or 24 months later.
The script should be in your own words: Some people you need to talk to or see every day, some every week, some every month and some people every few years. Don't worry about it, I'm not going to stalk you. I will call you again in two or three years.
Then talk like coworkers about new jobs, earnings, the good the bad and the ugly, learn they got married/divorced, had kids, left the country for a while. etc etc
Keep the call under 4 minutes. Some people don't know how to terminate a phone call.
After each phone call send them an email summarizing the things you've talked about. Include the previous email.
You will find that, provided there is no obligation to stay in touch, people don't mind telling what they did over the last two years. Even if they don't like you. The fact that you've asked puts you well ahead of most people they know.
The 3rd call after 3-6 years is simply hilarious. They know the drill, the conversation can be as short as two minutes. Thanks for your time, we should do this again in two years!
You methodically hammer out the email again and go on with life.
Well intentioned post. Though I never understood the "don't trash your employer" advice people often give. It's often the more empathetic thing to do in such situations.
I was shocked at how much even perfunctory messages from coworkers meant when I got laid off. And the folks that offered tangible help have stayed in my mind since. It was the most challenging time in my life and even a simple message saying they would miss me or something like that helped so much.
Before I got laid off I was always hesitant to reach out to other folks who were laid off, now I try to make a point of it, even if it’s to apologize
lol, no. If I do that, they may reach out to me outside of work, and why would anyone want that headache? I have plenty of friends already, thanks. If I have the opportunity to say goodbye before they leave, then of course I will, but I'm not getting personal with coworkers.
When I got the axe at OldCo earlier this year, what stood out to me - and what made it so much more bearable to endure - was how many of my colleagues did this for me. How many of them still reach out to me, half a year on, to shoot the breeze, discuss wins, share hobbies.
Maybe it’s because I grew to be a better person from their feedback and mentoring, or maybe it’s just a shifting of times and attitudes. Heck, maybe I just got lucky that I worked with amazing people like them.
I just wish I’d had that support in prior layoff cycles as well.
I'm sure the OP means well, but I think this approach is misguided. It comes across as self-centered rather than supportive. You might get a polite "thanks" in response, but I doubt it will be genuinely appreciated.
If you care about the person and want to talk with them, reach out and be genuine. If not, don't bother them with LLM corporate-speak masquerading as support. Let's be honest: they didn't "part ways" with the company--they were fired.
Right now, they're worried about paying their bills, not about making their former coworkers feel better.
If you really want to help, reach out to your network and see if anyone is hiring. I've successfully connected many laid-off former coworkers with new opportunities. I've even approached recruiters that I ignored saying, "I'm not available, but this person is looking, and they're excellent."
>If not, don't bother them with LLM corporate-speak masquerading as support. Let's be honest: they didn't "part ways" with the company--they were fired.
I can think of few more grotesquely slimy developments in the last century or so of human communications than the blandly saccharine corporate-speak that now prevails in government and business like an ever-spreading parasitic infection. It permeates nearly everything and is used as a shield by shitbag executives and grossly corrupt organizations to disguise their true nature and the many examples of mendacity that their activities really involve.
Now we also see it being applied by the actual people, real people, communicating informally with real other people inside these same organizations, even when they apparently mean well in their own brainwashed, dimwitted way.
If I ever had anyone write a goodbye message to me in which they described me getting my ass fired as "parting ways", i'd plainly tell them to shove such nonsense wording up their ass if they really give a shit about me, or about being human.
This statement "...but I doubt it will be genuinely appreciated" implies not. Otherwise I'd expect you to have written "but when I was let go, I would not have genuinely appreciated this type of response".
I have been let go. I truly didn't understand what it was like until I went through it. It was crushing. Really crushing.
That experience doesn't make me a world-class expert, I get it. But I would have loved any acknowledgement of my humanity or appreciation of the worth I provided to my employer from co-workers on that day (or even a few days later).
I also want to acknowledge that people who are former colleagues have a variety of energy they can offer to those who are laid off. The folks who remain have more work on their plate, may wonder about the future of the company, and are generally frustrated or frightened too. I think people who remain should offer whatever consolation they have the ability to, based on their relationship with the folks who are let go.
For some, that might be (as mentioned in other comments) offering up their network and helping someone actively. For others, simply saying goodbye might be all they have energy and space for. I wanted to keep the advice as simple as possible so that folks don't have the excuse of saying to themselves "it's too much work, I have so much going on" and doing nothing, which is, in my experience, worse for the folks who are laid off.
Appreciate the feedback about the coldness and tone. Lots of good suggestions in the comments about how to phrase my advice better.
I had a few other comments below addressing things you brought up that I'll link so I don't repeat myself:
Yeah, you only get to say goodbye if they don't walk you out and lock you out immediately. Otherwise, you get to send LinkedIn messages to people who you're maybe connected to.
It's interesting how polarized the response to this idea is.
On the one hand, there are responses like that describe this as bizarre and tone-deaf, accuse it of LLM levels of fake empathy, or say how if they were laid off they would absolutely despise getting such a message.
On the other hand, there are responses from people who actually received such messages when they were laid off saying how valuable and meaningful even a simple "sorry to hear the news" message was to them.
Though, at least as I post this, there aren't any responses describing being laid off and disliking such messages in practice, it's all hypothetical hate. Not entirely sure how to interpret that. Maybe they'll appear as more comments get posted.
There's a lot of layers here and many reasons why such strongly opposed sentiments might arise. It would be fascinating to get a better understanding of all this. Is it a personality thing? Is it a past experience thing? Is it from how a person views their relationship to work and their employer? How do these opinions distribute across the neurotypical/neurodivergent axis?
One detail that specifically interests me is this idea that wanting to offer condolences, but not automatically obligate oneself to anything beyond that seems to draw ire. Those expressing this opinion seem to be saying there is a clear, stark line for what constitutes "enough" that this approach clearly falls short of. But where that line is is going to be pretty strongly influenced by social convention, which not all people are not tuned into to the same degree, for a variety of reasons.
Seems pretty self evident that many people would just smile and nod and mask thru these interactions in the past ..And that people are tired of this same saccharine pr corpo babble invading every aspect and niche of their lives. And this is the straw that breaks the back.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Otherwise get sorted with the other parasites.
47 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 57.4 ms ] threadI really appreciated the folks who did reach out - some of whom I honestly didn't expect to. But I was deeply disappointed that others I've worked more closely with didn't bother. I was already in shock, and that just made things worse.
Hard to imagine; you don't really get it until it happens to you - hopefully never.
100% this. It rocked my world when it happened to me. I took a day to recover then hopped back in the job market. But it took a year for the anger to fade.
I probably identified too closely with my job at the time. I've tried to dial that back.
And the kind of person people want to work with.
I wish I'd done this more.
In some cases there was no way to. For example, we once woke up to find that the European half of our team had been laid off as part of huge cuts that weren't announced and even our manager had no idea were coming. There's no good way to do layoffs, but I think that "sudden shock" approach is worst of all, personally. You don't get to say goodbye in any way and people don't get to plan for contingencies at all. (The other extreme of knowing it's coming for a year and applying for your own job and then having 2 months to sit around after you didn't get it also sucks, and I've done that as well. You can at least make plans in that case, though.)
On the other hand, in a _lot_ of other cases, you do have a chance to say goodbye. Take it. This is really excellent advice. It's worth saying something, at very least to the people you really did enjoy working with.
There's a decent chance you work with some of those folks in the future, and even if you don't, it really does mean something to be a kind human.
And as we part ways on this sorrowful day may Odin and Thor be with you.
This is so bizarre. I would show a huge lack of empathy as well.
I didn't feel particularly offended, but in my next job, I will definitely not help my colleagues as much and will think about myself 99% of the time. It's disappointing to see grown adults who are so fearful, ungrateful, and reveal themselves to be rather miserable people, but that's the way the world works.
Rather than sending "hallmark™ layoff greetings", maybe make friends with whomever of your coworkers is interested, and if/when they get laid off, try buying them a beer and actually listening to their grievances...
Most people don't want to hear from old co-workers, from a job they just got laid off from, especially those that are there to offer fake, self-serving sentiment with a bunch of rules attached. Unless you already have a relationship with the person, you would probably have already talked anyway and it would be natural without all these weird rules of engagement.
People who do this are fake and its amazing to me they think this kind of thing isn't perceived as anything other than fake. There is a time and place for everything, networking with recently laid off co-workers is not one of them.
“I wish you the best!” is fine if they are moving on to some better job.
“I wish you the best.” is more appropriate for the gravity of the situation if they just got fired and thrown into the shittiest job market in recent history.
Start with the formula described in the article but call rather than send an email.
Call them again 12 or 24 months later.
The script should be in your own words: Some people you need to talk to or see every day, some every week, some every month and some people every few years. Don't worry about it, I'm not going to stalk you. I will call you again in two or three years.
Then talk like coworkers about new jobs, earnings, the good the bad and the ugly, learn they got married/divorced, had kids, left the country for a while. etc etc
Keep the call under 4 minutes. Some people don't know how to terminate a phone call.
After each phone call send them an email summarizing the things you've talked about. Include the previous email.
You will find that, provided there is no obligation to stay in touch, people don't mind telling what they did over the last two years. Even if they don't like you. The fact that you've asked puts you well ahead of most people they know.
The 3rd call after 3-6 years is simply hilarious. They know the drill, the conversation can be as short as two minutes. Thanks for your time, we should do this again in two years!
You methodically hammer out the email again and go on with life.
Before I got laid off I was always hesitant to reach out to other folks who were laid off, now I try to make a point of it, even if it’s to apologize
Maybe it’s because I grew to be a better person from their feedback and mentoring, or maybe it’s just a shifting of times and attitudes. Heck, maybe I just got lucky that I worked with amazing people like them.
I just wish I’d had that support in prior layoff cycles as well.
If you care about the person and want to talk with them, reach out and be genuine. If not, don't bother them with LLM corporate-speak masquerading as support. Let's be honest: they didn't "part ways" with the company--they were fired.
Right now, they're worried about paying their bills, not about making their former coworkers feel better.
If you really want to help, reach out to your network and see if anyone is hiring. I've successfully connected many laid-off former coworkers with new opportunities. I've even approached recruiters that I ignored saying, "I'm not available, but this person is looking, and they're excellent."
I can think of few more grotesquely slimy developments in the last century or so of human communications than the blandly saccharine corporate-speak that now prevails in government and business like an ever-spreading parasitic infection. It permeates nearly everything and is used as a shield by shitbag executives and grossly corrupt organizations to disguise their true nature and the many examples of mendacity that their activities really involve.
Now we also see it being applied by the actual people, real people, communicating informally with real other people inside these same organizations, even when they apparently mean well in their own brainwashed, dimwitted way.
If I ever had anyone write a goodbye message to me in which they described me getting my ass fired as "parting ways", i'd plainly tell them to shove such nonsense wording up their ass if they really give a shit about me, or about being human.
Have you been laid off or let go?
This statement "...but I doubt it will be genuinely appreciated" implies not. Otherwise I'd expect you to have written "but when I was let go, I would not have genuinely appreciated this type of response".
I have been let go. I truly didn't understand what it was like until I went through it. It was crushing. Really crushing.
That experience doesn't make me a world-class expert, I get it. But I would have loved any acknowledgement of my humanity or appreciation of the worth I provided to my employer from co-workers on that day (or even a few days later).
I also want to acknowledge that people who are former colleagues have a variety of energy they can offer to those who are laid off. The folks who remain have more work on their plate, may wonder about the future of the company, and are generally frustrated or frightened too. I think people who remain should offer whatever consolation they have the ability to, based on their relationship with the folks who are let go.
For some, that might be (as mentioned in other comments) offering up their network and helping someone actively. For others, simply saying goodbye might be all they have energy and space for. I wanted to keep the advice as simple as possible so that folks don't have the excuse of saying to themselves "it's too much work, I have so much going on" and doing nothing, which is, in my experience, worse for the folks who are laid off.
Appreciate the feedback about the coldness and tone. Lots of good suggestions in the comments about how to phrase my advice better.
I had a few other comments below addressing things you brought up that I'll link so I don't repeat myself:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45517727 talks about why I wrote about permission to disengage
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45481722 about how it felt when I was let go
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45517963 talks more about how I felt when I was laid off (and acknowledges that my experience is N of 1).
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45517875 what you should offer to folks who you are closer to (as friends and in geography)
On the one hand, there are responses like that describe this as bizarre and tone-deaf, accuse it of LLM levels of fake empathy, or say how if they were laid off they would absolutely despise getting such a message.
On the other hand, there are responses from people who actually received such messages when they were laid off saying how valuable and meaningful even a simple "sorry to hear the news" message was to them.
Though, at least as I post this, there aren't any responses describing being laid off and disliking such messages in practice, it's all hypothetical hate. Not entirely sure how to interpret that. Maybe they'll appear as more comments get posted.
There's a lot of layers here and many reasons why such strongly opposed sentiments might arise. It would be fascinating to get a better understanding of all this. Is it a personality thing? Is it a past experience thing? Is it from how a person views their relationship to work and their employer? How do these opinions distribute across the neurotypical/neurodivergent axis?
One detail that specifically interests me is this idea that wanting to offer condolences, but not automatically obligate oneself to anything beyond that seems to draw ire. Those expressing this opinion seem to be saying there is a clear, stark line for what constitutes "enough" that this approach clearly falls short of. But where that line is is going to be pretty strongly influenced by social convention, which not all people are not tuned into to the same degree, for a variety of reasons.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Otherwise get sorted with the other parasites.