A friend of mine was recently laid off from my company. In fact, he was one of the ones who hired me and was one of the first ten employees of my company. I work for a startup that has been in existence nearly two years and has seen some rapid changes, in fact, this was the third layoff this year.
I was told the day before he would be let go so that I could prepare security changes to ensure that no malicious damage would result. Not that I would have expected anything, but you never know and my boss wanted passwords and other items changed.
There was a discussion on Slashdot about friends in the IT workplace with the author asking do co-workers get together outside of work? It's interesting, though I'd not read anything rated below a 3, most are worthless comments. I think the lack of co-workers getting together is more a function of the way society has grown over the last few decades more than an IT thing.
However, this got me thinking about my friend. What is the appropriate response to a laid off friend? Personally, I wanted to avoid him the day we has let go. As he packed up his things, I had to leave and went to Barnes and Noble for an hour or so to just get away. I felt physically sick to my stomach and emotionally wasn't much better. I wished I that I could have talked with him more, but I couldn't handle it at the time. In fact, I didn't want to deal with anyone and the whole day ended up being a waste. I couldn't concentrate on work.
Over the weekend I started to feel better, but was still a little disappointed in myself.
My wife went through this a coupe times this year as well when her company laid people off. She was worried for her job each time and it was stressful for us, but luckily we survived.
Steve Jones
©dkRanch.net 2001
Training Horses
Blog Maverick
Jonathan Schwartz's Blog
SQL Server Central
ESPN
Slashdot
37 Signals
A Mile a Day
Joel on Software
Rockler
My Brother
Woodcraft
Weather at the Ranch
Books
