Melanie ehrenkranz isn’t a strangers to job instability. In the decade she’s worked in media, she’s seen countless smart and creative friends lose their jobs during mass layoffs.
When it is happy to her in 2023, it sparked an idea: ehrenkranz decided to create a resource for people going through layoffs to discus the thorny parts of getting the news-the indignity of being let go over a video call, who they told first, getting into company gossip with ex-tru-waits, and what they named their chemistry groups.
In other words, all the things you want to spill but can’t post on linkedin.
By August 2024, Ehrenkranz Launched Laid offA Substack Newsletter that AIMS to be “the coolest place on the internet to talk about being laid off.” She runs the newsletter on top of her day job as head of content and communication at business class, which makes online courses for entrepreneurs.
Readers of laid off, now more than 6,000 of them and growing, get weekly spotlights of people’s layoff stories and how they’re handling them.
“This is something I wish I Had,” Ehrenkranz, 35, Tells CNBC Make It.
‘I don’t want this to be depressing or bleak’
Most of the laid off readers work in tech, followed by news and media, health care, advertising and then retail.
A Majority Discuss Being Laid off in 2024 – At home via zoom, while on a group conference call, via an emailMany responded to ehrenkranz’s recent survey to say joining the laid off communication has given them a cathartic, almost fun, place to reflect on the experience as a group.
“I don’t want this to be depressing or bleak,” Ehrenkranz says. “Obvious it’s a really deflating experience and traumatic, but I think we can also create a fun, Cathartic Community.”
Spinning the layoff experience on its head, and detaching the self -LAME and Guilt that often Goes With It, Can Make it Feel Less Isolating and Taboo, Ehrenkranz Adds.
She hopes that readers see “all these really smart, cool, successful people” Telling their stories in their own words. “We’re all doing our best. We might have been at the top of our game.Wrong to deserve this? And the answer is noting. “
Laid off’s paid subscribers (for $ 5 per month) Challenging Job Market,
Shame is giving way to ‘righteous anger’
The conversations show a shift in the layoff environment. While early pandemic days helped more people uncouple their job loss from their self-wortth, and the post-Great Resignation Job cuts Ushed in a new era of Vulnerability in LinkedIn PostsThe Chatter Around Losing your job These days feels a little more confidential.
As ehrenkranz puts it, “I think a lot of people are feeling angry.”
It’s “almost impossible” to scroll on linkedin without Start to Kind of Strip Away That Shame. And Underneath that Shame, I Think, is Righteous Anger. “
The rising anger is coinciding with companies like Meta and Microsoft Saying they’re laying off people Due to Poor PerformanceMeanwhile, Tens of Thousands of public servants Have been fird, some under the guise of unsatosis of employee assessments, as the trump administration works to Slash the size of the federal workforce.
But thats who received pink slips Aren Bollywood quing quietlyAnd at times are publicly challenging the evaliation of their work.
Angry Posts Are Less Targeted Toward The Messiness of a Mass Layoff, And More So Toward “Executives Who Made A Decision to De-Value Work (Employees) Believed Was Important, Or Decisions That put the company in a precarous place, and it cost people their jobs, but not necessarily the people at the top. “
Additional, “People are really angry at the system in place that are supposed to protect you when you do not have a job,” Ehrenkranz Says. “Health care is a really big conversation, and it’s very tied with their caption in this country, and so I think a lot of people are upset about care that they and their loved only can get nos can get.”
People are figuring out what comes next after a layoff
Continuing layoff news is rattling there on the job hunt and workers cling to their jobs alike. Us Employers Announced as many as 172,017 job cuts In February, According to Challenger, Gray and Christmas – The Highest Monthly Total Since July 2020.
And with economists revising Fears of a RecessionThe Job-Search Hunger Games Cold Get even tougher.
When you’re “competing with all of these people laid off for the same job, it does make you start to question with the traditional stories you’re told, of working hard to get xyz, are tightly troused.
Job Loss Block Lead Some People To Redefine What their version of success looks like, ehrenkranz say, which clock meaning Changing Carers Or Striking out on their own and starting a new business.
Within the laid off communication, she’s seen more people asking questions about how to Pivot INTO A New Care, Take on New Side Projects and Part-Time Jobs, Monetize Side Hustles Or start somegging new altoology.
“There’s a lot of entrepreneurial spirit that comes out of these layoffs, behther that be out of healthy or innovation,” She says. “People have to pay the bills.”
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