My wife just told me one of our son’s closest friends just got laid off. He’s getting married next week and was planning to move to Denver and work remotely.
I went through a lot of these cycles in my career and it sucks. I was with one company that grew like gangbusters for ten years and then shrank for the next ten years. Every year there were layoffs and everybody felt that they were next. It is no picnic watching the attitude of employees shift from ebullient optimism about the future to nonstop pessimism. I joined Nortel Networks when it had grown to over 90,000 employees and it was at the tail-end of expansion. Then the optical communications industry got overbuilt and we hit the wall — rapid contraction, layoffs, and final the dissolution of the entire company.
Experiencing “Creative Destruction” first-hand is no fun, but you get used to it and learn how to retool yourself and bounce back.
Welcome to Bidenville.