Layoffs

  • |

    Linked – Looking for a Job While the World is Falling Apart

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    The advice in the article below might seem familiar. I’ve seen plenty of advice on the topic of how to keep moving in life during difficult times over the last few years. Things like turning off the news, keeping to a normal routine, etc. What I like about this article is that it acknowledges the elephant in the room that typical advice doesn’t when you’re not working.

    “Many people are in a job search and have to keep the quest moving regardless of world events.”

    Therein lies the rub. The difference between being informed and being overwhelmed often comes down to being able to turn the news off, set boundaries around our social media use, and so on. But it can be especially difficult to do that when your day isn’t filled with things you have to do.

  • Linked – Expectations Debt

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    The term Expectation Debt fits a lot of what I was talking about earlier this year. This is a paragraph about Amazon, but you could write the same thing about Microsoft, Google, Zoom, and many other tech companies.

    Expectations were so high in 2021 that investors and employees had to achieve extraordinary things just to break even. When results were merely good, they felt terrible.

  • Who Are You When You’re Not At Work?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    We’ve lost this idea. We’ve bought into the fallacy that being engaged at work, having best friends at work, and bringing our full selves to work is the “correct” way to function and get ahead in life. That working 60-80 hours per week at our jobs is somehow going to change the world. I think Toni’s father had it right.

    Get your money, then come home. Nothing less, nothing more. Work is not home, your life isn’t there.

  • |

    The Obligatory Lessons Learned After Four Months Unemployed

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 6 minutes

    So after 12 years, I’m back, but it’s very different. Because 12 years is a long time and things change fast around here. This opportunity only came about because I’ve been changing and now have something different to offer, that matches up with how the firm has been changing. I could have resisted learning all these new things over the years, but that would have also limited what I could do going forward. I’m really happy I didn’t do that. It might be the best career move I’ve ever made.

  • The Tech Industry – Which Game Are We Playing?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    But in other areas of life, that’s not at all how the game works. War, business, education, etc. are not finite games. It’s not clear who all of the competitors are, the rules change and there’s no one “score” that everyone has agreed upon. Maybe most importantly, it doesn’t end at the allocated time, it goes on and on with some of the competitors giving up over time and dropping out of the game.

    The problem Simon identifies is that when the game is infinite, but you play it as if it were finite, you end up in a quagmire.

  • A Business Lesson From Reading Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    She uses these stories as a jumping-off point to talk about goals and failure. When the goal is to finish the marathon, anything other than that is a failure. Despite the change in circumstances, the risk of doing more damage to themselves, and the fact that no one would find fault in them for stopping, they went on with this myopic focus on hitting their goal.

    It got me thinking about OKRs. You know, those quarterly, semi-annual, or annual goals we set for employees during performance reviews, and then measure them solely on whether they hit those goals or not. As if the world doesn’t change in the middle of the time period and forces us to react in a way that might not be part of our stated goals.

    It also got me thinking about company-wide goals like market share, revenue, etc.