#4 — What The Current Mass Layoff Teaches Me
[4th Episode] A set of reflections to answer the question on ‘who are you without your job title?’
If someone asks ‘What do you do?’, what will you say?
The answer most likely will be ‘I am working as X at Y’. Because that is the simplest way to give an intro about ourselves and to certain extent, there’s nothing wrong about it.
However, normalizing using our job title or company name as the sole answer to the question of ‘What do you do?’ is when we let social construct consumes our worth and identity.
It is quite unfortunate that we have been experiencing this social construct since very young age and contribute to make it even rooted in the younger generation under a question of ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’.
Quoting Adam Grant’s commentary on this regard, he said ‘We should teach kids that who you are is more than what job you do. Work is an activity — it does not have to define your identity. A healthy sense of self is rooted in character, not career choice.’
What. A. Preach.
And I don’t think it only applies to kids, we should also teach ourselves that very mindset.
Few months ago, I had a conversation with my boss who is also my mentor on ambition vs. purpose. She has this litmus test whenever she embarks on career milestones:
- ‘Do I do this because I want to prove something to others even to myself (ambition) or is it because I want to go on the bigger cause (purpose)?
- What will I feel if I am no longer a SoE commissioner, a CEO, or other cool titles I have now? — if I am ready and comfortable with it, thus I can say that I am standing on my feet, not on my job title.
The tech industry — where I have been for the past 4–5 hears — has been hit by cold winter for the past months. Not only startups, big tech companies are also vulnerable. As per mid-November, more than 67k have been laid off in the U.S alone. Thousands of Indonesia’s tech employees are also not immune to this challenge.
Few years ago, I had experienced being laid off and got quite significant salary cut. This personal experience and layoff tragedy teach me four valuable lessons:
- Echoing what I wrote in the beginning of this reflection; never tie your worth and identity to job title and company name. Our worth and identity rely on our character, skills, and contribution. I can’t deny the fact that having cool job title and being part of renowned company offers certain privilege, but they are super volatile — they can be taken from us literally at anytime.
- Job is a tool not a goal. Leverage the job we have as a means to build things that matter; character, skills, contribution, and friendships. On the last point — friendship — I witness how employment cut does not equal to ‘friendship cut’. Yes, not every coworker and boss can be our friends and that is okay. But when it is possible, invest in those relationships genuinely.
- No company in this whole world is perfect. Every companies have their own storms and rainbows. If you have the privilege to choose the people whom you want to pass the storms and enjoy the rainbows with, do it.
- This may be a hard one (at least for me); invest in yourself to get ready if you are impacted. We have no control over anything, let alone company decision. Get ready mentally and equip ourselves with the character, skills, contribution, and friendships. One thing I religiously believe: rejection is re-direction. My life has been re-directed to the much better destinations because of rejections.
Last but not least, let’s help the folks who are impacted with anything we can.
Hope we all can pass this winter and finish strong.
Cheers,
Diella
Ps. I don’t have any philosophical reason of why I put the half-earth picture on this writing. #itjustlookscool
