Layoffs galore

SInce the past couple of days, I’ve been reading lot of email forwards regarding X or Y Company laying off Z people, and frankly it never really bothered me much – mainly because the forwards aren’t that reliable.

But then today, that whole thing of a layoff really hit me.

Today was probably one of the worst days of my life. I watched in horror as 90% of the team mates of my current project were layed off, all in the name of cost cutting. These guys weren’t even given a month or couple of days notice, infact no notice whatsoever. These guys came to office in the morning, afternoon they get a call from the HR asking them to meet, and then were told, “Please submit your resignation paper”. Even worse, they were further told “Don’t make us do anything harsh”. Like, helllooooooooooo? Calling them in the middle of the day, out of nowhere and telling them to get the fuck out of here isn’t harsh? Oh gee.

What depresses me really is that these guys weren’t slackers, weren’t under-performers, not pencil pushers. Hell these guys have really slogged – slogged IS the right word to use – working 6(often 7) days a week, working on public holidays, working religiously for 12-14 hours a day, hell they’ve even worked for 19 STRAIGHT hours! There’s no logic to the way they’ve selected people for laying off, no consideration for dependencies [remember that the project is STILL ongoing, and we have a deadline approaching soon]. So what was a 50-strong team is now reduced to about 10, with an impending delivery soon, what’s left of the team is now under tremendous pressure – one from the managers to hit the deadlines and also from the HR.

Nobody’s safe, there’s EXTREMELY high insecurity wrt job, and with this kind of charged environment there’s neither motivation nor the incentive[why the FUCK should I work when my position isn’t certain, why should I slog when they can tell me to fuck off anytime] to work.

Quite a few people keep telling me – you’re safe, you’re off to US soon, but hey, it can be cancelled ANY moment right[“cost cutting”, remember]. SO why should I feel safe?

Yesterday was “phase 1” of axe swinging, today was “phase 2” – about 50 people from my dept have been layed off already. From what I’ve heard, another 43-46 are going to be layed off. Whether that’ll happen tomorrow, or next week, that’s uncertain.

Whether I will be layed off – that’s another thing which I’m uncertain. For now, every phone call to my extension, my mobile phone, everytime I see a “new mail” icon in systray causes my heart to skip a beat.

For all I know it might say - “Please meet us at ground floor”. Then you know the ritual.