Arkansas Online

IT workers can’t dodge job layoffs

HELAINE WILLIAMS

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in sighing my way through that cnn.com report of the callous layoffs, via email, at Google. Those laid off thusly included a woman in labor at the time and another worker on health leave.

If the sources — who spoke on the condition of anonymity — are to be believed, Google went from Good Romantic Interest to Bad Romantic Interest (in olden days I’d have said “Good Boyfriend to Bad Boyfriend”), the kind of significant other who gets increasingly emotionally unavailable, gradually starts dissing you more and more, then finally breaks up with you by text.

Been hearing a lot lately, matter of fact, about how people in tech jobs — the left-brainers who were destined to make a lot more money and have a lot more job security than starving right-brainers — have been losing those jobs. Amazon just announced it’s laying off 9,000 more workers, the second round of job cuts there in a year.

No, I’m not one of the right-brainers who (as some may suspect) are going “na-na-nana-boo-boo” to the affected tech workers out of jealousy. As one whose computer-navigating life has gradually been gobbled up by Google — and as an Amazon Prime customer who has hit that “order” button so many times that I thought I was single-handedly keeping scores of people working at that outfit — I mourn this news.

The disappearing tech jobs have it looking more than ever like there’s officially nowhere to run. Nothing that was once “guaranteed” is guaranteed anymore.

One of the main things the pandemic did to us was shake us out of many comfort zones we may have assumed we’d be able to cling to. Seems like since then, any other pillars we thought we’d be able to lean up against have crumbled … from big banks to the customary weather/climate for any given region; to at-least-tolerable relationships with other superpowers; to cheap eggs and Oreos; to anything resembling political etiquette. Re Oreos: Let me not just pick on them. Junk food in general, the stuff that’s usually diabolically cheap compared to the healthful stuff, is becoming unaffordable. And even Northwest Arkansas — Northwest Arkansas — was just cheated out of a new job-bringing plant.

I’ve always been one to advocate stopping and smelling the roses. But now, even the roses are subject to be missing or smelling like corpseflowers. (And what’s this about a seaweed blob that passes gas that smells about the same?)

All just additional reasons to resolve to keep ourselves rooted and grounded in ways that are independent of any circumstances and surroundings. Yep, you knew this was coming: like putting our hope in a God that doesn’t change.

And there’s more.

“So what are we to do?” writer Ellen Michaud, editor-at-large for Live Happy magazine, asks in a 2017 article, “15 Ways to Stay Grounded” (livehappy.com). “How — when this fast-changing world seems bent on keeping us anxious and unsettled — do we work, feed the family, get Dad to his doctor’s appointment on time and still keep our own feet planted firmly on the ground?” Suggestions include making a difference in your neck of the world — “Pick one single thing in your neighborhood, local school or community that needs fixing and figure out how you can carve out the time, talent and resources from your life to get it done” — returning nonessential phone calls on one’s own time; “rationing” one’s news; taking mud baths(!); meditating; counting those blessings; opting out of online politics. (I recently de-activated my main Twitter account, which kept messes going by putting Tweets on my feed by people I didn’t follow, even after I went into my settings and asked that not to happen.)

Makes sense. When faced with challenges we haven’t faced before, we can do things we haven’t done before.

And we can take some comfort in those things that remain submitted for our approval: maybe not death, but maybe taxes, at least for those of us due those albeit-smaller refunds. Cheesy-funny clickbait. Cute kiddos and furbabies. The ability to cloud-watch. The ability to listen to good music or go and peruse a good painting. Good old relational capital. And, we can hope, morale restoration for the remaining employees at Google and Amazon. Along with the continuing ability to use Google to look up even the most obscure people, places, words and things as well as go to Amazon to find just about any conceivable product.

Meanwhile, good (job) hunting to the layoff-ees.

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2023-03-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

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