A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work

Strongly agree with the author. I was laid off two years ago, and I am experiencing the same feelings he is describing: I no longer want to give my 100%, I no longer overcommit. I do the minimum required and feel emotionally detached from the company and my colleagues.

It's a waste that so many individual contributors who, as the author said, had good performance and were close to the users went through a laid off. Now a new generation of previously high achievers work force will get back in the market and no longer use all their potential for their job. Like it wasn't the fault of the new company that hired me, that now I do the bare minimum, they won't see the full potential I gave before. And I, I cannot prevent it. My work ethics and motivation died after the lay off.

It's disappointing that you feel detached from your colleagues. They're in the same boat as you. Also, increasing your network doesn't hurt. There's a risk in being known as the quiet or moody guy who doesn't interact with anyone. It might make you enjoy your work more too.

Well, if this generation is all like you then they’ll be replaced by the next generation of hungry graduates

Hmm… not really, bars are high, no one is hiring fresh graduates anymore, and new generation is more detached with better sense of real world and focus on work-life balance and more personal growth, unlike previous generation who usually tied their identity to their work and gave their 500% for peanuts and glory(always fake and meaningless).

This feels a bit too far in the opposite direction to the point of hurting yourself

I read a book called “The Goal” by Goldratt and he describes his theory of constraints. One of the main predictions of his theory is that the existence of many resources working at maximum capacity is symptomatic of a wildly inefficient production system. Thus you shouldn’t feel guilty about not giving 100% every day. This behavior is necessary to properly balance the total throughout of your company. Ideally only one person should be giving 100% in any given company, and in a fair and balanced system this would be the CEO who is concomitantly receiving massive compensation.

This is how you generate more layoffs for yourself. Having money saved and living within your means greatly reduces the impact of being laid off. You need to be impactful and putting yourself out there at all times or you lose trust. Several people who have allowed themselves to be beat down mentally at my company have lost trust and are on the chopping block. It can take a year or more before you get sacked. You can also reverse the course at almost any time.

Eh, the kiddos seem to be realizing that the rat race is, after all, for rats.

Partially agree. I still network, and actually found my current job thanks to my network. I still interact with ma colleagues, help them, socialize. But I try to keep some emotional distance. When I got laid off, my colleagues were also my close friends, so on top of the laid off turmoil I was living, I was sad I would no longer work with them.

Thank you for your advice. I agree. I am still working and completing my tasks, so far I didn't give anyone any reason to complain about my work. But I would not put again the extra hours or extra creativity. I save money and live within my means. And I live in a country with great unemployment benefits if it happens again. When I got laid off, I didn't suffer financially thanks to our support system, but emotionally it was hard.

I understand. But since I have decided to reduce my time and energy dedicated to a company, I put this extra time and energy more towards my personal hobbies. I feel like I am living two lives in one day, at work I am detached and do only what's required, while outside work I am deeply invested in my things.

The kids are way smarter than that.

This theory feels like it’s making tons of assumptions and leans heavily on semantics.

In a factory you have many components operating near or at capacity. In a high growth environment you want all of your components working at capacity to explore the problem space and optimize.

That was one of the most eye opening books for me. I think it all applies to Software development as well. It is not uncommon that you work all weekend to finish your task, only to see it waits two weeks in the next person's queue.

While not bad advice, but careful - you will die and you don't know when. You can't take it with you (almost all religion agrees on this, though if yours doesn't then I guess I won't argue religion here). Have a reasonable amount of saved money, but make sure you are using the majority of what you earn on things you enjoy (well at least things you enjoy consistent with the law and religion should either of those conflict with what you enjoy)

Yes, think of it like this: the point of the Tortoise and the Hare isn't to go to the pet store and start a racing league.

I've applied it to my studies as well. You will achieve little by learning a bit of everything. There is always one area of knowledge you are urgently lacking in, that you should hyperfocus on, in order to alleviate the information bottleneck of the system you are working on. It's the same as in the book: the teacher is always whittling down the incoherent problem space to the critical piece of wisdom that the protagonist then has to discover on his own.

The book is worth reading. Unless your work is highly parallelised, it’s hard to not create bottlenecks.

You guys are detached from reality, go talk to computer science students… internship applications aren’t going down

They are smart enough to want jobs that pay hundreds of thousands for interesting work?

You won’t be able to find data to support your huge generalizations