Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 462: Supporting laid-off employee and how to rebuild culture after layoffs

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: One of my employees is probably getting laid off, what do I do!?! I’m a tech lead / manager for a consultancy and a contract reduction means that one of the people I supervise is likely going to get laid off soon! We’ve found new roles for most of my people, but it’s likely that at least one will get laid off. I want to help this person out. How much support is typical for a manager / ex-manager to provide in a job search, and how can I go above and beyond without doing too much? Over the last year, my company has gone through 3 rounds of layoff. The engineering culture has changed dramatically. With the fraction of engineers remaining, I am increasingly concerned that it’s going to be me next. The company’s posture is that everything is “business as usual” and there is nothing to be worried about, but this is what has been said all along. Morale seems to be low with low engagement in department initiatives. I am looking for some advice here, if I stay with the company – what is a healthy way to engage with the current culture to build it back up (or evolve it into something new)? If I decide to leave the company – how can I set proper boundaries to prepare for leaving, but remain engaged until a new opportunity arises?

it takes more than using the specs channel to talk about glasses to be a great engineer this is episode 462 of the soft skills engineering podcast where i am your host jameson dance i'm your host dave smith soft skills engineering is the weekly advice show about all the non-technical things that go into the technical field of software development like interpreting things literally one of the famous pastimes of engineers oh specs i have those on my face spectacles i like to call them spectaclefications yeah you you win points with the engineers they cheer you on and everyone else rolls their eyes at you yeah when you do this but we do it because we must not because it wins us points we cannot help ourselves dave do you want to read our patron

notes yes this week we want to shout out a big thank you to everyone who did just some super weird stuff in their pay in their patreon profile i would just love it if someone actually changed their name officially with the government to this to one of these weird names but anyway all right this week they are the human in the loop please help croissant connoisseur christy the world's okayest programmer noah labhart deny beautiful functional user documentation and embrace anarchy instead that was funny how much do you bench alexander kuznetsov nick molyneux attribute error none type object has no attribute fetch dad joke javier gonzalez chewy ted timbrell jd vans vans refrigeration doing my part to make dave's heart

swell but he should probably get that checked dan from drone deploy chase w norton never is not just creator on Mars, I like chicken, I like liver, please deliver, trash panda, get config, dash dash global, re re re dot enabled, true, Kyle Boss, Kent C. Dodds, that guy over there, Jenny Kim, the stochastic parrot, no.

Jonathan King, Zanai, beautiful functional user documentation, Angelica Cathor, WilliamAngel.net really regrets using AI to leak your specific personal data, even though the vibes were great. I programmed my ci failures to play dave's laugh not the success is just a failure sting

brayden canes john grant britney ellick come to the slash new conference in newcastle australia may 28th to 29th that's like next week yeah time to get your tickets and dave will you please read our third question oh wonderful just wonderful you all rock we love you thanks for doing it If you want to rock like these people, go to softskills.audio, click support us on Patreon. You will get an invite to our Slack team and a shout out if you hit the numbers it says there, which I can't remember now. But I do remember we have not ever adjusted them. So we are inflation proof, which means it's becoming more and more valuable every day.

Should I read our first question? Hit it. All right. This is from an anonymous listener who says, one of my employees is probably getting laid off. What do I do? i'm a tech lead slash manager for a consultancy and a contract reduction means that one of the people i supervise is likely going to get laid off soon we've found new roles for most of my

people but it's likely that at least one will get laid off i want to help this person out how much support is typical for a manager slash ex-manager to provide in a job search and how can i go above and beyond without doing too much i can tell you my experience being laid off which was that my manager offered help. Let me guess how the story ends. Yeah, the help was sort of like vague and not particularly helpful. The most helpful thing would have been to not be laid off, but that was not an option. I'll do anything I can to help you. How about letting me keep my job? Yeah. I will do almost anything I can to help you. I believe that they were sincere and meant well, but I was not pumped about being laid off understandably and so in the moment i kind of took it as i think you're

just trying to assuage your guilt yeah well because there's literally nothing you can do like do you have another job for me no it's a professional courtesy right yeah yeah so i was probably bitter in the moment which i think a lot of people are yeah yeah it's it's hard to if you don't literally have a job you can connect the person to i don't know how much else you can do it doesn't hurt you to offer i guess and i do appreciate that they offered and and but i don't know you are kind of severing the relationship in some ways if it also depends on how closely connected you are to the decision to lay that particular person off well how closely they perceive you to be so if if they think this was made way above this question asker's head they

had nothing to do with it oh it sucks then i think it's easier to offer help and maybe you keep chatting and commiserate a little bit if they feel like you chose them to be laid off then it's kind of a it stings a little bit more so they might want a little bit more distance it kind of makes me remember back in my dating days uh this one girl broke up with me and then offered like how can i help i was like well i could use some relationship coaching maybe maybe you could connect me into your network of other girls yeah do you have any any girlfriends you would recommend yeah maybe like a positive reference when i come asking later yeah when i have laid people off i have offered to talk we have not talked very much i've offered to give

feedback on resumes or connect them with specific opportunities if i knew i've kind of posted publicly about it on linkedin and twitter to say hey i know somebody who's looking with these skill sets i might just be bad at this but i don't think it really did anything for anybody i will say i mean, when you have to lay someone off, you're in a position where you're doing them a huge disservice. I think there's probably two things you can do in that moment to not make a terrible situation extra terrible. And the first one is just try to get it over with as soon as possible. You know, just let's go ahead and get you out of here. Thank you for your time. Moving on, you know, I'm not going to discuss this. I'm not going to let you do that. And that's number one.

And the reason number one is so important, I think, is because you don't want to give the person the opportunity to say or do something stupid, which we all are going to be inclined to do in this shocking, emotion-filled moment where you might do something or say something you regret in the future. And in the spirit of practicing what I preach, I'm not even going to say number two. I'm just going to move on from that point. I like how you're such a straight shooter. You really cut to the chase.

there's a scene in moneyball about that where the brad pitt guy makes the jonah hill guy practice telling somebody they got traded and he waffles through it and says oh we love you so much you're a really great player and kind of like tries to soften it and the brad pitt guy says no you just say hey we're trading you this person will give you the details yeah this is a movie getting traded is not getting laid off so obviously yeah lots of differences there but i think there is something to it and it's a major league baseball which i'm sure you know it's like it's basically the same as getting laid off as a software engineer it helps if you're brad pitt that's the other thing that i think is true from that scenario doesn't he just have a way of playing

highly confident characters in movies yeah i think i think so i think that would make it go better yeah i am getting laid off but for some reason i feel a little bit better about it I know it's the right thing. Yeah, that sounds true to me. I also think there's not a lot of learning to be done in that moment. Yeah. It's a shock. You're scrambling.

You kind of go into fight or flight if you're getting laid off. You immediately start to maybe panic a little bit like, oh, what am I going to do? And it's not a good time to absorb information. Any information, even the logistics and the details. It's like send all that in written form later. Yeah. yeah it really is one of the suckiest things that can happen at work to a person i mean there was 9-11 but yeah layoffs

well i said one of so i left some room and now i'm glad i'm glad i did not say the suckiest thing yes it's not the worst that's how you know we never forget because we have made jokes about it oh sorry i think it's okay i've heard that it's okay to make 9-11 jokes now yeah it's okay 24 years later it's yep yep it's okay if i still have to take off my shoes at the airport then i at least should be able to make a joke about the event that caused it yes you've earned the right yeah there is one really important thing though you need to do get their contact info because their work email is about to stop working yeah yeah i think i mean we're kind of we're dancing a little bit around this but really like this question is someone who is hunting for

something they can do to try to make this a positive experience yeah to make it hurt less you just can't yeah i'm sorry it's going to be terrible it's going to be terrible for you it's going to be a lot more terrible for the person getting laid off all you can do is like reduce the pain it's like oh i've been assigned to torture someone what can i do to make this a better experience i don't know don't torture them and if that's not an option reduce the time spent torturing i think in this okay this is pretty dark you've brought up 9-11 now we got torture going and in the torture metaphor i think the thing you do is you kill them immediately instead of torture them put them out of their misery jeez james yeah you took a torture metaphor

and made it even darker this is weird for us yeah sign of the times i guess yeah i do think it reflects well on you to generally want to help people out as much as you can oh yeah totally i think if you have credible connections to specific opportunities that's the most helpful thing if you know based on what you know about this person ah they are good at this thing and oh i know this other person that either is actively looking to hire someone in that thing or is in that industry that i can point them towards that's helpful and specific more generically i think just kind of gets a little bit less helpful i think you could do this probably won't come across in the in-person meeting when you announce it so it's probably good to say in in writing too but something like

hey this sucks and i know it sucks yeah if you want to talk about it afterwards i'm open only if you really are though i mean oh yeah i once so i once was witness to a firing where the recipient of the firing was very confused and frustrated and the the fire er so we'll call the fiery the one getting fired and the fire er the one doing the firing the fire tried to diffuse the situation to end it sooner because you know like i believe this person also believed that you want to make these not take very long but one of the things he promised the firee was listen right now is not the time to discuss but i know you're confused and you have questions and later i'll make myself available to answer any questions you have and he never did and i remember i i

thought well that's an interesting strategy for getting out of the situation you know and cutting it short which you know kudos to him it did work they did cut the it did cut short which i think is the primary objective here but also be careful not to promise things you're not really going to be able to do yeah that's that's fair and i guess i'll gaslight you by saying well i didn't say the thing i just said i can talk about it sometime implies maybe you'll be able to explain the real reasons why in a way that will be satisfying to them and you won't yeah both because they won't be satisfied with the real reasons and it's going to be pretty uncomfortable to say well you were the worst person on the team so exactly yeah i don't know but what is what is the outcome i'm

looking for here i think i'm i'm saying this isn't a one-time offer right like i can tell me what kind of help you're looking for tell me what i don't know reach out when you're ready to look again some something to say not that i will explain all of the details behind this and vindicate you and right i don't know but but something to say if i don't have these specific things if you can if you can think of requests that would help you in your job search reach out to me yeah i think that's more what i'm trying to express and what i said the first time just don't go back and listen to verify that yeah exactly um never all right with that have we answered the question i think so i'm just glad these things aren't recorded yeah yeah good thing there's no way to tell what

i said earlier yeah phew dave do you want to read our next question yes i do okay this comes from someone named aussie wait do you think it's australian should i read it in my australian accent aussie have you been doing the podcast the whole time in your australian accent that's now what i'm wondering you just got used to it i've been slowly slowly inserting it one word here and there and now you're just like oh no that's just how dave talks yeah that's the dave accent you know i'll leave it to your discretion all right well i guess i'll i'm gonna read it and then it'll be a listener's choice as to whether i did australian or not yeah okay perfect okay over the last year my company has gone through three rounds of layoff the engineering culture

has changed dramatically with the fraction of engineers remaining i am increasingly concerned that it's going to be me next the company's posture is that everything is quote business as usual and there is nothing to be worried about but this is what has been said all along morale seems to be low with low engagement in department initiatives i am looking for some advice here if i stay with the company what is a healthy way to engage with the current culture to build it back up or evolve it into something new if i decide to leave the company how can i set proper boundaries to prepare for leaving but remain engaged until a new opportunity arises i'm googling a thing what's the name of that principle for it's something to the effect of like you can

estimate how long some phenomenon will continue to exist based on how old it is it sounds kind of flippant when you say it out loud but like stuff that's stuck around for a really long time tends to stick around probably stick around longer yeah there's some name for it but i feel like there's a there's a version of this for laughs which is that you can estimate the likelihood of a layoff by looking at layoffs and companies that have done a bunch of layoffs will probably do more layoffs just in general so this is like the calculating like mean time to failure based on the like you can predict the next failure time based on how long it's been since last failures i'm sure that's not the name of the thing you're looking for but it's not but yeah maybe that

principle applies here so yeah three rounds of layoffs over the last year certainly better chances of a fourth than if you were some arbitrary company that had had zero rounds of layoffs yeah i guess that's not what you're asking though you probably already knew that yeah you already know you're gonna get laid off it sounds like in this scenario one of the reasons engagement could be low is that everyone feels the way you do and they're worried that they're next and so they're all low engagement because they're looking for other jobs yeah and that takes time yeah also layoffs just suck to go through as we said in the last question it definitely sucks the most to be laid off yeah but it's not great to be on a team that had people laid off because now suddenly

you're looking over your shoulder yeah nobody nobody wins here right like yeah well the shareholders win well that's true private equity comes out on top like they always seem to probably just torpedoed the secret private equity deal you've been working on for this podcast yeah i'm aligning them yes we thought we thought you loved us what why did you make me sign a non-disparagement agreement yeah all right where was i going with this oh yeah it sucks to be on a team that has had people laid off it it really pulls back the curtain on how business is business and despite it being relationships you have with people there's just this cold soulless financial i was gonna say beating heart but it's not it's like a pumping machine a gear an oil pump yeah a grinding

gear yeah and it is rough it's hard to be trusting and excited and and stuff that makes a good work culture doesn't exist well with layoffs often it's a grinding gear that's lubricated on the optimism of the people in the company yeah that is no longer in them yeah i was going to say if they know anything about layoffs they do because they've done three so at the very least they have three layoffs worth of experience they should know that yeah you you expect lower morale and you expect follow-on effects from them it could be other people leaving you definitely have to count on morale being low and people being worried about their jobs and looking over their shoulder so there shouldn't be a surprise to the business that people are feeling this way but it doesn't

make it suck less to you yeah it could be why they're trying to pretend like it's business as usual that's maybe their answer of like no things are fine no we we won't do layoffs again yeah i mean i actually don't have a great playbook for how to build up a culture after layoffs especially after three layoffs i'm actually really grateful i don't have this playbook because it means i haven't yeah really lived through that extreme yeah version yeah but i think it behooves the leadership team to find ways to give hope to the remaining workforce and you can do that through things like perks like try to you know yeah you just saved a whole bunch of money money that you didn't have probably by laying off people well spend some money now to invest in the people that

remain by offering some kind of perk like add add some benefit that they didn't have before do something then and then also i think it's time that people need to understand why this is a great company to keep working for why the new trajectory this thing that we're now working on without you know 30 of our co-workers is actually a good thing and going to be successful and that's hard to do i have i actually know people who have been through these company layoffs and stayed on for years and seem to be in good spirit so i should probably have prepared for this by asking them but yeah apparently not how i roll i think that the leadership team is absolutely responsible for inspiring the remaining people like why should you stay here why are we going to be successful

why are we what are we doing to make sure we don't do another round of layoffs like this and as an individual contributor who's just trying to do their best to stay plugged into the company and provide good work it's actually really hard to bottom up do that kind of influence yeah if you don't have control over the outcomes it is hard i think the best antidote is information so layoffs happen because of some business reality some number went too low or got too high yeah and a nice thing that could happen after layoff is to make that number very public now our burn rate got too high our runway was too small this is our runway now see it's the right size now yeah now it's the right size it sucks we had to do this to keep the company alive

and we'll we'll post updates about our revenue or runway or whatever that's i think that's the best way that you can answer a layoff and provide some kind of stability and assurance that things are okay now if this has happened three times then presumably the first round of layoffs they did thought they thought it was enough and they were wrong so like stuff did not turn around and there can be some reluctance to reveal all this information because then it'll telegraph more layoffs coming and but i think you should at least be able to push for some more transparency in business metrics or financial health or something. And if you get it, that's a sign that it's pretty decent.

So that should help you feel better. If they don't, then it could be they're just not thinking about it this way or it could be because they're worried about it. But I think that's a fair thing to ask for is can you give us some numbers, some dashboard or something to help us feel good about the current financial state?

Yeah, and maybe you could just get that by hacking into the company's finance systems and just make it available online. Yeah, that's fair, yeah. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, or if you're publicly traded. I think that's the stock price, right? That's how you judge

whether you're about to get laid off or not. Yeah, true, I guess it's... Oh, don't do that. I guess we've kind of ignored the last part of the question. If I decide to leave, how can I set boundaries? Remain engaged until a new opportunity arises. I don't have a great answer for this question.

When I think back to people I've worked with who have left i could always tell certainly in hindsight yeah but often in the moment too hey they seem less engaged right and then they get a new job and i say oh yeah they were less engaged and that's why because they were doing a job search or they were so bummed about this job that maybe they got disengaged and then did a job search but yeah sometimes it's hard to know which is cause and which is effect you know but either way yeah it's it's tough to do a really intense job search and be totally engaged i think i set proper boundaries before leaving i mean time boxing is a fine way to do it you might have to try to be a little bit more efficient with the

time you have if you're spending a little bit of time in a job search but it will be stressful i mean you'll be doing more work with more context switching than before these two things are pulling in a bit opposite directions though because one of them is sort of taking on this leadership role of I'm going to build up the culture. I want to, I want to help, help the group. I want to fix things. And the other one is I'm pulling away. I'm getting out of there.

So I think it would be really tough to try to do both at the same time. And I think if I were you, I'd probably try the first one and see what the response was and see if I could get some more information that both makes me feel better about my situation and helps the team feel better to work around. If that really doesn't go well, then I think I would try to put some boundaries in place that are mostly going to be like being really efficient and on task when I'm doing stuff

and ending at a reasonable time. I often tend to work a bit more hours than the typical 40. So I would curtail that and use time to go search for stuff. It's kind of a waffly answer, but it's what I got. It's kind of a tough situation.

It's just kind of like, how do I take a bad day? I honestly, James, I need to apologize. I picked some really bummer questions this week. Hey, we haven't talked about people dying in this one. Yeah, good point. there's still room to to grow downward yes i was gonna say it's just the question here is kind of like how do i take a bummer situation to make it better and you know three years ago if you were

looking for a job as a software engineer you didn't have to worry about how long it was going to take because you knew that once you started looking it was just a matter of days or weeks before you had an offer in hand yep the hiring market was just on fire for that time now the question is okay if i decide to leave the company how can i remain engaged well now you're talking about a potential long game like you could be months before a real good offer comes through that you want to take that's better than your current situation and so you really you really do have to put in place something to keep yourself engaged and and i want to remind everyone like when you agree to work for an employer you did trade your work for money and so if you start

giving less work but they're still giving you the same money that's that to me is an ethical breach like you should get you should give them what they paid for now let's not be confused that the moment that the one metric goes in the wrong direction they will not hesitate to lay you off yeah so keep that in mind but also they are paying you you know so as long as your metric which is like your direct deposit paycheck every whatever recurring pay period as long as that metric is coming in, you owe it to them to provide a good amount of work. So I don't know. How do you manage it for the long run? Really hard. I can't say that I've ever known anyone who I felt like participated in an extended job search and remained 100% engaged and hardworking.

I think you've articulated clearly what I was trying to fuzzily mushily talk my way through, which is if you are working really hard 40 hours a week and you're really nine to five and you cut it off at the end of the day and turn it on at the beginning of the workday, then there's not really any way to change that and still do a job search during those same hours. If you feel like you are going above and beyond and doing more, if you're thinking about work stuff in the shower, I think a lot of engineers are like this, not all certainly, but I don't know, you think about the technical problems and architecture and, oh, what if we did this cool thing in the product? I think it is fair to channel all that extra energy into now your job search. It will be noticed most

likely and have an impact but i think you're right if you can still convincingly tell yourself and other people hey i'm i'm doing my job yeah or you you do like me with my australian accent you just slowly reduce your job output so no one notices yeah yeah i mean there is a there's an inherent risk here where if the company is maybe thinking of layoffs then you're becoming less engaged your output lowers you might be on the list i don't think there's an easy way around that it's just yeah that's the reality of the situation so there is one more strategic thing that i would probably do in this situation and that is that i would try to figure out if i am going to be on the next layoff list if there is another layoff and one way to do that is sit down with your manager and

just say hey we've had three layoffs i want to keep this job will you please let me know what if anything i can do to deliver the best value and make sure that you feel like i am way above the line for the layoff cutoff yeah and just have that frank conversation with your manager and i think your manager will often appreciate that because they're like oh great you mean i can basically get more performance out of you for no extra cost all it took was the threat of losing your job i mean at the end of the day that is the leverage we all live under right so So I don't know. I would really appreciate that. I'd be like, oh, great. Thanks for coming to me. Now, you'd have to also let them know you understand. Like, look, I know you can't make a promise here. You know, it's not like I'm saying you do this and I guarantee you a job here forever. It's like, no, I mean, it's just not how economics works. or reality, which sometimes is the same, but often not. And so being able to say,

give them a safe way to express to you what they really want you to do in order to be considered layoff proof, I think will give you a great advantage. It's good advice. It's possible if this is happening to whole swaths of teams, they might think, oh, what would make question asker the most valuable person on the team and give you that advice? But really the answer is work on this other team business unit yeah be on this other team where all the money comes from so it might also be worth stepping back and asking yourself that question yeah if i were the ceo and had to lay off 10 of the engineers what team or product line or skill set would i just say this is untouchable yeah and then go work over there yeah do that thing much easier said than done but oh

well that's why it's easy for us to give advice and then you get the hard part of ignoring it and doing the thing that would work instead. Exactly. We just do the said part. You do the done part. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be done the way we said. Yep.

But if not, we don't warranty our service. Yes, that is technically true. Also, if you do do the advice we said, we also don't. But that doesn't mean the thing you said before was wrong. All right. Have we answered this question? I think so.

Good luck. Good luck. what can people do if they want their own questions answered go to softskills.audio and click the ask a question button thank you so much to everyone who fills out our little form every week we just love it every week i roll into that form and just these little wings start like metaphorical wings just start fluttering on my back just lifts my spirits it makes me feel good this feels better than your heart swelling also it seems a little bit healthier a little bit although doctors are concerned about both well this one you're more like a an interesting subject

for experiments. All right. I think that means we've done it. Thank you for listening. We will catch you next week.