The other side of layoffs: navigating survivor’s guilt

Yesterday, my beloved NASA JPL laid off 570 hard-working, brilliant, good people. I’m grateful to say I wasn’t one of them, and neither were my team members. But as we all dust ourselves off, I’m having a lot of conversations with people around survivor’s guilt. If you’ve survived a round of layoffs at your company, you might be doing the same.

I don’t have definitive answers about how to deal with how you’re feeling, but I’m finding a few common threads in my conversations, that I’d like to share with you. If you’re a manager, maybe these are things you can suggest to your team. If you’re an individual contributor, maybe these are things that will help you feel better or will help you help your colleagues.

1) It’s ok to feel relief

The thing about survivor’s guilt is that often, it’s a self-feeding spiral. You feel guilty about surviving when so many good people didn’t. But you’re also grateful that you survived. Then you feel guilty about feeling grateful, like the only good way to support those who lost their jobs is to be completely miserable.

But that’s a fallacy our brains foist on us. It’s ok for you to feel relief, and gratitude, and even happiness that you still have your job. You can feel that AND feel horror and sadness and regret about the people who aren’t your colleagues anymore. Our brains are perfectly capable of both things at the same time. Just give yourself permission to feel them both.

2) Take a moment

Funny that this is part of my advice for if you’ve been laid off, too. But let’s face it. This is the second-worst thing that can happen to you at work. Layoffs are traumatic, because of the anxiety leading up to it, wondering if you’ll be laid off, followed by then seeing people you care for suffering. Recognize that. Give yourself a little grace. It’s ok to be traumatized for a minute.

Do the things that work for you. You know, self-care. If you have sick days, maybe take a sick day. If you have vacation days, do that.

My one exception for this is managers. Managers, you need to be there for your team. Do the self-care things you need to do so that you’re ABLE to be there for them (put your own mask on and all that jazz) but make yourself available to your team so they can talk about how they’re feeling, ask questions, cry, yell — whatever. For the week after layoffs, everyone kind of gets a free pass to behave however they need to.

3) Figure out your coping mechanism, and do it.

Mine is action. I always need to feel like I’m doing a Thing. As a result, I took today as a vacation day (see above) and I’m spending it checking in with my people, checking in with people who were laid off, connecting laid off folks with job openings, and otherwise Trying To Help. That’s a damn good use of a vacation day, IMHO.

I also process in writing, a lot of the time. You’re reading that right now. That doesn’t help everyone — maybe art, or sports, or talking it through is the way to cope for you.

For others I’ve talked to, it’s escapism. One person is going to stay in her jammies all day and watch Netflix. Another is going for a hike. Another is going to hang out with non-work friends and not talk about work. Another is playing video games all day. Yet another is just eating his way through his feels.

And one more is diving into her work, feeling like the way she can help is by doing such a good job that the company thrives and can maybe hire back some people, someday. She doesn’t care if it’s futile. It just feels good to focus on the mission. Which for us is literal, but for you might be philosophical.

4) Come together and mourn

One of the project teams I work on lost one of our best people. (BTW, if you’re hiring a brilliant XR designer/developer, hit me up and I’ll connect you. He’s effing amazing. )

We’re getting together after work tonight, for drinks and hugs. One of our team members is remote, and we’re trying to figure out how to include him. But the bulk of us will gather and commiserate and comfort each other.

It doesn’t have to be drinks. Several of the project teams at JPL brought in coffee or bagels or cookies, and have booked a conference room for the whole day. People can drop in, have snacks, talk about their feels, or just be grateful together. A different project is hosting a listening session, where people can just share with each other and others will listen with open hearts. All of these things are good uses of your time.

5) Boost signals

Now you know a bunch of people who are looking for jobs, and you have direct experience with how great they are. Write them LinkedIn recommendations. Share their contact info with recruiters. Share job opportunities with them. Give them a reference. Spread word far and wide.

While we’re talking about that, I know almost 600 great people who are now looking for work. If you’re hiring, hit me up. I’ll connect you.

6) Listen to your feelings

This whole darn article is about listening to your feelings, but I work with a lot of engineers and scientists who need to be reminded they’re human sometimes. So do I.

You don’t have to be stoic, or perfect, or flawlessly composed. You get to feel the feels. And sometimes when we haven’t quite internalized the part about not having to be perfect, we don’t even realize we’re feeling the feels. We just react to them, snapping at people or making negative judgements about stuff.

Recognized that even if you don’t think you are (thanks, brains, for being so non-transparent) you’re probably compromised. Don’t make any big decisions. Don’t form unchangeable opinions. Don’t act on that rash impulse. Listen to how your body and your thoughts are reacting to things, and recognize that you might actually be reacting to layoffs, not that font choice.

7) Give the company a little grace too

I’ve never seen layoffs done flawlessly. No matter how hard the company leadership tries, there’s always going to be something to complain about. Not the least of which is “How did you let things get to the point where we had to do layoffs?” — because that is sorely on the shoulders of people higher than middle management level.

But… I can almost guarantee they tried their best to be as compassionate and fair about this as possible. Almost. Let’s not give that guy who laid off 300 people over Zoom and talked about how much it hurt HIM any grace. Not one bit.

But for the most part, there’s a 99.9% chance that everyone above you on the food chain agonized over this, tried to avoid it, and tried to make it fair and compassionate. If they didn’t do it perfect, look at the parts they did get right. And help them do better in the future. We’re all in this together.

8) You might feel unsafe now

This is the worst and most insidious of the issues. You survived this round, but will you survive the next? Can you believe them when they say there won’t be another? If you have one bad day is that going to put you on the list for the next set of layoffs?

The truth is, you were never safe. No one is. There is no such thing as job security. That’s a harsh truth, but I love you enough to be truthy with you. Your job was never safe, will never be safe. Not at your current company, not at any other company.

In a sort of Buddhist way, that can be freeing, right? Psychology tells us that a lot of unhappiness comes from unmet expectations. If you don’t have an expectation of safety, you won’t be disappointed or feel betrayed when you find out you’re unsafe.

But the transition to this way of thinking is hard. It takes reframing and effort, and you gotta take baby steps to get there. The key is to recognize that this isn’t the business being cold and heartless or evil. This is just the way the world is. Like gravity always pulling toward the planet. Or food rotting if you leave it out too long.

It’s just a process, it’s not personal. It sucks, but so does gravity sometimes. If it helps, remember that everyone else is in the same boat. We’re all unsafe together. And we’ve all got you, just like you’ve got all of us.

That’s all I’ve got for you. Those are the things I’m learning as I process. What advice do you have? How can we all come together in times like this, support each other and cope with our grief?

Take care of yourselves, and each other. My heart is with you.