As an Employee, You Are Disposable

The recent tech layoffs have shown that employees are disposable in the eyes of executives. This isn’t surprising though, and I’m definitely not the first person that has written about this. I just want to highlight the current situation.

It doesn’t matter if investor expectations are surpassed, layoffs can still take place.

It’s somewhat understandable if a company is struggling financially and resorts to layoffs. However, there’s plenty of companies that are profitable and still lay off the people that earned the company those profits.

Many companies are not only profitable, but their executives continue to earn huge sums of money amidst layoffs.

Aside from layoffs, employees may have their pay frozen even though company revenues are up. That’s what happened at Microsoft. Let’s not forget that Microsoft is a $2.5 trillion dollar company (at the time of this writing).

It doesn’t matter how much value you’ve delivered. It doesn’t matter how much impact you’ve had in a company. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at a company. You are still disposable.

This article shows the mindset some very wealthy executives have about the average worker/employee.

There are some bits I want to highlight:

“There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them,” Mr Gurner said. “We need to remind people they work for the employer, not the other way around.”

[Mr Gurner] has previously made headlines by suggesting young people cannot afford homes because they spend too much on avocado toast.

I recently came across a blog post that is very relevant when understanding that the executives that earn 100x your pay can also lay you off at any moment: Maybe you should store passwords in plaintext.

It’s okay to like your job and employer. Just understand that as an employee, you are disposable.