Overthinking About Layoffs

Magical Overthinkers

Amanda Montell & Studio71

Education, Science, Society & Culture

4.3 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the work-specific euphemism "layoff" was first coined in the 19th century, it indicated "respite" or "relaxation." But layoffs in 2024 are anything but. It's almost impossible not to spiral after getting "let go," "phased out," "reduced in force." In a culture that makes hiring and company culture extremely personal, being laid off out of nowhere can feel like getting dumped by the love of your life... except the love of your life happens to be both your income source and, as it turns out, an entity that never actually cared about you that way. Doomy layoff vibes seem to pervade contemporary job discourse, but are layoffs as much of a crisis as they seem? How's a person to know the career path they chose wasn't one big mistake? And after getting laid off, how can one manage to drum up a sense of motivation ever again?? To help us wrap our heads around this overwhelm, host Amanda (amanda_montell) is joined by emotional investigative journalist, NPR layoff survivor, and host of the Proxy podcast, Yowei Shaw (@yoweishaw). - Catch Amanda on book tour! July 29, 7pm: Seattle, WA — The Age of Magical Overthinking talk and signing at Elliott Bay Book Company (free, no RSVP needed)- Join the "Magical Overthinkers Club" by following the pod on Instagram @magicaloverthinkers. - To access early, ad-free episodes and more, subscribe to the Magical Overthinkers Substack. - Pick up a hard copy of Amanda's book The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, or listen to the audiobook. To watch the podcast on YouTube: https://bit.ly/MagicalOverthinkersYouTube ; Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening If you like the show, telling a friend about it would be amazing! You can text, DM, email, or send this link to a friend: https://bit.ly/MagicalOverthinkers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the magical overthinkers podcast, a show for thought spirallers, exploring the subjects we can't stop overthinking about, from narcissism to burnout.
0:16.1	If you ever get the feeling that despite living in the information age, the world only seems to be making
0:22.0	less sense? Or that for some mysterious reason, it just feels especially hard to exist as a human
0:29.5	in the world right now, then you're in the right place. This podcast is here to help us think
0:35.5	less about the things that don't matter and more about the things that do.
0:40.7	I'm your host, Amanda Montel.
0:43.1	Today we're overthinking about layoffs.
0:50.6	The other week I was in San Francisco visiting my brother who works at Pixar, and we realized
0:56.8	that I'd never seen the campus before. So he brought me there, and we were going on a little
1:01.5	tour. It was the week that Inside Out too was coming out. And so you'd think that morale on
1:06.5	the Pixar campus would be really high. But everybody sort of seemed like they were in the
1:10.1	doldrums.
1:17.3	Quickly, it became clear why. In between my brother pointing out the Inside Out 2 exhibit and the outdoor amphitheater, he would gesture to someone he recognized and say, oh yeah, that's so-and-so.
1:22.8	He's so nice. He's worked here for 25 years. Yeah, he just got laid off. A massive round of layoffs had
1:30.0	just happened at Pixar. Days before Inside Out 2 was coming out, you think they could have waited.
1:35.5	It should have been such a celebratory time, but the feeling on campus was really somber. And I was
1:40.9	especially jarred by the fact that these folks who'd just been laid off were still hanging around campus.
1:45.5	I asked my brother why he thought that was.
1:47.3	And he said, I don't know.
1:48.3	I guess they're just saying goodbye.
1:51.6	Their whole life has been here.
1:54.1	And it's true in American society, we are really conditioned to pour so much of our sense of self, our pursuit of purpose into our work
	...

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