Recessions, Job Cuts, Turning The Heat Up At Meta? š¶
Job Cuts, Recessions, Turning The Heat Up š„
By Furquan Ahmad Ā· September 7, 2022Originally sent in my Ready Set Grow newsletter
Hi Reader,
Cost of living is going up and we may be heading for a recession. There has been a slowdown in hiring across tech companies, we've seen hiring freezes and some unfortunate lay-offs outside people's control.
As a designer, how am I coping and reacting? When a post comes out saying that āWe need to turn up the heatā, āThere are people at the company that donāt belong hereā, it naturally causes some extra anxiety.
The one thing you do value is stability in a job. Having a clear mind, so I can focus on solving design problems, not worried about lay-offs.
Naturally, people have imposter syndrome and when articles like āturning up the heatā get leaked, you question yourself further. Am I good enough to be here?
I had an open conversation with my manager about all the articles and my performance. This helped put me at ease, and allowed me to focus on my team's planning with a clearer headspace.
Whatever happens, the next performance cycle is going to be different, I feel. This will be a good acid test to see the adjustment in expectations. Thereās no hard ground right now to say if someone isnāt performing, as we see big tech companies shift to annual performance reviews.
If there are people underperforming, managers should be telling them right now. There are people's jobs on the line.
However, deep down, I feel like the people that are "coasting" know this themselves.
Some people on forums like āBlindā boast about how little work they do day to day working remotely and have such crazy pay cheques.
Itās not healthy or morally okay. Naturally, when you scale a company, people slip through the cracks, and you get the odd few people that donāt match the culture and are there to take advantage of things.
During the pandemic, a lot of tech companies saw massive growth with the increase in reliance on tech for remote work.
Companies had financial performance way better than forecasts, they were thinking about 2 things. Should we readjust our growth targets and scale? Or shall we keep to our existing plan? Not many people were thinking about option 3, what happens if there is a recession?
Thatās got us into this peculiar situation weāre in today, some companies scaled way too fast, and markets have readjusted themselves.
Whatever happens Iām confident enough in my skill set and experience as a designer that I can navigate this downturn period, times like this itās more important than ever to believe in your skill sets and upskill yourself to set yourself apart. Recession or not, the demand for product design jobs is still there.
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