If you're one of the 16,000 Amazon employees getting laid off, read this
It's not your fault
OPINION It's not your fault Amazon hired you for a position that it no longer deems necessary – blame bad planning or unanticipated market conditions. Everybody guesses wrong sometimes, even with the power of the most sophisticated business analysis software and the smartest prognosticators one can hire.
It's not your fault if you quit your last job because you believed the promises of your new employer. Maybe they offered you more money, more freedom, more challenging and interesting work. Whatever they offered, getting laid off trumps all that. "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?" Bruce Springsteen once asked in a song. I'm still not sure exactly what he meant.
It's not your fault if you turned down offers from other employers because you valued the stability of your current workplace, or you liked your bosses and colleagues (a good hang is worth a lot, as one former journalist colleague put it), or thought you were serving a more valuable mission than the one your would-have-been new employer offered. It's not your fault. You made what seemed like the best decision you could've made at the time, given the information you had.
It's hard not to blame yourself. Other people will blame you. Some people you thought were friends will use the moment to take their digs, bring you down a notch, criticize you for being too blind to see the signs. Your family might resent you for no longer being able to support them in the manner to which they were accustomed. If you're taking care of sick relatives, you'll all suffer under the sudden scramble to secure health insurance. But it's not your fault.
Others will be indifferent. The colleagues you left behind, having felt the scythe blade pass inches from their neck, may feel good reason to draw into their shells completely. People who've been through it before may shrug and welcome you to the club.
On the flip side, some people will surprise you with their offers of introductions, brainstorming sessions, moral and maybe even financial support. Thank those people profusely, and try to pay it forward the next time somebody you know goes through it. Few bucks are better spent than on the beers you buy for a friend who's suddenly knee-deep in the shit.
I know how this goes. I've worked in journalism for most of my career. My profession has shrunk dramatically over the last 20 years as the internet ate all the old revenue models. Craigslist decimated classified ads, Google and Facebook destroyed most of the rest of print advertising, then steadily chipped away at digital news business models, redirecting their massive audiences to whatever made them the most money. Switch to video, the pundits said. Go indie. Learn to code.
Now a lot of those coding jobs are disappearing too, sacrificed on the altar of AI and ever-increasing efficiency. If you believe the most foaming-mouthed AI prognosticators, the Dario Amodeis and Sam Altmans of the world, you can expect that this scene will be repeated many times in coming years, across many professions.
It won't be easy, but technological upheavals have happened before, and the skills you've acquired may find surprising new uses in the AI world. You are not your job. You'll find a new fit.
And remember: it's not your fault. ®