What It Actually Looks Like

First, let me say my father worked (actually, works) for Lucent Technologies. I have seen the aftermath. Lucent was the site of massive amounts of layoffs after they had constructed two of their own office buildings near Naperville, Illinois. I remember walking through nearly empty floors of a company whose workforce had been laid off, outsourced, eliminated, and in fact stripped to its bare minimum. I've seen the lowered morale and people worried about their jobs after they had so many things to pay for already. (That, in fact, for the public might be the first of the fallacies.) And I've heard names vanish, stopped hearing of certain of my fathers coworkers. This is when I was growing up.

My turn. Today, I arrived at work at about 3:30. Fashionably late. I asked the room (the SOC or service operations center, and the other staff who shares the room with their cubicles) how it was going. Some of them replied cheerily. Some didn't look. A couple answers came honestly "not so good." My first instinct is that a site was down, or a product was disabled, or network problems were bad, so these were what I was asking about. When I asked what I could help with, the answer came: "Nothing. Read your email from [the CEO.]" Bad things, and not everyone in the room had even heard. Asking more bluntly the less self-absorbed crew, I got the answer: The company is laying off ten percent of its employees. I'm at their HQ where at least seventy percent of us work. News spreads. The room gets quiet. Intermittently.

"Someone's gotta tell the execs what they're doing wrong. They say no lay offs until January, and then this! They can bite me," said John, dilligently defending the workforce.

"Calm down," Monica said cautiously. She wanted to make sure he didn't get fired either. No doubt both level-headed and very worried for his position and ours. The room was a-buzz when it wasn't dead quiet with this kind of banter. L. quipped about ducking out in there and doing little work, since none was expected with morale so low. Cool, as ever, he just sat around. He waited.

Larry's new and he asks me about it. Eventually he asks if there's any word on where the cuts are going to hit. I tell him there are more than ten people in the room, he won't see them all tomorrow. I tell him, by noon the next day, a bunch of those names are going to be gone.

There's a flood of people at this point, heading towards a big conference room down the hall and a floor away. These are directors, managers, and veterans. Just moving silently through.

It wasn't long then. First, Monica came back in with a bag straight to her desk. Silent. The room is quiet, and nobody knows. More news comes in leaked seemingly without source that Ken's going now. Light shock hits. Monica is now filling her bag with the last and walking off. They say Ken had pulled the power cord right from the wall and his workstation is off. Directors are moving through the floor right up to their employees, in front of everyone. "Have a nice day. Good luck, I hear the economy's not doing so well."

When Monica walked out, people stood up. This was the first I saw people's watery eyes. Hugs were exchanged. To me, she just said "Later, Extraodinaire." She had called me that since a tour she led, and I introduced myself as Michael, Admin Extraordinaire.

A name is heard from across the room when people go back to their desks, and L., who'd been ducking out there and keeping his head low behind me cool as always, he stands up. "No. No. They wouldn't let him go, NOT him. No, I will cry. I will cry. You're kidding me."

People shake their heads at him, somber. He walks straight out of the room, his new Mac on the desk.

I announce I'm going for a cigarette, but I go talk to Lars. His team is safe, looks like most of that floor is. I talk to him and he says I'm probably safe, but his IMs have been basically his RSS feed on who's gone NOW. This is when I hear Lisa's name, and I go smoke my cigarette. Which broke, so the last half I smoke unfiltered. I take the elevator to nine, and there's Lisa with a box, and a lot of quiet people. The one person I hugged. "Onto the next thing."

That's got to be one of the most interesting people I ever met. A storm chaser, a systems expert, and a tech for south pole researchers who was in Antarctica for around two years. Unfortunately, I don't trust the world not to show prejudice to her as a transgendered person whose name was likely not always Lisa.

Back in the SOC, John is fuming. Maybe about Monica, or Steve. "Well, Mr. [CEO], you've just decimated leadership. Are we go for the build?"

People are ending their usual workdays now, but no one is sure who will be coming back.