You just got laid off. You’re indignant. You’re ready to storm the corner office, slam your fists on the CEO’s desk, and demand answers. You want nothing more than to take the owners to task and blast them publicly for selling the company to a venture capitalist with no experience in the industry—thereby leading to your layoff.
Instead, you turn to social media and give your thanks.
Search Linkedin or Twitter for the keywords “laid off” or “layoffs” and “grateful” and you’ll find hundreds of posts featuring similar language. For example, when Hattie Lindert was laid off from Pitchfork, the newly appointed news editor at Resident Advisor wrote on Twitter, “the opportunity to work with the sharpest, funniest, brightest, and kindest people in this business was a dream come true I can’t quite put into words.”
Rachel S. Cohen, a former journalist for Military Times who was laid off earlier this month, wrote, “It has been my privilege to tell the stories of Americans in uniform and I’ll miss the talented, dogged team of reporters and editors that made the past three years special.” Similarly, Jennifer Locke, the former PR manager at Gearbox Entertainment posted, “It really was a dream come true working on this team, and I’m incredibly grateful for my time here.”
As of the beginning of June 2024, there had been roughly 385,859 job cuts in the United States this year, with the tech industry bearing the bulk of the weight with more than 100,000 folks laid off from January to July. It’s 7.6 percent less than the number of layoffs from January through May of last year, but that’s cold comfort for many—especially when mass layoffs are heavily publicized ordeals where corporate executives secure their own positions and salaries while letting go of the people who keep the cogs turning.
Yet when layoffs do occur, social media seems to be inundated with incredibly optimistic posts. While it’s not necessarily a lie, it’s certainly not the entire truth. The sharing of positive postmortems despite evidence of disorganization, abuse, or overall negligence toward employee well-being reflects the fear and desperation plaguing today’s working population.
Alex Fenstermacher, a longtime recruiter in the tech space, told me that the scarcity of available jobs means everyone jockeying for a new position must function from a place of self-preservation and publicly demonstrate that they are the kind of worker who can bounce back from adversity and smile through the tears. “Unfortunately, employees understand how they would be ‘blacklisted’, or lose their referrals from a past company, if they were to ever speak negatively about a company they previously worked for,” he says.
I reached out to Twitter and LinkedIn users who had posted their own fare-thee-wells to find out how they actually felt about getting laid off. They agreed to speak with me on the condition of anonymity to protect themselves from retaliation and maintain their reputations. According to them, their missives were highly sanitized to minimize risk and keep up appearances. Two explained that, to receive their severance, they had to sign a non-disparagement agreement, a clause that was ruled unlawful by the National Labor Relations Board in 2023. Another said that while it wasn’t explicitly outlined in the agreement, the implication was there.
But even if they had been given carte blanche to scream from the rooftops, they all said that there was just no point. “Getting laid off sucked, and I have many criticisms of the mismanagement at my outlet that led to that moment, but I generally don’t think being bitter on Twitter is a good look,” one journalist told me. “My gratitude was very real, I loved my job, but you also get way more clout if you’re gracious.”
Another source was equally conflicted between their appreciation for their co-workers and the experience and their resentment toward their superiors, especially when they and their team members were automatically rejected from subsequent job postings within the same company.
When I asked one recently laid-off gaming industry worker what they would have said if they’d had the opportunity for a repercussion-less diatribe, they didn’t hold back, sending me a swear-laden email that lambasted the leadership’s “archaic views of what the company should look like,” as well as their “tyranny and greed.” They voiced fury over the management’s clear race- and gender-based prejudices and their demands for long hours. “Go fuck yourselves, and then be lost to the wind so that kinder, better leaders can take your places,” they wrote.
Of course, that’s not what anyone posts on social media. In its place is something comparable to Green Day’s “Good Riddance,” a kind of nostalgic screed more fit for the last day of camp than for an adult who just got laid off. Except no one had the time of their life, even if they say otherwise.
Unfortunately, as anyone who has ever been laid off can tell you, jeopardizing your future employability, especially when you’re currently jobless, rarely works to your benefit. Going for the management’s jugular may earn you hero status among your peers, but with a few exceptions, it’ll more likely result in a mark against you, not them. Future employers may see you as a liability, former colleagues may no longer want to serve as a reference, and the company’s leadership themselves may retaliate.
“The only real option folks have now is to post something on Glassdoor and pray leadership doesn’t think it was you who wrote it,” says Fenstermacher.
