Melanie Ehrenkranz isn’t a stranger to job instability. In the decade she’s worked in media, she’s seen countless smart and creative friends lose their jobs during mass layoffs.
When it happened to her in 2023, it sparked an idea: Ehrenkranz decided to create a resource for people going through layoffs to discuss the thorny parts of getting the news — the indignity of being let go over a video call, who they told first, getting into company gossip with ex-co-workers, and what they named their commiseration group chats.
In other words, all the things you want to spill but can’t post on LinkedIn.
By August 2024, Ehrenkranz launched Laid Off, a Substack newsletter that aims to be “the coolest place on the internet to talk about being laid off.” She runs the newsletter on top of her day job as as head of content and community at Business Class, which makes online courses for entrepreneurs.
Readers of Laid Off, now more than 6,000 of them and growing, get weekly spotlights of people’s layoff stories and how they’re handling them.
“This is something I wish I had,” Ehrenkranz, 35, tells CNBC Make It.
‘I don’t want this to be depressing or bleak’
Most of the Laid Off readers work in tech, followed by news and media, health care, advertising and then retail.
A majority discuss being laid off in 2024 — at home via Zoom, while on a group conference call, via an email. Many responded to Ehrenkranz’s recent survey to say joining the Laid Off community has given them a cathartic, almost fun, place to reflect on the experience as a group.
“I don’t want this to be depressing or bleak,” Ehrenkranz says. “Obviously it’s a really deflating experience and traumatic, but I think we can also create a fun, cathartic community.”
Spinning the layoff experience on its head, and detaching the self-blame and guilt that often goes with it, can make it feel less isolating and taboo, Ehrenkranz adds.
She hopes that readers see “all these really smart, cool, successful people” telling their stories in their own words. “We’re all doing our best. We might have been at the top of our game. We’ve been laid off. And I think that also helps to re-wire your brain that might be [wondering]: What did I do wrong to deserve this? And the answer is nothing.”
Laid Off’s paid subscribers (for $5 per month) also get access to a Discord channel, a community of over 700 users who trade layoff horror stories but also tips on navigating today’s challenging job market.
Shame is giving way to ‘righteous anger’
The conversations show a shift in the layoff environment. While early pandemic days helped more people uncouple their job loss from their self-worth, and the post-Great Resignation job cuts ushered in a new era of vulnerability in LinkedIn posts, the chatter around losing your job these days feels a little more confrontational.
As Ehrenkranz puts it, “I think a lot of people are feeling angry.”
It’s “almost impossible” to scroll on LinkedIn without seeing a connection writing that they’ve been laid off, Ehrenkranz says: “Being bombarded with these stories and images and Open to Work banners, it does start to kind of strip away that shame. And underneath that shame, I think, is this righteous anger.”
The rising anger is coinciding with companies like Meta and Microsoft saying they’re laying off people due to poor performance. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of public servants have been fired, some under the guise of unsatisfactory employee assessments, as the Trump administration works to slash the size of the federal workforce.
But those who received pink slips aren’t going quietly, and at times are publicly challenging the evaluations of their work.
Angry posts are less targeted toward the messiness of a mass layoff, and more so toward “executives who made a decision to de-value work [employees] believed was important, or decisions executives made that put the company in a precarious place, and it cost people their jobs, but not necessarily the people at the top.”
Additionally, “people are really angry at the systems in place that are supposed to protect you when you don’t have a job,” Ehrenkranz says. “Health care is a really big conversation, and it’s very tied with their employment in this country, and so I think a lot of people are upset about care that they and their loved ones can no longer get.”
People are figuring out what comes next after a layoff
Continuing layoff news is rattling those on the job hunt and workers clinging to their jobs alike. U.S. employers announced as many as 172,017 job cuts in February, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas — the highest monthly total since July 2020.
And with economists reviving fears of a recession, the job-search hunger games could get even tougher.
When you’re “competing with all of these people laid off for the same job, it does make you start to question whether the traditional stories you’re told, of working hard to get XYZ, are actually true,” Ehrenkranz says.
Job loss could lead some people to redefine what their version of success looks like, Ehrenkranz says, which could mean changing careers or striking out on their own and starting a new business.
Within the Laid Off community, she’s seen more people asking questions about how to pivot into a new career, take on new side projects and part-time jobs, monetize side hustles or start something new altogether.
“There’s a lot of entrepreneurial spirit that comes out of these layoffs, whether that be out of necessity or innovation,” she says. “People have to pay the bills.”
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