Live Life, Not Work

This is in the backdrop of significant job cuts by tech majors. Those who have lost jobs are no doubt talented and they were chosen with a rigorous hiring process. But it is business that matters most for those companies letting go their employees now. For companies, it is better to downsize than go bankrupt. So, they asked some of their employees to leave. Some of the employees who got laid off were loyal to their employers, worked for years for them and did not think or do much beyond their job.

Now, it is not easy to find another job as the whole tech industry is seeing a downturn. Most of the tech companies are not hiring if not firing. So those who have lost jobs have to go to another industry where skills and compensation may not match. If they manage to get a job, it could be compromising on many fronts. It is a difficult situation. It leaves them confused and ponder what to do with their lives. While the severance packages given by their employers will help them stay afloat for couple of months, it does not heal the emotional damage.

Roots of this evil could be in our education system. Many High Schools (not PU colleges) prepare their students for entrance exams well in advance. This is when the students do not have any idea what they want to do with their lives. For those who get into prestigious educational institutions, FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) seem to be their best target. Just like horses with eye blinders they did not get to see the entirety and only when they are slapped with a layoff notice, they begin to introspect.

Whether these employees lived in the valley (in the US) or in Whitefield (in Bangalore), they must adjust to the new realities. When they were working on virtual reality technologies (like AR/VR), they had forgotten the real world around them. Truth is no tech company can offer a job for life. Experience one gets in tech sector may or may not be relevant outside of those companies. If they have burned out of their incomes with a lavish lifestyle (along with junk food), their future is in real trouble. What their employers indirectly told them was, take money as long as you are useful and get lost when the need ends. Now for those who have lost jobs, there is no money on the table.

It all comes to one liner philosophy. Live life, not work. That was basic. We needed jobs to lead our lives and not the other way around. Somewhere in the journey we were brainwashed and began to think work is life and associated our lives with our employers more than needed. We wore T-shirts with company logo, took the backpack which had company’s logo and their business motto. We flashed our business cards unnecessarily. We wore our LinkedIn profiles on our sleeves. Now, the mass layoffs from the wealthiest businesses in the world make us realize we lived illusionary lives, at least to some extent.

Working for our employers till retirement is not a plan we should pursue. If it happens fine but we need to have a backup plan. We need to introspect and like our employers have a business tagline, we also need to find a tagline for each one of us. Our jobs cannot decide our goals or fate of life. They are just our association and a means to life.

You might question me, what qualifies me to write this blog post? I am an employee for the last two decades. Though I have not worked for FAANG companies, but what happens there happens in the company I work for as well. I took time and slowly realized that I was on a treadmill, and I need to get off from it someday. I kept a ceiling on my expenses, started saving and investing the savings. So, there is some financial prudence. I picked up hobbies. And made friends outside of the industry I work for. I am thankful to my employer for keeping me on job and paying me well. But when the need arises to depart, I would do so happily without a second thought or regret. Even if they don’t ask me to leave, I would do a planned exit, before my retirement age (well, at least a decade before I hit 60).

I do not expect all my colleagues to agree with me. Each to his own. But the takeaway for everyone is written on the wall in bold letters. Live life, not work.