I Suddenly Got Laid Off. What I’ve Done & What To Do Next?
Anything that cannot kills you makes you stronger
A Sudden Layoff Came Silently…
Several days ago, as I was sitting on my seat, my supervisor, Scott, just messaged me through the telegram.
Scott: “Hey, Andy, could you please come to my office? I have something important to tell you.”
Andy: “OK.”
(He pulled out the chair and asked me to sit down)
Scott: “Andy, you know our project is going to be terminated at the end of this month. And I understand our team has taken effort to achieve our customer’s goals. Unfortunately, some people should leave the team due to the budget problem.”
Andy: “What!? So am I laid off?”
Scott: “Umm… yes, you are laid off.”
Andy: “But what about another project? We could still continue on that.”
Scott: “Well, the project would be temporarily paused. Later, the talent specialist would tell you what to do next …”.
In fact, I felt calm as I knew being laid off, because similar scenario happened several years ago when I was a software engineer. It seems like you were walking on a street but stepped on shit abruptly.
My Overall Performance Review
Everything would be OK as time goes by. I’ve taken some time to review my performance in the team, and I asked my supervisors to write cover letters for my future job seeking. There are several huge changes I’ve achieved since I came to the team. I would describe from 3 aspects: team growth, delivery improvement, and my personal growth.
- Team Growth
As I joined the team, I was assigned a game project that aimed to integrate different game platforms. However, I found their workflow was not formed so there were always many messages loss in development process, which took some more time to synchronize and adapt.
Therefore, I tried to work with them, observe how their message flew among the team, and formulate the corresponding workflow for members to abide by. As a result, our collaboration was streamlined and the inner communication quality was improved. If you wanna know how I achieved this, please watch the video below. I would tell you how to do it.
As the development process got transparent, and members got benefited from the practice, I started coaching them to follow the iterative and incremental manner to deliver minimum viable releases for sprints, which improved the relationship with the client. Aside from that, I’ve tried to hold several retrospective sessions to help members find inner problems, and brainstormed corresponding plans to refine them further. I once made a video talking about how to do this with a handy approach, especially for beginners. As a result, retrospective culture got formed and we were often trying to solve problems just in time.
- Delivery Improvement
When it comes to team growth, I cannot wait to show you some statistics that really symbolizes the delivery improvement of the team over the past several months. In my article, I’ve told you the difference between story point and lead time. In practice, I prefer the latter since I found many people misuse the concept of story point, and they wanna know precisely when to deliver.
The team delivery improvement, as above, should be observed for a long while with patience. I aggregated the data from the Jira board, and sampled the lead time statistics every Friday. As you see, for the average lead time, we achieved over 50% reduction, from 16.5 days to 8.1 days, which indicated that any item could be released almost every week.
And much to my happiness, the standard deviation was eliminated over 70%, from 8.3 days to 2.2 days, which means the robustness of our delivery predictability. We could almost know when is able to deliver the next release without much bias. Of course, visualizing the workflow is always the first step to intrigue the change management among a team.
- Personal Growth
And let’s talk about the personal growth along the journey. Over the past several months, I’ve grown up in my facilitation and coaching skills. I aided the team to visualize the workflow, and changed the discussion method to make collaboration more efficiently.
For example, I led them to meet daily, for up to 15 minutes, to synchronize the information, and resolved problems just in time. Instead of coaching members what Scrum is, I’ve tried to lead them to deliver stuffs in an iterative and incremental manner, and as a result, the team gradually got used to the tempo, diminishing unnecessary steps in the workflow.
Also, I changed the way holding sprint retrospectives. I visualized the definition of the ceremony from the Scrum guide; crafted an easy retrospective board to help them think how to further refine the current process, which got many feedbacks from the team.
Even further, this was my first time to introduce how to use User Story Mapping technique to collaborate with stakeholders and phase releases. Although the culture did not spread over the team, I at least found an opportunity to apply it to our discussion.
Finally, I understood how to use Axure RP to generate wireframes every time we’d formed the requirements. I knew many product managers use it to sketch wireframes for product discussion. And I was glad I had the opportunity to learn the practical skill, and got some product development experience.
What To Do Next?
Well, I still have to go through such a period, especially when global economics remains unstable. In fact, this is exactly the time to boost our mindset by learning new skills, travel around to know how big the world is, and move forward.
- Find Other Jobs
I feel calm because I have the habit of rewriting my CV, so it’s easy to open the job board. But I would consider overseas positions this time because I always have the vision to live abroad and construct my own family one day. In 2020, my vision was fiercely challenged due to the outbreak of COVID-19, even I’d passed the IELTS exam.
As I looked back the period I’d gone through, it seemed like the God was protecting me from doing something that might hurt myself. A suitable position matters, so I won’t be casual for the next job. Instead, I would explore those who really suit me.
In my 2023 retrospective, I’d once mentioned that I failed to participate in PSM-II training due to insufficient participants. Maybe it’s the time to reconsider the option because I have the will to become an agile coach. So I would travel to Hong Kong for the course.
- Travel to Japan & Australia
In fact, I have scheduled my plan to Japan and Australia for the year. I just cannot believe encountering such a shock in my career. Broadening my vision toward the world is always the best way to relieving myself. If you still have sufficient money and are not eager to work, take a trip now.
Coach’s Murmur
I feel regretful that our project was terminated in the end and I was laid off due to such a stupid reason. I know the boss just wanna reduced the budget and really appreciated it that my supervisors were still struggling to keep my position as they knew the news.
Are you laid off as well? Well, that might be another opportunity to understand yourself further. You are not alone if you read here. Always keep yourself prepared for the unexpected situation.
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