Meaning in transition
In between lay-offs and new jobs
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Every December, I do a review and reflection of the year gone by. Having done this for the past five years, I can safely say that everything I know about careers is true and untrue in equal measures.
As an amateur existential philosopher, this ambiguity around careers has been my muse. It has informed my decision-making, influenced my interests, and dictated how I spend my time. I have spent an unhealthy number of hours trying to make sense of modern careers. Just on Network Capital, we have looked at it in terms of —
The relationship between process versus outcomes
Necessary doses of disappointments
A state of anxiety
A state of constant transition
Navigating recessions and slow-downs
The great resignation and the state of ambition
The importance of judgement quotient over intelligence quotient
Creating your category of one
The death of careers
It’s relationship with confusion
In the midst of these contemplations on the nature of modern careers, between 2020 and 2024, over 670K people have been laid off just in tech. The larger figure for global layoffs is much, much higher.
About a month ago, I found out that one of my research collaborators at OpenAI had been laid off. The news came in a routine update email to our research group. The timing of this update was eerie, as it was the same day I had signed the contract for my new job.
I was, of course, familiar with the unpredictability of tech layoffs and the scale at which they operate. But seeing this happen to someone I knew personally made the data point more real. A week after the news of the layoff, I received the following update —
In a more recent catch-up call, I got to hear the mundane logistics of a layoff: the process of getting access revoked, signing off on financial compensation, and retrieving physical possessions. The sudden but gradual transition of something that occupied 99% of your headspace moving into indifference. The rise of an emotional vacuum followed an eventual detachment from professional endevours.
Culturally, all of this is alien to me. I am used to big celebrations when people leave.
These celebrations are less about the actual work or the caliber of the individual (for all we know, they could be awful at work). They are more about acknowledging and celebrating that this period of an individual’s professional life is coming to an end. There may or may not be more ahead, but in this moment, we celebrate all that existed.
Sure, a lot of these big celebrations and farewells made more logical sense when people stayed in one job for decades and formally retired from their professional lives. But maybe what is missing in the contemporary chaos of careers are these mini-celebrations between adventures.
Navigating my personal transition into a new role (and city) and simultaneously making sense of my collaborator’s experience with a layoff has had me thinking a lot about beginnings and endings.
In one of his TED Talks, Utkarsh reminds us how endings matter.
While his focus is personal — narratives, stories, and growth — I think there’s something there for the companies we choose to work with. How a company marks endings says a lot about its culture: does it focus on closure, recognition, and human connection, or does it reduce the transition to a transactional process?
In the process of the lay-off, my colleague described a recurring feeling of being invisible — as though they were almost being erased from the narrative of the workplace. This invisibility wasn’t just about losing access or signing off on formalities; it was a more profound sense of detachment, as if their contributions and presence were suddenly rendered insignificant.
In my case, before accepting this offer and while deciding between the options I had, I struggled to make sense of it all for a very long time. My existential spirals had me stuck in a loop of indecision. Each option felt like a mirror reflecting different versions of myself, and I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to become. What finally guided me was a simple instinct: more on that later!
In a world where careers often feel like endless transitions, I hope we find beginning worth celebrating and, someday, an ending worth remembering. I also, hope we get to do this many times over.
Tomorrow, I will hold my first hiring call for the first member of my team. It’s a small act in the larger chaos of careers, but it’s one I’d like to mark. Not with fanfare, but with intention. In this moment, I am both the one beginning and the one welcoming another’s beginning. And maybe, in these small gestures, we find our meaning.
The jury is still out on if it is worth building a ‘portfolio of career’ and the average number of transitions a GenZ or Millennial makes. The results on meaning-making are out :)
— Varya