#71 Should we be worried about tech layoffs?
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In the market right now, some of the people who are getting laid off, they're getting laid off because of irresponsible hiring, because of irresponsible scaling, because companies sort of were greedy. They wanted to hire relentlessly, grow projects without thinking about their sustainability, their practicality, their future, their profitability.

Hello everybody and welcome to the next episode of Honest UX Talks. That's the second episode for this year and we are hoping to make it as relevant as possible for this year. So getting up, hopefully, up to the trend and up to the needs or demand for the market. And that is why the topic of today's episode is, is 2023 the worst year ever for designers?

And that is the topic we wanted to raise because apparently 2022 and the now beginning of 2023 are not an easy year. We keep seeing great layoffs happening pretty much every other day or week.

and it doesn't seem to be stopping at the moment. I don't think many companies will stop doing the layoffs. I'm thinking that for some companies, it is still in store and still is a question. Will they be laying off their tech workers? And it's an interesting topic as well, if you think perspective-wise, because I think 2021 and even beginning of 2022 were the years of great recessions where I guess we as professionals were in charge and power and deciding where do we want to work

We were leaving our jobs, which were not fulfilling. We were looking for the best jobs out there. And then suddenly the tables is turned and a lot of people are scared because it's suddenly like a great layoffs period, right? Completely the opposite. We don't want to make this talk only about like, oh my God, this is scary. This is scary. We actually want to make it a little bit actionable and talk about how to prepare yourself for it.

and also if we should be even scared about it, if that's something that really is as frightening as it looks like. But before we dive right into the topic, we can also catch up real quick. How are you doing, Ioana? How was your last week? Hi, everyone, and welcome to this new episode. Thanks for the weekly routine of asking me how my week was. I wasn't as productive as I was planning to. I'm doing a lot of hands-on design work

right now. So my current struggle is just being able to balance between abstract thinking, big thinking, big picture thinking, systems thinking, and then very tangible decisions like the roundness of corners or like whatever blue color shade we're going to use and so on. I'm pendulating between these two spaces all the time and it's...

harder than I remembered it to be when you're doing high intensity projects. But it's exciting because as I was telling everyone for the past couple of months, I really missed doing, I mean, I've been doing design work even in my maternity leave. I've never stopped. Right now it's my priority. So it's the part of my work where I spend the most time. I'm completely neglecting content creation. Some of our listeners might have noticed that.

And I'm also not doing too much education, mentoring, all the other things that I was doing. So right now I feel like I'm 90% my head into design work and then doing some things on the side, which in the past used to be like 60, 70% design work and then 40% my projects and everything. So I'm very focused in that. But yeah, I love it because it's accelerated growth and learning. And it's a really interesting balancing act to get a product right.

So hopefully we will launch this product this year. So I'll be very excited to share more about that in the future. But right now I'm very focused on making it fantastic. How was your week? Yeah, just before I start talking about my week, I think it's very natural. And I also feel like when I started working on this new job, which is now not new anymore.

It's almost one year as I'm in. But I also felt sort of more disconnected from social media world. And I felt like it's not even as big and important for me anymore. And I just wanted to be focused on my work and kind of figure it out and be more engaged with the product. And it just became more, I guess, important in my head. Thus, the other project.

It's sort of disappeared a little bit from my priorities list. And I think it's just fair. You're just returning and it's a lot to grasp to understand. It's just fair to give yourself time. And then slowly, slowly, slowly, as you start feeling more comfortable, you'll feel great and excited probably about the side projects again. Like I think I am getting to, but don't look at me. I'm just like, it's one year after.

So maybe it's a bit long. My particular week was okay. Actually, my work is becoming really busy this end of the month, I guess, because we started the new work cycle. We are moving from tertiles, I think it's like three months cycles projects, to six weeks

So shorter cycles. And that means that timelines are now smaller and we have to manage to deliver in these timelines. And that means the work has to be more fast and more productive and challenging. And it's just more intensive. So this week we had a kickoff for the project and it was really intensive, even though we had like wellness Wednesday, we call them, when in the end of the month we have one day off, basically for free. But even with that

day off, it just felt too intensive. I was doing like a little bit of the investigation, planning, understanding, organizing, discovery. It was just a lot. So yeah, it's kind of getting crazier and crazier. But it's all right. Kind of excited. I think it's cool to try new projects that are

more focused and more intensive. So you feel more engaged and it's not like extended to three months and you can kind of take your time and kind of take it in a relaxed way. Other than that, I'm kind of working slightly on my course, actually slightly quite intensively as well. It's a new course just teasing right now. I'm not talking about it a lot and I will probably not talk about it just yet because I want to first make sure it's happening. I'm putting on sort of

more and more work into it and as I will be more and more sure that it's happening, I'll start announcing it. But presumably the course I'm planning to do will be cohort-based.

It will be three weeks and it should be happening in the middle of April. And all the rest of the details, like the topic, details about how many people it should be, what we'll be hearing about and stuff like that, I'll just not reveal yet, but I'll talk about it hopefully in the upcoming months. All right, with that being said, let's just dive into the topic.

And I think as we were talking so much about our work, being so busy, caught up in it, we now can zoom out and think about industry and think whether we are not wasting our time with our jobs because, oh my God, the world is on fire. Everybody is like...

screaming about the tech layoffs and how is it impacting us. So I actually want to stop for a second and think about the high-level perspective of what's happening with the market. And my first question to you, Joanna, would be, should we all be worried about having and keeping our jobs?

Should we be worried about the job market freeze? Does it impact the amount of jobs? What's your perspective on this topic? Yeah, so it's a very tough topic because whenever I stop to zoom out and think about it, the first brain that I use is the empathetic brain. And then I'm just imagining myself in the position of a person who just got fired. And I've never experienced that. I know you have.

been through layoffs twice. I've never experienced it. And I think it's a horrible experience. And even if it has nothing to do with you, most of the times or your value as a designer, it's still very hard not to have all this doubt, internal questioning. And I think it's a very rough time to go through, especially if you're seeing the market collapsing around you as well. So I think these are very difficult, strange times for

A lot of people, and even the ones who haven't been impacted, are affected in not so difficult ways. I don't want to put an equal sign between being laid off and having to process your colleagues being laid off. But that's also an unpleasant experience. So you work within a team and then some people get laid off and you had relationships with them. You enjoyed working with them. You've been learning from them. And it feels like a fracture. You're probably experiencing some level of guilt as well.

And then there's also the fact that some people experience a high level of anxiety. Even if they weren't fired, they're going through a difficult time imagining that they might get fired, that if in case they get fired, they won't be able to find a job because nobody's hiring right now and the market is in a very rough

place when it comes to openings. And so I think many people are experiencing tough moments right now. So in multiple ways, but of course, being laid off it and you read these horror stories on LinkedIn with people who have been laid off while they were on medical leave or while they were about to give birth or it's just horrible. And you cannot let those get to you, even if you're not the person being laid off. And I think it's much worse in the US where the layoffs have had a much bigger scale. I think Europe is sort of

I'm not minimizing the suffering and pain of Europeans. I mean, in terms and in volumes and even in, I think, in presentations,

It's less dramatic here in Europe. I've been talking about the bad parts, but I do believe that there is a silver lining and that maybe we will unpack those points in this conversation. I do feel that it's very bad, but it's not all bad. Like with anything in life, there are some things, some positive aspects maybe and some hope. So there is a lot of hope and I have some arguments and some numbers for that. I feel that

A level of worrying is absolutely natural. It's normal. I don't want people to feel that I shouldn't be worrying. If you resist your anxiety too much, then it kind of grows. So just embrace the fact that it's a bad moment and it's okay to feel scared. It's okay to feel worried. It's okay to experience anxiety. It's okay to feel guilty, to feel bad for other people. So those are all normal feelings. And I think we should all just process them and not resist or fight them. That's the first point.

But then I feel that you could also frame everything that's going on and some positive points that I personally see. And I'm going to go ahead and list those points. So on one hand, what's happening from reading stories and content from people who have been working in the tech industry for 40 years or since the beginning of the tech industry, I've seen this pattern that

They're talking about that. There are cycles. These crises, economic downturns, like everything happens in cycles. They've seen it before and things have stabilized. The predictableness of the narrative, right? So it's really bad now and everybody feels awful, but then it's definitely going to get better. So it's just how the world works. Things eventually get better and then they're going to get bad again and then they're going to get better. This for me is very reassuring. Somehow I feel like there's this tech story

supernatural force that kind of governs the cycle will sort of align things in the end. And one other sub argument to that is that if we think no further than 2020, 60,000 people were laid off in one quarter of 2020 because of COVID. So companies really panicked. I think we all remember that they went nuts. They were so super stressed out that they're going to lose money, that the world is going to pieces. It's like kind of...

destroy everything. And so they fired a lot of people. We've seen that. And then what happened immediately was that I was one of them. So yes. Yeah. Sorry. I'm still sorry that you experienced that. But I think it also helps us grow. And that's another point maybe for later in this conversation. So

A lot of people were fired. I've checked the numbers. We're talking about over 60,000 people in just one quarter. So in three months and because of the panic effect. And then what we've seen happen after that is that there was a spike in hiring. Like companies went crazy hiring after that. There were so many jobs, so many opportunities. Everybody asked me about designers. Nobody could find designers. Everybody wanted designers. Where are the designers? Not enough designers. I'm not saying that it's going to be the same story now, but it is a

statement to the idea that it's cyclic. And then probably we're going to see good times. I'm not sure if it's going to be 2023, not to create super positive expectations. It looks bad. But eventually, things will start growing, will pick up again after companies stabilize and they sort of understand how to reposition themselves. And this leads me to point two, companies will need to understand how to avoid this in the future. So

even in the market right now, you can tell that some of the people who are getting laid off, they're getting laid off because of irresponsible hiring, because of irresponsible scaling, because companies sort of were greedy. They wanted to hire relentlessly, grow projects without thinking about their sustainability, their practicality, their future, their profitability. And it just feels like there was this explosion in the market, in the tech market. And

You could also see it in the way startups were funded. So there were so many startups that got millions, millions of dollars in funding just with a PowerPoint. They couldn't even tell the market fit. Some people had nothing and they got millions. It felt like...

the world is in an irresponsible place. This was bound to happen in a way. And I'm going to strengthen my argument with the example of Apple. So everybody in the market is talking about how come Apple isn't firing people? They're the star of the tech industry right now, the big companies, because they're not firing. And they're not firing because they never hired irresponsibly. They were always conservative in the number of openings they had. They always hired very

mindfully. And so that's why they're not firing. And maybe other companies could like model that behavior in the future, because of course, it's not just about their profitability, which will be better, probably if they make better predictions. But it's also about the lives they're hurting. So I think the world can continue to be so irresponsible with the ethical implications of running a business so inefficiently. I think it's

It's not so inefficiently if you really think about it. And if you look at the numbers, because many of the companies actually fired 3% of their workforce. So the big companies are not hiring 50% of the people. They're hiring three, five. Sometimes I think I have some exact numbers just to put things into perspective. I think it's interesting. One second. Google fired 6%. That's pretty big. Microsoft 5%.

Amazon 3%, IBM 2%. So they're not doing major restructuring. It's not tremendous. It's not dramatic. Of course, it's dramatic on an individual level. Even if it was like two people fired, it's dramatic for them and it's dramatic in itself. But the scale isn't dramatic. And that's another silver lining, right? So many companies are actually doing pretty strong.

And then I want to take a moment to like point everyone towards this website that I discovered. It's called layoffs.foryourinfo, FYI. And you're going to be able to monitor how bad things are, but also kind of see silver linings between the lines. And then the last point I want to make when it comes to silver lining, and I'm going to pull another statistic out. It's very interesting and people seem to forget.

is that most of these companies like Microsoft, Google, I think even Meta, they hired more people than they fired in the past year. So Microsoft hired 40,000 people and they laid off 10,000. And so Google hired 30,000 people and they fired 12,000.

and then Meta 16,000 people and they fired 13,000. And Apple hired 10,000 people and fired no one. So I mean, probably there are some fires, but not like in this layoff wave. So I'm not saying that laying off 10,000 people is nothing because they hired 30,000 people. It's 10,000 people that are suffering.

I want to be very explicit that I hate talking about numbers, like when I'm talking about people, it feels unpleasant and it feels like it's not the right way to frame it. But then I think it helps putting things into perspective for all the other people who are affected by anxiety and even the people who have been fired. I think maybe it helps to see that there were more opportunities than the opportunities that were cut. So overall, the market is growing. Tech is growing. And

The last point, now this is really the last point because I think I made four points or something. The last, last point I want to make is that the tech companies aren't the only companies in the world. So Google and Microsoft are watching them because they're visible. We're watching Spotify laid off 9%. That's huge.

Right. So we're looking at this big news. The media is promoting this big news. But so many small companies are hiring. So in 2008, when the economic crisis happened, a lot of startups have been founded like Airbnb is a famous example. I think even Instagram took off back then. So anyhow, economic downturn can also mean new opportunities.

And it can mean hiring talent remotely more and more. So you can catch the best talent that's now in the market. So companies becoming more flexible with their policy. So you're also having those kinds of calibrations in the market and other companies are growing. So it's not just that everything is going in a dark place. So yeah, I think I'm going to stop now. I could like go on for two hours. Sorry, I just want to allow you to share your thoughts on what I just said or whatever else you want to add to that.

Yeah, well, to be honest, you did so many fantastic points. I couldn't repeat after you. So it's fantastic that you took this time off. I'm only happy and I'm like agreeing with all of them. I'll start and I kind of like, I'll just sort of sign under what you're saying because I feel like a lot of my points...

are very similar, but like with the twist of my experience on it. So for example, I totally agree with you that a lot of a lot of companies, especially those like scale up sexy startups were overvalued. And especially if you were like in tech tech, like you said, just right now, right, there are other industries, not just tech that you can look for. But like, if your product is

is in the tech and you were raising money, most likely you were overvalued. And we have seen it. There were crazy numbers. And that's very close to me because in that moment when all those crazy numbers were published on LinkedIn mainly, I was looking for a job and I was assessing all those companies. And I remember very clearly and distinctively

how it was reflected in the Czech market, how every single startup that was not visible at all for some reason, while two, three years ago, suddenly became this new sexy unicorn valued 1 billion. And suddenly they popped up like mushrooms and you have suddenly 10 sexy unicorns in Czech Republic.

Well, yesterday there was almost no startups, you know? I do remember seeing like, whoa, something is happening with this market. And then you can see that all the new other startups in like other markets. Usually I'm looking for like European markets. So I definitely have some bias around that. But I think it's kind of like a trend around the world at the same time. I've seen like other startups, really cool companies reaching me out. Klarna, I don't remember like all the names. But I do remember they were reaching out, constantly looking for new people. And you look at those people.

postings and you think, how many designers do you actually need? So there was this very strong demand, just like you said. And it's all very logical after the COVID, where first of all, a lot of people were laid off. Then suddenly there is a very big need for designers. Suddenly all the companies, especially scale-ups, are being overvalued and they suddenly need a lot of designers. They start hiring like

And I was going through that process because just recently, I think I was laid off in a very convenient timing when greater sessions were taking place. A lot of people were looking for the better jobs and all those startups were looking to steal you as a talent. I definitely was very lucky. But still,

the same time, I still went through the layoff and then went through the process of trying to resettle myself and understand what's happening, where am I going now, what should I be doing and all that. I'll talk about it in a second because I think maybe my perspective or my experience could help someone as well. That's the first thing. I totally agree with overvaluing and then it all came with a price just one year later when suddenly the economic crisis hit. Apparently, global economic situation became a

bigger thing overarching theme that made an impact on the market and

And then suddenly we realize, oh my God, we have wasted so much money as a world, right? We realize so much money were poured into those markets that were not even as profitable. And then, yeah, you see that a lot of companies starting to adjust. And that's just all natural. So I'm just kind of trying to reestablish the cause of the problem. So you understand why it's so happening and why this particular year is it is what it is. But coming back to your second, or it was maybe one of the first points,

that the demand is not going anywhere. And that's just it. Like if we just zoom in and think about where we are, why it is happening, why the tech layoffs are happening, it's just a specific timestamp in tech history that is happening. I mean, we can't deny it. Apparently, it's very important that it's happening. But at the same time, the demand is not going anywhere.

And if you zoom out from just this year, maybe last year as well, you will notice that demand is still growing. And I can't remember the exact numbers, but I do believe that NNG was publishing the statistics and projections on how the market is growing. And until 2020-2050, the market is still growing rapidly. We're still a very early industry.

and we're still yet to be established. So the demand is still there. And even if you look like you, you just were throwing a lot of statistics, but if you look out even just on the LinkedIn, which is the most common place to go and search for jobs, only last months, there was more than 90,000 designer jobs worldwide posted.

That's a lot. That's a big number. Yeah, he was saying that a lot of people were laid off. There was like thousands of thousands of people. But at the same time, the demand is still there. Not every single job would be as sexy as the job at the Meta or whatever other company we were working on or we were considering. But at the same time...

the demand is there and the design need will be needed. So instead of focusing on sexy new kind of companies in your CV, it's time to rethink where do we see ourselves and start to be honest and really think about not just a sexy brand in your CV, but really about who you are as a person, what do you want to do, where you want to work.

why exactly Fung was so sexy, why everybody wanted to work there and now look where we are, right? I guess my point is that the perspective is the key. There will be need for you as a designer. The demand is there, but the companies you will be working on, it's going to change a little bit. And I love the point of Joanna was like, it's not just tech companies. The world is so diverse. There are so many applications.

where the designer could be a very good fit and needed, essentially, that you can start looking out for different markets. As well as not just looking for the full-time jobs, but also thinking about other ways of working, right? We were talking a little bit about the freelance here. I think the freelancing will become a bit of a more demanded contract style. So instead of searching for a commitment and like full-time where you have to

pay a lot of taxes. A lot of companies might start looking more for like short-term contracts and freelancers, and that's one way of looking at it. Also, you can think about the startups, especially if you were working in one of those big techs and you get this amazing experience working with best designers, whatever, in the world. You might be now a very great mind or thinker, and your expertise could be very helpful in a startup. That comes as well with a little bit of a

checking your expectations and resetting your expectations. But let's talk about it in the next section when we will start talking about what if it happened to you. I do have some perspective there as well. So next question to you, Ioana, would be, let's say, hypothetically, imagine that our jobs are gone tomorrow, right? Your job is cut. My job is cut. What should we do if we're laid off? How can we help ourselves hypothetically? Or even just if there is anybody who's listening to this episode who is going through it,

Are there any advices we can think about to make it a bit easier? Tough question. I haven't really given it too much thought. I haven't thought about it at all, to be honest. I think I want to split it in two levels. On one hand, there's like the internal work that needs to be done in this situation and then the external tangible work. So on an internal level, what I would personally do is just

allow myself to heal, give myself the time to grieve the job, to accept the shock, to just stay one week without doing anything, not stress too much over, will I be able to find a new job? Just accept that it's a sucky situation. I'm in a difficult moment and I'm going to allow myself to process all the negative feelings that are absolutely normal in this context. So I'm

this is on an internal level. Because I think that for many people, I feel like it might be common sense to just sit with your feelings. But I think that the reflex is to like mobilize immediately, start doing things, act like you're doing well and you're handling well and you're keeping everything under control. And I think sometimes it's really okay to just say, I feel bad because it's a bad situation and I'm going to allow myself to do whatever I want. And if that's not productive, that's okay. And then on a

tangible level, what I would do is I would think about what works best for me personally. So I would start from myself, which is what I keep saying in most aspects of our professional life. And then in my case, my analysis would probably reveal that I'm good at building networks, at

making connections with people and I would use that work that I've been doing in this space to like leverage the power of one-on-one conversations to tell people hey look this is what happened to me I'm looking for a new job if you happen to hear or do you if you're personally hiring and so I would just reach out to my network of course the network is there so that's an advantage but this might be an interesting piece of advice for anyone who's listening build a network

So it's better to have a network. It shouldn't be your main focus, the main focus of your professional life. It's absolutely secondary. The main work should be building your craft, whatever that is. If you want to be an individual contributor or manager, whatever you want to do, just focus on that. But then building a network will definitely help you open doors and

learn about opportunities and just learn in general. So I would reach out to my network and talk about what happened. I would try to like have at least a conversation with you in the podcast. And I would maybe write about what I'm going through just to help normalize the feelings and the experience. I think...

one of the most powerful thing we're seeing these days is that everyone is opening up and everyone is vulnerable and everyone is honest and people are just very raw and unprocessed. And it feels like it's a very authentic time in the tech space right now, in a paradoxical maybe way. So I would open up

and talk about what's going on to hopefully help other people feel understood and feel like they're less lonely in this experience. And then very, very tangibly, I would work on my portfolio, try to make it as good as I can, try to regroup mentally and just focus on what are the jobs I want to target? What are the companies I want to go for?

what are the roles or projects or teams? What would I like? And then let's see what's available. And then I would try to find the, like in Venn diagrams, the common ground between what I would like to do, because you can still choose, even if you've been laid off, it doesn't mean that you have to take the first thing that comes up. You should continue to see yourself as a valuable contributor, as a valuable person, as a valuable designer that has the, let's say, quote unquote, luxury to choose the role they work in. So I would start with whatever would

make me happy and then try to go for those roles. And then if that doesn't turn out, I would like continue to continuously expand my net, my search until we find that. Man, again, somebody was saying this on LinkedIn. I can't remember who, but

The idea was something along the lines of you're going to get much more rejections in your career than you will jobs. And that's what happens to every one of us. You see those tables on LinkedIn, like I've applied to 300 jobs and I got 15 interviews and I got called back four times and then I had one job. So this is the funnel that we're all experiencing, regardless of our talent, seniority. I think it's even harder once you get very senior.

Because there aren't so many roles for that level. So what's happening is that we're all going to experience rejection. So it's going to be a tough moment, a tough period from that perspective. And you just have to prepare because you're reaching out to more companies. It means you're also causing more rejection to yourself. The price you pay for targeting that perfect job and it's absolutely normal and you should just accept it and not make it personal at any moment.

So those are my top tips. I would love to hear yours. Yeah, that makes sense. Totally. I guess I'll just start by reflecting quickly on my experience. And like I already mentioned in this episode, I was in these shoes a couple of times. First, like Ioana said, it was during the COVID. So I was working as a contractor there. And it was specifically hospitality industry, restaurants. So yes, it was very impacted me.

immediately, abruptly in a matter of 500 days. And all the people working on the contract, I was one of them, was also cut.

And that was the first time. Second time was end of 2021. And the company I was working for as well went through this economical interesting roller coaster when they were overvalued in the beginning of COVID because they were all in tech and secure connection, blah, blah. And that was very in demand in the beginning of COVID when everybody became working very much online. However, yeah, at the end of 2021, they didn't deliver on promises and they

just went from being a corporate to actually coming back to the private. So thus, they also had to cut a lot of offices. One of them was my office in Prague. Anyways, my experience was not as bad. Now looking back, I think, I don't know if I can help anyone because I think maybe this year is slightly different situation and I really don't want to diminish anybody's experience. But if it helps in any sort of way, I would just say that

every time it was happening, it was for the best. At least now I can say so. Because even though in the moment it does feel weird and it feels strange and you don't know what's happening and what you're going to do right now. And especially if you were not prepared for it and it was coming sort of out of blue and you were not expecting

and you're questioning why me, what did I do wrong, what I could do better and stuff like that. Most of the times it's really not that you did something wrong. And most of the people who are caught off, it's just happening because they're not reviewing every single person. Think about Google. They laid off in one day, 12,000 people. I can almost judge that

It was not that they evaluated the performance of each of those people and say, oh, this person has to go and this has to stay. It's not fair. Maybe you were one of the high performance, but a lot of the times it just happens that they have to cut the departments. They have to restructure the company.

They don't really have an energy and power to think about every single person. And so it's happening really in automatic way in many, many cases. Unless your role is very critical to the business and without that role, the business cannot survive. Most of the times they're just cutting specific roles, not people.

yeah, it's like, don't think about it. It's something wrong with you. Most of the times it's not. And then when it happens to you, I agree with you on it. It's really useful to take a little bit of the time for yourself and trying to understand what's happening, what's best for you right now. Really give yourself a week to just walk in the park. I don't know. Don't think about work. Don't think that work is everything in your life and kind of focus on what's helpful for you in life, right? Maybe it's family. Maybe it's

your side project, whatever could bring your joy. Don't think about work, think about those other things. And as you're going through that stages of trying to understand and accept the situation, the good thing that happened to me was really a chance to reflect back and to understand where I am at the career, reflect on my experiences in my past two jobs, and really understand the

What do I want to do now? Because in most of the times, like in many cases in the previous jobs, it was just an opportunity that came up, right? And I jumped right into that opportunity. And it was not that I was like very deliberate with, yes, I want to work in that company and I want to take the chance and stuff like that. It was really like, that's a great opportunity. I'm going to take it.

This time around, it was different. And I looked into my career retrospectively and very consciously. And I think it was very, very helpful for me to even understand who I am as a designer, as a professional, my strong sides, my weak sides, my interests, my passions, who I want to work with, my communication style, all that stuff, right? And that helped me to approach the job search in a much better way.

And look, actually, a fun fact, if I can actually brag it. I think because I had this gap and like few months that I could take off for myself, and luckily I'm in Europe, so I did have the severance payment. Because I had that couple of months of break and I could reflect and tailor my portfolio to the companies I'm actually most interested in, and I feel like I would be a great fit. I was going through interview process with a couple of companies. I actually got quite enough of the job offers in the Czech market. I got four job offers and I selected...

the company that I felt most connected to, which I am working at at the moment. And that's the only company out of four drop-offers that didn't have the layoffs this year. Fingers crossed, of course. I don't want to, you never know what's happening. Amazing. I feel like our business is going strong and every week we're talking with founders and they're sharing all the numbers and the business is really growing strong. So actually we just raised money and in the middle of this tech crisis, we

And they were sharing how it went. And it's a different situation right now because the companies are being evaluated in a much more profound way. And you have to make a case so much more solid. Look at the numbers, make sure all your metrics are healthy. You have a sustainable growth. It's a different story. You cannot just show a nice, beautiful pitch deck and there you have a couple of hundreds of millions. Now you really have to work for it.

And now I understand that I made a healthy choice and all the companies that I was considering did have problems, had to go through the EOFs. And again, because I had this opportunity to reflect and look about where do I want to fit and where do I want to work? And that's beautiful. I think we don't often have this opportunity in our market. We're often like running, running, running like hamsters in a wheel, not having a time to look back. So that's the first thing. Second thing is that obviously, like I still said,

It's not going to be easy and you definitely have to take a time off. But as you start coming back, I think it's very important that you have sort of your healthy expectations reset and even prepare for a total comp cut. Because if you think about the story that I think we both, Joanna shared, that a

especially 2021 was the year when everybody was raising lots of money and looking for people. And then because there was a very strong demand, the salaries were higher than the market need, basically. The salary you were hired for was probably overrated. The demand was very high. And today is not the same case. So a lot of those salaries, especially if you were working for a phone company or like all those established

accomplished sexy businesses, your salary was probably higher than the market average. And so honestly, it will be important to reset your expectations. It's going to be more conservative, especially this year. I don't know how about next year. Maybe there will be more and more years again with the history loops where there will be again demand and crazy salaries. But today, if you look at the market, it's not as crazy and not as sexy. And if

that happens to us, we might need to accept the salary cut and that's all right. Most of the companies they're firing today, they're offering severance package and that could maybe help to compensate for some of the time and get adjusted. I really like your point also with reaching out to network. I think that's a very powerful thing. Every time I was searching for a job, network was the big thing. The first job I found because I had a network, second as well. And the third one, it was also directed by one of the

HRs I've met in the conference. Network is huge and it's going to be as well huge moving forward with your next role. So don't underestimate the value of it. Also, feel free to reach out. I like what you said, Ioana, with normalizing this and reaching out and being open about your experience and asking for specific help. Not just asking like, what should I do next? Because that's going to be very general, but being very specific about what help do you need and

I really like recently somebody made a post on LinkedIn with not just like, okay, this happened, feeling not great and sharing just feelings. But that person that was laid off, I think it was an engineer in the Spotify, specifically mentioned what you can do to help her out and

she mentioned something like, I need a reference in LinkedIn. If you were working with me, I would really appreciate it. I need specifically roles. I need somebody with this expertise and stuff like that. So really be specific about how the market could help you because in this case, you are nudging or you're triggering an action, not just like a reaction where somebody will be saying, oh, we're so sorry, but actually a help. And

be very specific about it. The last point, maybe two points, would be to also, like I already mentioned slightly, to consider other markets or types of markets. So considering startup for a year or two, because I feel like that would be a very big need. For example, if you were working in a high big tech with great people around you, you were probably growing a lot. And now those big tech companies are not as active at hiring. Your expertise is

could worse a lot. And a lot of startups would really love to have you to help them accelerate in their growth. So it's a perfect sort of win-win, match-match, whatever you call it. But you could be a great fit there. And also you will be probably a valued member in that company, in that startup. I also think that it helps you with the perspective as well from working in an established company. By changing the environment, you can change the way you're thinking. It

It boosts your experience. It boosts your skills. It boosts your thinking. It's just like beneficial for you as well to not get stagnant in where you are. Or like it was also mentioned before, maybe consider freelancing because I think many companies and many not tech companies

will be looking for a contract source. And it's kind of less risky for them because when you're being hired full-time, there is always the risk that at some point, maybe they will need to do this layoffs. And then they have to pay Seren's package, which is expensive. So contract is becoming slightly more attractive sort of proposition in the market. And I guess to the point was like a

reflection, I would also say it's useful to look at the market trends and try to understand what's happening in the market and how can you be still relevant. Because we keep talking about AI and how the robots will steal our jobs, and we actually have an episode about it, so make sure to go back and listen. But I think it's important that you're still relevant in the market. And my kind of little take on it, and I didn't reflect on it fully yet, but I do feel like we are maybe moving from specialized

thinkers to becoming more resourceful makers. And there is becoming like this increased demand for generalist designers and hands-on leaders rather than very specific. I'm professional in this one, vertical, and I'm looking for this one specific role and stuff like this. I feel like many companies now need those like general great designers.

resourceful makers I've seen somewhere as a term. And again, I don't want to like nail it yet. I just feel like that's becoming a trend at least this year. And that's just natural, logical to the nature of the ecosystem today. And I guess that's it on my side. Anything else you would add here before we jump into the

takeaways? I don't have a lot of things to add because I've been doing all my talking earlier in the episode and I think we've already shared some very consistent ideas and a lot of content for this episode. So I'm happy to jump into our top three findings, which will probably just repeating some of the themes, but sometimes you know that we come up with completely different things in our top three findings. So let's start with that. I love the idea of becoming a more

competitive designer, like taking the opportunity and anxiety and channeling it into something productive, into something positive. So for me, this kind of reframing of my internal negative, let's say, energy has always worked in my career. It really helped me grow. So I was fueled by, let's say, self-doubt, imposter syndrome.

syndrome, anxiety. I was fueled to understand what's causing it. What are the parts where I'm not such a good designer? What are the things that I have to improve? What are the things that I need to learn about? Maybe I should be better at Sigma or whatever. So I kept asking myself these things and I continued to grow based on the answers I was getting. So the thing is that, like you said, companies want designers that are more and more capable. I mean, companies are shifting from

Not all companies. I don't want to generalize. But I see many roles, like even in like a product designer at Facebook has to be great at UI design, not just UX design or understand research. Many of the big companies or the dream companies, they have researchers. So as a designer, you come in and you show strong product thinking skills, but also strong UI skills. That's something that wasn't traditionally discussed before.

a couple of years ago. Like UX was UX and UI was UI and all the posts were like UX versus UI and that was a conversation and the market is changing. You really need to start building the skills that you're lacking right now if you want to make sure that you increase your chances. So you're working towards increasing your chances. I think

There will be a job for anyone for whatever skills you have better, but it won't hurt you to become better in the aspect that you have neglected so far in your career. So that's another tip that I wanted to add. And then other very short findings or ideas that I like. I really like thinking about how crisis are actually rewrites of the narrative. So I feel that it's a bad moment because it's going to be a better moment in the future. So probably I'm hanging on to these kinds of ideas. I think they make life better.

So we're all finding meaning. We're all giving some sort of cosmic explanation to whatever is going on. But my own personal take is that some things are being corrected right now. And there's a huge price that's being paid by, let's say, innocent people, the people who have nothing to do with all the errors that the industry has been doing. I think those same people might be happier in the future. So I think about your own personal example of getting laid off and then finding a better job and then

getting laid off again and then finding a better job. And now the job you're at is one of the most protected in your market. So sometimes even the people who have the worst time, they're probably, I don't want to say like that there's a governing force that makes things better, but sometimes it really is that a kick in the ass is a step forward.

Yeah. And my last point is just that we should stay united as an industry. I think it's a beautiful moment from this perspective. I feel that people are really helping each other. I see so many initiatives, so many efforts, people building lists with openings, lists with people who are looking for jobs. Everybody has mobilized. There's this sense of unity and connectedness, which I've seen before when COVID started. So I think this is beautiful and I think we should preserve it.

And now I'm going to just pass it over to you. I'm kind of still thinking about my top three takeaways, but I'll probably start with something that we mentioned today twice. And I kind of think it's important to again mention it.

So the first one would be to invest in your network now, no matter in which position you are. I think the network is an underestimated asset and you never know when you need it. In fact, you almost always need it in a moment of crisis. So make sure you're networking enough. And I'm not saying that you should network for a sake of benefit tomorrow, but really to help others. And like Joanna said, today we're seeing on LinkedIn or other...

like mediums people trying to help each other that's also a network and you never know when you will need help in returns it's it's really trying to genuinely find friends in the market and that usually really helps when you need something as well then the second point would be to tailor your experience to the needs of the market plus my own twist with your natural interest so instead of just looking for sexy companies like that's the trait right everybody wanted to work

In the fun companies, everybody wanted to work at, I don't know, Airbnb, Spotify, Meta, whatever else there. I can't remember. Google, Netflix, right? Everybody wanted to work there. And it doesn't mean that you're safe for life. You're protected. If you had it there, you'll have it everywhere. Yes, for sure. These companies still look very attractive in your CV. But moving forward, if you're in a position you are, it's only a chance for you to really think about what's the most natural thing

and biggest passion of you? Where do you really want to make an impact in your life? And that's probably a great opportunity to think about it internally, especially if you have those sexy titles already in your CV. And my third point, I guess it's just as simple as like perspective is the key. Always try to remember what is happening in your market and that it couldn't be like this forever. And

Maybe if you feel stuck or if you feel discouraged or not motivated, it's also a good idea to maybe just even change a little bit the nature of your application, of your skills application. Maybe it's a good idea to start doing something you haven't been doing, but always thought about, right? Maybe you were constantly working full time for that demanding, challenging job and you couldn't find time for personal projects. Maybe you can now do that and maybe write a book. Maybe your expertise could help somebody else.

or, I don't know, do another course or start blogging or whatever. Just like, again, perspective is the key. This will not be always like this and the market will be changing. There will be other like loops happening. Maybe if in the moment you don't feel like you want to start searching for the new job because you're not ready, there are other ways you can kind of manifest and kind of apply your skills. So it could be also a great opportunity. With every crisis comes an opportunity. And I also always want to add there, reflect.

Don't forget to reflect to kind of make sure you're on the right track, you're in charge of your career, and you're doing what you're most interested and passionate about. That is very important. That would be my last takeaway for today. With that being said, I'd like to say thank you so much, everyone who have joined our episode. If you are still listening to it for some reason...

Thank you so much for listening. If you're listening, it probably means it was helpful. I really hope so. And if it was helpful, please go ahead and rate us on any podcast platform of your choice, be it Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts. We're on every of those platforms, and we would really, really appreciate your rating. And also, if you're experiencing some problems or some issues or something,

questions regarding your design role, job, work, feel free to submit your question under the episode. You'll find different links. You'll find also stickies where you can drop your question. We're always, always looking out for new topics that we could talk about and make it relevant to you. And that's it on my side. Thank you for listening and see you in the next episode. Thank you, everyone. See you. Bye-bye. Bye.