Comment by dkobia
12 days ago
I've often heard the narrative from hiring managers over the years that a prospect who's been laid off probably doesn't make a good hire, especially if they've been laid off multiple times.
In this wonderfully written and inspiring piece, perhaps we should consider that the real issue isn't the individual's capability but rather that their potential has been misdirected or they haven't been in environments that recognize and cultivate their unique skills.
> especially if they've been laid off multiple times.
Every fantastic senior dev I have worked with has been laid off several times. Our industry is not immune to companies failing. You shouldn't discount people just because they've been laid off.
Your post reminded me of some thoughts I've had about a similar topic over the last few years.
I'm a scientist, and I've often thought about how the work I and others would do would be different in different funding environments. That's the same idea of people's "potential [being] misdirected" that you are talking about. People often chase the newest shiny things and follow the money for both hiring and funding, but that isn't always good for both the people themselves and for innovation as a whole. We need to make it possible for people to develop their talents and skills, whatever they are and even if they don't match the current needs or desires of the environment, so they we have experts and experienced folks when the time comes for those innovations and technologies. It's the same idea as diversification in investing, with more agility and resilience gained from a diversity of skills and experience. I hope more funding managers and hiring managers realize the value of fostering people's potentials rather than focusing myopically on supposed current needs.
This makes me think about all the psych grads, that went to school, wanting to help people, but are now writing dark patterns.
But they are being paid a lot more than they would get, helping people.
That's a great example of this kind of problem. People are pragmatic and take the jobs that are available, even if that it's not what they originally planned for or what would be more helpful. I've done the same myself a few times.
"often heard the narrative from hiring managers over the years that a prospect who's been laid off probably doesn't make a good hire"
While i'm unsurprised to hear that such a sociopathic and non-scientific narrative exists from hiring managers, I'm curious how they find out whether a departure was a layoff. For big companies, sure, you can probably tell that if someone left various tech darlings in late 2022 that it was probably a layoff. But like outside of that, how the heck do you know? Are you googling "$coname layoffs $year" for every entry on a resume you're screening or something? Or are you literally just asking them "tell me why you left each job" and people are for some reason answering honestly?
This just seems really hard to actually pin down unless employees are volunteering the information. Even if you did leave right on a publicly-known layoff date, it seems pretty easy to just explain that "uh yeah they were doing so poorly they laid off X% of people, I left for greener pastures". Or that general sentiment but passed through 1 or 2 layers of word-smithing.