Notes From the Epicenter: Soul Searching in San Francisco
Last night I went to a bar in downtown San Francisco to meet a number of journalists I used to work with. On the way inside, I passed through a somber knot of patrons chain smoking in the heated atrium the proprietors had set up to get around California’s ban on smoking in bars. It turns out the patrons were the part of a new urban subgroup: the victims of the ever-present dot-com chill.
This was eerily serendipitous in a way because I and the very journalists I was on my way to meet had in fact been laid off ourselves, exactly two years ago that night. And we had commemorated our newly unemployed status with a drink at that very same bar. But there was something markedly different about the group of just-cut-loose dot-commers there tonight from what I was able to remember of our own outlook two years ago.
We had been shocked and troubled by our layoffs and more than willing to drown our sorrows. That particular night ended regrettably for me, when I began telling everyone who would listen that I wasn’t afraid of them — a pluck-under-pressure that would serve me well in the years of unemployment to follow. The newly unemployed people at the bar last night were different. They seemed resigned, like being laid off wasn’t a particularly big surprise and they were just glad the inevitable had finally gotten out of the way.
“Layoff” Doesn’t Mean the Same Thing Anymore
The word layoff used to fill most Americans with the same sort of dread as the phrase nuclear proliferation. But now layoffs are a common story on the nightly news and many people who don’t already occupy the higher echelons of a corporation regularly find themselves changing jobs as often as once a year. A friend of mine worked at the product review site Productopia for all of ten days before it went belly up. There is something disconcerting in the idea that a layoff should be viewed with all the fear and loathing of a bad hair day, or perhaps the cutting of a not-so-ripe fruit. Even worse is the way layoffs are often handled by newer companies (read, Internet start-ups).
If you know people who work for Internet startups, you’ve probably heard at least a couple of horror stories, and the press has been writing about mismanagement for months. For instance, the New York Times ran a recent article (registration required) detailing some rather egregious errors in judgement on the part of dot-com management. At one dot-com, for instance, management called a meeting in the office of recently laid-off employees, with the employees in the room packing their belongings.
Apparently I was lucky to have been laid off (twice now, and I’m counting) from businesses that had been around for years (and by years I don’t mean just two) and were decidedly more savvy about labor issues than many dot-coms. But then, what can we really expect from free-spending companies who supply their employees with free Jolt cola so they can work longer hours and free scooters so they can get across their warehouse office spaces faster?
Nice Freelance Work if You Can Get It
What is particularly interesting about the increasing spate of layoffs in the two years since I experienced my first one is what laid off employees have chosen to do with their time. According to an informal poll I’ve been conducting for some time (greatly aided by the occurrence of so many laid-off journalists in one place last night), the answer for many people is not to go back to work at all.
More and more people in today’s labor market are working as freelancers or contractors. In many cases people are turning to freelance work after being fed up with the relative instability of the world of full-time employment. Close to half of the journalists I met last night are now freelancing, most of them after more than one layoff.
The freelance and contract life can be rewarding for many reasons (besides the ability to go to matinees). For one, many people find staying at home reduces their cost of living. As one new freelancer told me last night, she no longer has to pay other people to do things like mow her lawn, and she has the energy to shop and cook rather than eat out regularly. People who work at home are also able to enjoy the house or apartment they are working to keep, unlike some of their office-bound brethren, who can regularly be found pulling 60- to 80-hour work weeks away from home.
Of course not all freelancers choose to work from home (trust me, it can get lonely). I have a designer friend who has been working in an office as an in-house contractor for years. She enjoys working with people, but also wants the freedom to take longer vacations and to change jobs without having to change her life’s entire infrastructure. Another friend used a contract job as an entrée to a new position after a dot-com layoff.
Breaking the Work Addiction
In his new book, “The Future of Success,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich argues that Americans (including himself) have become addicted to the security of working as much as possible. But if you ask me, people are starting to give up the new insecurity of working as much as possible for the relative security of working sporadically, and actually spending their leisure time.
I had the good fortune to meet Robert Reich yesterday, before my date with the journalists who’ve been laid off too many times, during an internship I have at the local public radio station (my way of warding off the loneliness of the freelance life). “How’s your internship going?” he asked me. “Great,” I replied. “I work for free.”
Read more by Andrea Dudrow.
This article was last modified on January 6, 2023
This article was first published on March 5, 2001
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