Stefanie Spera and the Early Termination
Stefanie Spera and the Early Termination
Dear Friends,
The recent wave of layoffs in the tech industry came as a shock to many. Not just to those who were affected, but to those who viewed big tech as invincible. Over 60,000 employees have been laid off so far in 2023, and we're not even done with the month of January yet. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Salesforce each had layoffs of 8,000 or more. (Apple is notably absent from this list.)
Layoffs aren't new, so let's go back in time to the year 1994. "Big tech" didn't exist outside of Microsoft, which had a mere 15,000 employees at the time. The United States was out of the '90-'91 recession, but half a million people were still laid off that year. The economy was in transition.
Dr. Stefanie Spera, a psychologist in Texas, worked at an outplacement firm that saw a steady stream of laid off people trying to find new work. Stefanie's life didn't enter Hard Mode. She figured out a way for others to get through their own Hard Mode.
Stefanie had 63 recently laid off subjects and an idea for an experiment. She told the treatment group to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings related to their job loss, 20 minutes a day, for 5 days straight. She told another group, a control group, to write about Time Management, a buzzword at the time. A third control group was tracked and weren't given any special instructions.
Four months into the experiment, Stefanie cut it short. The group that journaled about their thoughts and feelings were finding new jobs significantly faster than both the controls. 53% of the treatment group found jobs compared to 18% in the other groups, despite having the same number of job interviews.
After terminating the experiment early, she shared her results and invited all the control subjects to take part in the journaling exercise.
It's hard to say exactly how the writing exercise worked. A reasonable guess would be that the people who were laid off harbored feelings of resentment and anger. They felt betrayed by their company and had the added stress of household finances, friction with their spouse, and so on. Those who didn't vent their anger revealed it to potential employers - an instant turnoff. Those who did vent their anger into a safe space (like a notebook) seemed more well-adjusted and got more job offers as a result.
There are good ways and bad ways to cope with job loss. For example, Bouqs founder John Tabis became a dog walker after being laid off. Being around puppies made him more optimistic. He would later start his flower business and suffer a long string of failures - being rejected publicly on Shark Tank, being rejected privately by dozens of venture capitalists, and failing to deliver hundreds of bouquets on Mother's Day. Nevertheless, he remained optimistic, hustled, and ultimately succeeded.
On the other hand, some people handle job loss poorly. John DeLorean famously got pushed out as a young hotshot executive at General Motors and started his own car company. When it began to fail he tried to hustle up cash by selling 50 pounds of cocaine to some undercover FBI agents. (Oops.) His car is best known for a starring role in Back to the Future.
Job loss can mess with one's head in the most subtle, pernicious ways. The Monday after might seem relatively normal. It might even seem like a vacation, but it's not. For a lot of people, if not everyone, earning a living is a fundamental part of their self-worth. Take that foundation away and everything else starts to crumble.
There are a lot of tools available to work through a layoff. Stefanie Spera gave us one 29 years ago, and I hope it isn't forgotten.
Keep Going,
Geoff
Notes
Microsoft in 1994 (I’m going to have to watch that video someday)
Expressive Writing and Coping with Job Loss (Spera, et. al.)
Photo by Andrey Popov on Shutterstock