American Greatness Stumbles

On Layoffs and the Brutality of Specialization

By guest author Edwin Colter.

A 7:30 AM 1:1 with my manager. Suspicious. But then he is based in NYC and is a perfect example of the Peter Principle — someone promoted to manage people based on his individual contributor efforts who in fact turns out to be a terrible manager. Competent in what he does with excellent domain knowledge, but an ability to run a team or bring structure? Not a chance. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

I join the meeting, and almost instantly the HR lady joins.

Ah, this.

Another year, another layoff.

I’m the wrong side of 35, and for the second time in a 12-month span I am being laid off. The story is always the same — the line of the company has to be seen to keep going up, and so we need to make cuts. Weirdly it always seems to coincide with more Indians being hired, though at least these ones are being kept in India.

The first time it was 20% of the company; this time, it’s closer to 10%. Just eight months I had there. Frankly, I hated it. It wasn’t quite fake work, but a bad boss and an uninspiring industry don’t make for a great combination. That fat 150k salary sure was nice, though. At my previous company, I had seen a brutal round of layoffs the year before I was cut — the same CEO had done similar before I joined during Covid. Funny how every time this guy tried to grow the company past 200 people it failed and the layoffs were inevitable, but the board let him stick around. Line must go up.

There is this weird mantra in the U.S. about the cutthroat nature of capitalism and layoffs, but in truth we’re stuck in a fake economy with fake jobs but without the ethnic heart of the Japanese. Their economy is the future we keep trying to run away from — stagflation. People there kept in unproductive jobs because the company has a duty to them. Americans like to ridicule it, zero growth and so on, but having visited, I have to say I’d take that sliding decline because it is encased in a total ethnic homogeneity that makes it a nice place to live. A society for its people that looks after its people.

Here we have that as well, but it’s become the moneyed class of the vulture capitalists. They have seemingly infinite money and will pour it into whatever of their pet projects they want to keep seeing “growth.” It’s not even about profit anymore for them, just growth and commoditizing every last thing they can. Meanwhile, the ever-shrinking remaining middle class are pushed out. It’s what I fear — and you hear stories about it. Guys like me. Wrong side of 35, who never quite broke through to management. Too senior for the junior roles, and too junior to make the leap upwards — you make that leap upwards within a company willing to invest in you and promote you. Even if you too are the next failed manager, you become more secure than before.

Last summer, it was over 300 job applications. A mere two companies gave me interviews. I’ve worked almost nonstop out of college and in foreign countries. Thing is, though, I’m a white guy. Ordinary in that respect, competent as well. Not a job-hopper: five years, three-year stints, and so on. Yet I’ve been in the room as my peers have talked about the need to diversify — how white engineers have pulled the ladder up after them — insisting on a woman or a minority at the expense of competence. Sick stuff. You speak up against it, but to not much avail. It isn’t just that kind of hidden ideology you’re now facing, either — it’s the brutality of specialization. We’re becoming insects. Algorithms filter you out because they have to. Yet it is farcical — okay, maybe I don’t have knowledge of financial services or identity verification, but trust me, that shit isn’t that difficult to learn. Trying to change industry now seems harder than ever — you get trapped and then slowly unemployable as time goes on.

We’ll see how this go-around is — the neetbucks ain’t much, but they are just enough. The severance package isn’t big for the guy who was there only eight months. Tighten the belt and push on. My earliest ancestors on this continent date to 1670. They had it rough; this, this is nothing. Late-stage empire vibes for sure, but the shower is still hot. There are countless others like me out there, maybe awake to the horror, maybe not. It’s hard to escape it now in any tech-related industry — globalization is eating them. For me the best have been the Russians, the worst the Indians. Not hard to work out why. American greatness has stumbled, and many have dropped the ball or thrown it across the globe. We’re going to pick it up again, somehow.

That’s what I tell myself, what I tell other white guys I hear going through the same.

If that’s you, know this: nothing is over.