Five Questions: We’ve all been made redundant. Here’s what happened next
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Welcome to Fear and Greed Q&A, where we ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics, and more. I'm Michael Thompson, and good morning, Sean Aylmer. Good morning, Michael. Good morning to you, Adam Lang. Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Sean. All right, five questions all on one theme, and today that theme is redundancy because a lot of people are going through it right now. A lot of job cuts across a whole range of industries, be it for AI or just for other changes within workplaces. The three of us have all been there. In fact, fear and greed probably doesn't exist without it. So I want to ask you some thoughts.
Some bad news, Michael. Adam and I have been talking.
And as much as we like you.
That's right. We figured this would be the kindest way to do it. That's right. We didn't bring a support person.
Support person. Well, Adam's going to be the support person and I'm going to do the redunding.
What are the emotional impacts of losing a job?
Yes. Okay. All right. Well, that would be quite a surprise, right, to get it – I want to know though, let's start with question number one. What was the first thing you felt when you finished up at your job? And I mean, they don't fit into one category necessarily. It's more of just an abrupt end to employment for whatever reason. What was the first thing you felt when you finished at your job? Was it kind of really fear? What was it, Sean?
Yeah.
A slight sense of emptiness, I think. I had been at Fairfax for many, many years and I had enjoyed it and I didn't want to go. I did not want to go either, but it wasn't a choice I would have made myself at that point. And I think I felt a sense of emptiness. And there's a whole self-worth thing, especially for many men, I think, tied up in what you do in your career. And I was never really angry or anything like that because I kind of thought it was a pretty good decision. to make me redundant. And I meant that genuinely. And the CEO was decent enough to call me into his office and say it to me, which I really appreciated the fact that, you know, he was face-to-face. And it was a good call. Like, you know, I think it was fair.
But empty is probably the thing I felt immediately afterwards. What about you, Adam?
Uncertain, I think. It was... The first, because it's happened a couple of times to me, and both times I knew or believed it was coming. right, in varying degrees. But the first time was a company that I was working for got sold internationally and that was really quiet and I didn't know. But what I was told is, hey, can you be available tomorrow morning? And this was an American-owned company. Bring a support person. It's a giveaway. Oh, it was before those days. It was a phone call from the US head office. And I was just told the day before to be available. And you go, okay, well, this is probably going to be a redundancy, an announcement. Or this little faint hope, maybe they're doing something big and they want me to move overseas, you know, or something like that.
And so I thought 90% redundancy and 10% possibility. And so when you find out, you go, cool. It was, you know, my response was right. Understood. How do you want to play this out from here? And the fellow on the other end of the phone just said, oh, I don't know actually. I didn't know how you were going to react. I didn't think you would be this constructive about it. So I'll have to get back to you. So it was a bit unusual in that sense. But very human, you know, they were just telling me the job's going to be over. And the next time it was leading up to a company getting sold again and that was something I was very much part of. So I was certain, probably 90% that I was out at that time and 10% oh, maybe my job will change.
So I guess it's the reckoning of all those possibilities and you know the likely one and then you just settle into it. But once you've settled into it, it's like, oh, I've lost my sense of gravity now. I've lost my routine and you can know about that in theory but you can't know about it in practice, like what to do from here because that's uncertain.
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