Lately, we’re documenting our layoffs on TikTok. Inside the inevitable collision of remote work, mass job cuts, and sharing it all.
It's playing out across screens everywhere: Employees log into Zoom only to find out they’re being let go, sometimes alongside hundreds of colleagues. And now they're pushing back by posting it all on TikTok.
Our guest is Amanda Hoover, a staff writer at Wired.com who recently wrote a story called The Stark Realities of Posting Your Layoff on TikTok. She unpacks the viral layoff ecosystem, how HR practices are being outed on social media, and the unexpected upside of uploading your job loss trauma.
Also, Vass and Katrina talk about their own tragicomic layoff stories.
This is Lately. Every week, we take a deep dive into the big, defining trends in business and tech that are reshaping our every day.
Lately is a Globe and Mail podcast.
Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad.
The show is hosted by Vass Bednar and produced by Andrea Varsany.
Our sound designer is Cameron McIver.
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Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions, or ideas to lately@globeandmail.com.
Katrina Onstad [00:00:01] We're just getting started on Lately and we'd love to get your opinion. There's a brief survey at the end of the episode, and as a thank you for taking it, we'll give you a chance to win some prizes. More details at the end of the show.
Vass Bednar [00:00:15] Have you ever lost your job?
Katrina Onstad [00:00:17] Yeah, I'm of a certain age. I work in media in Canada. I have lost many jobs, but one of my favorite layoff stories is in a certain newsroom. This didn't happen to me, but I was working there at the time where an email went out to half the newsroom, and those people were called into a room and laid off and escorted from the building, with their personal belongings tucked under their arms and their heads hanging low. This may be apocryphal, but a friend I worked with says that they received the email and just didn't go into the room, and therefore kept their job.
Vass Bednar [00:00:53] What?
Katrina Onstad [00:00:53] So? I don't know if that's true or not, but I love that story. But those are the old ways.
Vass Bednar [00:00:58] Those are the old ways.
Katrina Onstad [00:00:59] What about you? Have you ever been laid off?
Vass Bednar [00:01:01] Yeah. I experienced a layoff a few weeks before the global pandemic set-in in 2020, and I hated it. It was brutal. It was very stressful, very surreal. And to have the kind of one two punch of the rug being pulled out from under you. You've got to rethink and remake who you are, your identity, what you're good at. You have to be brave and vulnerable and tell people that you're looking for work. And then suddenly I had to cancel all my coffee meetings and Google coronavirus, you know? So it was a definitely a scarring experience for me. It doesn't feel like it's actually that far in the rearview mirror for me.
Katrina Onstad [00:01:38] I'm sorry that happened to you. It's terrible. And it is traumatic to lose a job. I mean, there are actual health repercussions for it, and our identities are so tied to work in our culture that losing a job really feels like an attack on the self. Whether or not you lose the job because of performance issues or as a result of a reorganization of a company.
Vass Bednar [00:01:56] And there have been plenty of layoffs in Canada across all sorts of sectors. In retail, we've seen Canada Goose saying goodbye to over 800 employees in March, and Indigo laid off an undisclosed number of employees, but especially high numbers in the tech sector. So this year, more than 75,000 people laid off worldwide. These are people who are now competing with each other for new jobs in the sector, and also media major cuts at Vice and at CBC. And in February, Bell Canada cut 4800 jobs. They also announced they were selling radio stations, ending newscasts. And last week CEO Mirko Bibic was grilled before Parliament. He was totally in the hot seat and the CEO defended the cuts, pointing out that the entire industry is in crisis. But MPs questioned him really hard about the corporate bonuses and government subsidies to a $40 billion company. So people are pushing back, looking at this contrast in terms of where value is being created in a company and who's being rewarded while we have these narratives that we can't sustain jobs and the livelihoods of employees, many of whom have been with the company for quite some time.
Katrina Onstad [00:03:10] Right. And that push back in Parliament was articulating a question that a lot of people are asking, which is whether or not this layoff carnage is rational or just opportunism on behalf of these companies. You know, change for change sake. The market likes disruption and layoffs give companies a short term shareholder bump, even if the long term benefits of mass layoffs are debatable. And that is something that many economists question. But the question we want to ask is adjacent to this. This week we're talking about viral layoffs. I'm Katrina Onstad, a producer on Lately.
Vass Bednar [00:03:42] And I'm Vass Bednar, the host of Lately. We know layoffs are happening, but let's unpack how; abruptly and on Zoom. In March, Vice started to lay off a group of people through a virtual town hall, and employees responded by throwing up all these thumbs down emojis. And they actually had to stop the meeting because of that push back. A screen recording of that experience has been viewed more than 2 million times.
Katrina Onstad [00:04:07] Yeah, and according to the union Unifor, Bell did something similar. They laid off some of their employees in a virtual town hall. I don't think that was recorded or I certainly didn't see it. So that's one part of what's happening with this kind of layoff content that's circulating online. But a lot of people are also secretly filming their layoffs their one on 1 or 2 on one layoffs and posting them on TikTok or Insta. It's quite interesting. It's very new.
Vass Bednar [00:04:31] Very new. It's like a really scary episode of Undercover Boss, but it adds this layer to the theater of letting someone go. And maybe it's a way for people to reclaim a little bit of agency, right? When you're starting to feel powerless or disposable, this is a way to kind of reclaim some of that power, or at least have your grief and frustration be witnessed by others.
Katrina Onstad [00:04:54] I think that's probably why they are so compelling to watch. There's something sort of prurient about this getting up inside the wound, but I do think it reflects the fact that workers today feel so powerless. The reality for so many of us is gig work, precarious jobs. And that's up against the lie that many modern workplaces sell us about, 'bring your whole self to work, and wellness, and we're a family.' And then that moment when you're laid off is when you recognize how inauthentic that relationship is, and you do want to burn it down. So recording and outing the company for that hypocrisy, I think is something else that's going on here. And in the case of tech employees, they're using the master's tools to do it right, like they're using technology.
Vass Bednar [00:05:34] I think it's also giving companies some ideas on how to handle off boarding. And that aftermath of layoffs more effectivel. Your conduct during a layoff, not just as an employee, but as a firm, can influence future talent decisions and also color the minds of consumers.
Katrina Onstad [00:05:51] Yeah. But then on the flip side, do you want to hire someone who illicitly filmed their layoff and posted it? I don't know, like how an employee engages in a layoff video could have repercussions for them down the line.
Vass Bednar [00:06:03] It could, it could. I mean, I also wonder if with remote layoffs, maybe we just haven't mastered the medium and how to handle unemployment relationship through a screen. Yeah, we don't seem to have the right norms yet. And just like you can't text message breakup, maybe you shouldn't be able to lay someone off online at all. Maybe this is a knock on the door, a cup of coffee, an in-person conversation that's going to take a bit more time than an 11 minute script reading.
Katrina Onstad [00:06:30] A good rule. There has to be a more humane way to lay people off. So who are we going to talk to about this phenomenon?
Vass Bednar [00:06:37] I wanted to make sense of this radical trend with journalist Amanda Hoover. She's a staff writer at Wired.com, and she recently wrote a story called The Stark Realities of Posting Your Layoff on TikTok. This is Lately. What's the worst layoff story you've ever heard?
Amanda Hoover [00:07:10] I've seen many being talked about on social media. There's always ones that are close to home, though. You know, I had a friend recently who was locked out of slack and locked out of their email and everything before they actually got on the layoff call with a manager. So you hear these stories more and more, I think about people that are finding themselves, just like waiting for the calendar invite. They know it's coming. They don't know if they're a part of it, and there's just so much anxiety in those moments. And then additionally, it can feel really cold and jarring to not have access to, like any of your your files, your contacts for people, a way to say goodbye in the way that some of these have been conducted.
Vass Bednar [00:07:53] So there's this trend of people turning on their phones and recording and then posting their remote layoffs on social media. And recently one went viral on TikTok. It was Cloudflare employee Brittany Pietsch.
Unknown [00:08:09] Hi Brittney.
Brittany Pietsch [00:08:10] Hi.
Unknown [00:08:10] Thanks for meeting with me. We have an important meeting today. We finished our dilations of 2023 performance. This is where you have not met Cloudfare expectations for performance. We decided to part ways with you.
Brittany Pietsch [00:08:24] Yeah, I'm gonna stop you right there.
Unknown [00:08:26] Sure.
Brittany Pietsch [00:08:28] So I started August...
Amanda Hoover [00:08:30] She sort of was pushing back, saying that she hadn't been with the company very long. She had been making progress explaining the ways that she saw herself as valuable and the progress that she had made, and that she was very, very confused by this. She mentioned not really knowing the people that were conducting her layoff, and the surprise that comes with that of being pulled into a meeting with people at a large company that you haven't worked with who are now giving you this information.
Vass Bednar [00:08:58] Right. So in that way, she was pointing to it's not only the medium, that's the message with remote layoffs, but also who the messenger is. What kind of response did that video get?
Amanda Hoover [00:09:10] It went so viral that of course it got like a mixed bag of response. But there was a lot of support for her, and there were a lot of people in her corner saying that her standing up for herself, her articulating her value was really moving. And I think that's one of the things that made that video go so viral. I don't think it was necessarily that it was just a layoff video, but it was the way that she pushed back. On what she was being told.
Vass Bednar [00:09:35] Yeah, nine minute videos, I think are a little bit long for TikTok or maybe in the information age, but 2.4 million views, probably more by now is pretty substantial. Do you have any other layoff videos that come to mind that have similarly gained traction?
Amanda Hoover [00:09:52] That one really stood out and really like rose to the top. But I've seen others where people might not film their actual layoff, but they're kind of documenting themselves in the moments leading up to it because they've maybe awoken to the surprise calendar invite and know that it's coming. There was one woman who really was saying, like, it's three hours until I get laid off and this is what I'm doing. Here's two hours. These kind of day in the life TikTok videos that are popular with this sort of dark spin on like, not come get ready with me, but come get ready with me to get laid off. Then there's a mix of whether or not people record their actual layoff. Sometimes people are crying, just talking to the camera, asking what are they going to do next? This was such an awkward experience and, you know, deciding to post it anyway, even though they've become quite vulnerable and shown all of these emotions.
Vass Bednar [00:10:41] So who's posting about getting laid off? Because I have a sense it's not the CEOs or the board members making these TikToks.
Amanda Hoover [00:10:48] They seem to be young people, seems to be a lot of women. But I've seen some men have made videos like this as well. It seems to be people that are Gen Z or Millennials, maybe even the younger end of Millennials. So these are obviously people that are among the more active cohorts on TikTok to begin with, but they're also generations- they're a little bit more used to sharing the positive and the negative of their life online.
Vass Bednar [00:11:12] And what's the entertainment value here? Why do people watch that? What drew you in?
Amanda Hoover [00:11:17] You're drawn in because you really are seeing somebody in a vulnerable moment. And I think it speaks a lot as well to the climate that we're in where, you know, particularly I cover the tech sector and tech companies have had so many layoffs, you know, starting in late 2022. And that really wasn't the norm for this industry for a while. You know, especially throughout the pandemic, there was so much growth at big tech companies, even at startups. And then we started to see a reversal of that. It was right sizing of these companies. It was less capital going to startups, so there was less hiring. So it's this huge reversal of these industries that have had really high salaries, lots of perks at some of these big companies. And now you're seeing people facing the downside to the way that the tech industry is changing. And I don't know if that's entertaining to people. Perhaps it is. I think it's more just...It's a way in, you know, to see the personal side of what happens when tech companies make decisions like this, or really any company.
Vass Bednar [00:12:16] What is layoff contagion?
Amanda Hoover [00:12:18] Yeah, it's this idea that people who look at these industries and economists have where if one big company says we're going to cut 10,000 jobs, you might see another company of a similar size in a similar field be like, oh, maybe it's a great time for us to also cut 5000 jobs, 10,000 jobs. It's this idea that when one firm makes this decision, another one might follow because you can kind of all be like, look, it's justified. It's the industry. But it's really hard to say when you look at any given company if this is behind what they're doing, if it really is a dire economic situation. But we've seen so many tech layoffs that there's this idea that it's a safe time for companies to make these layoffs, and it's justifiable when so many others have done this.
Vass Bednar [00:13:08] And layoffs are fundamentally different from being fired right? They're where you're exiting a job but it's not about your performance, but rather a reflection, either mismanagement or the excuse that tends to be brought up, which is the capital 'E' economy. Do you think that that distinction between a layoff and being fired is part of why people are more okay peeling back that curtain and sharing those experiences?
Amanda Hoover [00:13:34] Particularly in this environment where there are so many tech layoffs, it's still is very hard to lose a job. It's very stressful. But knowing that there have been hundreds of thousands of tech workers laid off, you're sort of in a community of people. And by posting, you're also showing that you're out there on the job market and potentially open for work. And if your video does fairly well, there's a chance that maybe you get noticed. So I think that it is quite different, if you were to broadcast being fired and they were saying all of the transgressions that you've made or that you stole from the company or did something really terrible, I don't think that's the thing that most people would want to be out there for the public.
Vass Bednar [00:14:12] Could there be repercussions for these employees or former employees who are engaging in this recording?
Amanda Hoover [00:14:19] Yeah, it can be risky. You know, if you make a video just of yourself talking about being laid off and you keep it very personal, that's probably not so risky. But if you are recording somebody from your company without their knowledge, that can be illegal depending on where you are in the world. So that's a legal issue. It's also the way that some of these videos might be edited if context is removed, if you really paint the company in a false light, a bad light, without other context of the conversation that potentially could have defamation repercussions, there's also potentially disclosing proprietary company information. You know, that could be something that would be risky as well. And because these are layoffs, people are probably being offered some type of severance. Severance agreements can have all kinds of clauses in them to make sure you get your money. So there are some risks depending on what the content of the video is for sure.
Vass Bednar [00:15:12] And in Canada, we found some advice that offered; if you secretly record a conversation and post it online, this could violate certain privacy laws as well as the conditions of your severance offer, as you just said. So instead of recording your termination or layoff meeting, it's recommended that you write things down the old fashioned way using a notepad or a computer. May not translate as effectively to TikTok. So what about repercussions for the employer from these videos?
Amanda Hoover [00:15:40] Yeah, I think we've seen some companies kind of apologize or have to address this. That happened with the Cloudflare video, where the CEO had to make a statement on X, formerly Twitter. I believe the wording was we weren't wrong to get rid of this employee, but it could have been done in a better way.
Vass Bednar [00:16:11] So zooming out for a second. How are these remote layoffs fundamentally different from what used to happen when a company engaged in a kind of set of layoffs?
Amanda Hoover [00:16:22] From what I've known from more of fully in-person workdays, I think a lot of these happened in one on one conversations in person. There is then a lot of tension and awkwardness of you have to pack up your things. You have to leave the office. You were, you know, walking out with your box of knickknacks or whatever you've kept on your desk in front of your coworkers. So I think that doing this remotely kind of avoids some of that, but it doesn't seem that it's the perfect solution, because I don't know if there is a perfect solution to terminating people.
Vass Bednar [00:16:55] It's going to be unpleasant no matter what. So then what is the actual problem with this mode of layoff? Because I think a devil's advocate would say, isn't a remote firing just a logical extension of remote work? And isn't it just more efficient? It's less emotional overall. Let's get that Band-Aid off and move on.
Amanda Hoover [00:17:13] Yeah, and I think there probably are ways to do this remote that are just as ethical or as ethical as can be to doing it in person. You know, it would be quite important for people to have conversations with their actual manager, ways to access people's contact information so that it doesn't feel like such a sudden shut off, especially if you're working remote. Maybe you've never met your coworkers in person, but you want to stay in touch. You want to have these connections like giving people the appropriate time to tie up loose ends so it's not as cold and jarring.
Vass Bednar [00:17:48] Well, speaking of cold and jarring, there's also this Zoom town hall format. That's where a leader of a company, also through a screen, delivers news to either like all employees or a subset of employees. I'm thinking of a viral video of a Vice Media town hall from earlier this year. The COO, that's chief operating officer, Cory Haik, starts talking, laying the groundwork for layoffs.
Cory Haik [00:18:11] You know, it's a very, very, very difficult time in the macro landscape. I think you all know that-
Vass Bednar [00:18:17] And then right away there's a thumbs down total emoji takeover. That's where people are pressing buttons on their screen. And the thumbs down emoji is just kind of crowding out the speaker fluttering down the screen. It's totally raining emojis. The screen then changes to a boardroom of higher ups, and an executive at the table just shuts it all down.
Unknown [00:18:38] Cory, I just want to, it's impossible with all the emojis. From my side. And and I think, we're going to organize this in a, in a way where we can actually give information to people who want to receive it. In a way, it's meant thank you for your, your time and your-
Vass Bednar [00:18:58] And that's the end of the meeting. There seemed to be more of a sense of camaraderie or solidarity in that almost active audience experience, even though people are passively behind their screens and not in a room together. How do you situate that in this range of reactions to the remote layoff trend?
Amanda Hoover [00:19:17] I think there's something to be said that it's maybe not entirely about whether these layoffs happen remote or not. The recordings are resonating because there's a bit of just a push back and people being more vocal and not just wanting to only post really positive things about their employers. We had like the quiet quitting trend, people really setting up more boundaries with their work, people posting a lot about that on social media, people posting their 5 to 9 before or after their 9 to 5, you know, showing the other things they do with their time that aren't related to work. And perhaps it's happening with people of all ages. But I know a lot of these workplace trends have been kind of credited more towards Gen Z and their take on work. We've just seen a lot of people not want their job to be their whole identity and to not want to be overworked. There's also the trend of getting a lazy girl job, which is just a job that can be done between the hours of 9 to 5. So I think when people are a little bit more vocal about all of those things, it also breeds ground for people to be more vocal about companies making these decisions and saying, you know, it's just economic, but really showing, like, again, here's the people behind it.
Vass Bednar [00:20:25] You mentioned pushback. Are these videos the new version of a worker rebellion?
Amanda Hoover [00:20:32] They could be. I think people are more vocal about what they want and work life balance, which 20, 30, 40 years ago, that wasn't that accepted, that was kind of looked down on or you were thought to be lazy or unambitious. If you didn't want to do everything it took to climb the corporate ladder. And there's definitely still plenty of people taking on those jobs with crazy hours and working those schedules. But places like TikTok are giving young people a place to voice their dissent.
Vass Bednar [00:21:02] Can't they backfire? Does it make you look like, you're kind of a whiner or a bad employee that you just didn't take the reality of a layoff well?
Amanda Hoover [00:21:12] It could if you're on there posting with your real name. If you go so viral that recruiters see your videos, you kind of pose a potential risk to the company depending on what your content is. If you're really just saying I was laid off, I loved working at this place, here's all of the things that I achieved that probably doesn't look so bad, is what experts in HR described to me about this. But if you are like, this is a terrible place, the who treated me so terribly and maybe that's just the truth, but really like airing out all of that dirty laundry that could come off as you would be a risky hire to a company that you might do the same to them.
Vass Bednar [00:21:50] Okay, so where does this all go? Are these videos going to have any power to actually change anything, improve the layoff process? Improve hiring conditions? What do we get out of this, other than the immediate, cathartic nature of sharing and the voyeuristic peek inside that we get as viewers.
Amanda Hoover [00:22:12] It does put some pressure on companies to be very careful and like calculated about how they're going to carry out these layoffs, because I don't think that some social media videos are going to make a company not lay people off if they're in whatever economic position that they're using to justify these layoffs. But, you know, they're going to perhaps try to take steps to not be the company that goes viral for something like this and to learn from the mistakes of the other companies before them. I think what we're seeing is it's an erosion of trust on both sides. People are less likely to trust their employers because of these layoffs. It makes work feel less secure. But employers now seeing that their employees could potentially record, put things online, disclose things that erodes a little bit of trust on that side as well.
Vass Bednar [00:23:03] How do you see that trust being built back? Will it also happen through videos or the future of what we share about our job or our relationship to that work?
Amanda Hoover [00:23:14] It could, you know, it's been a popular piece of content as well for young people to show themselves going to their 9 to 5. And often if you watched those from people at big tech companies, it was like, here I am getting my free meal. Here I am hanging out with my coworkers in this lovely conference room. Now we're going out to drinks. There's another side of TikTok that really idolizes some of this. And if you were a young person looking to work at one of these big companies and saw that, I think that could be quite appealing.
Vass Bednar [00:23:41] As you mentioned, getting laid off used to be much more of a shame filled experience. How is the layoff video trend starting to challenge that?
Amanda Hoover [00:23:51] It really is showing, I think, how common this is, how competent some of these workers are, you know, as they're listing their accomplishments and it's giving people a way to connect to one another. So a lot of what I see in these comments are not like online bullying of 'you must be horrible at your job.' It's a lot of people saying, 'I'm so sorry this happened,' maybe sharing some support, sharing some resources, or it's a way that people can kind of take back what happened to them in their story. And it's not just on TikTok like I've noticed- if you go on LinkedIn, you'll see people of all ages very publicly saying that they were laid off. They might not be recording the company or disclosing things that some of these videos might. And again, if it's on LinkedIn, you're not going to see somebody crying or really like sense how upset they are. But you do see tons of people comfortable saying that they're now out from this company. They're going to be looking for other opportunities. They were part of a big layoff.
Vass Bednar [00:24:44] Listen how would you want to be laid off, knock on wood, if you had the choice? And I have some ideas too, for myself not for you.
Amanda Hoover [00:24:54] I hope that that is not coming my way. You know, media is another industry besides tech that has just been hit so hard with layoffs over the past few months. I think the best possible scenario is to have enough time to gather your contacts, enough time to feel like you can ask questions, that you can fully understand the process. That's what seems to be a little bit better for people, especially as they're going to be trying to rebuild their network and potentially be reaching out to people and get their foot in the door. Like we mentioned, with the contagion of layoffs, it's hard to find a new one. The jobseekers, there's so many of them, and the number of jobs is a bit less, because there have been so many cuts, so ways that people can stay connected, get their company to act as a positive reference for them as they seek new jobs. Those are some of the things that can mitigate some of the effects of being laid off.
Vass Bednar [00:25:52] For me if I had to be laid off, man, I want a gift bag. And I don't mean looting. I want stuff, I want to keep some stuff. If I have a computer for work, I want to keep it. I want a meet up so we can have the catharsis, say goodbyes, hang out together. Yeah, I want to stay connected to that firm in some way. I want to feel like I'm part of the quote unquote 'family' that jobs keep telling us we're a part of. Fundamentally, I don't want to be treated as being disposable. Even if it was a dream layoff, would you film it?
Amanda Hoover [00:26:20] I don't think so, but I'm not really making TikToks. I'm not part of this cohort of people that is telling the internet about my everyday experience as a reporter. Twitter X was really more of my place. Very different vibe.
Vass Bednar [00:26:33] Amanda, thank you so much.
Amanda Hoover [00:26:35] Thank you for having me.
Vass Bednar [00:26:50] You've been listening to Lately, a Globe and Mail podcast. Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Andrea Varsany and our sound designer is Cameron McIver. I'm your host, Vass Bednar. And in our show notes, you can subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where we unpack a little more of the latest in business and technology. A new episode of Lately comes out every Friday wherever you get your podcasts.
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