From the moment I got the calendar invite for my layoff meeting in December, every piece of advice or feedback I've gotten has instantly been put through my own filter.
"You'll get through this" becomes "Keep it together. Don't become another problem on a long list of problems." Budgeting advice is met with indignance and insecurity, as if the person saying it is suggesting I've been doing things wrong for the past year. When I'm sent a role that's an obvious downgrade from my last role, my bewilderment warps into gaslighting myself: wondering if I'm delusional for stating things that would sound normal on any of my colleagues.
"No, I'm not open to taking a job that pays $90,000 less than my previous salary."
"No, I'm not open to a 70-mile commute one way."
"No, I’m not open to an entry-level copywriting role."
But one question seems to come up more often than the rest, and it's the one I’ve been struggling to answer with one of my boilerplate responses.
"I know someone who's looking for a content designer for a 6 month gig..."
"Are you open to contract work?"
I’ve been slowly unpacking why this question has triggered so much angst for me, and I'm realizing that it too has been put through my own filter. When I look at the job I got laid off from alongside the ones suggested to me, I feel fundamentally misunderstood. My own self-doubt bellows over the actual substance of what people are saying. I'm reminded of a (problematic) scene from Mean Girls that depicts Regina George, a high school queen bee hanging onto her reign by a thread, during her fall from grace. When she finds she can no longer fit any of the tiny dresses at her favorite exclusive boutique, the saleswoman dismissively suggests "You could try Sears" as Regina looks on in horror.
My own inner critic is just as dismissive. Each time someone asks me "are you open to contract work?", all I hear is that voice of self-doubt, projecting itself onto the people around me. All I’m hearing is that I’m not perceived as worthy of investing in as an employee. My inner critic sounds a lot like a character in Mean Girls, saying things like:
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Your last role? The one with the great benefits and pay at a major company? Yeah...it was a fluke, sweetie. And so was the one before that, and the one before that.
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Sure, this role would only pay your bills for a few months. But you have a ton of savings, right? No? Generational wealth? No? Have you tried having a rich husband?
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Hi Bria, such a bummer about the layoff. Let me know if there's anything I can do...unless it's getting you connected with a full time role. I know the rest of us have healthcare, but like...you’re good without it, right? I actually heard dying is totally coming back in style.
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Oh, that full-time role with a great company? Yeah, no, I saw it on LinkedIn, of course! Love...you're just not good enough for it. But hey: this might help you pay your car note, so you can live in the car after the bank takes the house. So generous of me to send you this, right?
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Hm, I noticed your husband was also laid off. So...you two must be pretty strapped for cash, right? Guess you'll have to take anything you're offered. How about...barely half of what you made before, with zero benefits?
Is my LinkedIn profile screaming damsel in distress?
There are moments when I wonder if I did this to myself. I wonder if this is a consequence of my own tendency toward melodrama (picture me gesturing vaguely at my entire online presence). I wonder if that's branded me as content design's latest pity party. Perhaps it was a mistake to share my true emotions online. Maybe I should have responded to losing my livelihood with the standard LinkedIn recipe of near-delusional-optimism, forced gratitude toward my former employer, and a demure smile that I'd keep up even if it came to living in my car and putting dollar store groceries on a credit card. Maybe that was the path to success. If you're going to drown, at least do it with a smile on your face.
Maybe if I lied about being strong, and acted like I had two or three hundred thousand dollars in savings that I could ride out for a while, people wouldn’t keep sending me well-meaning messages that end up making me feel worse. After all, if you see someone in a moment of weakness venting about how they feel hopeless and want to quit the industry (or worse), perhaps it’s a natural conclusion to draw that something is better than nothing.
Or maybe I didn't hype myself up enough while I was employed. Maybe I should have boasted publicly about my accomplishments, my salary, the projects I was leading. Maybe I should have been obnoxiously online about my career progression. Maybe then people would only be sending me roles that at least came close to the prestige and pay I had at my previous role.
Maybe those things are true. Who knows? But I do find that the more I write down the negative things my inner critic is saying, the more I actually chuckle to myself about them. They're so very clearly my own negative thoughts. I literally hear them in a voice that's a caricature of a Mean Girls character, or a Disney Channel bully.
They also assume every contract role I've been sent would be a downgrade. And let's be perfectly real: most of them absolutely would be. The tech job market is kind of shit right now. How many of these contract roles pay the hourly equivalent of $200,000 a year? How many offer stipends for gym memberships and educational materials? I'm pretty sure none of them offer 6 months of paid parental leave.
Even full time roles are starting to pull back. Today, I spoke to a recruiter at one of my former employers, and I haven't been that turned off applying somewhere in a while, despite their high pay and equity. They're heavy on the panopticon and light on the perks these days. When I scroll LinkedIn, I see a bunch of "senior" jobs with salary ranges posted that don't even match my most recent mid-level salary. That's how they're treating full time employees, so it's fair to say that on average, they're investing even less in their contractors.
But it's not like there aren't some upsides to contracting, at least that I've heard about. If you've got substantial savings, a paid off home, or low overhead costs (or that aforementioned rich spouse), a contract may give you a break from that constant fear of losing your job to a layoff. Especially in today's market, which seems to no longer offer layoff-proof jobs: no matter your company, your role (they came for engineers), your tenure (they came for folks with 10+ years of service), or your spot on the org chart (they came for heads of entire design departments). If the dream of landing at a company that won't lay you off is dead, then maybe there's something more peaceful about taking contracts with set end dates, and walking away when the time comes with no shock or horror.
For some (but definitely not all) of these contracts, they also come with more autonomy than their full-time equivalents. The same former employer that's prodding employees back into their overpriced strip mall real estate block in Silicon Valley? They're taking on remote contractors. If you're cool with foregoing any benefits, they'll at least let you make your own decision about where you work. (Someone give them a medal for generosity.) I've also heard that for the best contract roles, you also get some autonomy about when you work—a godsend for caregivers.
One other appealing thing about contract work is that it's often tied to high priority work that's actually going to ship. While that may be high pressure, it also means you end the contract with something to put in your portfolio (assuming it's not under a dreaded NDA). For the overachievers among us, you can rack up names on your resume in brief three-to-nine month bursts, instead of taking the span of your entire career to try and collect the FAANG infinity gauntlet. For folks who are newer in their career or switching industries, contract roles can help them get a foot in door.
All of those things are well and good. But they still leave me with the task of deciding whether I am personally open to contract work. In December, about two weeks after my layoff announcement, I opened a FigJam file with three sections:
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one with sticky notes describing my ideal next job
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one with notes describing an acceptable next job
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and one that described the kinds of jobs that would be unacceptable, things I'd turn down interviews for.
I revisited it about halfway through January, and that itself was a good exercise in acknowledging that part of the process was treating it like a living document. I raised my standards in some areas and adjusted my expectations to the market in others. My answers were colored by the data I'd received from starting to interview.
If I look at that FigJam document now, "contract role" is in the "not acceptable" section, which means regardless of any other good qualities, as of January 12th, I didn't want anything explicitly temporary, no matter the company's prestige or pay. And I haven't updated the document for this month yet, but maybe it's fine if that's still the case. This isn't Mean Girls. Not everything has to be some sweeping statement about whether I'm in the in-crowd or not. My document isn't a list of things I'm "too good" for, or me "punching above my weight class". Maybe contract roles aren't the Sears equivalent to an exclusive little boutique. It's possible that they're just not for me, at this current moment.
One thing I did notice as I updated the document, though, was that most of my changes were happening in the second two sections: "acceptable" and "unacceptable". I wasn't making substantial changes to the kinds of jobs I really wanted: the ideals. I knew those jobs existed, because I knew people who were getting paid to do them. I'd even interviewed for one or two of them. My standards there were high for a reason. I'd spent a career pursuing more, asking for better, and then doing the work to get there. I wasn't wrong for wanting those things, just like I hadn't been wrong for leaving my first ever tech job for something better. I had a breakthrough: my desire for something that aligned with my skills and my experience was a blessing, not a curse. My intent as I continue to search is still the same: I know what forward movement would look like for me from my previous role.
I'm reminded of the academic decathlon scene from Mean Girls, where Cady realizes that it's in her power to be mean or kind, but being mean won't help her win the competition. I'm realizing that throughout this job search process, there's not a ton that is in my control. But one thing that is: it's in my power to be mean or to be kind to myself. Treating myself unkindly and internalizing the words of my inner critic—they won't get my dream role any faster. So I may as well be kind to myself.