#1
American corporate bankruptcies soared to a 14-year high last year, with a total of 694 companies shutting shop by the end of 2024. This year isn’t going too well either. So far, more than 10 million workers have already been laid off or discharged.
One day everyone’s happy and productive. The next, it feels like a funeral. When a company heads to the graveyard, it can happen fast, or it can be a slow and painful death for everyone involved.
Hopefully, management will be transparent about what’s going on and what’s being done about it, but that’s not always the case. So how do you know your workplace is about to become the Titanic?
Keep scrolling to find out...
#2
Generally speaking, we were overworked and underpaid but for someone like me it was godsend opportunity. I went from washing dishes 7 days a week and barely making ends meet, to having weekends off and two weeks of paid vacation every year. .
#3
- The editor/publisher/reporter
- The adman (himself) who doubled as photographer
- one constantly-turning-over-reporter position, which didn't require a journalism degree
- one stringer photographer who also did some reporting
When he started in 1999 they had a staff of 20+, including a stable of reporters and dedicated photographers, and numerous ad-peeps.
He said he was glad he got into it when he did, but he effectively worked through the post-peak years of local journalism.
Experts say one of the first signs is when you start seeing the top employees jump ship. When the blue-eyed boys and girls suddenly start handing in their resignations, it’s often a cue that trouble is brewing.
Another red flag is when pay raises across the board grind to a screeching halt. According to Angie Segal from ActionCOACH, companies stop increasing salaries when they’re on life support and if it’s been more than a year since the last raises were given, best you get your funeral clothes out. Or find yourself another job asap.
#4
#5
Our chief IT guy had an entire floor to himself and worked on the complete other side of the building... At night he would construct massive castles out of old desks and divider walls.
Working there was alright, mostly we were there to maintain support on the remaining existing contracts but it was pretty clear the company was just waiting to be put out of its misery by the new bigger companies in the market.
It was a kind of boring job and ultimately after being a mediocre employee for five years, I was fired for watching Invader Zim episodes I'd downloaded off Napster on the company computers.
#6
Honestly, it really sucked. From the time I started there just out of university to when I was finally let go 4 years later, the company lost 90% of its employees and was one quarter of bad news after another.
I was constantly having to weigh leaving vs. hoping for something good to turn things around. There was always some sort of hopeful news from the execs, some turn around just around the corner that never came.
The work dried up. Days took longer and longer to pass by. Pretending to work became more difficult. Watching whole teams get let go and lose their jobs was hard. Re-organized from team to team to team. New leaders who didn’t know what I did, or cared. The eventual realization that my peers at other companies were learning, progressing, getting promoted, get bonuses, etc. while I languished was devastating.
I finally told my boss I would take a package if another round of layoffs came and then it was just a matter of time.
Thank god I don’t work there anymore and have found myself in far better pastures.
A similar sign is when the benefits dry up. If your benefits have suddenly been cut, for whatever reason the bosses claim, it could be time to seek other benefits - and a new job - elsewhere.
“Good companies use rich benefits to become an employer of choice (think Google or Facebook),” explains street.com. “Dying companies plain don't care anymore about who punches in. Be especially wary of fancy mathematics designed to camouflage a benefits cut. If it quacks like a duck, you know what it is.”
#7
Everyone knows it's likely the job will eventually end. There are people who are very, very paranoid about layoffs and will talk about them a lot. Those people are annoying, honestly, it's not worth being paranoid all the time. Make a plan/decision about what you'll do and do that thing. The decision could be finding another job and leaving soon, or waiting it out to see what happens.
#8
There is VERY little original content being produced in your local markets. One reason why they lean so heavily on sports. Other than that, a few major broadcast companies own most of the radio stations and they force announcers to record daily radio shows in markets that they have never even set foot into. Basically, "that was ____, here is _____."
Local radio, with a few exceptions, is dead.
#9
Rest of us know the end is near. Lunch talks are all about interviews and who’s hiring. We are happy when someone leaves.
I’m just collecting the paycheck and padding my 401k. The call from HR is coming before the end of the year. It’s inevitable. But I show up, do my job, document everything, and go home at 5pm. Every day.
Are you spotting management and/or colleagues heading into mysterious meetings behind closed doors? Do they emerge looking defeated? Are there whispers in the corridors? Don’t ignore this. You might be the next one called into an unexpected meeting that leaves you unemployed.
And on the subject of meetings, HR experts say another red flag is company mergers or acquisitions. Even if management claims there’ll be no impact on current jobs, you might want to prepare for the worst.
"No matter what the leadership says, when there is a merger or acquisition, there will be an elimination of redundant heads,” says global career expert and author, Dana Manciagli. “It may not be immediate, but it's coming."
#10
The company tried to show how wonderful and responsive it was by doing an "employee satisfaction survey". The results were dismal. Rather than address the employees' concerns, The CEO decided to solve the problem by not doing any more satisfaction surveys.
The CEO eventually "left the company to pursue other opportunities", which was code for he was fired. The damage was already done. Fewer clients meant a declining workload, and I was eventually "separated", but I was already mid-60's and just took retirement.
The company still exists, but it is a mere shadow of its former status.
#11
Me and pretty much everyone I knew had no real vested interest in that company other than a paycheck, so none of us really GAF about the company at all.
It was annoying having to deal with vendors refusing service on occasion because the company wasn’t paying its bills and there were jokes with each other about hoping our paychecks didn’t bounce, but beyond that it was like any other job.
Somehow it managed to limp along for another 15 years or so after I left.
#12
Byron was pretty depressed since no one else was hiring. So he stopped looking for a job. He stayed home and started drywalling his unfinished basement. And the direct deposits kept coming. Months later, in-laws came to visit and they got on his nerves after a few days so he got dressed up and went into his office to get away from them. As it turns out, the European manager was in town also and came into his office and said “Byron - that’s an English name, right?” Byron agrees that it is, and the manager invited him to a meeting that afternoon. When he showed up, the manager greeted him by his name and told everyone “this is Byron and he is going to take notes.” So Byron takes notes, gets several assignments, and is back working full time. No one asks what he has been doing for six months. He figured that having a non-American sounding name was all it took.
Has the proverbial water stopped flowing? Does it suddenly feel muddy and stagnant? That’s also a sign, says CEO of HR consulting firm OperationsInc, David Lewis.
He warns that a company is probably in deep trouble when "your boss has been in that role for X number of years, as has their boss - and so on - and you do not see any place for them to move upward...meaning you are not going anywhere."
According to Lewis, this shows long-term lack of growth and you should probably follow the signs to the nearest exit.
#13
#14
The region we covered had about 200k people; today, there’s 400,000.
#15
When your family, friends and former neighbors start calling to ask if you still have a job, it’s probably not because the Virgin Mary came to them in a premonition.
"If your immediate family members are worried, chances are there's a good reason why," warns Vicky Oliver, author of “Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots.”
The same applies to seeing negative media reports or tweets about your company. Bad news travels fast, says Oliver. And you should "Try to figure out how your skills will mesh better in a job that's not a dead end."
#16
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#18
According to data from demandsage.com, around 1.5 million people are laid off each month in the U.S. alone. That’s an estimated 18 million workers annually.
40% of Americans surveyed said that they’ve been laid off or terminated from their job at least once in their career, while close to half (48%) claimed to have layoff anxiety.
Most layoffs occur in startup companies, notes the site. “In the past years, not only were the employees laid off but the startup companies as a whole were reported to be laid off,” it adds.
#19
#20
