I can’t say what I experienced is representative of all layoffs. Both times individual rating or reviews were not brought up. Having done layoffs before, the committees deciding the fate of people were not deciding based on meritocracy and much of the decisions were based on whim. Much of the result is luck or a lack of it though. Owning the layoff outcome is healthy so far as you don’t let it impact your confidence. There are always things you could have done better. IMO, banks mostly care about DEI during bull markets for appearances (read publicly traded banks).ĭEI has only improved representation at the analyst level but if you look at VP and above, female minorities especially are few in numbers, and tend to have way stronger backgrounds (objectively speaking - education and experience wise), to be able to hold the same senior roles. Many laid off in my associate class were non-citizens and on visa - they were first to be let go following the merger. However, in the second-round layoff and subsequent layoffs, those cut on my team included a COO (female, minority) who was in charge of DEI initiatives, a new associate (minority), and a top performing MD (female minority). Speaking as a female minority who went to a top 10 school, was a STEM major w/ 3.7+ GPA: as my bank was going through mass restructuring this year and bought out by another bank - the first-round of layoffs was a bottom bucket senior analyst (white, male), who was truly an underperformer. People are just bad at accepting that they aren't the main character, and generally aren't good at estimating their own value, and so they come up with other excuses for why something bad happens beyond "I couldn't hack it"ĭEI is not a protection umbrella in this economy, and let's be honest, most positions of power are still dominated by white males. If you get laid off and someone else doesn't, it means you aren't as good or as valuable, and yes, that comes down to personal performance. To the extent you weren't outperforming your peers, or even achieving average performance, that means you aren't as good at your job as others. If the firm lays off 40% of its staff, and you're one of them, it means you were in the bottom 40%. If your firm didn't have a cutthroat history of firing everyone who wasn't stellar, the standout year they decide to do that is probably due to external conditions. In what situation aside from bad market/firm conditions, does 40% of an entire group get laid off ? since when does being in that bottom % necessarily indicate a poor performance? they're obviously not the best in their group but it doesn't mean they under-preformed to the extent where being laid off was natural. I have been wondering why all these weeks, and the truth is probably I was not as good as I thought or as I was told. This take might seem harsh for some people, but it actually comes from someone who lost his job 1 month ago, who had good reviews the past two years and who was told he was a top performer by HR and his boss the same day he was let go. That does not mean that maybe in other years, you would have kept your job, but if you were laid off recently, it means your bosses had to choose between you and other people and then they decided to keep others. If 40% of analysts in your group were laid off and you were among them, then I am sorry but you were in the bottom 40% percentile. No bank is stupid enough to fire people randomly - they will always keep top performers or at least those people who are more liked or play the politics game very well. Here is the truth, unless your group laid off the entire analyst or associate class, it is indeed performance related at some point. All of them say “my firing was not performance related…”. I’ve been seeing a lots of posts over here this past year from people who got laid off and blame market conditions, lack of deal flow or major restructurings.
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