The Message

It arrived via WhatsApp at 7:30 on a Monday morning, as I was walking to the office. My CEO referenced our friendship, a “strong package”, and my “early contributions”. I rolled my eyes. It informed me that my role was one of roughly thirty being cut that day. That was 20% of us at the time. I stopped walking so that I could type a laconic response, then turned on my heels and went back home.

It was not the first time I had been made redundant but it was the first time I had seen it coming. Months earlier, I had begun to recognise the signs: the narrowing of conversations, the reassignment of work, the perceptible shift in how I was spoken to, if at all. By the time the message arrived, the event itself did not come as a shock, merely as confirmation that my instinct is rarely wrong. The timing, however, was something else. Late November.

Redundancies at that point in the year carry a particular quality, not because of the proximity to Christmas as a cultural moment, but because of what happens to the labour market around it. Hiring slows to a halt in December and does not meaningfully resume until well into February. A decision taken in late autumn extends its consequences well beyond the day itself. Redundancy at that point in the year does not simply equate to a job removed, but to a veritable stasis imposed upon the individual.

This is not unusual, nor is it even especially noteworthy. It is, in many sectors, routine.

What is less often acknowledged is how these events are framed, both at the point of execution and in their aftermath. The language used, carefully managed and often personal in tone, sits alongside a set of expectations about how the individual should interpret, and respond to, what has occurred. Gratitude is encouraged. Perspective is advised. The event is positioned as a transition, an opportunity, a new beginning, a minor adjustment within a functioning system.

What is never examined is the system itself.