Jobs: Competition for talent is alive, and sometimes layoff talk is amusing
Layoff talk is particularly interesting to hear when you're not on the receiving end. Otherwise, it sucks hard.
Fortunately I'm sitting contentedly in the latter category, as are pretty much all my friends.
The same can't be said for others, though.
Playing tennis with some other CAs I found myself in a little "Big 4" mini-conference with reps from three of the firms participating. It's always an eye-opener to hear news from another company's perspective:
Player 1: "Your firm snapped up all the best employees. They asked everyone from their competitor how much they were offering, and immediately gave them a big boost on top of that."
Player 2: "Oh yeah, and your company stole a bunch of people from my group."
Player 3: "What happened?"
Player 2: "We laid off a bunch of people, and your company hired them all."
Player 3 thinks - that sounds more like "picking up" rather than stealing.
Ah, career moves in 'the profession.'
The interesting point this raises, I find, is something that pings off Francine's interests, the indication that firms in this fair city I call home do in fact compete with their job offers. For at least some people, anyway. It should serve as some kind of comfort that the normal rules of a competitive job marketplace are still alive and well around here:
"I need good people more than you do, and I'll prove it with dollars."