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The original was posted on /r/antiwork by /u/YepperyYepstein on 2025-11-13 19:25:16+00:00.
Original Title: A question I was asked in a recent job interview surprised me: "Are you sure you aren't looking for a new role out of fear of an impending or ongoing restructure or mass layoff at your current position?"
I was not applying for that reason, so I answered the question honestly, but what is disconcerting to me is the fact that that question would be used as a filter question.
For example, what if there were a mass layoff at a company? And, for very good reasons, I preemptively calculated the risk of being randomly laid off without severance (no guaranteed severance in my state), and decided to apply elsewhere for the good of my home and family?
Is the employee not allowed to calculate risk in the same way the company does? The company continually calculates risk and routinely makes sweeping, secret, last-minute layoff decisions. But somehow the behavior of an employee wanting to survive a layoff or restructure is suspect and red-flagged?
It truly feels sometimes like the powerful CEOs, MBAs, and executives in the United States gain a degree of delight out of the power imbalance and rug-pull nature of reorgs and mass layoffs. Some would say it's to keep workers productive without them worrying until the last possible second about walking directly into the slaughterhouse, but I truly am beginning to think some executives delight in watching the frantic scurrying of employees who trusted the system to be loyal to them a little too much.
The enormity of being laid off or even facing the possibility of a layoff is so understated by the media and those with greater economic security in the United States. I believe it was someone from Amazon that recently acknowledged mass layoffs, but also followed up that it wasn't even about saving money. The layoffs are simply about the "culture" of modern work in the US. That viewpoint in itself says the quiet part out loud: they want you to be desperate and scrambling in a minefield loaded with possible layoffs at every turn, just so you stay on your toes so they can watch you hate it.