Copycats
What's that about jumping off a cliff?
More on the “why” of layoffs below, but in the meantime, please know they continued unabated right on through the holidays. Salesforce announced 8,000 layoffs, or 10% of the company, along with some to-be-announced office closures. Excited to see how the company plans to fill all 22 floors of the new Wolf Point Tower it promised to occupy in exchange for naming rights and external branding!
Suburban lender Interfirst Mortgage announced layoffs for another 75 people, bringing the total to 500 people laid off in a little over a year. Bet morale is great!
Deerfield medical products maker Baxter hasn’t announced layoffs yet, just its grimmer twin, restructuring. Plans are in the works to spin off business units and trim expenses wherever possible, which always works out a treat for employees.
Tyson announced layoffs for hundreds of its employees — many of whom outright refused to move from Chicago to the new office in Arkansas. We’d love to say that’s why Exelon is keeping its headquarters in Chicago, but we know there’s got to be more to it than simple common sense.
Speaking of common sense, just a friendly reminder that if you are a purportedly progressive organization serving a decidedly progressive community and you try to lay off 61 people right after they vote to unionize, people are going to bring out the rat. If you try to then resolve that embarrassment by calling the police on the picketers, you will look even worse, and potentially put people’s lives in danger. All our support to Howard Brown Health workers. And to this management team: Do not make people choose between crossing a picket line and accessing badly needed healthcare.
Same sentiment goes to Quartz, a health insurance company available via the Affordable Care Act marketplace that just ate a $500,000 fine for failing to provide adequate substance abuse and mental healthcare. You know, just two diseases that absolutely never spin out into horrible and sometimes irreparable consequences.
We promise not everyone’s in trouble though. Jellyvision is expanding with an acquisition of healthtech startup Picwell. Jellyvision has long educated employees on how to pick the best benefits for them, and Picwell will be another tool to help it make personalized recommendations based on employee needs. Good news for everyone!
Telehealth platform KeyCare picked up another $3 million — bringing its Series A funding round to $27 million, money it’ll use to virtually connect doctors and patients. And other Chicago companies might soon find access to cash a little easier. University of Chicago is committing $20 million to startup accelerators for what it describes as “hard-to-fund” areas like data science, AI and clean technology. Not sure who was struggling for interest in those areas, but always happy for some extra cash.
The 81 Collection — a VC fund backed by former Chicago startup players, the Pritzker family and the state of Illinois (not to be confused with the Pritzker family) — is similarly interested in “hard” industries. Manufacturing, real estate, retail and construction ventures will have a chance to tap into the fund’s $41 million raise, which promises longer timelines for returns in industries that generally take years to turn a profit. If all of these areas are so underfunded, we really have to wonder what industries are benefiting from the billions of dollars flying around. We know it’s not all logistics.
Jobs, Glorious Jobs
Digital Communications Director for Run for Something
A fully remote job encouraging and supporting young progressive candidates to run for office, any office. The job promises a six-figure salary, a four-day workweek and an annual $500 “Treat Yourself” stipend. Which probably explains why more than 200 people have already applied on LinkedIn.
Deputy Director of Internal Communications for the Cook County Government Bureau of Human Resources
Weirdly, this job is not experiencing the same wave of applicants! But hear us out: Internal communications gives you
A captive audience
Whose jobs are made better by the information you’re sharing
And who generally have low expectations for readable communications
We genuinely think internal communications can do a lot for company culture and individual effectiveness, and lord, if any organization needs that, it has to be Cook County.
Social Media Manager at the University of Chicago
Some may find U of C intimidating, but you’re not scared. In fact, you can do one better: This role is for the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, where you’ll create content, oversee analytics, and identify opportunities to promote the school and its people. (There’s an Instagram page, how scary can it be?) And it’s a hybrid job, so there's space for you to take a breath or Google terminology in private.
Inspiration of the Week
“Could there be a tech recession? Yes. Was there a bubble in valuations? Absolutely. Did Meta overhire? Probably. But is that why they are laying people off? Of course not. Meta has plenty of money. These companies are all making money. They are doing it because other companies are doing it.”
—Author and Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, on why so many employers are laying people off en masse right now. TL:DR; It is not because they know something you do not! It’s because they’re little bawk bawk chickens who want to cover their asses by doing what everyone else is doing. And it doesn’t work. Layoffs almost never improve the fortunes of a company, and they hurt not just the people who are laid off, but the managers who have to let them go and the colleagues who have to pick up their workloads.
The whole article is worth a read, and judging by title alone, we have to imagine his book — “Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance–And What We Can Do About It” (lol) — is too.
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