I hate to say it, but I think a lot of us will be dealing with this in the near future.

I'm literally up nights worried I'll get laid off, the worse the economy gets.

Temps are going to be in high demand during this whole thing. They get paid less, you don't have to give them benefits, and they come in really handy for replacing "real" workers who got laid off. Ugh. Hate it.

My husband (a recent hire where he works) saw his workplace go through the same thing. It's sad to see. I see much less of it, because in academia, we don't let go tenured people unless we're in a financial exigency, and even then we try other methods (encourage early retirement, don't replace vacancies) before this.

Here's the scenario around my office: One day, you notice you haven't seen Jimbo around the copy machine for a few days. You go and look in the employee photos file on the office documents server on the network and Jimbo's photo has been deleted. You think "wow, I guess Jimbo got canned!"

I am so freaking out about all this. I'm the lowest ranking person in my office of 4. :-/

My dad keeps saying that universities are more stable than others, but when it cost me fucking $30 to fill my goddamn tank, I'm cranky AND worried.

They've been saying for months that layoffs were eminent, that 700 (that's seven-zero-zero) jobs were going to be eliminated.

I haven't noticed it, really, I guess. But there's been more and more cube space opening up around our building - they tell us temps that we're going to be consolidated, that they have to make room for another department, but then you realize that no one ever moves into the row you just left.

I was working aerospace in the early 90s. I went through this stuff back then. Strangely enough I considered myself "lucky" in terms of being hit in the early round. For those left behind it was grim, wondering who would be next.

The first time I got laid off, I got no notice, no severance, no extension of benefits. I was part of a waive of 3,500 people let go THAT DAY. We were already in credit counseling because we had no money (and therefore no savings). My sons were 3-1/2 years and 5 months old. My wife had a part-time retail job.

With that many people being dumped locally, staying in the area was not even a consideration. I was lucky and landed a job with the same company but in a different city three weeks later. They paid to move me 1400 miles.

But the early 90s being what they were, I got laid off three more times (for a total of 4 times in just over 5 years).

The company I work for now recently announced 800+ layoffs locally. Back in November I went to another division of the company. I was able to stay in the area (and in fact was working in the same site as I was before the change), but last month my new job was eliminated. My new manager saw it coming though and had another position waiting for me. It doesn't appear a layoff is in my immediate future, knock wood.

I've started to hear about former coworkers getting their layoff notices though. However, I think the recession is already ending if that makes any sense. They say you can't tell there's a recession until long after it's started. I think we're in one right now. But I also think engineering is a leading indicator of when the recession will end, and the engineers I know who are getting laid off are getting snapped up by new companies pretty quick. So I hope that means we're already on the rebound.

Last night I guessed the odds of my being laid-off by year-end at 50/50.

Oh man... when a certain online company bought a certain media company in the late 90s, HR set up a row of offices on the 11th floor and over the course of two days, every single employee was called up there into one of those offices, closed into one of them with an HR stooge, and told their fate (which either "you're staying" or "you're outta here"). It was like being taken out behind the shed, but you didn't know whether or not you were going to get shot.

The gloom on those two days was palpable. I think that was a horrible, drawn-out way to handle layoffs (esp. since they announced how it would work about two weeks before the axe started swinging).

The main problem I have with the way layoffs were handled at my former job was that they picked the most senior people on each team to lay off - myself being the most senior developer on the .NET team (at 3.5 years tenure), 2 senior PMs, 3 senior database developers. It's probably because we were the most expensive. But it will be tough for the business trying to succeed having lost so much of their long-term institutional memory.

Also, for those of us who've been on the "transition plan" (working for approx 6 more weeks to finish outstanding tasks), it's been kind of like Bosnia here on the morale basis.