‘Get fired with me’: Why Gen Z-ers are filming themselves being made redundant (and going viral)
You could argue that it started with the “get ready with me” videos – users posting clips of themselves applying make-up to get ready while sharing deeply personal revelations. Everything is covered from bad dates, to bad sex and terrible experiences with parents, even death and suicide and often these most intimate experiences will go viral. So it is no surprise that in our chronically online society, young employees are now sharing their most vulnerable work moments too.
Historically, layoffs have been a taboo subject, often discussed privately in hushed tones. Where Baby Boomers and Gen X might have viewed being made redundant as a personal failure, my generation sees them as a regular, albeit unfortunate, part of modern work life. We have an unspoken understanding that our job will never love us back and this is our response to that.
The layoff wave in early 2023, including 12,000 at Google, was the wake-up call that I remember. The prevalent LinkedIn posts like “On no longer being a Googler” highlighted how deeply personal identities are intertwined with our jobs. For younger employees, these mass redundancies risk creating career gaps with long-term effects. This was a significant realisation in my own career, motivating me to scale my business to leave corporate life.
