[mswen]

Different recession. Spring of 2008 I was in a corporate job within a fairly new business unit. Over the space of 3 years we had grown the new business unit from nothing to a unit with about 25 employees and turning a profit. For the first few months our business unit wasn't touched. We saw other more mature business units in the corporation going through selective layoffs to tighten up expenses. But when the recession started impacting our revenue growth, from a 50 to 60% annual growth down to 5% growth the layoffs came to our unit.

What I provided to the business was one of the ancillary services rather than the core service offering. So regardless of the good performance reviews when the word came down that our unit needed to cut costs the only place to cut was labor and I and a couple other people got laid off in the first round. In many ways I couldn't fault the decision.

Oddly enough they laid off the sales person who was most responsible for their growth. He had the misfortune of having been given the challenge of opening up a new market just as the first of the recession was being felt in 2007. Honestly I was more surprised at his layoff than my own. But I guess whoever was higher up in the corporation directing our layoffs was more focused on what have you done for us in the past 3 to 6 months than what have you done for us in the past 3 to 4 years.