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Do you want the truth?
Welcome to Do You Want The Truth? where we dive deep into the real raw stories from parents in the trenches of parenthood.
Season 2 is brought to you by Sam Strom and Freelance Journalist Zara Hanawalt, along with guest co-hosts such as Jaime Fisher.
Season 1 is brought to you by Paige Connell & Sam Strom. They bring you candid conversations with parents who share their experiences of parenthood and what they wish they knew before having kids. You'll hear the real stories. The stories that are typically reserved for best friends. The stories with TMI. We believe in the power of truth telling because when someone asks, do you want the truth? We always say yes. Join us as we explore the highs and lows and everything in between so you can feel less alone on your journey.
Connect with Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Do you want the truth?
The Truth About: Navigating Layoffs and Parenthood: A Panel Discussion
Laid Off, Logged On: Parenting Through the Unpredictable Job Market
In this episode, I’m joined by an incredible panel—Valerie Oresko, Blake Kasemeier, and Brittany—to talk about the curveballs life throws at working parents, especially when job security takes a nosedive. We dive into the raw and real experiences of being laid off, navigating identity and stability, and balancing parenting amid uncertainty. Whether you're a parent or not, this conversation offers insight into resilience, reinvention, and how to find meaning (and even a bit of humor) in chaos.
From being the breadwinner while facing maternity leave with no income, to pivoting from corporate jobs to creative careers, to learning how to survive virality on TikTok—this is not your average career advice episode. We’re telling the truths behind the polished résumés and LinkedIn updates. Trust me, you’ll want to hear this one.parenting and layoffs, getting laid off with kids, working parents and job loss, millennial job insecurity, layoff stories from parents, career changes after layoffs, parenting through unemployment, balancing work and family, breadwinner mom challenges, male vs female parenting expectations, mental health after job loss, stay-at-home parent stigma, corporate layoffs in tech, maternity leave and career setbacks, freelancing after layoffs, mom guilt and career, TikTok parenting controversy, navigating layoffs in California, real stories of working parents, career identity after kids
Website: https://www.doyouwantthetruthpod.com
Connect with Sam:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/samanthastrom
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthastorms
Connect with Zara:
Zara Hanawalt https://www.linkedin.com/in/zara-hanawalt/
TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@zarahanawalt
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/zarahanawalt/
Welcome to the pod. This is our first panel podcast with we have. We'll go around and have everyone introduce themselves.
Speaker 2:I'm Valerie. I've been a guest on the podcast before I talked about traumatic birth. I'm the mother of one. He's currently 14 months old and, since we're going to be talking about career, I'm a content specialist at a digital marketing agency.
Speaker 3:I'm Blake. I think we've discovered I was guest number two, which is it's great to be back. I'm oh man, it's weird. I now I guess we'll just say I'm a full time content creator by de facto, because I don't have a job. So that's what I do now for money. I tell stories on the Internet about parenting, grief, millennial culture and where all those things collide.
Speaker 4:My name is Brittany. I have also been a guest on the podcast. I was connected with Sam because I went viral for one post where I was lamenting the difficulty of watching my then one year and working a full-time corporate job. That was a lot of meetings and I went viral because people felt some kind of way about it. I love sharing my life. I think deeply about working parents, even though currently I'm not working, and so I've been trying to reframe this time and figure out how best to put this newfound time to good use.
Speaker 1:So everyone, welcome to the pod. And so the topic we're covering today is not it is parent related, but you don't have to be a parent to relate to it, and we're talking about getting laid off and going through tough things when you are parenting and how what that's like. Zahra, have you been laid off before? Yes, I have. We have all been laid off, and the first time it happens it is shocking. I don't know if you all have been laid off previous to this experience, before having kids.
Speaker 2:Valerie, I know you were right, yeah, so I had actually laid off shortly before I found out that I was surprise pregnant, so that was jarring, and then, of course, was laid off again shortly after I returned to work after paternity leave.
Speaker 1:When we talked to you, your son was four months old, and then you were also planning a wedding and redoing a wedding dress, and was your son six months old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was laid off when, yeah, my son was six months old, three days before I was taking time off for my wedding and my honeymoon, and just three months after I had returned from my maternity my unpaid maternity leave. It was a tough year doing. I'm the primary breadwinner for my family because my husband is a full-time student, and so we had three months of unpaid leave after my short-term disability insurance claim was denied and then ended up being laid off just three months after returning to work and spent the next three months looking for work. So we ended up doing six months essentially without an income, while also raising a newborn, which is definitely stressful. I have more gray hairs now than ever before, but we are now.
Speaker 2:I've been at my current employer for about six months and it it just kind of now feels like we are regaining our financial footing and starting to breathe a little bit easier.
Speaker 1:Glad that you found something. Blake and Brittany, do your partners work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my wife is a full-time parent. She's our.
Speaker 4:My husband works. We live in an area where dual income households are pretty much necessary just based on how expensive cost of living is, and so our finances are really predicated on both of us working, and so it has been an interesting time. We are lucky that he has kept his job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Brittany's in Marin, which is the Bay Area, so she's over by me and Marin is where all the VCs or venture capitalists, live. So to give you a little context about, if you're listening and you've never been to California or you don't know about the Bay Area, that's where all the tech folks live. And you were working, and both Blake, you and Brittany were both working in tech, right?
Speaker 3:My last job was in tech, yeah.
Speaker 4:Same. I was working in tech for a company that felt like a startup but was probably too big to actually consider itself a startup.
Speaker 3:My career has been mostly in fast growth startups and kind of in fitness and in tech. My first big layoff came from a like just a. I was on a rocket ship, employee number 40 at a company. Then we rode with them until I was employee number 140. We were having exponential growth and making those promises to the board. We had a Q4 where we fell short and then it was like the first rocky road that the company ran into.
Speaker 3:This is a story. I think that you're all nodding your heads because I think this is something that you've all probably experienced or seen. And so, in order to appease the board after a bad Q4, there is this like pound of flesh that you must deliver in the terms of layoffs, because human capital we are, our salaries are the easiest thing to balance P and L, and so it just becomes like cool, where are there redundancies? Where are there? Where can we? Where can we make one person do the job too? Or where's one person maybe doing the job of a half a person, and especially us growth startups or these kinds of early stage companies where they hire broad roles that are really shallow. So, like my skill set at the time was like hey, blake is like back of all trades. I was working in content at the time. And so it's like, oh, cool, like we, they hired me early. And they were like, oh, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, like you can do it all. And you're like, yeah, I can. And then they're like, oh, but we need to hire an email marketing specialist. And you're like, oh, there's a little bit of my job that's gone, that's okay, I can focus on the other day. And then, like you realize, your sliver is narrowing in, which, in some ways, is awesome. But also it's like, oh, I'm pretty vulnerable.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, my first big layoff was in 18, january 18th, I know, because it's my then fiance, now wife's birthday and it was literally on a plane ride home from saying goodbye to her back from Burbank into the Bay Area, and my phone lit up with notifications from all my coworkers and they weren't sending me condolences, they were seeing if I made the cut. And at the top of the list was a message from my, my dad boss, who was like hey, man, call me as soon as you can. And basically they had. They had to lay everyone off and he couldn't have this gap between me finding out about the layoffs and finding out that I had been laid off and him not telling me. So he had to tell me, and because I wasn't in the office, it created all kinds of complications.
Speaker 3:Right, I had to get my laptop back to them, and this is when remote work wasn't as much of a thing. But yeah, I was. I was getting married in six months. It was terrible. That was my first one and after that one I was pretty desensitized.
Speaker 3:I was like oh yeah these people don't care about me. I'm literally a line item on a P&L.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, yeah, it is shocking when it happens, though. Right, I was laid off. I've been laid off a tech company and I had COVID. My son and I both had COVID really bad and I started the same thing, blake. I started getting pings from people being like did you make it? And I'm like make what? Like what are you guys talking about? I'm off work, I'm of COVID, and then they're like oh my God, you're getting laid off. You have the 15 minute calendar schedule with HR and our manager on your calendar, and I was like what, what do you mean? It can feel very personal, which, which isn't fun, and the thing that you all had to deal with, that we've all had to deal with, is you go back, to go back and you have to parent. Have you all had conversations with your kids? I know some of them are younger than others. Brittany, you have a three-year-old right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, she's about two and a half. We have not had that conversation just because I don't think she would understand. And we have kept our child care in place because, although I am out of a job, the goal is to get a job sooner rather than later. And where we live, if you give up your child care, you are not getting it back because the market is so competitive and we trust our child care providers innately. We love her and so we have not foregone that. However, we have had to be a little bit tighter on vacations or presents, so it's definitely put some strain on our finances.
Speaker 4:I will say also we've all been talking about tech, but it's happening. Layoffs are happening across industries. I'm not certain there is any industry that is quote unquote safe anymore. I worked for a large consumer products company. Their brands have been around for 60, 70 years and they've done multiple rounds of layoffs. I've worked for one of the largest OEMs in the country. What's an OEM? A vehicle manufacturer, so cars, car makers and they have done multiple rounds of layoffs. So I'm not entirely sure who is safe anymore.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I work in journalism, which is notoriously very unstable, and when I came out of school, the narrative was always go into tech because you'll always have a job. It's recession proof. It's going to grow and it's just going to go up and up and up. But, like you said, I don't know if there is a stable industry right now. I mean, maybe like be an accountant, I don't know, but they're even cutting though Accountants health care is cutting Like.
Speaker 1:I have a friend who is a nurse and she's like I'm not leaving my job, I have seniority, she drives an hour and a half each way to work, yeah, and she's like, nope, not going to do it. And so it seems like, yeah, brittany, that's a good point, it's happening everywhere. So you were all kind of laid off around the same time. I think it's been about what? How many months for each of you Laid off? Oh, sorry.
Speaker 2:Blake. I was laid off in October of last year.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's been a while when you got laid off, so you were at a big tech company.
Speaker 3:What's kind of this journey been been like, because that is a pretty big shift, yeah. So my position is kind of it's unique and it's also very common. I think that we live in more of a gig economy than our parents did, and certainly more so than the people who then. Then it was when I first started working. So when I first started my career, I was like cool, like I get a job at this company and I'm here three to seven years and then I go to this company, I'm here for three to seven years and I could just see this kind of like this arc in my career. That is not what my career has been like at all. I had in-house jobs for first, maybe seven years of my career, eight years of my career and then I jumped ship and started consulting and I've been in this kind of cycle of consulting with people because it's just so much easier than landing a full-time position and it's a lot more lucrative once you can get it. And so my last role I was at a very large tech company and I joined as a contractor and my contract was for a year, with the caveat that I may be signed on for another year.
Speaker 3:I live in California, and in California there is a law that you can only be a contractor for two years at a company, and so, and this is, and so they kind of it's, it's at this company. It's sort of sort of like a ship of theseus, in that like it is run by an army of contractors. And as you get in, you're like, oh wait, what's real? Who's? My manager is a contractor, their manager was a contractor, because nobody's timed in at the same time People would just vanish. And suddenly you're like we have to absorb the responsibility of their role. Somehow it's very institutional, knowledge is flying out and you're like, wow, this is like one of the biggest companies in the world and this is how it's run. This is horrifying, but yeah. So my contract was up for about a year.
Speaker 3:Candidly, I was not very good at my job. I was hired on. I was hired on as a role that is not what I do. My background is in copywriting, content strategy, creative direction, and I was hired on to do a very technical role in in terms of like I was working on localization and legal copy a technical writing job and I was just not good at it, and so I actually made it much longer on my contract than I had anticipated. And, at the same time, this is happening like my content stuff, my personal content creation is skyrocketing, and so I'm like, well, I have to respect that opportunity. At the same time, I have to keep this job, and I took this job at this tech company because it did offer me some stability and, as a contractor, you make a lot more money in a short period of time.
Speaker 3:And so when my year timed out, I actually anticipated that they weren't going to extend my contract because I was like I'm terrible at this, they can't responsibly keep me at this job. And at that time, actually, a few people had done this, vanishing this timing out of other contractors, and so they needed somebody to absorb their jobs. And so I literally, about a year in, made a complete pivot and started like working in finance and like and I was like this doesn't make any, any sense. But no, no, I was like literally like doing administrative finance stuff, I was like approving POs and I was onboarding new vendors, and it was just something I'd never done in my career and like, candidly, like I'm I'm pretty senior in terms of like being a creative director and copywriter and I was doing stuff that was more entry level, which is totally fine because they were still paying me my contracting rate. But it was like, hey, there's a big target on your back because you're you're a massive expense doing something that totally isn't. And so they they extended my contract for a couple of months and then a couple of months after that, and then that company announced a massive round of layoffs and my manager was like, hey, man, I like you and like you've done great here, but I can't responsibly keep you on when I'm letting go five percent of, like, my team. And I was like that totally makes sense. And so I was given kind of actually like 30 days, which was fine, makes sense. And so I was given kind of actually like 30 days, which was fine. But and then I drifted off and now I'm in this weird position where I've just been a year and a half in this kind of like lateral role and, at the same time, like my content creation has started becoming more lucrative and I'm like it's totally crazy for me at 41 years old, the father of two, to kind of take a run at that. But it's also like if there were someone who would have a chance at it like I kind of am in that position and so, yeah, like it's it's.
Speaker 3:I think that bringing this back to being a parent is like it's. It is an awkward thing when you're. Your children look to you for stability and security and safety and you can provide that and how you present yourself to them and how you relate to them and the things and activities and structure that you do, and like you could do that. But at the same time you're doing it knowing that you're sort of wearing a mask, because everything else is very unstable in the background and like that's the sort of like dissonance that you're balancing. So that's kind of my story. That was really long, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:You're a great storyteller, though. That's why people follow your content. Like of today but have you talked to? You? Have kids who are a little bit older and who can understand things a bit? Have you? Well, not two, but you have one who is. Have you talked to your kids at all about?
Speaker 3:it. Yeah, I mean, to some degree it's very abstract, but they're super. My kids are smart. They're way smarter than you think they are and they definitely like pick up on stuff that like is is whatever I think.
Speaker 3:Look, we try not to make a big deal about it because we live in and I don't mean to get weird or political but we live in a country where the consequence for being poor is death.
Speaker 3:If you can't provide for yourself, there's you're no one's responsibility like that is the nature of of free market capitalism in the world that we live in, our, or that there's any kind of risk and that that risk is associated with money. Because it's a terrible way to feel like I lived with financial insecurity for a lot of my life as a kid and the truth is I actually didn't need to know. Like, looking back, I would not have known had I not had parents that made it known there was like basic things like oh hey, like you can't go fucking on a snowboarding trip to Tahoe, but like also, like I didn't really want to do that, like I was, that wasn't what I was about, but it was a presence in our household all the time. It was this conversation, and so for me, for my kids, like, oh yeah, dad's doing something else now. No-transcript to learn, not at fucking five.
Speaker 1:So that's yeah, that's where we're at yeah, you just got me thinking because I also grew up with financial insecurity, if you're gonna say like that. I grew up poor and I guess I never thought about it until it was like, oh, we have our, have our food stamps and this is what we can spend, and I was involved in doing grocery shopping. But that didn't happen until I was older. So, yeah, that's interesting because I tell my kid way too much Like I, he knows too much. So I like that, blake, how you're kind of like threading the needle a bit about being like, hey, things are changing and you're being upfront about it and we're just going to keep going.
Speaker 5:Yeah well, it is so interesting to see how kids perceive money. My son a few weeks ago came over to me and he was like Mommy, we are so rich. And I was like what do you mean, bud? And he goes. Daddy has a bowl in his office and there are 81 coins in it. It's like they just have no concept and it is really really hard to walk that line of educating them about money without creating any kind of scarcity mindset or insecurities. It's very, very tough as a parent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially if there's like, if you're stressed or your partner is stressed or whatever. Yeah, it's an interesting topic.
Speaker 3:For sure.
Speaker 5:Blake, when you were talking about, I think there's this narrative about millennials not being able to commit to things, not being able to stick it out at a job. You know, having these high expectations. I don't think people realize that we have had to be so nimble, because the market that we're navigating is constantly throwing curveballs in our path, and you kind of spoke to that a little bit too right. The arc of our careers looks so different than what previous generations had. Do you have any other thoughts on that? I mean, was that tough for you as somebody who was doing it in a completely different way than the generations before?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I came into being a grownup late in my adulthood, so I was in like I I 18, I barely graduated high school. And so I, after high school, I was like a high school, more school, seems like a fucking terrible idea. I was not very good at this and I think I should probably do something else. And so I was an independent touring hardcore band for about five years, running around the country playing music. And then, when that dried out, I started going to college and I started at the very ground level, like remedial classes at a community college that was mostly attended by people who were trying to offset their parole, and I scaled my way up this ladder of academia to like graduated from Berkeley. At that point I was in my mid, late 20s and I was like this is safe. That's why I did this, because like sleeping on people's couches and playing in like sticky floored, seedy venues in like Des Moines didn't seem like a really smart route for the rest of my life. And so when I got my first job at a great company in 2011, and I was like oh great, I have a salary, I have health insurance, like I like literally took my first paycheck and got a chipped tooth fixed, like we had a dentist office like right down the street. I was like this is stability, this is like fucking great.
Speaker 3:And then that was my first time witnessing mass, mass layoffs, as I was there for like six months and then just like there was a bloodletting and I was like holy shit, this is terrifying. Like we all live like this all the time and like I think that is just a maybe it's a generational thing, maybe it's something that we were sheltered from, but like I think that there is just so much more insecurity than we realized coming up into this Right, like I mean journalism. It's funny because like I, when I went to school, I was like oh yeah, like I want to be Joan Didion, sebastian Younger, like I had like all these people that I was like I was like screw that dude. Like let's go write like 1800 word blogs for SEO. Like that's always going to pay the bills. Fuck you, chatgpt.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's like literally what ChatGPT does, and so, yeah, so do I think we live with more insecurity than generations previously. Yeah, absolutely. And I also think that maybe we didn't realize how much insecurity was just in the job market always and we were kind of sold the bill of goods to start off with and it's all. Yeah, I mean like, yeah, you can't predict the future.
Speaker 1:Well, there also used to be pensions, and there also used to be whether you work at the federal government or my sister-in-law, she has a pension from FedEx and I was like what Public companies were doing this? And she got into the company a long time ago and they no longer do them. There just isn't any of that safety anymore, and so why would we be loyal to any company? For that older generation was like heard of and it was a really big deal, and for us it's like oh for another 17% layoff at Google or wherever. It is All right. Since we're on the topic of you, and you went through kind of a crazy time when we spoke to you, I think you hadn't even hit the four-month sleep regression yet, and then you're going through a layoff. So how have things been?
Speaker 2:For a little context. I was laid off in April of what was that I've been 2023, pretty unexpectedly, with five of my other coworkers, and then I spent the next couple of months looking for a job. I got a new job that June, but it was really a short period. I was very, very lucky to find new employment so quickly. And then that August I found out that I was unexpectedly 10 weeks pregnant. I'd been on the NuvaRing, which has like a 99% efficacy rate, and I guess I was that 1% despite following the rules like so rigorous.
Speaker 2:So when I had signed up for this new job, I had, of course, signed up for the short-term disability insurance. So I had about six months to prepare financially for becoming a parent. Also, my husband had become a full-time student. Basically, we found out that we were pregnant two weeks before he was starting his master's program and he was no longer going to be working full-time. So at the time we were like, oh, it's okay, we'll figure it out, I have my short-term disability insurance. I ended up having the baby. I worked up until my due date for the full 40 weeks.
Speaker 2:My birth did not go according to plan. You can listen to that previous podcast episode, but it was very traumatic Come home, file my short-term disability claim and it gets denied. Because it turns out when I find out for the short-term disability insurance I was unknowingly pregnant, so it canceled out the policy. So that money that we had really planned on getting us through those three months of unpaid leave was completely gone. So it was a very stressful three months of unpaid leave was completely gone, so it was a very stressful three months. I ended up returning to work and that was when I last spoke with Sam and I was, you know, talking about that challenge of having an unpaid maternity leave and just being so disappointed by what happened with my short-term disability insurance and just really expressing frustration about how we have failed mothers and parents in this country.
Speaker 4:Little did I know what was to be in store for me.
Speaker 2:So when I had signed up for this job, I had negotiated three days of in-person work and two days of remote work. When I returned from my maternity leave, I returned to that schedule and I had child care for those three days that I was out of work. For those three days that I was out of work and then within, I think, a month of returning to work, I was told that I needed to have full-time in office five days a week, effective immediately. The words that were given to me were if you are not in office full-time starting tomorrow, you will lose your position.
Speaker 2:Now I know I'm talking to a crowd of parents who have probably all had to find childcare and how difficult it is to find reliable child care, how difficult it is to find safe child care, and also the cost, the very significant cost, of child care. So going from three days a week to five days a week while being the primary earner, that just is coming off. Three months of unpaid maternity leave was I mean, it was almost. It was going to financially ruin us, but we needed this job. I started looking for other jobs right away, but in the meantime I was like I have to keep working and we were able to kind of hodgepodge our childcare together with paying somebody for those three days and then having my mother-in-law come stay with us for two days a week, like, thank God that was an option because we would not have made it otherwise.
Speaker 2:Shortly after that so I'm now five days in office I found a job listing from my company for my position at a 50% pay cut. Oh, it became very clear to me that the company was not doing well and they were looking kind of like what Blake was saying. They were looking to save, cut and one of the easiest places to cut costs is in the marketing department. And I think they saw my salary and they're like we could probably get somebody fresh out of college who can do essentially the same thing at 50% of the pay. So I, of course, approached my manager about this. I put together the comprehensive presentation about everything that I've been doing, the incredible results that we've gotten, because it was significant. I had a very strong case for why, of anybody on the team, I should be retained, and they basically told me they're like well, we can't control this, we're just looking at numbers. And I was like but I have the numbers to show that my position is worth it. I'm here five days a week, I'm putting in this work despite being a new mom, but I knew that like my head was on the chopping block. So about a month after finding that job listing, I was laid off, told me that my position was just being terminated, and this was, of course, three days before I was going to be taking about a week and a half of PTO for my wedding and my honeymoon Super frustrating, so disappointing.
Speaker 2:And then we had to navigate about two and a half more months without income. And that was an interesting season because, being the primary breadwinner, I had a lot of people express sympathy of like, oh, you can't be home with your baby. And you know, I think part of me romanticized the being a stay-at-home mom thing because I love my child, I love being a mom so much, I love those precious moments I had with him after work. So part of me was like, okay, like I'll be unemployed for a little bit, but I'm just going to treasure the season so much. And I did treasure aspects of it.
Speaker 2:But I quickly realized that I am not the stay at home mom type of mom. I am the leave the home, go to an office, get my little like break, have my own routine, my own identity outside of motherhood. That's what's really good for my mental health. And so not only were those two and a half months really stressful financially, but also I was crawling the walls looking for purpose outside of my work, and so that just added this whole new level of complexity to this dialogue I was already having with myself and the people around me of we just need more options and more support for mom, whatever that looks like, because the band-aid for affordable childcare is not, oh, just stay at home, just be a stay-at-home parent.
Speaker 2:That does not work for every family. One, because I'm the breadwinner, so I literally cannot stay home. We will be destitute. And two, not all of us want to be stay-at-home parents. I am my best mom when I am a working mom. So, all that to say, I was able to fortunately find another position in two and a half months, which I feel so grateful for because that's such a relatively short period. But we didn't have any income for that time. We didn't have any health benefits at that time At all. It's very stressful, yeah. So we're just really beginning, six months out, feeling like we're rebuilding.
Speaker 1:Did they, and so I'm guessing they didn't give you severance COBRA? Were you able to collect unemployment? I was able to collect unemployment, fortunately, Okay, which is still a really small amount relative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it ended up being like around $300 every two weeks.
Speaker 1:That's wild, okay. So now and then you found a job and you're like, yeah, and I think there is a lot of that conversation around like, just stay at home, it's fine, like you, just you'll just be a stay at home parent. I, for me, I don't know that I'll ever go back to full-time work because it is so up and down. And it's like, like Blake said, you can make a lot of money being a contractor and it's like, okay, but I'm also not the income earner in my household. So we're, yeah, it's just so complicated, universal basic income, not a political podcast, but so when is your husband out of school?
Speaker 2:So he just finished his coursework in April but he now has a year long internship. So he's returning to full time work over the summer, which we're very fortunate that he's able to kind of pick that up every summer, and then, starting in the fall, he will have a full time internship and then we are we can feel the light at the end of the tunnel. He'll be starting his career after that internship.
Speaker 1:What's he going to school for, school of psychology? Well, he's gotten a good chance to practice all of that right, like over the last few years. Sadly, absolutely, sarah. Do you have questions?
Speaker 5:Kind of had a thought. You know I, Valerie, have kind of a different experience than you, I think, because of my first layoff, which happened right out of school, my first job. The minute that happened I had in my head that at some point when I have kids, I'm going to stay home because I am so disposable and so unimportant in the workforce. And then I did. I stayed home when my kids were born, slowly transitioned back into freelance work. But it is such. I just feel like we all need to understand that we don't all want the same thing, that we don't all have the same situation, that what is gonna serve one mom is not gonna serve another or another parent. And I just wanna thank you for sharing your story, because I think there is so much of that narrative right now of this is a blessing in disguise you can always go back to work, but you can't have that time with your baby ever again, and that's not the reality for everyone and that's not what best serves every family. So thank you for sharing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I will say that, despite recognizing like, yeah, I'm a working mom through and through, this is what's best for me and my family, I will also say that, having this experience shaped how I approach work and how I approach motherhood there's that trend going on right now. That's like I'm replaceable everywhere. But here and I really do try to embody that because I've learned anything from a lay office that I am replaceable in the workforce but I am not at home. So with my job now I am very much a. I get my work done, I work my 40 hours a week and then I turn my phone off and I am fully present with my family. Because that I am working to live. I am not living to work ever again. I live for my family.
Speaker 5:Even the phrase work life balance right. Why does work come first?
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yes, life, work, balance. And I mean you guys might hear this in the background, but and I'll cut this out, zara, but Zara's kid is homesick today. Hear this in the background, but and I'll cut this out, zara, but Zara's kid is homesick today. So it's like, luckily she's able to be multitasking and doing all of this because she is stay at home, slash, freelance, right. If you had to go in an office, this would would not be the case. Well, I'm so glad things are starting to look up and that is a really fast turnaround to find a job, because when I was laid off, I forget how long it took to find another job, but a few months, for sure.
Speaker 2:I got lucky. I had a personal connection at the company and if I know that if I had it, there's no way I think I may very well still be on the job hunt. So I was very, very fortunate yeah definitely, Brittany.
Speaker 1:how's it been going with you?
Speaker 4:It's been going okay. I will say first of all, I think Blake, valerie and I should talk because we all work in marketing. My background was in brand marketing for consumer products and when I moved to the Bay Area, I pivoted into tech, because that's where all the jobs are. It was a lucrative jump, I will say, and I was really excited for it. I was working for a self-driving car company, which was really the darling of the industry in San Francisco. We were scaling to multiple cities. We had lots of funding from a large vehicle manufacturer so that they would make the cars and then this tech company would make the tech that make the cars drive themselves. So if you're based in the Bay Area or even Los Angeles, phoenix, certain markets in Texas, you will have seen those cars everywhere.
Speaker 4:It is a highly, highly regulated space. I had not worked for a company that was so highly regulated by any oversight committee, and that is by design because, obviously, self-driving vehicles the roads we need to be safe. There needs to be a watchdog. However, it means that if there is any misstep that happens in terms of the technology failing and there being a pedestrian incident, it has really big consequences and in December 2023, the company that I was working for had an unfortunate pedestrian incident which led the company to essentially lay off 50% of its staff and to pull all of its cars off the road. The large vehicle manufacturer parent company also stepped in. They cleared house. They said we are taking the reins here. You cannot operate as your own kind of darling tech company. We are stepping in and we're adding adults to the conversation. I think that was the right move, but in that one fell swoop, 50% of the workforce was laid off. I was one of those people. However, the large vehicle manufacturer parent company scooped me up. They made me an offer kind of in the same breath so you're out of a job, but we also have this offer for you. It was December 2023. And so you all know December is not a time where you want to be looking for a job. And so I took it because I am fairly risk averse and it was a fair offer and it was fine. So I joined and it was going to be a rebuilding year in 2024.
Speaker 4:Some of what Blake said before really resonated with me, because I work in brand marketing. So I work on the flip side of what Blake does with creative direction. I'm setting a lot of the marketing strategy and working with awesome, awesome creatives like social media, but I am not a social media manager. However, in my new role at this company because they had saved my job they said, okay, now you're going to take on these other functions also. So you are going to do social media, you're going to do community management, you are going to dabble in content marketing and SEO, which I can respect. People who do those things. I am happy to learn. I'm a quick learner, but it is not my expertise and I was very upfront about that. It's hard and at the end of the day, I was happy to have a job, so I said I'll do it. And so I did it for a year and change.
Speaker 4:The company was starting to rebuild. All of a sudden, instead of darling self-driving car company, we're really the underdog trying to rebuild our reputation because trust had fallen precipitously as a result of this and then, after billions and billions of dollars had been invested in this company, about eight weeks ago, the parent company decided to pull the plug and said you know what? We have lost the market so far that we are no longer trying to do self-driving cars in an Uber or Lyft capacity, like a ride-hailing capacity. We are going to take the technology and put it in our personally owned vehicles. So if you were to buy a car from any of their badge brands, it would have some self-driving technology in there. I think the idea is to compete with, like a Tesla, full self-driving even though it's not exactly the same thing.
Speaker 4:But as a result, I was laid off in kind of a team meeting where someone who I had never seen before showed up and said you are out of a job and here is your severance package and go forth, and so it was unfortunate. I did see it coming. It didn't make it any easier and I was given a severance package which I felt good about. I thought it was fair, and for the last eight weeks or so, I've really been hitting the ground running trying to find a new position. It is a difficult market, which you all know, and I'm trying really hard not to take it personally. I think as millennials, we were all sold the dream of finding a job that fulfills you, one that you are willing to hustle and grind for because you believe in it so deeply and we spend so many hours of our lives working that we were told the promise that you'd find fulfillment and companies will care about you. They don't, and that is a fine thing.
Speaker 4:Similarly to Valerie, I like working. I have always worked. I find a lot of identity and self-purpose in the work that I do, and because I do that, I'm able to show up better for my child. We also live in a place where a single income household is very hard to achieve, and so it's not really doable for me to stay home. I don't really want to either, and so this time that I've spent looking for a job has been profoundly unsettling and destabilizing, honestly, to my personal sense of self.
Speaker 4:However, I've been working hard to reframe the time and see the silver lining in ways in which have surprised me. So, for instance, with content creation, I've picked up some branded partnerships, and that's been really fun. I'm freelancing for companies that don't have headcount to bring me on full time, but who need help. In the places in which I have expertise. I've rediscovered a love of cooking things that became such a chore when I was working full time, because, at the end of the day, I do not want to cook a meal for this family, and also my toddler's not going to eat it anyway and I'm dancing a lot, so I grew up dancing really seriously and now I have the time to take ballet class during the workday, which brings me so much joy. So honestly, I'm trying to reframe this time and find some purpose in it, but ultimately I need to find a full-time job.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I really appreciate that you're taking time to do things you enjoy, because I think there's this narrative that if you have childcare, you should only be using it to do paid work, right, like I keep seeing all these TikToks about, like these parents are dropping their kids at daycare on their day off. Why would you do that? I don't know, maybe because you need to go to the doctor or get a mammogram or go to therapy or get your hair cut or like take a nap, like whatever. But I appreciate the fact that you are allowing yourself to do things that you enjoy again and you're not like falling into that guilt cycle that I think so many of us can fall into.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's, it's been interesting. One thing I've really had to learn is to not feel guilty about things that are not wrong. So you should only feel guilty about things that are morally wrong. In the context of mom guilt, I've really had to unpack, with a lot of help with therapy, things that make me feel bad that ultimately should not. So in this example, taking time out of the day to go take a ballet class when I could be looking for a job or I could be spending time with my child. It is not morally or inherently wrong for me to do so, but I have internalized it to feel bad in the past because of societal things and also because people on TikTok tell me I'm a bad mom because I do that.
Speaker 1:So it's like, if you're not drinking, going to the bar and drinking your day away, for instance, like as an extreme thing, being like, yeah, I'm just going to hit the bar and I'm going to spend that doing that all day, because that's my new hobby Right.
Speaker 4:We have assigned rightness and wrongness to things incorrectly, and it's a fallacy to believe that those sorts of things should make you feel guilty when they really shouldn't. So I've been working really hard on unpacking things like that that you internalize over years, but I've also had this same reset, I think, that Valerie had after I came back from my maternity leave, which is that work just has to be good enough. Work is a vehicle for the rest of your life. It is a means to an end. If you feel fulfilled and you like your coworkers, then more power to you, but at the end of the day, we need a paycheck to live the rest of your life, and so that's ultimately what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 3:I just want to say the bar is your life and so that's ultimately what I'm trying to do. Yeah, I just want to say the bar is so fucking low for dads. Like the difference between our TikToks. Like mom is shamed for going to a ballet class, dad is praised for going to a jujitsu class. It's like it's like what? Like it's like oh no, it's for your family. It's so great that dad takes time to work, work out and take care of himself and like look at this great, healthy dad. And it's like, yeah, the bar is so fucking low. Dude, like I oh you mean I get to go do the hobbies that I, I really enjoy doing and that I get a pat on the back for that, and like that's just so funny, it's. I can't, I can't believe that there's a world that exists in which it's you're shamed for doing that and I'm praised for doing that. It's so weird. Sorry, I know it's not my time, but I just that just blew me away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and on the flip side, I got connected with the podcast because of my content going viral around. I have unpaid maternity leave, I am the breadwinner and the amount of comments I receive telling me that my husband must be a bum that they can't believe. I would financially support my husband while he is in school because he's just going to leave me as soon as he has his master's degree in school of psychology. Come on, and it's just. I think that we have all made careers on the internet and it can be the most uplifting place for parents, where we find solidarity and where we have a platform to share about issues that, as parents, we are facing. But there are a lot of people that just want to tear down mom, dad, whoever, for the sake of tearing them down, and it's crazy.
Speaker 5:And you can't win. I mean, when I was fully at home, I was living on my husband's dime or like leeching off of my husband, or whatever the fuck people wanted to say about that. So you just can't win as a woman, blake do people say anything?
Speaker 1:I'm curious, now that you pointed out the other Do you get any shame or hate online?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean yeah, the Internet's a terrible place.
Speaker 1:About parenting.
Speaker 3:About parenting. Here's the deal with parenting I rarely do any kind of prescriptive content. I'm not telling people how to parent, I'm not positioning myself as an authority, the life of a dad, I'm relating to people, just offering people my own personal experience, and so because of that, it actually shelters me in some ways from certain hate, which I think is good. I don't think I'm an authority about parenting. I think there's something so funny about people who become parents and are suddenly an authority. It's like bro, your kid's three, you've been doing this for three years. We're the same, you know. But I will say that, like, the stuff that I do get hate on is it's stuff like one. It's like hey, you're, why are you romanticizing your life? Parenting is much harder than this, and I don't think that's fair, because I do actually think I paint a pretty fair portrait of everything and then the other thing I get would be I, often, I occasionally, sometimes my politics gets into my what I talk about, but it's just in a very practical way, like occasionally, sometimes my politics gets into my what I talk about, but it's just in a very practical way, like, hey, like it's it's. It is really hard to be present with your kids, when you're worried about income, right and like and I may have used ridiculous like terms, like you know, under the crushing weight of capitalism and and so somebody's like, wait, like all of the, everything that you have that is afforded to you is through this, this, you know capitalism that you're you're talking about, and I'm like, yeah, but imagine if it wasn't like, how great would it be, like we could just be be present and be with our kids. Like don't you understand? Like this is all like, but I don't get into it. I never, I never respond to shitty comments like that. So, like some of that stuff, but like I never get stuff like for.
Speaker 3:Like I also like I'm I am super privileged in, like like straight, heterosexual, white man, like I just pass in a lot of spaces and and also like the jujitsu stuff from a black belt in jujitsu, I'm an athlete in a lot of things, so that I pass with a lot of people who would normally be critiquing me and in that way it's like they like I walk into their space and they're like, oh, there's a familiar guy. And then, like I might say something that's a little bit on the edges of what they think and they're like oh well, maybe I can hang out with somebody who's a little bit more like that's my goal, right? So a, but I don't get hate. Like hey man, like why are you spending all this time? There's occasionally like you're spending this much time capturing your kids. You should just be present with your kids and like that's fair. But like the they, they don't see what content capture is actually like. And I that's not kind of like the nature of what I do. But those are the critiques I get.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just know, because Brittany got so much hate for posting that it was hard to be staying at home for a week while working and she just got eviscerated, which is just I.
Speaker 3:It's insane again because, like the inverse of that right, if I am to make those complaints people are like, oh, yeah, that dad gets it, like he's, he finally understands what it's like to be us. Oh, he's such a good, he's such a good, well-rounded. It's like it's like basic thing that, like the first time I was on this podcast we talked about, I was like, yeah, I think it's interesting that people any kind of weird or interesting or novel way, necessarily and I think Sam Page pointed out like, yeah, dude, if you're a woman and you make content and you have a child, and being a parent, being a mother, isn't part of your content, people are like, why, like you, aren't you a mother? Like shouldn't you be talking about your children?
Speaker 3:And if you're a man and your kids are in your content, people are like, oh, that's so great that he's bringing fatherhood into his, into his life, into the, into the like it, for for a woman, it has to be this thing that defines their identity and for a man, it's charming, it's cool If you happen to bring up the fact that you're also equally responsible in this thing that you willfully decided to do. I mean, I don't know. So, yeah, I think that's. It's so weird what happened to you, brittany.
Speaker 4:A lot of the tenor of the critique that I got based on that one video, which I think like we can all level set. When you work in a corporate environment with tons of meetings and you have a one-year-old, it's not really possible to do both at the same time. You can park them in front of the TV for maybe 30 minutes and that's the end of it. Okay, so the video I just made because I was out with her in between meetings having a hard time. I thought I was giving credit to the parents who do that, who do not have full-time childcare and who work a full-time job.
Speaker 4:But what I learned was that if the internet gets any whiff of an ounce of privilege that you enjoy in your life, that anything you say in your own personal telling that you find difficult is not legitimate. So I had opened the video by saying that our nanny had called out sick that day, which of course people get sick. Unfortunately, we don't have backup care. We were not in the position to take time off that day, and so we were making it work, and the amount of hate that I got on that video was really jarring. I have thick skin from my years of ballet dancing and so I took it in stride, but had my husband made that same video, I don't think he would have gotten those responses at all, and so the double standard is just insane.
Speaker 5:Well, it's also like if you allude to the fact that caregiving is work, which it absolutely is people assume that you don't like your kids or that you don't like spending time with them, and it's like no, you can actually love your kids and love being with them, and also find it really hard because it's a massive responsibility Sam and I talked about last week. The stakes are so high when you're with your kid because any slip, any wrong step could quite literally be life or death and you have to be on your game the entire time. But people just don't like the narrative that taking care of children is hard.
Speaker 4:I think people have a really hard time understanding that two things can be true at once. I can love my child to the ends of the earth and still find that it's difficult to be with her sometimes. I think any parent can understand that. But the internet emboldens people and they come out of the woodwork and they say why did you sign up to be a mom if you can't even take care of your daughter? Why would you let someone else raise your child when you'll never get this time back?
Speaker 1:Gotta love that, or you're doing damage to your child by having a caregiver instead of. We're actually talking to Emily Oster, in what two weeks Zara?
Speaker 1:And we're going to ask her about that. One of the questions that's going to come up and again this will be cut out is going to be about like does having a caregiver actually damage your child? Because there's so much of I don't know if you guys have seen Diary of a CEO, but there's so much rhetoric about it and I know some of it is based in science. But my husband and I were talking last night because he gets so much praise he was sick or something.
Speaker 1:Or I was out with a friend and he took our son to the park and there were two mom friends with their husbands there in our group and he pulled out snacks for our son and they were like oh, did Sam pack those for you? And he's like what do you mean? No, because I don't pack the bag. He always does. And they're like, oh, she had to remind you to send those. And he's like no, this is like my child. What do you mean? Did she make the food that you? And? And like they were just they didn't believe him. It's like it was, like he was telling them santa is real or something that like he could be responsible for feeding his child when I was not there. And every time he does something and he's like I feel so uncomfortable because why is this just like expected to not be me, like why wouldn't it be me? Have you ever experienced anything like that?
Speaker 3:all the time.
Speaker 1:yeah, like the bar is just so low and I never packed the bag I never like, even when he was a baby. That's just not. I don't think about that. I can never even find my keys, don't know where my driver's license is. Like how would I remember to pack food?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I also think my wife and I got lucky. We had I mean, we had a COVID baby and so, and like I was marginally employed at the time I was starting, I was running my own agency, business was slow, all of our clients were impacted by the pandemic, and so my kid was our COVID project and so, like it was literally like this is what we're doing and because of that, like there was never a question of like and I had this like it's also really dark. Like coming into being a parent after losing a parent. Like mortality is very high on your mind and super dark. Please don't take this out of context, but I always thought of like what if my wife dies tomorrow? Like this is your ship, dude. Like you're going to have to do all this stuff. Like it's equally your responsibility. Same deal with my wife. Like I might die tomorrow. So my wife needs to know, like all of the things that I do with the kids and like I've always had that mentality of like at any point, this 100% of this business is going to be. It's going to fall into your lap. Yeah, just real quick.
Speaker 3:I want to say something about to Brittany, about, like the consequences of virality is that like, the algorithm doesn't discern right. So, like, when you brush up against the, the edges of the people who might like your content and the people who might not like your content, the algorithm only sees engagement. And so, like, when they see like a comment, particularly a long comment, they'll go oh cool, we'll give this to another person who's like that and we'll give this to another person that's like that. Oh, wow, more of them are commenting. The algorithm doesn't discern like. Oh, these people are saying terrible fucking things and like, and that's like.
Speaker 3:One of the really big frustrations about going viral is that like, also, that is a very small portion of the population.
Speaker 3:It's just happens to be the one that they're serving your content to because of, however, unfortunately, many of them not to feel like.
Speaker 3:This is what people think of me, because it's not. It's what a small and the analogy I always make is like is. It's like if you're at a party with like 10 people, there's a high likelihood that one of those people is going to suck. And if you expand that to 100 people, to a thousand people, you understand that like, wow, the percent not necessarily even going to suck, but maybe that there's just a person who doesn't understand you or a person that you don't necessarily get along with or doesn't share your ideology or worldview, or that's something you might say, might might accidentally offend them, and like that's a group of 10 people and so, as you see that to once your video gets seen by a million people, like that's a lot of people who are that one person at the party, and so it's really easy to think that that is the perception, when really that is just a small perception of a noisy piece that I mean, you probably don't need to tell you this, but it is hard to detach yourself from it.
Speaker 4:No, totally, and those hateful comments are the ones that are salient to me because they touch a nerve. But on the flip side, I also got many comments from people who understood where I was coming from, who were coming to my defense, who supported the things that I was trying to say. Those just don't stand out to me as much, but I have, and the reason why I continue to create content is because of the community that I've found, and so, yeah, it's been a really interesting juxtaposition between people who champion you and then people who are really quick to try to cut you down.
Speaker 1:And social media is so weird. It's really hard. I really credit all of you for what you do, because you do go viral often and you post really vulnerable content. The one job I've been fired from is being a social media marketer manager for Chicken of the Sea. I was so bad at it. It's the only job I've been fired for. They were like no, no, no. You like have spelling errors, Like what is this?
Speaker 5:And I was like yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1:You're right, I shouldn't be doing this. So I just want to give you all credit because you're doing this. You're looking for work or you are working full time and and having kids, which is already so hard, and so thank you for all that you do and, brittany, for anyone who's saying all that stuff, a lot of companies now you have to sign that you have full-time childcare in place before they will extend an offer to you. Because of what? Not because of what you said, but the sentiment is you cannot do two things at once. You cannot parent full-time and work full-time. So it's actually a requirement and many, many contracts now that you have to sign for employment.
Speaker 1:So thank you all for being here. I know this is kind of like a touchy subject and there's a lot of us on the call and I am so grateful that you are all willing to join again and talk about this really thing, really heavy thing, before we go. Anyone who's in the same spot what advice would you give them to? Kind of that helped you get through it or is helping you get through it like layoffs or losing a job?
Speaker 2:I think personally I wish somebody had kind of sat me down and we touched on this a little bit earlier, but really made it clear to me that I'm not a failure as a parent because I experienced the layoff. I think a successful parent in our society looks like an employed parent who's bringing in revenue, who's checking all these different boxes. I think, especially as a working mom, there's very high expectation and I really internalized that for a while, thinking that I was a failure as a mother because I was not currently employed. It's just not true. For a lot of our jobs we are just a name on a sheet that may happen to get crossed off for a while does not have anything to do with your success as a parent. That's great advice.
Speaker 4:I would say that your ability to find a full-time job has zero bearing on your personal value or your self-worth just as a person. I've actually not had a moment where I questioned my ability to be a good parent in this time, but I have found myself questioning whether I can do the job because this job search has been such a slog and it's just not the case. And I catch myself having intrusive thoughts like that and then I try to reframe the conversation. So not tying your self-worth to this trash job market is of the utmost importance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great advice. Or even when the job market gets better. Like you, are, different from your work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would just say that, oh man, for me the experience is the best thing I've done is just like leaned into the to being a, for I guess it's just I'm.
Speaker 3:For me, the experience is the best thing I've done is just like leaned into the being, for I guess this is just leaning into being a dad, and like I find a lot of joy in being able to be good at that, but then also, when that doesn't go so well, because, like that could be the thing right, like oh, cool, now you've got this time to be a parent, just know, like hey, this was frustrating to you when you had a job, and like not like, looking for a job and not having a job is more stressful than having a job, and so you're bringing that stress into being a parent.
Speaker 3:Like it's almost more stress, and so like, don't put that much pressure on yourself to be the perfect parent just because you don't have a job now. Looking for a job is a job and it's a really, really stressful and hard one. So like, don't expect yourself to be somehow like exponentially better at parenting just because you're not spending eight hours a day doing something that you you know what I mean already knew how to do. You're doing something you don't know how to do and it's really hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you have two jobs right Parenting and looking for a job and you don't really know how to do. At least, I don't know how to do one of those things, and it's the parenting part, it's the hard part.
Speaker 5:I would also say don't be ashamed to reach out to your network and let them know what's going on. I think that when I had my first layoff I was so ashamed. But especially now, with so many people talking about their experiences, just reaching out to former colleagues or people you've crossed paths with, crossed paths with, and just telling them that you are open to work, can lead to some new opportunities. And they might be just freelance or consulting or something like that, but it could put you on the right path. And also I would say remember that even if you are not getting paid, you are working.
Speaker 1:if you are a parent and my advice is more logistical, logistics, logistical, I don't know form an LLC or company. If you're doing freelance work. That is my biggest advice. It makes it really easy to get contracting jobs because you already have that set up, you have an EIN and you also get to deduct a lot of business expenses. So if you anyone listening, who is consulting, doing freelance, whatever it is sign up for a business there's great accountants out there who can help you, but also I use LegalZoom, so that is my you'll get more money back. So thank you all for being here and thank you all.
