I should have been laid off from work today. I wasn’t.
My employer, whom I rarely blog about even on the journalism-related blog (although when something happens at work, there’s always a lot more traffic from work-related IPs), laid off 20 people on Friday. Seventeen of them were from the newsroom. Fifteen were part of the union. One was from the design desk. The guild contract is pretty clear when it comes to layoffs: Last in, first out. I started in December 2006 (a reporter who started on the same day was also laid off), and was the last designer hired.
In the past year or so, I’ve worked fairly hard (and spent a bit of money) to teach myself new things. CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Flash — Webby things. I did everything I could to try to ensure I wouldn’t be laid off at some future date. As allowed for in the guild contract, those “specialized” Web skills are why I wasn’t laid off and the designer hired before me was.
And I feel guilty about that.
I hadn’t though about the survivor guilt caused by all these layoffs.