What to do when your white coat gets the pink slip

The WSJ reported that a Detroit-area engineer with more than two decades at General Motors woke up one Friday last month to a predawn text on his work phone. It carried an ominous message: Check your email.

By the time the engineer logged into his inbox, as the text instructed, his wife had already seen the news on TV. The automaker was trimming another 1,000 jobs.

A form letter in the engineer’s email informed him that his employment at GM was over, but no one from the company called him. There was no all-hands meeting. No one-on-one chat. If he felt the need to speak with someone, the email gave a number for a call center.

In the hybrid-work era, some companies no longer feel obligated to deliver bad news face to face, or even over a Zoom call. A pink slip can come via a text message and email. 

US Physician salaries have plateaued and so has the number of employed physician placements, with more hospitals looking for advanced practice professionals. In addition, there is a culture clash for formerly independent doctors when they become employees. Finally, sick care is right sizing so it should come as no surprise that doctors are being fired.

COVID has also placed every employee at risk, including doctors working in non-clinical roles like advisors and chief medical officers or engaged in side gigs. In addition, going back to clinical practice is limited due to re-entry issues and the dropping demand for non-COVID care or elective procedures.

June, 2022 brought another wave of layoffs in tech, with cuts impacting roughly the same number of employees as May: 16,000 employees, according to tracker layoffs.fyi. Another layoff aggregator from TrueUp paints a more dire picture, counting 26,000 impacted employees this month, up from about 20,000 last month. Either way, the data is grim.

If you work for a start up, you might find you might be made redundant once the private equity team takes over or the A round is secured, and a new management team arrives with different objectives and priorities compared to when you were hired 18 months ago.

Nearly 70,000 tech-startup employees world-wide had lost jobs since March, led by ventures in the transportation, financial and travel sectors, according to a report by U.K.-based brokerage BuyShares.co.uk. Sickcare startups are not protected either.

We’ve been told over and over again that doctors, nurses and medical professionals on the front lines are “heroes,” but if they are so necessary and critical to the future of America, why have so many been laid off and furloughed due to COVID-19 stay-at-home and essential surgery orders?

The dynamic is not just happening in sick care delivery sites. Startups and scale-ups come and go quickly and so do their "loyal employees". The fact is that there is little or no corporate loyalty.

It's personal.

It is common to ignore the signs and symptoms that you might be in trouble:

SIGNS YOU MIGHT BE IN TROUBLE

• Your boss stops dropping by your desk with suggestions.
• You’re left out of important meetings you used to attend.
• Once-friendly colleagues start to avoid you.
• You never get any feedback.
• You never ask for any feedback.
• You start comparing yourself to mediocre peers rather than stars.
• You’re not sure what your boss cares about.
• You don’t care what your boss cares about.

Here's what to do when you think you are about to get fired.

Here are some questions that will help you determine whether or not your fears of being fired are grounded in reality.

• What’s the general financial state of your organization, industry, and economy? If the financial state and outlook of your company or your country’s economy is poor, your worries about losing your job may be realistic. If the outlook is good, that’s a positive sign that your job is safe.
• What’s the general culture of your organization? If you have an open, feedback-oriented culture, it will be clear to you if your job is in jeopardy. Likewise, if your performance is positive, you will continue to get good feedback from your manager.
• How does your manager think and act? If your manager is giving you lots of negative feedback without guidance on how to improve, you should maybe worry about losing your job — especially if your coworkers are not getting the same type of feedback.
• What are your own personal biases? If you’re an optimist at heart and you still have a gut feeling that you may lose your job, this may be a realistic worry. But if you’re a pessimist who always expects the worst, take your fears of getting let go with a grain of salt.

If you are an employed physician or part of a startup team and are "made redundant", what should you do? Here are some tips:

1. Take a deep breath. Work through the stages of loss and get beyond denial and anger as quickly as possible

2. Do a Plan B assessment. Depending on the stage of your career, you might want to pursue a non-clinical pathway.

3. Increasingly, it is likely that as a medical student and resident you had little or no exposure to the business of medicine and, as an employed physician, were immunized from the intricacies of practice management. If you decide to join an independent group, you will need to educate yourself and get up to speed quickly, particularly when it comes to revenue cycle management. Create value as soon as possible.

4. Familiarize yourself with your biocluster and network extensively to get a view of a landscape that you probably have ignored up to now.

5. Don't make these 7 common mistakes when looking for a job or working with a search consultant.

6. Learn your lesson and, even when you find your next job, always have Plan B. There is no job or corporate loyalty and you are always on the bubble.

7. Playing it safe can the most dangerous thing you can do with your career.

8. Consult an employment law attorney if you feel you have been wronged or subjected to discrimination or wrongful discharge. Know your rights.

9. Forget the exit interview.

10. If you are at the later stages of your career, don't screw up the encore.

11. Be aware of the warning signs that you have a target on your back.

12. Tell the good story and, to a select few, the real story.

13. Here are five strategies that should help you handle it gracefully so you can maintain your connections and reputation, and emerge stronger in the end.

14. Here are six strategies for regaining — and even redefining — your sense of who you are after a job loss.

15. Be open to opportunities

16. Follow these 6Rs of career transition planning

17. Post on social media

18. Consider a non-clinical career

19. Navigate the 5 career transition crossroad crises

20. Consider it a gift that someone towed you out when you were stuck

Here are some other things you should do when you get fired, forced to retire or eased out your job. You are not alone. How about announcing it on Twitter and Linkedin?

Maybe it's time to fire yourself before someone else does.

There are several reasons why more and more white coats are getting the pink slip. You might be next, so start planning and preparing your contingency plan should you need it.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack