Interview: How To Move Past the Shame of Layoffs, With Joel Hoekstra
Welcome to Celebrating Setbacks!
I’m so honored to kick off this series with our guest Joel Hoekstra. After climbing the ranks at a number of prominent tech companies over the last ten years — he was one of the early employees at Uber Eats, became a people manager there, then moved to Square and Meta — he became a career and leadership coach earlier this year. I first came across him on LinkedIn, where a bunch of people had been sharing his beautiful and honest posts about being affected by two layoffs, taking risks in spite of being terrified, and dealing with imposter syndrome. Today’s conversation is all about navigating the complicated feelings around job loss — and how it can lead us to more meaning and freedom in our careers.
In one of your posts, you mentioned that right before you were laid off at Uber, you had just been promoted. Having been through a layoff myself, I understand that the whole process can feel very disorienting. What was that feeling like for you to find out you had been let go?
Well, it was interesting because this was in May of 2020, so we were maybe a month and a half, two months into the pandemic. Everybody was remote and it was crazy busy because I was on the Uber Eats team — which was the only part of the company doing business. All the rideshare stuff for Uber and Lyft had come to a halt.
I was managing a team and we owned eater support operations for North America. And you can't guarantee anything —nor is it wise to guarantee anything as a people manager —but I was telling my team: “I feel okay about us. We are a keep-the-lights-on sort of operational team.” And at the end of that last performance cycle, I had received a promotion, gotten my first significant pay bump since being at the company, and I was feeling like, okay, performance indicators probably align with me being okay. So I woke up to an email and was pretty dumbfounded.
It was really disorienting. Especially because immediately after you receive the news, you have to start telling everybody, because everybody's asking. All of your coworkers are asking, everyone's checking in, and it's hard because you're kind of trying to process the news yourself while you're having to share this information out. I felt a ton of shame. I was really embarrassed to share the news with the people in my life or the people that I worked with who weren't impacted. I was like, oh, yeah, I was one of them.
How did you share the news with your team?
I didn’t even have time for a call. I was so thrown off. You kind of lose access to everything pretty quickly. I think I've written a LinkedIn post about this, but there's a strong sense of grief that follows it. It's kind of like — my whole world revolves around this company.
You have so many different routines around work and relationships, and then all of a sudden, it's just gone. It can feel really lonely.
That definitely resonates with me. Especially if you’re a person (like myself!) who can often tie up their job with their identity. How did you start to define your life outside your job?
I think it's still an ongoing journey. I don't think it happened immediately after. I think it took time. So, thankfully, I had been in therapy for a couple of years at that point, but the layoffs were a forcing function. And with the pandemic, everybody was spending a lot of time alone.
But the layoffs were a rude awakening for me. I really felt like I had made an impact at Uber, and devoted a ton of time to it, especially in the early days of Uber Eats. Everybody was devoting so much effort into building this company. It was super painful to remember all that time and effort I put in to help grow and to become what we had and then to be kind of, like, read a script and told, okay, see you later.
That was the first time that I started to separate my identity from my job, and I started to adopt the approach of “I just work to live. I don't really feel super passionate about my job, but it provides me the financial ability to do what I want outside of work, whatever those hobbies are.”
I totally get that mindset — it’s almost scary to devote ourselves again into work after being laid off. How did that mindset turn out in your next roles?
I lasted two years with the mindset that I could work to live. Because I was like, I'm spending 8 hours of my day doing things I don't care about and I don't want to do. There's got to be more to life than this. I don't want to just waste my life away at middle management at a tech company.
Did you have fear of getting laid off again?
Not right away. I definitely felt a ton of fear that summer after I was laid off, and I actually believe, looking back, that I probably rushed to take my next role. If I could do it all over again, I think I would have given myself some more time. But at the time, I had never been laid off before —I had all these fears in the back of my head, like: oh, no, I'm going to end up in my parents' basement. I live out here in San Francisco, nowhere around any family, I have to take care of myself… So I immediately jumped into applications. However, at that time in the pandemic, everybody was still hiring like crazy.
And then all of a sudden, the economy took a big downturn. Layoffs were top of mind for everybody again. And, yeah, when they announced that layoffs were coming at Meta in 2023, I was like, 95% sure I was going to get laid off. And so that's kind of what gave me permission to make a bet on myself and go into coaching, because it was like, okay, well, clearly there isn't the security in tech that I thought there was, and this could change instantly.
Had you been thinking about coaching for a while at that point, or was it something that occurred to you after the layoff?
I feel like I should say I've been thinking about coaching for years and years. I kind of stumbled into it, to be honest, Anna. I was starting to get pretty tired of working in tech and was starting to think about what else could be out there for me. And it's just such an overwhelming place to start. You're like, what could I do? What else could I do with my life? What do I like to do? How do I make my hobbies into a job? It's just so hard to figure that out. I just started to think about, what am I good at? What do I think comes naturally to me?
One of the things that I felt like always came pretty easy to me was one-to-one connection, and just investing in the people on my team. I had a former coworker who also worked at Uber. I watched her quit her job and announced to LinkedIn that she was changing into a career coach. And I'm kind of on the same path that she laid out. She started posting a lot and was raw and honest and vulnerable, and I was like, I love this. I'm so impressed by her. And so I reached out and asked, can I hear about your journey? How'd you do it? What happened? And so then she introduced me to the coaching program that she got certified in, and I signed up for their introductory course just to see if it could be a good fit. And I loved it. I was like, I'm where I belong for now.
How did you feel when you first started sharing your posts on LinkedIn?
It was so fucking scary. Yeah, I pressed post and I threw all my devices in the trash can. And it's amazing that I came back to LinkedIn. It was really scary. I got coached on it, actually. I hired a coach before taking the plunge. I also have a friend who's a writer – I had him look at it and edit it for me. All these people reviewed it. Then I was like, okay, I'm going to do it. It feels like a fuck ton of imposter syndrome to be like, hey, everyone, I'm now a coach. There's like a part of me that's like, who do you think you are to be a coach? So it's scary.
It's scary to put yourself out there and think, I’m going to learn publicly while I do this in front of you all.
How do you feel like your relationship to work has changed, now that you’re an entrepreneur? Is it still “work to live?”
I think the life I build is much more important to me. Being a coach gives me a lot of flexibility. This is Poppy (gesturing to his dog). I’m building a life that gives me flexibility and freedom to build it out how I want to. And so I'm getting glimpses of that being possible with this change. I'm excited for what's next. It's been a long time since I've been excited about what I do for a career.
There's plenty of fears that I still have about it, like fears of failure, fears of what will people think of me, fears of judgment. But the idea of getting to just talk to people and be curious about what they want with their lives and helping them is pretty rewarding.
What advice would you give to someone going through a tough time in their career, such as a layoff?
I think it would just be probably to take care of yourself. It's really easy to rush back into the job market and to panic-anxiety-apply to a lot of places. It's really easy to be hard on yourself and to feel like less than after layoffs. I would just encourage people to try to be kind to yourself, maybe take the opportunity to do some work on yourself (if you have the time and the privilege and the financial runway). Take it as an opportunity to reassess what you want next for your career. With a lot of the clients that I talk to about layoffs, almost every single one of them wishes they took more time when they reflect back.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I think the best coaches are the ones who have actually been through tough career challenges themselves. How can people contact you if they want coaching or guidance?
Thank you so much for your interest in my story! I appreciate your sentiment about coaches who have navigated tough times themselves. As a coach, I’m personally drawn to people who resonate with my story or can see pieces of their journey in mine. There’s a level of understanding and empathy that’s really important to me.
If you're interested in working with me, you can schedule an introductory call here or check out my LinkedIn page.
Thanks so much for reading, all. Please drop any comment or questions below — and I’ll address them in the next reflection post, where I’ll share my take on the conversation!