RIF

Reduction In Force. Downsizing. Rightsizing. Restructuring.

Layoffs.

Words that strike fear into the heart of any corporate worker, American or otherwise.

Here, they call it 'redundancy', which strikes me as a particularly offensive and dehumanizing term. 'Bob was made redundant' seems to imply that Bob, as a human, has no value.

By now, you may have seen some of the news stories about impending RIFs at the various big banks. Even Goldman Sachs, which emerged relatively unscathed from the subprime debacle (there's an official who-knew-what-and-when investigation into why that is, by the way...), is expected to be axeing something like 5% of its staff. My own company is anticipated to reduce its staff by about 2%, which, frankly, strikes me as somewhat lower than I'd have expected. I hope it's true, but something tells me it isn't.

Let me hasten to say that, while anyone who thinks there's no risk to their job is a fool, I'm not especially concerned about losing mine at this point. But it's hard not to think about what would happen if I did.

I had a conversation with some single friends last night about what they'd do if they were made redundant. Some would take it easy, some would travel, some would use the opportunity to start over. I'd like to think I'd write that book I've had kicking around in my head for a couple of months. But realistically, the difference between me and these friends is that they're mostly single and I'm, well, mostly not. Not that being laid off is any better or easier or less of a blow to the ego when single, but it's a qualitatively different thing when you've got a family to support.

So, while I might like to write that book, or travel, or just relax in the park and feed the ducks for a while, I'd probably have to pull my socks up and get on with the search for a new job.

One of my friends thinks everyone should be laid off at least once. He's never been laid off, by the way. But he thinks it would be a good character building exercise. While this might be true, I think I've got enough character, thanks very much, and I like my security.

Thinking about it, I've spent a great deal of time and energy over my life trying to obtian security. I suppose that could be said of almost anyone, so I don't think it's that unusual. But at times like this, when there's a whiff of insecurity in the air, you're forced to admit that there isn't any real security to be had, because nothing's certain in life - there are simply too many variables.

This is especially true of the financial services industry, where most of our gains and losses are a function of nothing more than the confidence level of very large numbers of people. If you shift people's confidence enough in any direction, sums of money so large as to be incomprehensible shift along with it. Were all of the losses in the markets and the associated decline in the value of real estate directly attributable to defaults by sub-prime borrowers? I doubt it. Although there were certainly some real losses, I think a majority of the losses were because financial services types lost confidence and started selling off. And of course, this is natural. No one wants to be the last guy holding an instrument derived from a bunch of subprime loans because this will almost certainly be unsellable by the time everyone else has sold theirs.

I'm no economic theorist, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but my view is that you can pass the bottle around only so many times before it's empty, and someone gets stuck holding the bag. The obvious key there is to get out just before the last guy takes a drink, but of course that's more difficult to predict when you're talking about money.

So if there's no real security to be had, why are we all so intent on trying to obtain it? I don't know, but maybe this calls for a little more enjoyment of the now, and a little less worry about the later.