Living in Dallas with lots of Finns has been a good thing, as some of the traditions that we carry in our lives can still be practiced with your native friends. We have a Finnish motorcycle club; we have a golf club, Finnish language school, Finnish American Business Guild and many other things.

Business cycles are what they are; we cannot do anything about them. However, this last cycle has been very gruel for many Finns living here in Dallas. Layoffs without mercy for people that have spent the last 20 years with the company is the name of the game today. Some of these people have their lives here in Dallas, their kids have grown up in this environment and the employer gives to options: move back to Oulu, Tampere or Helsinki, Finland after 20 years or get laid off. Which one will you choose? Easy choice, let’s take our kids from school, lets sell all we have built during the last 20 years, lets ignore that we have not accrued any pension benefits the last 20 years..  I am sure you get my point…

It has been hard to see this happening to many good friends and as business-owner, it has reminded me that even if business-owners have hard times every once and a while, we at least have the chance to control our lives. These people that have spent almost all of their lives for a company are now suddenly too old to learn new tricks and they are of no use for the organization. Yes, I know that management needs to look for shareholders, but I still think that these organizations are driven by the evil cycle of quarters. I used to have to do that, but life has been so simple the past five years. The only question I have to ask myself is whether we have money in the bank account and possibly review the financial statements in the end of the year to see how we did. That is what I call for luxury!

Have you been part of a recent layoff and does this sound familiar to you?