I grew antagonistic toward mgmt through the pan. The books were bad and there were two rounds of layoffs. I was included in the first round. They actually did me a favor because I was unhappy but too lazy to look for a different job. I got a better job (in every way - commute, pay, workload, etc) six months later. I’m approaching one year at the new gig.

I was unusually lucky.

Soul crushing.

Worked at a place for 16 years, made many close friends there, helped the company grow from a $2M company into a $2B company. Then one day they decided that it looked like they might not be add profitable in the coming quarter so they needed to cut 20% of the company. I was my family’s sole provider and now wasn’t sure how we were going to survive. I did get a nice severance of 6 months pay, but only 3 months of COBRA coverage. I was very fortunate to find a better paying job a little over 3 months later. Financially it was a good thing for us, but mentally I’m pretty fucked up now. I’ve never had anxiety issues but now I’m on 2 different medications for it. I’m depressed. I hate my new job and coworkers. I have no joy in work. I know if I get laid off again that I won’t get nearly as good of a severance package. I realize that my lifestyle only exists as long as my employer chooses to keep me employed. I feel like I not only have no safety net, but if I fall I take my family with me. It sucks.

It’s been close to a decade and I’m still traumatized by it. Fuckers almost cost me my marriage, my family, my home… Have never hated a company more. I can’t wait for the revolution.

There were signs it was coming, but I didn’t really accept it. When it did happen it was pretty distressing, but I had been planning to leave anyway. It ended up working out because I got to leave with some extra runway. They gave us 60 days notice, during which time we collected paychecks. I didn’t work at all during this time though. Instead I searched for a job. At the end of the 60 days we got about 6 weeks worth of pay, a prorated bonus, and our vacation days. I ended up finding a job that paid 3x as much before my 60 days were up and was able to pocket the severance money rather than live off it.

My employer sued IBM in early 2k for breach of contract but lost all their money, rep, staff, dreams, hopes and future in the ensuing legal/PR fight.

I was laid-off after dodging so many proverbial bullets. I got a call on a Thursday from my boss, and he checked the HR was on the line and didn’t say another word until the official stuff was done. Then he made sure I was okay, asked if I had any options, and rang off.

I didn’t cry, beg, rage, or question: I felt relieved that I could stop working 16 hours a day, guilt over being let-go, and a general feeling of worthlessness. And then I was out.

The element of surprise.

I was laid off in late July of 2023. I dodged a massive layoff in November of 2022 so I knew it was a possibility.

It fucking sucked. I miss that company. I miss it all. It made me feel worthless. I kept comparing myself to the others that didn’t get laid off as if there was any sense made in the decision.

I get work through my skilled trades union. We’re constantly getting hired onto jobs and laid off when the work is complete. Jobs can last 1 shift, up to a few months, or even years. Getting laid off is a time for celebration after being on the job for a while.

My last job laid off over half of their staff. They hired a bunch during COVID after getting relief grants and then laid off whole departments once ChatGPT started to get popular. First it was marketing and communications. Had a work buddy who had some health problems there but he passed away a week after being laid off from a heart attack.

Then it was HR, to be replaced by ChatGPT as a bot. It started giving incorrect information so they hired 2 teams of consultants to work on that.

Then when that wasn’t working a third crew of consultants were hired but we never got a straight answer to what they were working on. Turns out they were working on a report to senior management of additional efficiencies the company could make? And guess what they concluded? More cuts!

So the company cut the IT department 15% and they figured it would be fair if they did it at random. I was one of the “lucky” 15%. I was asked to help train one of the consultants on one of our internal programs so I walk into the meeting room but it’s my manager and two security guards and she says “Your employment with company is complete, your position has been eliminated. Vacate your desk and hand over your laptop and badge”.

Very cold, no emotion. This was a woman who would joke with me on Teams and shoot the shit all day. Both security guards walked on either side of me out the door with my backpack. Felt like I was being arrested.

Found a job two months later. Blew through my entire savings and lost a friend of mine (yes heart attack but I still hold firm that the layoffs triggered it - he has money problems at home with kids. They didn’t deserve this). No severance pay but I was able to collect a little bit of employment insurance so I could still afford food to eat.

got given 4 grand + got to loot the hotels freezer for as much food as I could carry between me and my partner.

I remember taking about 50 sirloin steaks, 30 ribeyes, 5 pounds of mince, 20 rumps and 20 lamb shanks all in bin bags + my backpack.

I gave out as much as I could to my friends and froze the rest, I was handing out frozen steaks to my friends everytime I saw them for months lol.

I got a public sector job within a week that let me work from home.

Overall 10/10 nice opportuntiy to loot corporate.

This was a covid hospitality lay off.

I was breaking up in Whistler back in my twenties, at the end of the season, they lay everybody off except for a small crew of full-time employees. I went on to EI for the summer pretended to look for jobs, and went on road trips with friends. Once summer finished, I found another job and I have unfortunately been employed ever since in various Warehouse jobs from order picker to warehouse manager.

There were a bunch of closed door meetings with upper management and the busy season was set to end in a few weeks, so the writing was on the wall.

I had some of the most consistently highest metrics so I went into our VP of Operations office and straight up asked if I would be let go on X date. He told me no.

To be fair, he kept his word. About 70% of the staff were let go on that date. I was let go 2 days after that.

Dude. Those stories all suck and make. To explain mine sounds like complaining about nothing, but I started the thread, so I’ll tell it.

It’s not exactly being laid off. I am a Visiting Assistant Professor at a liberal arts college. Our duties are primarily teach, and we work on one year contracts. I went into my chair’s office to show her an online homework system I deployed on a 15 year old optiplex, because fuck the publisher. She was really impressed but that was when she gave me the news.

Now I’ve not had my contract renewed before (fucking assholes gas lit me about it last time), but this is where it becomes a layoff. The college didn’t renew ANY of the VAP contracts.

The part that sucks about this is I love my department. Typically VAPs teach only intro courses, but they let me teach a junior level computational physics class. They understood I had a lot offer, and they gave me a shot. I love this department and it sucks to go.

I have one more shot. The provost really wants an interdisciplinary data analytics program. The head of it contacted me to teach a course. I emailed him telling I would but can’t do it. Here’s the kicker. As far as I know, I’m the only one who has done computational work with the humanities. I pitched him on creating a different position, he seemed interested, but this was last week.

I have my fingers crossed, but am not holding out hope. It’s also worth mentioning. All of this comes from the buisiness and finance division. Academic affairs (the faculty) is pissed about it. The two have been feuding for a long time anf academic affairs almost always loses. I think it is a general lack of leadership from all levels and just generally paying too much to their own research, but that is another post haha

I was with a SaaS company for 5 years. It was my first job in software. I busted my ass and worked my way up. I ended up managing the support department while leaning how to code in my spare time. I move to Engineering and was a developer for two years.

The company had a great culture and I was genuinely proud to work there.

Then a growth equity firm came in. They said they weren’t going to change the “magic” we had and were just there to give us the tools and expertise to grow. That is when the steady erosion of our company culture began.

The third CE0 since I’ve been there took over a few months ago. Of course he promised there would be no layoffs and he didn’t see a need to change anything. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, I was getting panicked messages from coworkers saying they were getting let go and then I saw the 15-minute meeting with my department head on my calendar.

When the dust settled, the first layoffs at our company were over. A third of our engineering department was gone and our work was being outsourced to an outside firm.

Now I’m looking for work and it seems really daunting. My wife is self-employed and lost her biggest client that made up 80% of her income right before I got laid off. I got 4 weeks of severance initially, but I was able to negotiate 8 weeks.

Now I’m reaching out to my network, applying to as many jobs as I can find, building more portfolio projects to pad my GitHub account, and believing things will work out so I don’t have a complete nervous breakdown.

I don’t recommend it. Don’t be laid off.

I recently took a voluntary lay off from my job after almost 20 years with the company. I found out my dept was going to be reorganized and I was not very happy about the direction things were going, so I put myself on the severance list. I had been planning to look for a new role this year anyway, though I originally thought I would be looking for something in the same company.

It has been a couple of months now and I’m getting fewer interviews than I expected. I still have plenty of time to find something, so I’m not too worried yet, but I do question if I made a bad decision. Of course, I expect more layoffs within the next year, so it was reasonably likely that I would have been laid off eventually anyway.

Last year’s reorg for my dept, they broke into two rounds, the first round mostly got rid of supervisors and managers and kept more analysts than were needed long-term to get through all the work changes. Then, in December, they came back and laid off the extra staff. They knew that was the plan when everything was announced in April. They actually discussed telling people up front so they would have 8 months notice + severance, but decided not to at the last minute. I’m guessing they were worried those people would leave or not work hard enough through the transition.