- 1 week ago
Four former employees of Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Intel discuss the shock they felt when they were laid off, the difficult search for a new job, and the financial and emotional fallout that followed.
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00:00Dear Joseph, this letter confirms that your employment with Google LLC will be
00:04ending. You have been selected for involuntary separation from your
00:08employment with Intel Corporation. And from that point will no longer be
00:13expected to work for Meta. Sincerely, Human Resources, Microsoft Corporation. I did
00:20expect a layoff. I did not expect to be impacted by the layoff. Getting laid off
00:26definitely will show you where you went wrong with your finances. Being laid off
00:33affected my confidence and my sense of self-worth. I believe the tech industry is
00:39going to go through a lot of turbulence. Part of the reason why I chose Big Tech
00:43was for career stability. It doesn't feel like it anymore. I thought I would have a
00:48job by now. I definitely am worried for the future. I've applied to over 8,000
00:55jobs. Only to be told that, oh, we hired someone internally. The job market has
01:00changed because it's filled with highly skilled people who have just been laid
01:04off. It's not normal. I mean it's so corporate, right? Dear Joseph, nobody calls
01:09me Joseph.
01:16I was a documentation engineer at Meta for nearly five years and I was making a
01:25hundred and eighty K. I taught myself how to code by going to DC Public Library and
01:32also studying on YouTube. So when I actually got my offer letter at Meta, I was like, wow,
01:39I really made it. I really did it.
01:42I worked for three and a half years at Google. It was my first job out of college.
01:48I was a software engineer at Google making over 200k a year. Meetings might start
01:54early, meetings might end late, but I didn't really need much outside of the
01:59office. My long-term plan was to work there until I retire and climb the
02:06corporate ladder.
02:08I was a product manager at Microsoft. I worked there for 23 years and my base pay
02:14was $250,000. Work's always been really important to me. I liked what I did. I
02:19liked explaining it to people. I was proud of my work. Most Americans probably put a
02:25lot of emphasis on their value in context of the work they do and the things they
02:31accomplish. I don't think that's healthy, but it was definitely the reality for me.
02:35Here's my badge.
02:37That was a huge part of my identity.
02:40You can't work for a company for 23 years and not feel that they are part of your DNA in
02:48such shape or form. I was a developer advocate at Intel Corporation. I was making
02:53$180,000 a year and I was laid off in July 2025.
03:02The day I got laid off, I woke up in the morning and the first thing I saw was that
03:07I missed a
03:089 a.m. meeting with my boss's boss's boss. I immediately sort of had this like, oh crap,
03:16I think I know what this is. And I was like, oh, that's not good.
03:23My children, I was dropping them off at school and I got the email on my work phone that I
03:31no
03:31longer had a job. I felt numb.
03:33It was through a one-on-one meeting with my manager and HR.
03:37The entire business unit was shut down. So what I remember was sort of feeling numb.
03:47I had made it through so many of the previous layoffs. So I thought that I was safe, which
03:54is crazy because like, who's really safe? And having an hour to say goodbye, you know,
04:04you feel like a number. It's horrible. Honestly, that's literally probably one of the worst things
04:09about this is the feeling that I gave all this time and they just don't care.
04:16All of the ideas that I have for my career, like, it was, everything went dark.
04:30In this last year, we could see that. We could see the wheels slowly coming off. And, you know,
04:38I understand that unpleasant things needed to happen to correct the ship.
04:45Because it happened so quickly, I got overwhelmed by it.
04:49I was really struggling with depression. And it's hard to wrap your head around it all, right? Like,
04:55where's it coming from? What's it about? Like, why do I feel this way? It probably took me about nine
05:01months to come to terms with it. I felt lonely and isolated during the layoff period. So I adopted a
05:12dog.
05:17He has been what I needed because I'm forced to actually go outside and walk him.
05:29The day I handed in my badge, I took a selfie and then I posted on LinkedIn.
05:39I think that's like a LinkedIn thing to do. Share your badge and say it's over for now and looking
05:45for new challenges, which ironically, that photo was the most popular LinkedIn post I've ever made.
05:57My first reaction after the meeting was just pure shock. And then from there, my mind went to,
06:03okay, now what is the best thing I can do to start preparing myself to get a new job?
06:14I just didn't anticipate being unemployed for over a year.
06:21I've been unemployed for three months now. And honestly, when I was initially laid off,
06:25I thought that I would have a job by now. I expected getting a job in maybe six months.
06:32Well, it's been a year. How do I explain it? I can't explain it.
06:37So far, I have applied to about 30 jobs. I did look around for jobs. I just really
06:44wasn't very excited about anything. I'm sort of losing my patience.
06:47I applied to over 8,000 jobs. 8,000 applications. And a lot of those jobs,
06:58they may not actually exist. I have heard back from not even one of them, I believe.
07:04I think I've maybe gotten 10 final round interviews. And then you hear nothing. They ghosted you.
07:11Only to be told that, oh, we hired someone internally. Is it me? Is it them? What's happening?
07:18It kind of feels like a humiliation ritual. You do get a sense of loss of confidence.
07:24I applied to work cashier at Target and I was denied because I've been in tech for 15 years.
07:30I don't have any retail experience.
07:38I'm 57 and it is a crowded market. It's filled with young folks just coming into the job market.
07:46It's filled with highly skilled people who have just been laid off.
07:49There's a lot of them out there. And so how do you differentiate yourself from them?
07:55Because the job market is so competitive right now, you need to do something to set yourself apart.
08:02You can't just submit for a job these days. You can't just submit a resume and, you know,
08:09cross your fingers. To do job search in this market, you have to call attention to yourself.
08:13And that means you need to sell yourself more on social media. If you're an extrovert,
08:20that's great. If you're an introvert, that's much harder to do. I'm not comfortable with always
08:27being on camera. And so Substack is a way for me to be introverted, but also extroverted in a way.
08:37Whatever your, your superpower is, you showcase it.
08:43One thing I focus now more with the free time I have is content creation. And the core of that
08:50is
08:50really just building something for myself that no one can take away. Today is the first day since I
08:57got laid off. And it just feels weird. No morning meetings, no chat messages, no stand up to attend.
09:04It is really important for people to have more than one source of income. Since I started building
09:11my own brand and I posted my layoff story, I have been reached out by a lot of recruiters and
09:17even
09:17non-tech job opportunities. Because when you build a personal brand on social media,
09:23you're also learning marketing.
09:30Getting laid off definitely will show you where you went wrong with your finances.
09:40I am going to relocate to Charlotte, North Carolina because DC rent is way too much for me.
09:52The mortgage payments is something that drains on us. We do think about maybe selling this house or
09:59putting up for rent. Everything's on the table, right? Moving is on the table.
10:06Once the severance was gone, I had to use up the savings that I was building. I had to sell
10:12stocks.
10:13I had to depend on my mom and dad for their support, which was really hard.
10:19It has definitely impacted the future plans I had, which eventually was hopefully to buy a house,
10:26to be able to buy my parents a house, to help them retire.
10:30I changed my spending habits to align more with my lack of income. You go out less,
10:37you cook more at home, you close out Netflix accounts or something like that, right? Things
10:43that are more entertainment versus essentials.
10:50One thing I did when I joined Google was actually planning a lot of my finances around the potential
10:57of being laid off. I kept a lot of my savings in cash and I also didn't fully max out
11:04my retirement.
11:06Just because when you're laid off, the last thing you will want to worry about is like,
11:09oh, you know, how can I withdraw from my 401k or something?
11:12It's super scary at first when you start pulling money out. You're just like, okay, here we go.
11:17How's this going to go? The biggest money lesson is invest, invest, invest.
11:25If you're saving, make sure that it is a high interest saving account so that your money isn't
11:31just sitting there. But also when you're purchasing, keep in mind, if I didn't have an income,
11:38would I still be able to afford this? I don't think that I planned for the what ifs and it
11:43cost me dearly.
11:46I would say the largest stressor for finances I have right now is probably health insurance.
11:51In this country without health care, it could drain your accounts quite quickly.
11:56I've had medical provided my employer my entire life. I never have thought about this before.
12:03We pay $2,600 a month for medical. So that's a, you know, wake-up call to reality that a
12:11lot of Americans
12:12experience and have experienced all their life.
12:15I was quoted at like $1,300 a month. I was definitely not expecting for it to cost that much.
12:22So I'm currently electing to not have health insurance.
12:28It isn't just the person that's laid off that is affected. It's the family. It's the children.
12:40When I got laid off, it kicked off a full reevaluation of where we were financially and what our options
12:49were.
12:53Probably for the first time in my life, I worked with a financial counselor and was like,
12:58can I afford to retire? Like, what would that look like? Then it opened up that opportunity to say,
13:06okay, well, I really don't want to go back to work. I'm ready to be done.
13:21I'm an only child from immigrant parents. So my parents immigrated to America when I was seven,
13:28and it was very important for me to be able to find a stable career because I wanted to be
13:34able
13:35to help my parents out as well as build a financial future for myself and my future family. And computer
13:42science seemed like the very obvious choice. Now, you know, times are changing.
13:50I was a tech optimist for sure in the early days. And I think that my attitude has shifted greatly.
14:00It was a badge of honor, and it was job stability, and it was, you know, all of these amazing
14:08things.
14:08Now it just, it doesn't feel like it anymore. The amount of institutional knowledge that is being
14:17lost because of the layoffs is staggering. If you save a billion dollars by cutting a bunch of people,
14:25you're taking that billion dollars and building out AI infrastructure. So they're choosing to build
14:30infrastructure and maintain stock prices over people. I still want to go back into big tech.
14:38And my overall perspective of big tech since I graduated has changed. And part of this period
14:46now is also me trying to kind of figure out what other aspects of my life do I want to
14:51build and do
14:52I want to make a larger part of my life outside of my work. These are the top three AI
14:58tools I use to
14:59save over 10 hours a week. Since I got laid off, I'm really learning like the opportunity to make choices
15:06about where I invest my time. And I'm realizing I've got to rebuild that in other ways. I have learned
15:14that there's a lot of things I want to do, things I want to explore.
15:21Sometimes when there's no movement, you need to make the movement. So I've started a consulting firm.
15:30I started building what became my startup company, Technodocs. And so it solved a problem of, you know,
15:39documentation, especially in the age of AI. That really lit a fire under me,
15:47where, you know, the question mark about, you know, what comes next. I think that found their journey
15:54was what came next. The hardest thing
15:57to do is make peace with what happened, sort of close that door. It's just an end of a chapter,
16:05like a book, and you move on to the next chapter.
16:27So
16:31you
16:32you
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