Category
Leaders who rule by fear, take credit for others' work, throw people under the bus, and create cultures of anxiety and dysfunction — then get promoted for their results. The damage they cause to people's careers and mental health is rarely counted.
If you're here because you're going through this right now
What you're experiencing is real. The fact that it's happening at a workplace doesn't make it acceptable — it makes it a failure of the institution. You are not overreacting. You are not alone. Share your story anonymously →
My mid-year review said "exceeds expectations." I have it in writing. I took a screenshot before my access was cut because I had a feeling I might need it. When the layoff email …
There's a particular kind of irony in building enterprise communication software and finding out you've been laid off via that software, on a call hosted by that software, with HR…
The quarterly earnings call was on a Thursday. Record revenue. Leadership talked about strong demand and resilient growth. The restructuring announcement came the following Tuesda…
I was given what they called an "extended transition period." Sixty days. Presented as generosity. In practice: sixty days of documenting everything I knew, training the contracto…
Intel cut 15,000 jobs and suspended the dividend on the same earnings call. Three months later, the dividend was reinstated. The jobs weren't. I don't fully understand every capi…
When you hear "15% of the company" you don't immediately understand what that means at a human level. In our building, it meant the third floor going quiet. The canteen half-empty…
Twenty-two years in British television. I worked across almost every major format the company produced. I trained people who are now commissioning editors. I know the schedules, t…
Boots UK was doing reasonably well. The issues were at Walgreens Boots Alliance level — the American pharmacy business, the debt structure, the decisions made thousands of miles a…
The company was transparent about it, which is unusual. They said clearly that AI would replace many functions, including parts of my function. Then, in the same month, my team wa…
In December my skip-level told me, unprompted, in a one-to-one, that I was one of the most valuable engineers in the org and that I shouldn't worry about any restructuring rumours…
The Activision acquisition was sold to us as a moment of strength. All-hands about synergies and the future of gaming. We were told investment was being maintained. The deal clos…
A week before the layoff announcement, my manager called me into a one-to-one and told me — off the record, she said — that things were going to get difficult and it might be bett…
I worked in one of Spotify's podcast studios. We made something we were genuinely proud of — it won an industry award in the autumn. Our team was called together for a celebration…
After the first round we were told the company was in a stronger position. After the second round we were told the restructuring was complete. After the third round they didn't re…
In October I was put on a Performance Improvement Plan. "Communication style." Vague enough to cover almost anything. I'd never had a negative review. My 360 feedback was positive…
Two and a half years on the same team, longer than most of the full-timers around me. I found out I was done because my badge stopped working at the turnstile at 7:45am. A securi…
I worked in the Boots head office in Nottingham for eighteen years. I know that building. I know the history of this company — the founding, the values, the transformation over de…
The announcement came during an earnings call. The CEO said 55,000 jobs would go by 2030. He cited AI and the completion of fibre rollout as the primary drivers. He was calm. The …
The programme was called simplification. The stated goal was removing management layers to improve agility. Five layers of management became three. Layers four and five — where I …
During the pandemic, delivery workers and those of us supporting the operation were told repeatedly how important we were. Essential workers. Keeping the country fed. Leadership s…
I worked on HoloLens and the broader Mixed Reality division. We were building things that were genuinely technically impressive. The team was extraordinary. The memo used languag…
The Bloomberg story went live at 8:52am. My calendar showed a "check-in" with someone I didn't recognise at 9:00am. By the time I joined the Zoom call I already knew. They read f…
My end-of-year review said I was doing "exceptional work" and that I was being considered for promotion. Six weeks later I was in a layoff round. When I asked HR how to square th…
Eleven years. I joined when the culture felt genuinely different. I turned down other offers. I believed in the company in a way I'm now embarrassed about. The email came at 6:15…
The all-hands started at 10am. The CEO talked about difficult decisions and investing in AI. By 10:15am, CNBC had named the divisions. We were all watching our phones in the room.…
I joined to build something genuinely new for Goldman — consumer banking, retail products, a business that wasn't just serving institutional clients. The pitch was compelling. The…
A mass email on a Monday morning. System access cut that afternoon. A link at the bottom of the email: "To speak with an HR representative, please use the scheduling link." The e…
It happens every January. Has done for years. You know it's coming. The firm has never pretended otherwise — it's part of the culture, framed as performance management, a percenta…
Salesforce hired aggressively during the pandemic. When the market turned, leadership stood up and said they needed to "right-size" the organisation. We made those hires because …
I woke up to a notification that Marc Benioff had tweeted about the layoffs. I was still in bed. I hadn't had a single communication from my manager, my HR business partner, or an…
After the first round of cuts, remaining employees got an email asking them to commit to being "hardcore" — long hours, intense work, no excuses. You clicked yes, or you left. A l…
I was a contractor at Twitter through a staffing agency. I found out my engagement had ended when my team lead messaged me on WhatsApp — personal phone — to ask if I was okay, bec…
A notification on my personal phone at 2:17am. A tweet from a journalist saying the first wave of Twitter layoffs had begun. I looked at my work laptop. Locked. Corporate email go…
I'd been at Deliveroo Australia for two years. We knew things were difficult — the IPO had been a disaster, the share price was somewhere no one wanted to look. But the message fr…