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I came back from parental leave in January. My manager welcomed me back, told me the team had missed me, said we'd ease back in gradually. Six weeks later I was in the layoff rou…
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 …
I have a progressive condition requiring specific workplace adjustments. Cisco were accommodating when I joined. Documented, agreed, in place. When the restructuring list was dra…
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…
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…
Amazon's RTO mandate wasn't about collaboration. It was a way to reduce headcount without conducting formal layoffs, without paying severance, without justifying individual decisi…
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…
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 came back from maternity leave in September. My manager said all the right things. My performance history was strong. My return plan was in place. Six weeks later I was told my…
I wasn't struggling with the work. I was struggling with the culture after the first round of layoffs. Overnight, collaboration became competition. I spoke to my manager about it.…
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…
I led diversity and inclusion programmes for one of Google's product divisions. Mentorship pipelines, sponsorship initiatives, HBCUs partnerships. Things that were genuinely worki…
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.…
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…
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…