15% of the company. Gone over a week. The third floor just went quiet.

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. Familiar faces just not there on a Monday. The cuts happened over a week — some people on Monday, some Wednesday, some Friday. Those of us not affected in the first wave spent four days not knowing, walking past empty desks, catching people's eyes in hallways. My skip-level gave a team meeting where they said they "couldn't comment on individual situations" and encouraged us to "focus on what we can control." We had no information and no agency. People I'd worked with for twelve years were gone with a form email. We got a recorded video message from senior leadership. It was four minutes long.