Laptops locked mid-task. We found out by watching each other's faces.

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Anonymous
· Senior Software Engineer · Former employee · 2023 · 20 Jan 2023
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. Afterwards we were told to check our email. If you'd been affected, there'd be an email. If not, nothing. So the entire company sat refreshing inboxes for twenty minutes. In open-plan offices. Next to colleagues. A woman to my left started crying. A man across the table put his laptop in his bag slowly and sat there. The ones who were cut had their machines locked remotely. In some cases this happened before the email arrived — people's screens just stopped working, mid-task. I got no email. I didn't know what to do with that either.

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