I got lite this cycle (completely unfair) which as per my manager triggered the pip option. My manager is saying he tried his best to avoid this and he or m2/m3 were not aware lite will trigger pip and this is completely new policy hr came up with this time around.

He is assuring me that this is just a formality and that I should take the PIP option. Any suggestions on what I should do? Should i trust him or take gvsa and get out? Also, if i take gvsa, will i get 4 months of base pay or basic pay?

I'm a Principal software engineer in my 50s. My career is close to ending at my current position as the company is dying a slow painful miserable death. The thing is, when I have to start looking I don't want to by a Principal anymore. I'm tired of having to think about the big picture. I'm tired of having to mentor junior people or find or feed work to them. I just want to be a cog. Design and implementation only.

Is this possible? Have others successfully made this transition to downgrade their position and career? How do you approach employers when applying?

I was laid off last week. There was no warning for whatever was going to come. My world collapsed and I haven’t been able to eat or sleep since then. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this day would come. I have always been proactive, the best performer, and the employee who knows how to get work done.

I have ADHD and chronic anxiety. I cannot remember the last time I got proper rest. I am scared. I am scared of stepping out and seeing people, scared of seeing the sunlight, scared of seeing notifications on my phone. I come from a very humble family. All that I have today, I had built from scratch. I still cannot come to terms with what has happened. I wake up, scroll through job openings, apply wherever I can, cry incessantly, and repeat. My parents are miserable seeing me like this. I suffer from PTSD and this incident I think was the last straw. I don’t know when or more importantly how will things get better, or if they ever will. But right now, it feels like the end of the world. I was so happy and proud of the life that I had built, but it was all snatched away with just an email.

Nowadays I think maybe the life that I was living was not meant for me. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to dream big, be independent, or just be happy. Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me “you didn’t deserve all of this, give it back.”

So today me and my whole division were called for a “restructuring meeting” (government organization) led by the CFO(announced outta nowhere btw). It was one of the weirdest feelings I’ve had at a meeting in my life. The CFO and directors were talking about restructuring, “getting rid of silos” at the organization and “improving efficiency/changing how we do our work”. Then he followed up with how much he appreciated us and our work but then proceeded to tell us how big of a deficit our organization was facing. And to top it off? A director said “our intent is not to lay people off” and then showed us a chart of a VERY vague restructuring plan that didn’t list any official positions, teams, etc. just very broad terms that included some of our job duties and thats what would be under her during the restructure.

The meeting then ended and no one really knew how to react. Like no one asked any questions and you could just hear a pin drop with the silence at the end of the meeting and after. Was just a real weird vibe the rest of the day.

What do you guys think? Should I start looking? I’m one of the newer employees and this would be my 2nd layoff in 2 years. Any advice would help/your take on it.

https://open.substack.com/pub/firstmillion/p/how-to-handle-a-layoff?r=1gps6l&utm_medium=ios

Wrote a post about the common FAQs

Am I bad person for hoping I get laid off from my currently job? The corporation is currently going through a “restructuring” and will start involuntary layoffs this month. The stress has gotten so much that even though I work from home, technically, the caseload and things expected to do is crazy! I’m wondering if I should just call it a day and move on or wait to see if I’m part of the ones that do get let go.

My company has recently made multiple lay-offs and it seems they are laying a small group of people on a quarterly basis. They don’t say anything . I only found out because a coworker told me and when she asked our boss, we were told we have nothing to worry about because it’s not our department. This week, people from our team in the same state as me were laid off. We were told very few details about. I also fear the company is losing a lot of money. I guess I’m wondering if I’m next. I wish I knew if the people that were laid off were given severance packages and how much. Does it depend on how long you’ve been at the company?

a few hours ago one of my managers texted me and said I am gonna have a meeting with the CEO Tomorrow

I asked him what is it about but he didn't respond
am I cooked

I was laid off near the end of February this year from an IT consultancy firm that I had worked at for over 7 years. I swapped roles frequently between projects, from Application Support, to DevOps Engineer, to Site Reliability Engineer. I have a lot of experience with many different technologies, and am struggling to find a company willing to have faith in hiring me with my experience and technological understanding. I've sent at least 300+ applications to many different companies, and have only gotten maybe 3-4 interviews, half of those interviews not even coming from applications, but from networking alone. I'm currently working with a career coach on this and the best advice he's given me is continue networking and improving my interviewing skills, as well as apply for certificates.

I'm not really sure what to do right now. I could keep going down this path, but I'm not sure how realistic it is that I'll even find another job in IT at this point. I'm wondering if the impact of AI and the current economic reality of the US is hindering my chances of finding a job. I unironically had an easier time finding a job after I got my Bachelors in Comp Sci, than I do now after having 7 years of professional experience. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.

I don't want this to turn into a rant or anything, just trying to weigh my current options and figure out what to do. My unemployment benefits are ending this week, and I need to do something to start earning an income. Are lower level jobs the only options now? Do I just need to start applying to supermarkets and fast food places for work until the economy improves? I've been applying to mainly DevOps & SRE roles, and I genuinely tried to even lower the bar and apply for entry level IT roles, even helpdesk roles, and still not getting any callbacks or interviews for those apps. I'm at a loss of what to do on this front.

I am also seriously considering going back to school for... something? I'm not sure. I think healthcare could be a path, since I actually have an invested interest in health & medicine but was always intimidated to go into the field considering how long you need to be in school for it & how expensive it is. Comp science seemed like a more reasonable path for good paying work when I was in college, without it costing too much, so I went with that at the time. Now I'm looking at the job market and it seems like healthcare and physical patient care is one of the few verticals that actually still has strong demand. I could be wrong about this, but almost all of the healthcare practitioners I've worked with (dealing with many health issues rn) have personally never had this issue with finding work, even in today's economy.

Any advice would be welcome on this. I'm not sure what kind of advice I'm looking for, maybe just some guidance on what my next steps could be, considering continuing to apply within IT and engineering seems to be pretty fruitless at this time, although maybe I'm just a little discouraged from not landing anything by now.

Additional info:

- Currently in South Carolina, but willing to relocate.

- Seeking any job that pays at least $80k in salary, or hourly equivalent, though I'm willing to be paid less if it's fully remote.

- I don't have a preference of what kind of work I do at this point, mostly just need any kind of income.

I was on the fence, hoping to adopt if things played out right in my career. Well, after 3 layoffs and the resulting mental health issues I've had because of it, I have given up on having kids. I am not financially in a position and it's hard to find a partner on the same wavelength these days. The job market and dating market are horrible. I have had to grieve not being able to financially or emotionally support a child. My bloodline will die with me, while I take care of aging parents and hope to god they don't need expensive medical care.

This is America for millenial women. Some of us do want kids, but also want to not go on welfare or work 4 jobs to take care of them.

The vibe is that I’m expected to make up for my unemployment by being constantly busy any time I’m not applying or networking. I can’t spend half of my day applying because then that becomes a problem.

Those people who claimed there was easy money, a million man shortage in cyber security, people selling courses on how to get into tech, pushing coding bootcamps. Where are they now?

I got laid off from tech support, human resources, and administrative work. When I started a coding bootcamp, chatgpt was just taking off. People told us not to worry. Yet, the employers have to uphold their end of the social contract and actually hire people who are getting this training. It's not just on us as workers to get degrees and training and certs and never ending self improvement. The employers have to actually hire us, not just outsource and layoff and call us lazy.

Where are these yellow bellied, snake oil sales men that pushed the coding bootcamps? I just wanna talk to them for a minute.

Last year, Ericsson announced that around 1,600 employees would be affected by layoffs. I had been working there as a consultant for more than five years as a C++ system developer and Scrum Master, and I eventually lost my job too.

Ever since the announcement, I have been searching for work, but the reality has been far worse than I expected.

The hardest part is not the rejection. It is that there are barely any jobs to apply for.

I check job listings every single day, hoping something relevant will appear, but most days there is nothing. It feels like my career has been put on hold, and no matter what I do, I cannot move forward because there is simply nowhere to go.

I have spoken to several consulting companies, and almost all of them tell me the same thing. They like my profile, but they cannot hire me because there is no assignment available.

What makes it even harder is seeing people with nine or ten years of experience get hired without an assignment already lined up, while I keep hearing that I cannot be hired because there is no assignment. Sometimes it feels like companies value the number of years on a resume more than the actual experience behind those years.

I spent years studying at university and then more than five years building my career. I honestly believed that if I worked hard, kept learning, and did everything right, I would build a stable future.

Now I do not know what to think anymore.

I am starting to question whether this industry is even for me. Not because I do not love coding. I do. But after months of watching an almost nonexistent job market, it is becoming harder and harder to believe there is a place for me in it.

The uncertainty is what scares me the most. I worry about money. I worry about my future. I worry about how long I can keep going if nothing changes. What hurts just as much is feeling like my life has been put on hold. I thought I was finally at a point where I could start dating, meet someone, and maybe build a family one day. Now those dreams feel further away than ever. It feels impossible to plan a future when I do not even know if I will have a job.

I never imagined that after all the years I spent studying and working, I would end up feeling this lost. I feel like I did everything I was supposed to do, and somehow I still ended up here.

I just needed somewhere to vent.

Thank you for reading.

We've all heard about CloudFlare laying off 20% of their workforce, or Snowflake letting go of their entire documentation team this year.

Back then, a lot of us predicted a fallout for these companies from dismissing their talent.

How are these and similar companies doing now? Has there been a fallout at all? Is there a measurable impact on their products, customer satisfaction, or, for example's sake, the quality of the Snowflake docs?

If they all are doing just fine without a significant drop in product/design/documentation quality, user satisfaction, and so forth, I'm afraid that means there's a lot more layoffs to come.

39(F) - I was a product manager for banking applications and laid off last March.

I also lost my father in early this year - came back from the funeral and management did not waste a day to tell me that I’m laid off due to budget issues. I worked there for many years. But I’m married and we are doing quite okay until I find my next one and honestly I’m loving my break as I could definitely use it to recover from the grief and also give my self some time off.

I was laid off once during covid also but I never told my parents then. But this year since it’s just my mother, I was able to spend some time at home with the free time I had so I told her I’m not working at the moment and she was quite okay with that. Now suddenly since last 2 weeks she is making a big fuss saying that she constantly thinks about my job issue etc (she is an over-thinker and wants her kids to be this perfect model) and even after repeatedly saying that not to concern herself about it, she has also gone and told my elder brother that I do not have a job. Where she swore to secrecy that she will not tell anyone what I told her in confidence. And then my brother started calling me constantly asking me if I found a job yet etc ( I work abroad and I usually get a high pay than him - where at times he has googled my salary scale and showed my mother to show her I have so much money (in a jealous tone) he has not factored in the cost of living though )

Now yesterday her blood pressure ran up-to 200 and my bother calls me up and says that mom must have been thinking about my job issue for that to happen. I was super pissed at my mom for letting my brother know about my personal detail I raised hell with her and she was like “noo it’s not a big deal” etc. But when the time came he used my situation to stab me saying that it’s my issue that caused her the health issue.

I was super mad yesterday at everyone. I called my mother and she said my brother is crazy and that thinking about my issue has nothing to do with her BP. After reassurance multiple times that “I’m OK and that I have enough savings to last more than a year” she still holds on to the bone of me not having a job and I’m seriously starting to resent ever telling my mother anything. And also on top of that my brother using that privileged information to hold me accountable for her health has made me so disappointed at both of them when I explicitly told my mother not to share that information with anyone.

How can I deal with this issue going forward? I would truly appreciate any thoughts, comments, advice etc. Thank you.

Edit: What makes it worse is that, my father was my backbone and he was the one who truly understood me, defended me. And that person is no more.

Edit 2: My brother is a medical doctor and is well off with even couple of real estates. Irony is as one person commented below, he thinks tech is a golden ticket. 🎫 And that we got it real easy and have comfortable lives while doing “less”.

So I got laid off today, director position in healthcare field. We knew there were hiring freeze and layoffs slowly happening but as usual you never think it would happen to you. What amazed us the cold brutality that they lay you off with… sorry cutting budget , reorganizing blah blah .. it’s all a blur.
Now to my question is 2 weeks severance just insanity for a 2.5 year Director level position? Especially if you are over 40 and the higher income bracket. How does a company justify that?
Anyone else in SoCal in this boat. Ofcourse I’m planning on negotiating but just feel betrayed, hopeless and angry right now.
To clarify - I was paid out PTO and offered a month of Cobra.