i got laid off... (as a software engineer)

foreign a few weeks ago I got laid off [Music] [Applause] [Music] I signed this Severance agreement which means I have to be careful what I say since there are confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses but everything I'm going to tell you today is just the factual truth sprinkled with some opinions of mine so please don't sue me today just like every single day for the past few weeks I'm unemployed but in order for me to explain exactly what happened I need to take you to the beginning this is a story about identity my identity in high school I took web dev and mobile application programming and for the first time in my life thought whoa this stuff is cool then I took AP Computer Science and realized this stuff is also hard but mostly still cool so when I matriculated at Rice University in 2016 I declared my major as computer science and it never changed I interned at a big oil and gas company called slumberger then Microsoft and then a startup in San Francisco called Gusto I did Tech fellowships I had Tech friends and I was in-house Tech consultant for my parents being a software engineer was all I knew and all I ever wanted so when I graduated college I recruited hard and joined quote a fintech startup with some of the smartest people I'd ever met it was covet so I was fully remote at my parents home in Houston Texas and remote I'd remained for my three years of tenure I joined June 2020 and left June 2023 and man did those three years fly by when I joined we were 30-ish engineers which meant I got thrown into the deep end and worked on some insanely cool projects I worked hard and got promoted in just over a year my colleagues were my friends worked brought me fulfillment and life was really good and then the recession hit the job Cuts in big Tech are piling up 150 000 Tech workers which amounts to six percent of its Workforce and like most software businesses we had layoffs each one we were told would be the last that they cut deep enough but it was never full we had three official rounds of layoffs and then some unofficial ones to hush hush and that last official round of layoff the third one that's the one that got me but it was so different than the first two let me explain the first and second layoffs are identical the CEO would message in the general slack Channel announcing the decision if you were impacted you'd get a calendar invite called both restructuring conversation and if you were safe you'd be invited to the town hall later in the day and so I just lay on the couch with my phone out constantly refreshing slack email calendar to see if I'd lost access to Company accounts and anytime it glitched or took an extra second to load I thought it was over for me but each round of layoff I survived it's so weird to use the word survived [Music] Choice some hit three four five years of tenure and were ready to try something different others wanted a career break and some were starting families and slowly little by little my co-workers the OG's my mentors were no longer at the company my direct manager switched four times as more and more people left there were reorgs and a general sense of instability and morale well morale was almost non-existent but could you blame us and then one Tuesday I get a message from a friend at the company turns out I missed a town hall that morning I just lost track of time and they had announced some news big news the people off the team had rolled out a voluntary resignation program or vrp which essentially allowed you to leave the company no hard feelings with Severance and some benefits but also let's be honest vrp wasn't totally selfless the company had to cut costs and they had a Target number in mind so if enough people voluntarily left great no reduction if not some people would be volunt told to take the program and if they didn't they'd get laid off anyway in the coming weeks with potentially less favorable Severance and benefits this all happened on Tuesday and the deadline to accept or reject the program was Friday at noon PST the next couple days are gonna be crazy so bear with me and to make this easier we're going to call my direct manager Peter and my skip manager so my direct managers manager Ian Ian sets up a meeting with me on Wednesday morning just to check in the Ops on and he asked me a simple question do you want to stay or do you want to go and I say I want to stay let's do this when that meeting ends I pick up the phone and call my direct manager Peter I told him I want to stay I'm letting you know the same thing just so everyone's on the same page and then Peter says you should take the program [Music] in that moment I felt blind s but this betrayal runs even deeper you see a couple months back in March I started actively looking for new opportunities so I went out recruited and got some really strong offers at some amazing companies I went to my manager and said hey this is my two week notice and then he did something unexpected he tried to convince me to stay around this exact time period I'd also learned that there were some pretty serious development in my health I was also moving to New York a new city and so my personal life was not the most stable so I was already kind of on the fence and so when my manager asked me to stay I was tempted and then just three weeks later I was on The Chopping Block so this conversation ends and I am reeling emotional nothing makes sense to me I have so much anxiety and you're just you feel so alone and lost and fearful and the only thing you want is for the pain to go away so I took the next couple hours off to calm down and then I called my manager back and in a less emotional more rational State I basically said you owe me I turned out multiple job offers because you asked me to stay and three weeks later you want to let me go that's not fair I'm not gonna put up with that and I guess he could maybe hear it in my voice or because I've been so persistent that he was like okay no man let me see what I can do so pictures of the phone and he calls Ian so next day I go into the conversation and before I even have a chance to explain myself Ian just says sorry numbing I talked to Peter I know you really want to stay but we just we just don't have the head count for you there's nothing more to be done right no you fight until you can fight no longer I say look I deserve to stay and honestly you all owe me and I really drilled into that and so I guess Ian also feels the energy as of the rest of Thursday I get regular updates on slack and then finally he's like I think things are looking really good still not certain but I think we might have it and then he calls me Thursday night and I just feel a relief I don't feel happy or even at peace I just feel relief so we go out with my friends and I drink and just try to forget and the whole time I'm thinking should I actually stay or not because now the choice is mine so I went back and forth pros and cons I made lists and I talked to my friends and all those thoughts of you'll never get a job again what if you can't pay rent they were coming back and they were strong but I said no and so it just came down to realizing I was comfortable and I never want to be comfortable I grow the most when I'm uncomfortable when I'm in the unknown when I'm stressed when I'm anxious when I have some fear and this was an opportunity to just send it to bet on myself and I knew 10 years from now if I looked back I would never regret taking some time for myself so Friday morning I woke up I texted Ian and said let's hop on a call I have like a lump in my throat I feel nauseous hey good morning can you hear me cool yeah so I wanted to thank you for kind of like doing everything he's been a tumultuous couple days uh but I think I've come to the decision that I I'm gonna take the voluntary Severance and that's my layoff story from not having a job to getting it back to choosing on my own accord on my terms so what's next for me well for the foreseeable future I'm gonna take a well-deserved break I also have some things up my sleeves some big projects upcoming stay tuned for those otherwise stay safe take care and I'll see you very very soon cheers

Channel: Namanh Kapur

Views: 64,154

Keywords: i got laid off, laid off, tech layoffs, i lost my job, software engineer, software engineering, programming, computer science, namanh kapur, big tech, google, meta, jason goodison, pooja dutt, layoffs, joma, frying pang, tech, software developer, day in the life, unemployment

Id: n9XlJii7e0U

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023