Yesterday I got laid off.
I woke up, saw a weird meeting on my calendar, opened Slack, and read that my position had been affected. Notice of termination attached. The company runs on European time, so the announcement had come through at 4:30am. That meant I wasn't a part of the announcement call.
The first thing that went through my head was "I'm fucked."
What the rest of that morning looked like
22 people were cut, dropping the company by about 50%. The whole DevRel team, mostly gone.
Once I knew I wasn't the only one, it made it a bit easier to swallow and helped me not feel alone in this process. There were people in it with me, and that mattered. Before we all lost Slack access, we scrambled to stay connected. Discord channels, WhatsApp group chats, whatever we could set up fast. Most of that first day I spent talking to people and pulling together what I needed for my resume.
It helped to have something to still think about and work on.
Over the weekend and into Monday I pushed hard to get through a lot of what I had open. Tuesday morning I was laid off.
That timeline is hard to sit with. I'm pissed about it. But I also understand why it happened. This wasn't a "we want more profit" situation, but knowing that doesn't make it hurt any less, but it makes it easier to process and understand that I need to keep moving forward.
A year of actual progress
In one year I went from a no-experience intern, to a junior, to an intermediate. I was told I did good work. I was promoted because of it.
That doesn't go away because the job did. The layoff says something about the situation. It doesn't say anything about what I built or what I'm capable of.
I'm not going to pretend the "I'm fucked" feeling is gone. It's still there. I'm just pushing forward anyway, because sitting still doesn't help and will just make it harder in the future.
What's actually helping is the people. My former team, my family. The relationships I built don't expire with the contract, and I'm not treating them like they do. That support is real, and right now it matters more than I expected. We need to lean on eachother and push forward.
If this just happened to you
This is just a thing that happens.
It doesn't mean you didn't do good work. It means circumstances changed and you got caught in it. Feel the bad feeling. It's honest. Then take a breath and keep going.
Stay as positive as you can and push through it. That's what I'm doing.
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