Day 0 – A Five-Minute Meeting

I got laid off. Still letting it sink in.

I have always struggled with writing something on my blog. I’ve kept this domain for over 10 years and I wrote maybe 5 or less posts total. And I always just ended up either removing the posts or never got to finish writing the next one. I think this post might be up on my page longer than others.

During our last team meeting, my manager mentioned that there would be a series of layoffs happening across the company, and that our performance reviews would be delayed until everything was finalized.

I remember hearing that and still thinking:

“I should be okay.”

The team has only been getting busier and busier. If anything, I thought we needed more people, not less.

Then a last minute meeting invite from HR came in.

“Important Employment Matter.”

Just me and an HR manager; my team manager wasn’t on the invite. At that point, I knew this wasn’t a surprise promotion. My heart started racing. I may have panicked a bit. I could actually hear my heartbeat in my home office. It was that strange feeling when your brain already knows what’s about to happen, but some part of you still refuses to believe it.

And strangely enough, I still continued working until the meeting as if everything was normal.

Responded to emails.
Worked on the next Jira ticket in my queue.

Just another Tuesday. Then I joined the call.

To be honest, the actual conversation probably didn’t even last five minutes. I could tell that she just wanted to end the call right there and then. I dragged it. I think I stretched it a couple more minutes because I didn’t want to accept the hard truth.

“Thank you for your service.”

That was how the story ended for working almost 11 years for the company. My access to all communications was revoked almost immediately after she said that.

“But I have emails to reply to. Code to review. People to talk to.”

Couldn’t do any of that, but I still tried anyway. I tried sending goodbye messages to few people, although I knew they were just gonna be lost forever. And that actually hit harder than I expected. Being digitally erased from a place where I spent over a decade of my life, possibly with a single click.

Then came the part I dreaded the most:
telling my family.

Except… I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find a subtle way to deliver the news to my wife.

“I got laid off” seemed to weigh a million times more than “I love you,” even though it’s only one word longer.

I sat there staring at the screen for a while.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t panicking anymore.

I’m not some twenty-year-old living by himself. I have a family to look after. The world wasn’t going to stop because I got laid off.

So I got myself a fresh cup of coffee, reviewed my resume, looked through job postings. After all, I found myself a full day of free time to do whatever I want.

And then I spent most of the day pretending nothing had happened.

I continued doing chores.
Played with my daughter.
Acted like I had simply finished another normal workday.

I wanted to talk about what’s happened today with my wife, but part of me thought she wasn’t ready to hear the news yet, or I wasn’t ready to say it out loud. Could’ve been both. Not sure.

I kept thinking I should immediately focus on my next steps, but instead, I’ve decided that I’ll spend the rest of the day playing with my daughter. I think I deserve that for all my “service” over the years. I NEED it.

Tomorrow can deal with tomorrow.

That’s enough for me today.