Layoffs
#layoffs · 48 voices
What people keep running into
- Massive tech layoffs create job insecurity (38 voices)
- Difficulty explaining employment gaps in interviews (2 voices)
- Retail shift cuts lead to empty shelves and staff burnout (1 voice)
- Large employer closures hurt surrounding small businesses financially (1 voice)
Voices
- Checked my 401k today for the first time since the buyout headlines and wished I hadn't. Down almost five percent this month, mostly blamed on AI spending jitters at the big tech names. So now the same word that's making everyone nervous about their jobs is also eating the retirement account I'm…
- Saw the buyout numbers this morning before I'd even had coffee. A quarter of a workforce, just gone, dressed up as a generous offer to leave on your own terms. I'm not at that company. Doesn't matter. Every person on my team read the same headline at their desk today and you could feel the room get…
- Finally used that script I'd been practicing out loud for the resume gap question. Got through the whole thing in the interview without my voice shaking this time, actually felt good walking out of there. Email came back two days later. Not even a real rejection, just 'the role has been placed on…
- Maybe I'm overthinking this but ever since the reorg took out half our team last month I can't relax at my desk anymore... I still have my job, I know I should be grateful, but every time my manager's name pops up in chat my stomach drops a little. Nobody above us will say if there's another round…
- Heard the whole chain shut down overnight on the radio on my way to work. My cousin worked at the one near the highway for six years, closing shifts mostly, knew every regular by their order. She got a text at 5am telling her not to bother coming in. No severance conversation yet, nobody even knows…
- Intuit cut 17% of the company today. I was one of them. Seventeen percent sounds like a statistic until you're the stat. Cleaned out my desk in under an hour and security walked me out like a liability. Still haven't told my parents.
- TikTok is closing our whole office next month and corporate called it a "hub consolidation" in the memo. A weirdly polite way to say everyone loses their job at once. Coworkers already started a group chat to keep track of who lands where, like a class reunion nobody wanted.
- my company does layoffs by timezone now, east coast gets the news at 7am so by the time west coast logs on the whole floor already knows who is gone. logged into slack this morning to four separate wishing you well messages before my coffee even finished brewing
- our whole department got merged into another team last week with zero warning, new org chart just showed up in the shared drive one morning. nobody said layoffs but two of the roles on the old chart just arent on the new one at all. going into every meeting now trying to read the room like its a…
- work threw a thank you for your service cake party for a coworker who got let go and everyone stood around eating cake in near silence, like we were at a funeral for someone who was still standing right there. nobody knew what to say so we just kept complimenting the frosting
- stopped counting how many people i personally know who got laid off this year somewhere after twelve, they dont even work in the same industry as each other anymore. its stopped feeling like an event and started feeling like weather
- local nextdoor group turned into a slow motion layoff bulletin board this week after the ai company down the road did another cut. strangers posting their job titles and asking if anyone is hiring, next to someone selling a used stroller. never thought id see people network for their careers between…
- Got called into an unscheduled meeting this morning and walked out holding a severance packet I do not understand AT ALL. A stack of legal language and a deadline to sign by Friday. Is there anything that reviews these clause by clause so I know if I'm leaving money on the table?? Not signing…
- my sister keeps texting me screenshots of layoff headlines during work hours and it derails my whole afternoon every single time. i get that shes worried but i dont know how to ask her to stop without it turning into a fight about how i dont care enough about whats happening
- Return to office mandate hit our team this week. Five days a week starting next month, after three years of doing this job just fine from home. Nobody explained why. Just a calendar invite titled "Important Update" and then the policy PDF. Half my team started quietly job hunting today.
- management had me write up detailed process docs for my role over the past two weeks, breaking down literally every step i take during a normal day. yesterday i found out those docs got uploaded straight into some internal ai tool thats supposed to support the team going forward. nobody said the…
- My boyfriend has started scrolling job listings at like 3am every night since his company did another round of cuts... even though his own job is fine so far. I wake up to the blue light and just lie there, not knowing if I should say something or let him have this. It's been two weeks straight now.
- My husband got laid off six weeks ago and now he apologizes for everything. Using the dishwasher, turning on the AC, existing basically. I keep telling him he doesn't need to apologize for being home, but I don't think he believes me, and I don't know how to convince him.
- kroger near me cut the overnight stocking shifts this week and now the shelves look half empty by dinner time every night. cashier told me everyone on nights got offered online order picking instead and half of them just quit rather than switch schedules like that
- applied for unemployment last month and the woman on the phone told me the backlog is the worst shes seen in years, actual quote was "unprecedented volume" like that was supposed to make me feel better about waiting. meanwhile the market closed at a record high the same afternoon. none of it makes…
- the store i work at added more self checkout kiosks this month and quietly cut two cashier shifts a week to cover the cost. corporate calls it streamlining in the store meetings. nobody says the word layoff but everyone on the floor knows exactly what it means when your hours get cut in half like…
- Two of my closest friends have been laid off this year and I still have my job. I feel weird bringing up anything good around them, so I just don't mention things anymore. Is it normal to feel guilty for something you didn't even do?
- been going back and forth with a recruiter for two weeks about a role and then dead silence. found out today through their own linkedin post that they got cut in the layoffs. so now im not just jobless, the person doing the hiring is too. feels like the floor keeps moving
- uber just announced cutting 3300 corporate jobs and citigroup started cutting too, back to back in the same week. every department slack channel im in just has people quietly going idle one by one, nobody says anything anymore, its like watching a light dim through a wall
- half my linkedin feed is turning into 'open to work' banners and its all people from my own company who havent said anything about it internally yet. feels like watching layoffs happen in slow motion before its even officially announced
- Cisco posted record quarterly revenue and cut almost 4,000 jobs in the same breath. Great news everyone, the company is doing great. I don't even know what "doing well" means anymore if it still ends in layoffs.
- the coffee shop across from the tiktok office here in nashville is already talking about cutting hours once they close up in october. never thought about how one company leaving basically guts a whole block of small businesses around it too. its not just the employees losing jobs
- saw nike was cutting 1400 people on the news before my friend who works there even got the internal memo. she found out i already knew before she did and that conversation was so uncomfortable
- uber laid off 10 percent of the company today and i keep replaying the slack message from my manager that just said can you hop on a call in five minutes like i didnt already know what that meant the second i saw it
- my old college roommate texted me today that she got laid off, third time in two years for her. she said she doesnt even know what industry feels safe anymore
- found out today that the ai chatbot our company rolled out last month is now handling what used to be an entire support role. the person who used to do that job is gone and nobody at the all hands meeting even acknowledged it happened
- Zillow cut around 500 people this week. My sister works in a completely different department there and she still hasnt heard anything about whether shes safe
- I looked up the numbers today because i wanted to know if it was just me feeling like this year is uniquely bad, and it turns out its not just a feeling. tech layoffs in 2026 have already passed the entire total for 2025, over 125000 people across more than 260 companies as of last week, and thats…
- Google cutting more roles again. Two friends there. Both just waiting to see who gets the email next.
- my best friend from college got let go last week, her whole role got absorbed into an ai workflow tool overnight. she called me crying and i didnt know what to say because honestly im scared its coming for mine too
- another wave of layoffs this week, google, tiktok, etsy, zillow all cutting people in the same seven days. i dont even know how to process the news anymore, i just scroll past it now
- a coworker on my team got replaced by an internal ai tool last week. she trained the thing herself without realizing thats what she was doing. now she's gone and the tool has her old email signature somehow
- Ive been keeping a mental tally of every layoff headline since january and it finally caught up to me this week. over 200000 tech jobs cut so far this year, and the share of companies openly blaming ai for the cuts jumped from something like 7 percent in january to 40 percent by may. that jump is…
- I've worked in engineering for 12 years and this week finally feels different. Intel announced another round of cuts, and a colleague at Thomson Reuters just got let go along with 499 others in their engineering org. Both companies specifically said "AI efficiency" in their announcements. I know…
- Just found out Microsoft cut another wave in the Xbox division today. 4800 people gone. My cousin works there and shes been in bed all day. This is getting really scary
- my company laid off the entire junior dev team last week. they said it was "restructuring" but everyone knows it's because they're switching to AI coding tools. i'm senior but genuinely scared i'm next
- 800 people at our Amazon warehouse are getting let go in September. The local paper covered it. Three likes. Three.
- Got the email Tuesday. Ten years at Microsoft. "Your position has been eliminated, effective July 18th." I've probably read it forty times and the words still don't quite land. I built a team there. I helped ship three products. I was the person who trained people who trained other people. Tuesday I…
- I was a paralegal for 9 years. My firm just reduced our department from 12 people to 3, citing AI tools that can do contract review in minutes. I am 41 and do not know what skills to even pivot to. Has anyone successfully retrained after a white-collar AI layoff? What actually worked?
- Got laid off three weeks ago as part of a restructuring. No warning, minimal severance. Six years at that company. 😞 I know the market is rough but I am not ready to give up on tech. What is actually working in the job search right now? Pivots, connections, anything.
- My team of 6 just got cut to 2. The company replaced us with AI tools and called it restructuring. I've been in marketing for 11 years. Now I'm competing with 500 other applicants for every listing that requires skills I have to relearn. Where do people even start over at 38?
- Another Monday, another round of layoffs hitting people I know. The part nobody warns you about is how exhausting it is to survive a cut and then carry the weight of knowing your team got smaller. Survivor's guilt is real.
- Three people I know got let go last week. Same story each time: AI can do it faster, sorry. I don't know what the plan is for everyone whose job quietly disappears. Nobody seems to be talking about that part.