Community / #layoffs

Massive tech layoffs create job insecurity

Workers in tech companies face sudden large-scale layoffs, leaving them uncertain about future employment.

38 voices

What people say

• 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 quiet in a way that has nothing to do with the actual news and everything to do with what it means…
• 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 coming or if this one was it. I keep redoing my own numbers on what I'd do if I was next, just in…
• 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 who to call. She keeps saying she's fine but she's also already made four signs for her car to drive…
• 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
• 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 yard sale posts but here we are
• 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 anything until I know.
• 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.
• 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 this
• Ever since the Oracle news broke I haven't slept a full night in about two weeks. I just lie there running numbers in my head. I finally started looking at sleep and stress trackers to see how bad it's actually gotten instead of guessing. Has anything actually helped you? Besides staring at a screen before bed, which I know I need to stop.
• 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.
• 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 before you count everything outside of tech. google, zillow, tiktok and etsy all made cuts in the…
• Google cutting more roles again. Two friends there. Both just waiting to see who gets the email next.
• 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
• 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 what gets me. its not just cost cutting anymore, its companies saying the quiet part out loud…
• 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 everyone says AI creates new jobs too. In the long run, maybe. But I've been around long enough to see…
• 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
• Oracle announced another round of cuts this week. Survived two of them already. Not sure if I'm lucky or just next in line.
• 800 people at our Amazon warehouse are getting let go in September. The local paper covered it. Three likes. Three.
• The AI that screened me out is the same kind that took my last job. Nobody at that company is going to notice the irony.
• 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 was that. Wednesday I'm a severance package and an updated LinkedIn headline. The hardest part…
• 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.
• The question has shifted from wondering if AI will take my job to realizing it already took my coworker's. I'm watching people I respect get phased out and I'm not sure what to do with that feeling.
• 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.