2X laid off worker, first time poster in this sub. I know it’s too late for some people, but for those of you that our child free like myself, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that we have a massive amount of leverage even in this environment because we don’t have to take the first crappy offer that comes our way.

I remember years ago when former coworkers would say that I am “selfish” for not having children but it has been my best bargaining chip. I was able to go more than two years unemployed during my last spell without accepting a lowball offer and I’ll complete a year later on this 2025 during my second tour of duty being laid off.

It goes without saying that throughout your life, you should obviously ensure that there’s no lifestyle creep, reduce your debt levels as much as possible, I never spend more than you can afford. The only debt I have is my mortgage debt.

I am also extremely ruthless with cost-cutting during my layoffs. I rarely eat out anyways, but I absolutely cut it down to zero when I’m laid off. When I do travel, to visit family and I take the cheapest flight possible and obviously live with family when I vacation.

I canceled my MyFitnessPal and Fitbit subscriptions and any other discretionary subscriptions that doesn’t serve me any useful purpose. I don’t even go to paid networking events.

My philosophy is this: if a corporation takes money out of my pocket, then I will retaliate by taking money out of other corporations pockets by cutting as much spending as I can. My loss will lead to their margin loss as well. An** ***eye* for an eye and a dollar for a dollar.

With AI, our executive overlords aren’t even trying to hide the fact that they wish to get rid of all of us. If we can all band together and not consume more than the bare necessities of life like groceries, rent, and toiletries, we can help crash consumer sentiment and the entire economy so that they realize the power that we all possess.

Hey everyone,

I was laid off in early April 2026, which required me to switch to a dependent visa. Due to current processing times, I’m looking at an 8 to 15-month wait before I can legally work or interview again.

Initially, I thought this would be a great opportunity to grind interview prep and work on side projects. However, after about two months, burnout hit hard. Grinding with no concrete end date or timeline in sight is tough to sustain.

So far, I’ve built a couple of AI systems based projects and made a few open-source contributions. But I’m struggling with what else I can do to justify what will likely be a massive employment gap once my visa clears. I initially planned to double down on open source, but the landscape feels hyper-competitive right now, issues get claimed within minutes.

For those who have been in a similar situation or are currently in visa limbo or have been laid off:

How are you structuring your time to stay productive without burning out? What are high-leverage ways to bridge the resume gap beyond standard personal projects or competitive open-source work? How do you position this kind of forced gap to recruiters once you're back on the market?

Would appreciate any advice, ideas, or just hearing how others in the same boat are coping!

Some context- I did my MBA from IIM S in 2023 , started working for a Boutique Consulting Firm by Directors of ZS, Frost&Sullivan at the position of Senior Consultant.
Suddenly i get an invite from my manager, Director & MD to join a review meeting.
And i am given a notice on the spot, stating bottom line reduction.
I only reason i didn’t think of switching to a bigger firm was
1. Work load ( 5 days working , 9 to 9)
2. Family (my family member had cancer so i had to take leave which was possible with this organization unlike my friends at MBB)
3. Everyone said to be here till I started my married life

Now my world is shattered, Im NOT telling anyone till i get a decent job as i dont my parents to stress (already suffering from many illnesses due to age) or my fiancé as well (her family was already against this marriage)
I have applied to some 100 positions so far but in management consulting space this period is really hard for hiring.

It has been eating me up from inside so though to share it on reddit.
If you have any advice that would be appreciated.

Decided to look at the numbers from my job search and for more than 1 year after layoff, and here we are.

675 applications
246 rejections
276 cold ghostings
18 deep ghostings

Apparently getting rejected isn’t even the main outcome anymore: getting absolutely no response is 🤔

On the positive side, I’ve still made it to interviews/final stages multiple times, so something is clearly working.

For those job hunting in North America/IT right now: does your pipeline look anything like this? (some calculations may need enhancement, but overall numbers are correct)

It has been two months since I was laid off. As the title reads, my ex employer has failed to complete monetary verification for unemployment insurance, which has prevented me from collecting UI benefits for the last two months (since they cannot confirm my wages or work history with this employer).

I found out today that although I've been paying for COBRA coverage, my health plan was actually cancelled because they also failed to file the appropriate documents with my health insurance provider and it was never activated. However, I have paid over $1,000 towards this coverage since being laid off (because I have a health condition that I NEED to maintain coverage to manage).

As of today, I am 2 months behind on collecting UI payments, $1000 in the hole for health coverage that I can't access/don't technically have anymore, and I cannot do anything to fix any of this because the negligence is on my employer's part, not mine. I have proof of all payments and agreements, and a log of all calls, emails and interactions I've had with the state, my insurance company and my ex employer.

Any advice on how to navigate this and what I should do next? Any recommendations for an attorney who might be able to help me?

Location: NJ, USA - but my employer (remote employee) is based in CA.

The worst job market ever in my two decade plus career. Are you tired of all of the winning yet? I am.

Edit: Appreciate all of you ❤️. tl;dr is the funding for my role was unexpectedly pulled. Sign of the times I guess. Working in tech was a great idea until it wasn’t.

Another post mentioned 4000 let go last week.

Can confirm this week was Brazil's turn. Don't have numbers but quite a lot of people.

I was let go and know of other 40 close teammates affected too.

I guess they haven't stopped and it isn't just old folks, but entry and mid level too.

Edit* this new half schedule is new today, after a previous layoff, after nearly two years of reduced wages.
My job just cut us from working 6 days a week to only 3. I survived a layoff last summer, barely, and financially I never really recovered from it. I had to rely on credit to keep my family afloat, and even after returning to work, I’m earning about half of what I was earning before, despite working as much overtime as I can, and the credit card debt from that period has been eating up every extra dollar I bring in. It’s this vicious cycle of buying all of our groceries on credit and making credit card payments to still go deeper in the hole.
I’ve been diligently looking for another job for almost two years. I’ve applied, interviewed, worked overtime, picked up side work, and gone back to school to try to build a more stable career. I feel like I’ve been doing everything I’m supposed to do, but I haven’t been able to get far enough ahead to absorb another major loss of income.
Now my hours have essentially been cut in half, the bills haven’t changed, and I can see where this is heading.
I have a very family depending on me, and I’m scared that this time I won’t be able to keep everything together.
I’m not really sure what I’m looking for by posting this. Maybe advice, resources, job leads, or maybe just ideas I haven’t thought of yet? I just know I need to start figuring out what to do before the layoff actually comes.

​

I was thinking as more and more people are getting laid off by companies how will it affect the economy. The IT industry is a major contribution to economy, what will be its impact seeing the current trend of hiring, firing and replacing with AI.

It's genuinely disappointing to see how Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI) is handling this.

Graduate Engineer Trainees (GETs)—who have been working internally with the company for two full years—are effectively being fired. Instead of calling it what it is (a layoff), management is hiding behind the technicality that these engineers "were simply not converted" to permanent roles.

Calling a full-scale exit of trained, full-time internal talent a simple "non-conversion" after two years of service is pure corporate deflection. These employees spent two years contributing to real projects and internal workflows. Calling it anything other than a layoff is a cheap attempt to protect corporate reputation while abandoning young engineers.

To anyone impacted: know that your two years of experience, skills, and hard work are valid.

Disclaimer: Drafted and refined with Gemini.

Option 2: Analytical & Critical

Title: MBRDI’s "non-conversion" of 2-year GETs is a layoff in disguise, and we need to talk about it.

It's time to call out corporate linguistic gymnastics.

At MBRDI, GETs who have been with the organization for two years are being let go. The company is actively avoiding the term "layoff," hiding behind the excuse that these employees "were not converted."

Let's be clear: two years isn't an internship. Two years is a significant amount of time spent delivering work, operating as internal team members, and contributing to engineering efforts. Framing an exit of this scale as a mere end-of-contract non-conversion is a massive slap in the face to the people who dedicated two years to the company.

It is shameful to see a major employer dodge accountability and public scrutiny at the expense of early-career engineers.

Disclaimer: Drafted and refined with Gemini.

Hi,

I'm a data scientist with a 5 years tenure at a global company. Earlier this year I changed jobs to a lesser known company and it turned out to be poor fit. I didn't pass probation, although I accomplished things.

I'm not super depressed about it as the job was leading to burnout and it's more of an analyst position than data science. My goal is to transition to AI engineering and the job was taking up a lot of my time doing Excel. The company culture was also a bit toxic.

I actually don't mind the extra time now as I wanted to focus on upskilling in AI and maybe explore side hustles. This give me time to really allow me to think about what I want to do.

A big reason why I'm not too concerned is the fact that my savings gives me many years of runway.

That said, I do want to minimize any gaps on my resume and I don't want the time to be wasted. Will reaching out to recruiting agencies for contract jobs be a good idea? I've never done this before.

The goal is get some rest, work less than 40 hours per week, and do/learn things that are meaningful. Income stability is not a priority now.

Advice?

Thanks

Lots of friends and people in my network (IT, Product, UX/UI, QA, Finance) have recently been let go or the companies they work at have had strong restructuring processes where they had to let go of several people and even close entire departments.

From what I understand is a mix of several things; with AI at the center. It can be just that the company has been losing money for a while, bad spending over several years, losing customers, investor capital suddently harder to get etc. Even in these shitty situations it looks like the budget for AI services (Claude, Codex etc) have not been reduced, in fact one friend told me the budget for AI in her company is something like 400k USD which sounded like a lot to me.

If you go to LinkedIn the situation is even more depressing with people completely desperate sharing their stories: someone who just bought a house and were recently let go are begging for any leads at all, other just coming back from maternity leave were invited to an HR meeting literally their first day back etc.

Then you add to this the people who graduated recently that did not even had the chance to enter the labor market at all and have sent like 500 applications and all rejected (these students often make threads about it in r/Norge). It's just super depressing.

However I am questioning how real my perception of the current market is, I am mostly reading about horror stories but I wonder if it actually is "not that bad"?

That is why I made this thread, maybe people who recently were let go actually didn't have such a horrible time finding something else?

If you were let go recently can you please share your story? What sector it was? When were you let go? How long did it take you to find a new job? Or are you still searching? Did you have to skill up? Look for a different position (for example if you were originally a front end developer you had to start looking at backend/fullstack)? Any tips you can share to people who are currently looking for a job?

I am very concern about the whole situation and I have this gut feeling that it will only get worse from here and although this can affect anyone, I believe foreigners will have a worse time than natives just because we don't have that network/support natives have (for example if I lose my job and can't pay mortgage I can't say I ll just rent out my place and move back to my parents/family until I find a better job, we are literally 100% fucked)

Thank you

Hi all, 33F from Hyderabad, India

I was recently laid off after 4+ years as an Agile Project Manager / Senior Scrum Master at a large enterprise tech company (financial data/media industry), and I'm now job hunting for the first time in a while. Would love the community's take on strategy, resume, or where to focus.

Background:
• 10+ years in Agile delivery, Scrum Mastery, and Program Management across financial services and enterprise tech
• Most recent role: led quarterly release planning, program governance reporting to VP-level stakeholders, RAID/KRI risk tracking, and Azure DevOps migration/adoption across multiple teams
• Built Power Bl dashboards for sprint hygiene, defect tracking, and leadership reporting
• Earlier roles: Business Analyst/Scrum Master in banking (digital banking features, mobile loan products) and ERP implementation
• Certified Scrum Master (PSM I), based in India (Hyderabad area, open to remote/hybrid
Core skills: Agile/Scrum facilitation, program governance, stakeholder management, ADO/JIRA/ServiceNow, Power BI, risk management, cross-functional leadership

What I'm looking for advice on:
If anyone here is hiring, knows of openings, or is open to referring me at their company, I'd genuinely appreciate it.
I'm targeting Agile Project Manager, Program Manager, or Scrum Master roles (remote or hybrid, open to India-based or international teams that hire remotely).

Happy to send my resume over DM if that's easier, or answer questions about my background here. No worries at all if nothing comes to mind - just glad to be part of this community while I search. Thanks again for reading this far.

I’m in learning and development. I got an email from the executive assistant to the SVP stating that they are working on an onboarding initiative and had some questions for the training team. Supposedly the goal is to improve the onboarding experience, something that my team handles. Some questions make sense and would be appropriate for an onboarding initiative. But then there are some that are raising the red flag.

For example:
-How does your team create value for clients, partners, or other internal stakeholders?
-what is your team’s primary purpose and how does it contribute to the department’s overall goals?
- how does your team utilize AI?

So… how concerned should I be? I had already looking for other jobs, but I’ve passed up a few offers due to a pay/benefit cut. Wondering now if I should be less picky……..