I knew I was about to get laid off so I stopped caring and started answering questions on stack overflow all day every day instead of working.

10k rep later I got a new job via stack overflow careers that pays twice as much.

Moral of the story? Be efficient... even when you are not.

Got laid off on Friday because of a workforce reduction. When I was in the office with my boss, someone went into my cubicle and confiscated my laptop. My badge was immediately revoked as was my access to network resources such as email and file storage. I then had to pack up my cubicle, which filled up the entire bed of my pickup truck, with a chaperone from Human Resources looking suspiciously over my shoulder the whole time. They promised to get me a thumb drive of my personal data. This all happens before the Holidays are over. I feel like I was speed-raped by the Flash and am only just now starting to feel less sick to the stomach. I wanted to stay with this company for the long haul, but I guess in the software engineering world, there is no such thing as job security and things are constantly shifting. Anyone have stories/tips to make me feel better? Perhaps how you have gotten through it? 😔😑😐

Do you guys have that one chick / dude who doesn't know jack shit about shit but just like a fukin cockroach always manages to survive every nuclear layoff, all this guy does is come in an watch YouTube videos all day

A web developer has started working on my windows.

How should I communicate with it that I don't want a website outside my windows? Will this be considered a covid layoff if I just throw it off the said window? 🤔

P. S. I'm talking about a spider, icymi.

When you work super hard for 3 years to acquire skills to get a job at your Dream Startup

Then finally after joining,
WITHIN 3 MONTHS, unfortunately, you become a victim of MASS LAYOFFS :|
Since your company is shutting down that particular business

The fuckkk :/

Layoffs happen all the time. But when you survive it and come back the next day and see the empty cubicles occupied by very senior devs who were really close to you and mentored you.

Had to go through this twice, 2014 and 2016. Thankfully we still meet up at Hooters every Friday and rant, and that's our version of a 'weekly'

!story

So, this is the story of my lay off from last organisation. It was just 4 months and i was getting good ratings in features development and overall timely completion. So, during this lockdown/Covid-19, one day out of the blue i and my teammate got a mail from HR to have a catch up. We were suspicious about that. My team mate was sure that it is regarding layoff but I was like we are doing well, why the hell they will fire us, and also it's only 2 of us who is handling the whole project, I don't think they will fire us; they are probably gonna discuss about something or may be covid situation. So my teammate was having his discussion earlier than me; after the discussion he told me that he has been fired, he tried to reason with them for half an hour but ultimately they asked him to put the papers.
I was bit scared, but still i was having hope that maybe..
So, the conversation started like this is the meeting..
HR- Hey, how are you. I thought if we can catch up a little?

Me- I'm good, what happened?

Tech. VP- See, we wanted to talk about your performance, from some past months you're not performing well and ...

Me- but i have been here just for 4 months and our team was the highest scorer in task completion last month.

Tech. VP- i know, i dont deny your technical capability. You're an awesome developer and technology wise you can achieve anything but your performance..

Me- ok, (to HR), anything will change your mind

HR- umm(silence)

Me- cut the crap and let me know how to put resignation via mail, bye.

And i cut the call.
The call lasted only for 7 mins, i was proud to not waste time on such assholes.

Such hypocrites are there...

Going around the building of a large mega corp telling all my internal customers their projects are going from "green" to "red" because I had a layoff meeting later that morning.
Ever see adults cry because their "favorite developer" was getting sacked and they would not see their project in time, or at worse, canceled?

Best: Got my first dev job a month before I graduated my bootcamp. Was hired till rona layoffs started happening. Found another dev job 4 months later, and just received a promotion from said job just before going on holiday leave.

Worst: Being laid off for those 4 months. Sure unemployment + stimulus got me through financially, but mentally and emotionally I was starting to crack. I had thought I broke through the barrier with that first job and was going to be set. That layoff threw a wrench in my whole plan. In those 4 months unemployed I developed some imposter syndrome. Regardless, I plugged along with my side projects. One company was really impressed with one of them and was using a similar stack for an upcoming project, so luckily they ended up hiring me. Confidence restored.

Has ANYONE ever seen a multi-day layoff? WTF are they thinking?! Best case, no one shows up today with violent motives after getting an invite last night to get downsized.

Web Assembly performance layoff

Layoff wave in Germany.
There is a new open-source project on Github, willbeallright-COVID19 for engineers being recently layoff because of the COVID19 situation. The main aim is to help programmers to stay connected to job opportunities. Quite interesting as the main contributor mentioned immediate questions that should be asked after the notification, and it seems to be on point as even here I've seen people searching for that information like What about all the personal items you have on the company computer? How can you get this information back? She is looking for community support so if you have any experience with layoff might be an interesting project.

My company just announced we're going to have a one week furlough. It's bad, but not as bad as a layoff. If we miss Q2 (which we will with the current state of affairs), then we will have layoffs starting in July I'm sure.

I knew programming was for me, MUCH later in life.

I loved playing with computers growing up but it wasn't until college that I tried programming ... and failed...

At the college I was at the first class you took was a class about C. It was taught by someone who 'just gets it', read from a old dusty book about C, that assumes you already know C... programming concepts and a ton more. It was horrible. He read from the book, then gave you your assignment and off you went.

This was before the age when the internet had a lot of good data available on programming. And it didn't help that I was a terrible student. I wasn't mature enough, I had no attention span.

So I decide programming is not for me and i drop out of school and through some lucky events I went on to make a good career in the tech world in networking. Good income and working with good people and all that.

Then after age 40... I'm at a company who is acquired (approved by the Trump administration ... who said there would be lots of great jobs) and they laid most people off.

I wasn't too sad about the layoffs that we knew were comming, it was a good career but I was tiring on the network / tech support world. If you think tech debt is bad, try working in networking land where every protocols shortcomings are 40+ years in the making and they can't be fixed ... without another layer of 20 year old bad ideas... and there's just no way out.

It was also an area where at most companies even where those staff are valued, eventually they decide you're just 'maintenance'.

I had worked really closely with the developers at this company, and I found they got along with me, and I got along with them to the point that they asked some issues be assigned to me. I could spot patterns in bugs and provide engineering data they wanted (accurate / logical troubleshooting, clear documentation, no guessing, tell them "i don't know" when I really don't ... surprising how few people do that).

We had such a good relationship that the directors in my department couldn't get a hold of engineering resources when they wanted ... but engineering would always answer my "Bro, you're going to want to be ready for this one, here's the details..." calls.

I hadn't seen their code ever (it was closely guarded) ... but I felt like I 'knew' it.

But no matter how valuable I was to the engineering teams I was in support... not engineering and thus I was expendable / our department was seen / treated as a cost center.

So as layoff time drew near I knew I liked working with the engineering team and I wondered what to do and I thought maybe I'd take a shot at programming while I had time at work. I read a bunch on the internet and played with some JavaScript as it was super accessible and ... found a whole community that was a hell of a lot more helpful than in my college years and all sorts of info on the internet.

So I do a bunch of stuff online and I'm enjoying it, but I also want a classroom experience to get questions answered and etc.

Unfortunately, as far as in person options are it felt like me it was:

- Go back to college for years ---- un no I've got fam and kids.

- Bootcamps, who have pretty mixed (i'm being nice) reputations.

So layoff time comes, I was really fortunate to get a good severance so I've got time ... but not go back to college time.

So I sign up for the canned bootcamp at my local university.

I could go on for ages about how everyone who hates boot camps is wrong ... and right about them. But I'll skip that for now and say that ... I actually had a great time.

I (and the handful of capable folks in the class) found that while we weren't great students in the past ... we were suddenly super excited about going to class every day and having someone drop knowledge on us each day was ultra motivating.

After that I picked up my first job and it has been fun since then. I like fixing stuff, I like making it 'better' and easier to use (for me, coworkers, and the customer) and it's fun learning / trying new things all the time.

McAfee will never layoff its employees due to corona .... cause they make antivirus 😛🤣

Has anyone engineered getting layoff before?

I don't know why, but I dread waking up to the job. It all seems meaningless and a waste of time. I know I'm coming from a place of privilege. But what's the point of doing something you abhor and trading your life for money on shit you hate?