About to be laid off, what do I do?

Don't sign anything they give you, ask to take it home and take the time to read and understand it first.

In the meeting:

• Stay calm and maintain professionalism. Don't show fear. Just try not to show any emotion.
• Take notes about anything that seems relevant to your layoff. PRO payouts, when your final day will be, any severance pay you might be getting, etc.
• Ask about COBRA benefits. But don't go ahead with incoming those unless it's necessary over the next few months, because they usually suck ass (cost a lot).

And some general advice:

• Look up how to, and then tee up, an application for state unemployment benefits. As soon as you're laid off officially you can pull the trigger on that.
• Get personal contact info for anyone at your job who could be a good professional reference.
• Get copies of any work-related certificates that might be useful in future jobs.
• Try to find the good tech recruiters in your city or region. There's usually at least one among all the crappy ones. Ask colleagues/friends if you don't know where to stay. Avoid the sweatshops like Accenture unless absolutely necessary.
• Update your resume on LinkedIn and start looking for new opportunities. But I wouldn't flip your status to 'looking for work' because you'll probably just get flooded with spammers and scammers. But look on the down-low yourself.
• Determine which subscriptions you can cancel to save some money, because if you get laid off it's belt-tightening time.

Good luck!

Hey OP. I've been there, I'm sorry if it happens. Top comments here already have great advice. Take notes, DOWNLOAD YOUR ANNUAL REVIEWS NOW, make sure you can log into all hr sites on your personal laptop, makes w2 easier and 401k.

Not a lot of people are talking emotionally though. If you've never been laid off and this is your first, I want to prep you that this is going to hit hard. You don't think so now, but you're about to have massive emotional swings.

The first will be intense numbness and lonliness as you lose access/walk out. You will feel incredibly alone as your world is shut out. I want you to know that you are not alone, there are those who care for you. Tell your significant other, friend, even your mom. Reach out, talk to people if you need to. Ask someone if they want to meet for lunch. Try not to be alone all day. It will level set you and they'll help. You'll feel like you're lost, but knowing people are still there helps immensely.

Don't try to figure out your life that day. You have a great tenure of 7 years. You are allowed to take a break! Obviously I don't know your finances, but I would take a week if you can, or minimum 24 hours before starting to think about your next role. You may feel panicky, like you have to get started, that's normal, but fight that urge. Any plan you make in that state is going to be garbage anyway and you'll need to redo it. Don't do your resume yet, don't start applying, just do something you enjoy. Hobbies, games, family time. It will also help center you.

This is a traumatic experience. No its or buts about it, its a feeling that still haunts me a year later. I still have intrusive thoughts of was I good enough, am I a failure, why was it me? It's something I deal with, and I hope that at least in those first few days my advice will keep you moving.

Feel for you friend, I've seen it

They may offer you a severance agreement. These are negotiable, you can always ask for more prioritizing what is the most important and/or where they will be flexible:

Larger severance payment amount Longer healthcare subsidy Pto types balance payouts not already mandated by law Keep your computer, phone or other hardware Reference (if important for your area/industry) or neutral employment verification Etc.

Where are you based? Labour law varies quite a bit worldwide.

Most of the advice here is good. The less you say the better. Don't sign anything. If they ask if you can do anything for them that's not COMPLETELY standard (returning keys and equipment is obviously fine.) say "I need to think about it". Don't let them push you around.

Remember to breathe. Especially in the meeting itself, but before and after too. It's a stressful operation, especially the first time.

Don't make any big decisions 24 hours after, allow yourself time to decompress and evaluate your options. Also be careful not to burn bridges on a whim. Sometimes that's the correct course of action, and if you've already decided that cutoff is needed, then stick to the plan. Just be aware that high emotions can make you do or say things you may come to regret down the line. Less is more in the immediate aftershock.

Make sure you understand every document before you sign it, and keep in mind that you can refuse your signature on any or all of them. EDIT: a clarification: make sure you understand what the document actually says, not what HR or whomever says it says, before signing. HR can get real interpretive when they've got a dozen people to get signatures from and aren't under oath. Someone else mentioned taking documents home for review and I think that's excellent advice.

If you have personal accounts logged into your work machine, log out of them and/or rotate the passwords for them.

Apply for unemployment benefits.

Be mindful about how much you drink or use drugs. If you find yourself using more, or if someone near you remarks on it, see if you can stop or cut back. If you can't, seek help. That's general purpose advice, but post-layoff is a particularly dangerous time.

Take stock of how much money you have, what your current expenditures are, and where you can cut. Subscriptions especially are good targets for immediate suspension or cancellation.

Keep in touch with your cool co-workers, if any. If it's a mass layoff, a group text can be useful for sharing job leads, commiseration, or notification if your ex-employer tries to pull any bullshit.

That's all I can think of for now. Good luck, and I hope for the best for you. But even if things turn out for the worse, it's a bad day before better ones ❤️

Make sure that whatever you sign is clear on whether you are being fired or resigning. You don't get unemployment when you quit.

If it’s going to happen, just play cool. If they terminate you, you don’t have to agree to anything or say anything you don’t feel like.

7 years is a good tenure. You can apply for new jobs from a strong position. Learn to leverage your sales pitch for what you learned and how you grew in those 7 years - that’s the story your next employer wants to hear. What are you finally good at? What did you fuck up and learn a valuable lesson from? Tell stories about that kind of shit in your next interviews.

Establish lines of communication with coworkers you want to maintain contact with. LinkedIn is good enough. You just want to be able to contact them for a reference on your job hunt. Prospective employers want to talk to them - so pick people that will sell you the best. They aren’t going to call your previous employer and ask how you did - fuck the company. Keep lines open with people you want to, and set them up while you’re still employed and can exchange emails with them.

What do you want to know in the meeting? Just ask. You aren’t under any obligation to answer any questions but you can ask whatever the fuck you want. It is unlikely to have any impact on the rest of your life if you ask a question or don’t. You’re done with these people. Don’t feel like you have to be obedient or indulgent.

If this is how it goes, that sucks. I know the anxiety that comes along with it. The last time I got laid off, I was even looking into fucking military service. Don’t panic and make rash decisions like I almost did. A gap in cash flow is scary as shit but you will bounce back and hit a new stride. The uncertainty is just shitty.

Good luck!

If you have time still, it can be good to just go over all the projects you've worked on and just give yourself a quick summary of what you did on them, and if there are any concrete examples of ways you contributed to them. It can make things easier for you to sell yourself in interviews afterwards, but it's one of those things that we often don't think of until we've already lost the job and no longer have access to the files we would need to reference to put it together.

Aside from that, there are some big questions on the financial side of things, if you happen to be based in the US. Do you qualify for severance, and if so, how long will it be? If you get it, will you also have access to your medical insurance during this period, or will you have to consider COBRA coverage? If you are based in the states, then this should like serve as a qualifying event to let you register with your state health marketplace and sign up for subsidized insurance there, which will likely be much cheaper than COBRA coverage long term. However, if you do get severance, you may have to wait until your severance period ends.

Also, take care of yourself. It's never fun going through a layoff, happened to me about 2 years ago. Finances permitting, give yourself a few days or a week to just get yourself together and decompress, then start bombing out applications and looking for something else. I like to try and give myself a target date, that way I can take a bit of a breather, but I've got a hard deadline on it so I don't let things drag on too long and just waste my time and make things even worse for myself in the long run.

This happens to a lot of people, you’re definitely not alone.

Just try not to go off the deepend and spend a month at the bottom of a bottle/bag like I did, that shit only postpones the bounce back.

Instead try taking walks, playing games, reading or working out, IE healthy distractions and work your way in to sitting with yourself and understanding how you feel and who you are after this job.

[off topic]

I suggest this book to anyone who is laid off or going through any kind of job change.

"Discover What You Are Best At"

https://bookshop.org/p/books/discover-what-you-re-best-at-revised-for-the-21st-century-linda-gale/a159e3461a51e251

It gives you some self tests to find out what your skill set is, and then shows you jobs that use those skills. Nurses and hair stylists both need to have good people skills and be dexterous. Totally different jobs with a similar skill set.

If nothing else, it'll give you some ideas about what to look for in your next job.

And start the unemployment process right away!

In addition to the great advice in this thread, as a dev you were probably working in one stack for those 7 years. When that happened to me, I realized that my skills were out of date. So I did some leetcode grinding to get current. Also, lots of jobs use leetcode-type screenings now, so best to get proficient there. It sucks but that’s the way it is now.

Save anything you think you might need that’s attached to a work account, like emails/contacts. You might be locked out soon.

Ask for severance pay. I have previously been in your position and got 1mo/yr of employment. So you should ask for 7mos of pay as severance.

Why are you being laid off? Is it a company wide thing?

Make sure to get phone numbers from your coworkers and managers that you like for use as references for future jobs.

Hang in there. It sucks but you can get through this. Spruce up your resume. Think about what matters to you. Message me privately if you want to talk more. Take care and good luck.

You won't immediately lose your house and health insurance. There's a program called COBRA that you'll gain access to that will allow you to continue to have health insurance, and you'll get access to unemployment insurance, which will pay you a substantial percentage of your previous income on the condition that you're actively applying to (I think 5?) jobs every week. Try to say as little as possible, and don't sign or agree to anything on the spot, and consult with an employment attorney if you feel something is off about the layoff. I'm sorry this is happening to you, but I believe you'll be able to recover from this.

Depends on your country. But eyy welcome to the club pal. I got my 3 months notice 2 weeks ago :)

As a dev you luckily have the privilage to learn and work even at home. So use that time. Treat applying to jobs as your new job and the rest of your time, you can learn and programm projects. Make them public on codeberg so you got smth to show. Read a book. Learn. It is not end of all things

probably a career change tbh.

yer not gonna like how hard it is to get another job in the field

The one time I quit a job turned out to be the right decision. The one time I got an interview but didn't get the job turned out to be a good thing and being laid off from my previous job is what made me go for self-employment which has so far been among the best things ever.

All of this felt scary at the moment but all of it led to something better.

Stock up on torches, pitchforks, tar, and feathers.

File for unemployment and, if you want to keep your insurance, COBRA. If not, apply through your state’s marketplace.

I don’t know how important or even possible a portfolio is for a dev job, but if the field is something where you need to provide examples of past work to future employers try to go ahead and save copies of your best highlights if you haven’t already been doing that. I hadn’t saved examples of my work from one of my first jobs but I made it a habit at future jobs after getting laid off from that job. It’s easier to do it as you go along. Even if you don’t show the actual project to a prospective employer, keeping them can help jog your memory for projects to highlight.

you better prepare your resume again, you might have to apply in the hundreds of applications in a short amount of time(i looked in a sub and some of them are using AI to mass apply)_. most areas of tech seem to be suffering AI related layoffs, and theres very little jobs in those areas right now.

Takes notes like some of the other comments said. Including work you've done. You might regret not to when you are writing your resume 3-6-9 months from now.

I am from a developing country and my father got laid off on June or July. Luckily, he had some savings so he paid expensive fees of my university and we are living fine. Well, I tried to teach somewhere but they did not like my demo. And after that, I too have not gone anywhere. My dad is now selling insurance (idk his training is completed and he still goes but he says I got no money). My parents are POS but I am glad that I got basic necessities, sunscreen, and internet, and my uni fees got paid.

You've gotten plenty of good support that hopefully makes it clear this isn't necessarily the crisis it might seem to be, but a little more can't hurt.

The time I got laid off, I wound up finding a new position before my severance was done and getting a window of double pay.

And that new position is what lead me to my first dev job!

It's stressful, but it can work out alright. You can do it. Keep moving forward!

Make sure you have the most up to date info on your company's 401k provider and FSA/HSA providers (if you used them). Double check you can login to them, and verify there's no ongoing fee to keep your account open. You have about 2 months to make a decision on purchasing COBRA; so you don't necessarily need to buy into it immediately. Some enterprise software will allow you to have a free family plan, make sure you can retain access to that (1pass is an example). If your company offers and you use pet or legal fee insurance make sure you have alternatives set up. I don't think your life insurance policy will matter.

Make sure you know when, how much, and how your last paycheck will be delivered.

Make sure you know what equipment you need to return and how (have them tell you, don't volunteer info). If they just tell you "anything with an asset tag" ask for a list.

Make sure you've got any personal stuff off your work PC before the meeting, because you sure as hell can't access it later, and log out of your accounts.

OP can you please give us an update about what happened? I see your edit but if you can share more please do.

Either way take care we are all wishing you well ❤️

what should I ask for?

Nothing. They won't go to hell just because you have asked for it :)

Think about the outcome of that meeting. What are the possibilities? Make a list. Is there any outcome that changes from discussion or asking? Then prepare for these possibilities.

They can ask you for signing a paper to confirm that they have told you this or that. You are not legally required to sign anything, but if it is really only that, then it makes no difference.

If it says more than that, do not sign, but take it into your own private bag immediately, faster than they can blink, and say you read it at home because right now you are too loaded to be able to read anything carefully.

If they get upset because you took the paper, you know that there is something very fishy in it.

This just happened to me, too. There's lots of great advice in here, but an important one is to apply for unemployment. It won't be anywhere near what you were making, but it will definitely help stretch your finances.

Does anyone have thoughts regarding either hiring a resume writing service or just putting it through AI? AI is free and might help get past some early screening, but it also just feels.... Wrong. On the other hand, I imagine these resume services just do exactly that. I'd love any thoughts or advice on this

Best wishes!

Definitely don’t copy source code and any documents you have access to.