Yo!

This week, I witnessed a mass layoff. My team members were removed. My friends were removed. The whole day went by refreshing my inbox, wondering if I was next, pinging everyone on leave to check if they were among them. The person I’d lunch with, the person who got teased for being a workaholic, is gone.

The day started as usual, I woke up thinking about WFH, but as it’s Thursday, the last WFO day of the week, I pulled myself to the office. Two stops from my destination, Sadhana sent me a screenshot. The email opened with how AI is changing our work, product, and customer expectations. the kind of thing that sounds like a preamble to announcing a new Claude or Codex experiment. But something was off at the end: “restructuring the technology organization”, “roles will be impacted”.

I reached the office to find no one working. People walking back and forth. You'd make eye contact with someone, exchange an awkward smile, which only meant“ what the hell is happening?”. Now people got called out via calendar invites and 15 mins later, accompanied by an HR ( I guess ) with a couple of papers to table, then to the exit.

My lunchmate of two and a half years handed over her laptop and walked out. I went along to see her off. She was panicking. I heard everyone was compensated properly, but you couldn't look at anyone without seeing the stress on their face.

After it seemed to be over, I had lunch with my team. They noticed me sitting alone and joined me. When we returned from lunch, one of the people who had just eaten with us was standing outside waiting for a cab. She'd been impacted, too. That hit all four of us at once. We spent the rest of the afternoon refreshing our inboxes.

At five, a mail from the director said it was over. We could log off if we wanted.

I think everyone walked away with the same quiet thought: take care of yourself. Your savings, your skills, your people. Nobody's going to do it for you.