You Got Laid Off. Now What?

I joined Etsy in 2015, shortly after its IPO, as a product manager on the seller experience team. After the company struggled to beat investor expectations for a year and a half, then CEO Chad Dickerson called an impromptu all-hands meeting the day of our March 2017 earnings call and announced an 8% layoff, along with his own resignation. I remember the audible gasp that went through the room when he shared the news. I certainly hadn't seen that coming, and the warm and fuzzy feeling I felt at work vanished in an instant.

Over 120,000 tech workers have been impacted by a mass layoff in 2022—including at stalwart firms like Stripe, Netflix, Amazon, Coinbase, and my own employer, Meta. Losing your job is never easy, but it’s even harder when there are so many workers on the market and many firms have hiring slowdowns or freezes in place. This environment is probably one of the worst labor markets for tech employees in a decade, which is remarkable given that only a year ago, they were in exceptionally high demand and negotiating lucrative offers from employers.

If you’ve been laid off, you may be confronting urgent questions like:

How will I pay my bills and support my family?
What could I have done differently to avoid this situation?
What value do I have as an unemployed person?

The Rethinking Resilience series is all about how you can better cultivate the skills of resilience during uncertain and volatile times—and getting laid off certainly qualifies. Even for those who remain employed, the possibility of a mass layoff adds a new layer of stress and anxiety that requires courage, flexibility, and grit to endure.

As a reminder, my framework for resilience focuses on how four skills help you withstand and overcome adversity and change: responding in the face of change, restoring what change has taken away, rebuilding in the wake of change, and reflecting on the lessons of change. Let’s walk through how you can enact these skills in the midst of a mass layoff.

Respond

News report of Etsy’s leadership change and layoff. (Source: Vox.com)

While I wasn't impacted by the first round of layoffs at Etsy, I wasn't out of the woods. The next day we met our new CEO, Josh Silverman, who articulated a set of "ambulance projects" that the company needed to make our highest priority. These projects had to do with reducing costs and driving new buyers to the marketplace.

Notably absent were investments on the seller-facing side of the product, and Josh's reminder that we needed to say no to "the qualified many to preserve the vital few". A few months later, Josh let go of another 15% of the company, including myself. One hundred and twenty of us got six weeks of severance and two months of health insurance.

Responding in the face of change means to work up the courage to take decisive action and mitigate harm. Being laid off triggers a cascading set of actions that you must confront in order to protect yourself and create breathing room to make your next move. While your immediate thoughts may go to finding a new job, there are several steps that you may need to tackle first.

Understand your severance package. Most tech companies are not kicking former employees to the curb with nothing. You likely have several weeks, if not months, of pay, healthcare coverage, and perhaps other benefits, like additional stock vests or recruiting support. Make sure you sign up for anything that could be useful and know exactly what you're owed.
Make a six-month financial plan. Everyone's financial situation is different, but assume that it might take some time for you to find and start a new job. Can you reduce your spending and cut expenses such that you have a six-month window of safety? Actions like making smaller payments on debt, tapping into rainy-day savings, filing for unemployment, and expanding any side income you might already bring in will claw back some much-needed peace of mind when job hunting.
Consider cutting housing costs. Housing is probably your largest expense by a long shot. In the case that your job hunt drags out, consider moving or changing your housing situation—whether that's back home with parents or to a cheaper place in your current location. It doesn't have to be permanent: subletting your apartment or renting out your home could let you return when things stabilize.

Restore

Facebook group of Percolate alumni. (Source: Facebook/Jason Shen)Before working at Etsy I worked at a rapidly growing enterprise marketing company called Percolate. We were backed by Sequoia and had a swanky office in SoHo with an espresso machine, catered breakfast and lunch, and an in-house photographer who would post "action" shots of us at work to our Instagram channel each week.

But the company grew too fast and revenue couldn't keep pace. Shortly after I left Percolate, 40 employees were laid off in sales, marketing, client services, and recruiting. I heard the news over brunch with one of my former coworkers and started the Percolate Alumni group on Facebook. As former coworkers quickly added each other, it became a source of community for support, encouragement, and new opportunities.

Restoring what change has taken away is about checking in with yourself and connecting to your community for support and love. When it comes to being laid off, this means taking time to breathe and be with people who care about you before jumping back into the fray. Losing your job is a blow to your self-esteem and sense of security. The emotional weight of being let go can be heavy, and you need to make sure you're taking care of yourself in the face of it.