"Your role has been made redundant"
A blog post reflects on the personal experience of being laid off, detailing the emotional impact, the logistics of severance and unemployment, and the process of rediscovering identity and career direction afterward. The author shares lessons learned about self-worth, networking, and the importance of resilience in the face of corporate restructuring.
Background
The author, Aayush Sahu, is a former engineering manager at Microsoft and Meta, and a Harvard CS graduate. He writes this after being laid off from his role as a Senior Engineering Manager at Meta in the company's 2024–2025 cuts. "Layoffs" in Big Tech (Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc.) have become cyclical since 2022; after pandemic-era over-hiring, companies trimmed headcount to satisfy investors. Meta alone cut over 10,000 people in 2023. This piece is a first-person look at what that process feels like on the inside — the meeting scripts, the HR process, the sudden loss of access — for readers who have only seen the numbers in headlines.