laid
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brittney Ball, a 36-year-old former Meta employee based in Washington DC. It’s been edited for length and clarity.I didn’t anticipate being unemployed for over a year after my layoff at Meta. I assumed that, coming from Meta with my skillset, there’s…
I spent over 10 years at Meta, joining in 2012 when the company was still called Facebook and the newly acquired Instagram team occupied just two rows of stand-up desks in a half-filled Menlo Park campus.As a global director, I helped lead a creative group launching campaigns with Marvel, Disney,…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shanon Morris, a 34-year-old entrepreneur in Ithaca, New York. It’s been edited for length and clarity. Loading audio narration… I’m a Navy veteran, Marine Corps spouse, and the CEO of Trimester Abroad, where I develop solutions that elevate the travel and…
When Tejal Rives was laid off from Amazon in October 2025, she and her husband had a plan. Loading audio narration… They had bought a career-coaching and résumé-writing business, Do My Resume LLC, in 2024. Rives used some smart time management hacks to turn it into a side hustle alongside…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with small-business-owner Kristina Martinelli, a 56-year-old AI consultant who formerly worked a corporate job. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Loading audio narration… Getting displaced at 55 years old caught me completely off guard.I had just spent two years…
On an otherwise innocuous morning in January 2025, I lost my job. Loading audio narration… When the CEO asked me into his office, I already knew what was coming. Management had held an emergency meeting earlier that morning, warning us that mass layoffs were coming.Two of my colleagues had already…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jason Zhang, a 25-year-old former Google employee based in Seattle. It’s been edited for length and clarity. Loading audio narration… When Google hired me as a software engineer at 22 years old, it felt like a huge accomplishment. It wasn’t just…
