The Story of My Dismissal

Today I want to talk about something a bit more personal than usual, as it is something that affects many colleagues in the sector and it's possible that, like me, it will directly affect some of you.

1 - Layoffs in IT

First of all, I want to pause to discuss the layoffs we've seen about a year ago, mostly between the end of 2022 and early 2023. We saw the biggest impact during that time. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.

The whole world was coming out of covid and companies stopped having "free money." On top of that, many companies over-hired, and I mean way over-hired. When the free money ran out, they realized their mistake.

This was especially apparent in startups. During the pandemic years, startups were raising money with almost nothing, and many did so without even having a product. Obviously, many workers were affected, me included.

We also saw companies with thousands of employees that “did nothing” also get hit. And we all know which companies I’m talking about; all those tiktoks and videos showing how employees day after day do nothing productive in the office. I can confirm first-hand those trending videos are very true.

2 - Layoffs at the Company I Worked For

Honestly, I don’t even know where to start. When this whole wave began, I worked for a Silicon Valley startup and they assured us that everything was fine, and it did seem fine, as the big layoffs in the big companies had already happened, or seemed to have happened.

There were four rounds of layoffs at the company, though two of those were split into two (like they fired 100 in one day and 80 two weeks later), so the numbers get a little blurry. From my point of view that’s two different rounds, but it doesn’t really matter.

The first round, honestly, I expected. My team had 17 people (seventeen!), and some were doing absolutely nothing. They’d get a ticket and take a week to do something that should take five minutes; my manager would go crazy. That’s where most were let go, eleven of them from my team. In some cases, it was obviously necessary. In others, honestly, I don’t get it.

By the way, the way they found out they’d been laid off was by showing up for work in the morning and finding the office locked, or for those working from home, not being able to log into their computers. Imagine that scene.

A few months later, basically the next quarter, the second round of layoffs came. This time my team wasn’t hit, but we saw people who had just started, or were supposed to start the next week, get their contracts canceled. Imagine being in that position: leaving a stable job for a new company that says everything is great only to get an email two days into the new job (or before even starting) saying “Hey, remember us? Well, we don’t want you. See ya.”

As you can see, the handling was terrible. Again, there were two sub-rounds: they fired about 20 people, then 15 or so.

What bugs me most is that the CEO or founder or whoever gave the typical all-hands meeting the next day wearing a wig with his hair on fire. Either he didn’t know what had just happened or he couldn’t care less. And, of course, everything was “fine” and there was money in the bank for years.

3 - Wastefulness

One of the main problems with companies is they waste money like crazy. I won’t go into what other companies have or don’t have, but I will talk about what this startup did, or seemed to have, rather: money to burn.

It’s true they raised almost $130 million in 4 funding rounds, and they had customers and plenty of usage, but none of that matters if you waste three times what you make.

I'm not just talking about having 17- or 20-person teams, which is obviously unmanageable, I'm talking about the perks. Honestly, you don’t need to send your employees t-shirts every quarter (though they are pretty comfy, I still wear them 😅), €15 Just Eat vouchers every week, and other little things.

What you need to do is plan and grow with control, at least considering best and worst scenarios: "Okay, if we make nothing, how long can we last?" These are basic things, I think.

And of course, if 95% of your staff works from home, don’t spend $40 million (30% of all funds raised) on a “cool” office no one goes to.

4 - How My Dismissal Happened

Finally, my day came: Tuesday, January 31, 2023, at 11 a.m.; honestly, I wasn’t expecting it, well, that day I was, because I started working and saw that the VP of Engineering had set up a meeting with me and a colleague at 11:30, and then I saw his schedule was full of 30-minute sessions all day.

So, I had the meeting around 11, where they told me what I’d get as my severance, and once the meeting ended, I lost access to everything. That’s all there is to it. Then, of course, some LinkedIn messages from colleagues, but not much else.

What do I do now?

5 - The Best Month of My Life.

It so happens that I was already planning to travel to Spain the next day to see my family. Obviously, this hit really hard. Now you have to explain to everyone that you’re out of work: "The guy who emigrated doesn’t seem to be doing so well, haha.”

But not everything was terrible. Here, you can’t just fire a permanent employee overnight, well, you can, but you have to pay them even if they don’t work. And that’s what happened: the company gave me all of February off, paid, without having to work a single day. Plus, the severance was one month’s salary.

So basically, I earned double that month for working zero minutes.

Obviously that only softened the blow.

What I really want to say is that when I got the news, my world collapsed. I was going to leave for a few days, which ended up being a full month since I didn’t have to work. What if I don’t find something fully remote? What if I don’t find a job? How long can I live without income while paying a mortgage, household expenses, and taking care of my kid?

I needed to find something and truthfully, I was a bit stressed.

Of course, as soon as I arrived in Spain, I started sending out resumes, and by the next Monday I already had several interviews lined up. Only two of them really interested me, and they were cool companies. One, on Friday, did a second interview with me and by the end of the day told me they’d make me an offer, which became formal a couple of days later. The other also took me through a couple more rounds and offered me the job, but I preferred the first one.

So yeah, finding a job was more or less easy; the company looked really good. Of course, in the interview, neither my future manager nor their manager was present. The experience there is a story for another post, but in the end, I left during the trial period to go freelance. If it hadn’t been for my manager’s manager, I’d still be there, honestly.

The point of all this is that you have to find the bright side. In my case, I had a new job within a week. I didn’t start until March, so I took ALL of February to relax. I did wake up early to take the kid to daycare, but at 10 I’d go to a café for coffee and pastries. Half the days I’d have lunch with my parents, other days with my grandma, grandpa, or cousins I only see once a year, then go to the park with the kid and just let him play.

Many parents never get to experience this because of their horrible schedules and only see their kid right before bed.

And for giving me a month like this, with no bigger worries, I always say that being fired is the best thing that's happened to me in my work life.