A layoff story.
30th of January was the day I was laid off from Delivery Hero. Until then, I had never talked or commented to anyone about anything. It has been a month, and I have struggled with the psychology of it.
On the day they laid us off, an Excel sheet was shared over LinkedIn which had my name on it. From that day, many recruiters, CTOs of start-up companies, and consultants reached out to me. However, I was in a situation where I thought my world had crashed upon me. I was frustrated, angry at everyone, and constantly thinking about why this had happened. Even though I had received good feedback from colleagues and my manager, there were three other people in my position on my team, so there must have been a different reason for my layoff.
When I got to the office, my manager could not stare at me. He did not reach out to me. He did not even say “hi” to me. During the declaration of the layoff to my face, my director spoke so quietly that I felt ashamed. I delivered the computer, I signed up the agreement and went off.
Time has passed now, and I am trying to stay away from everything. Many of my friends, recruiters, and consultants ask me if I am looking for a new job, but I am not. Whoever you are, whatever you do, it does not matter if you are hardworking or not. We are all disposable people, especially in IT tech. There is no solid proof or explanation when they lay you off. Just some people make decisions, and your life changes.
If you ask me about my plans, I don’t have any. I don’t care about my life, capitalism, profits, CEO and CTO lies. The whole organism is just about making profit, no matter what you do. It’s a rabbit-carrot story, and these layoffs are also made to fit the fashions of a few big companies.
I am lucky that I don’t have my own family and am living with my parents at the age of 37, without rent. But on the other hand, I am thinking that I spent 24 years in school and university, worked for 20 years, and 10 years in software development. Now, look where I have ended up. Many people like me have the same story, so I don’t know if this is fair or not. Some people say, deal with it. No money equals no life. Is that so?
I am tired of everything: social media, looking for jobs, interviews, comments, “success” stories, useless LinkedIn posts, politics, the country we live in, expenses, and complaints.
When I looked at job posts and the hiring process of companies, they had four to five stages, sometimes six. But these same companies make layoffs without informing you beforehand. So what is the meaning of it? I reject many jobs because of the hiring process of companies. These processes also raise another question in my mind: what should be expected from a senior software engineer? This is another story.
I am not sure if I should work for another company again from the start or retire entirely from this “development” business. There is too much wrong in this world. Not sustainable, not for human benefit. So I am not sure if I again get into this shit hole.
Ofcourse, one door closes, new opportunities comes. I appriciate that they opened my future. But I don’t want to spend my time, for some dudes with fancy houses, cars and life. Or bunch of insufficent people not doing nothing except company gossip.
Now I withdraw into my shell. I am not open to the world and opportunities yet. I don’t want to hear anything from anyone.