Who has been laid off?

I woke up today with a nice surprise from HR. I got laid off. It was the most impersonal and robotic email I received.

20 minutes later all my accounts got disabled, not a chance to even say farewell to my nice co-workers.

It sucks. I don't have a ton of savings. Luckily my car is paid off, and I only have student loans left.

I was very tempted to inflate my lifestyle after I got a big raise.

I didn't do it, otherwise i'd be in a world of shit.

At least I can survive for a couple month or so.

Stay strong people

Just been put on furlough with likely redundancy at the end of the national lockdown period. Absolutely devastated. My job was hard and the pace relentless but the work was extremely stimulating and my colleagues were absolutely fantastic people.

(It was also a Haskell gig, which is a real rarity.)

Right now I'm just licking my wounds and waiting for the lockdown to end. I'm not sure if it makes sense to start a new job right now - the UK furlough scheme is essentially guaranteed income until June. Starting a new job would waive that, so unless you're actually losing money on furlough I think it's a bit unwise to jump companies.

My job of 9 years ended the last day of February. My plan was to take two weeks off and start looking for another job mid-March.

I've been ready to change jobs, but I find job searches while I have a job frustrating. Each opportunity is a huge investment in time. Honestly, I find it easier to search for a job when I can give it my full and undivided attention.

To make a long story short, I dropped a hint that I was ready to leave voluntarily under the right circumstances, but I didn't anticipate the whole COVID-19 thing happening just as I was starting my job search. I never anticipated that, the exact week that I planned on looking for a job, daycare would close, and everyone else in the industry would join the job search.

So anyway, what am I looking for? Priorities:

0: You can pay me

1: You need someone with almost 20 years development experience

2a: Ideally, I'd like to join an early stage company that has a "bubblegum and duct tape" version of their product on the marketplace, and now needs someone to make it better

2b: Or, I'd like to join a company with demonstrated product-market fit and write the first version of their product

3: I'd like to work with some languages, frameworks, toolkits that I don't have experience with (But otherwise, I have about 18 years experience in C#)

4: I don't really care if it's web, mobile, desktop, full-stack, ect. (But the last 9 years was a desktop product.)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-rondeau-56490a4/

My heart goes out to all who've lost their job (and those who's health has been impacted by COVID-19).

In case you want to get perspective of the huge US impact of unemployment, see this automated visualization.

https://t.co/G5k24nxJRS

I have been laid off yesterday. I decided three years ago to settle for a 1800€ job in a public institution, thinking that I could relax and escape the stress of freelance or small startups. For reasons too complicated to put into words right now it has been the most stressful years of my life, burnout/depression/loss of social support, that job took everything from me. There was a political/adminstrative change in the structure of that public institution and a clique of women set things up so that one of them - who has no IT skills, no coding skills, just a community manager - could get the budget that supports my role.

That budget was going to end in a year anyway. They just shotgunned me in the knees in the goddam apocalypse and we are talking public sector. Things must be savage in "the real world", right now.

I got a phone call from a local politician telling me that "It's not your performance or your skills or you it's just a budgetary reason. If I see anything that fits your profile I 'll let you know" (like... letting me keep the job I have been doing for three years ?). My job is entirely supported by a higher federal entity, I cost them 0 bucks, and I am there to carry on missions for that entity. It's truly cronyism at its finest.

And total lack of humanity.

All my close coworkers are up in arms and letters to local politicians are being written this week-end.

Today is the first day of a two week vacation (I officially am out in three weeks but the lockdown won't be very productive considering) and I was still in 2 zoom meetings talking about branding and destination management strategies at a small country level and how we can best help and support our sector to rebound later in the year. It's mind blowing. Was sending technical thingie to a coworker at 1 in the morning. They haven't even told my n+1 that I was let go.

Good thing there is a social net in my country, I am looking for to rest, find myself back. It's going to hit me real hard next week when I realize I have no social support in lockdown and all the projects I was working on are just... poof... gone.

edit: not covid19 related

edit2: so, total loss of trust in our representatives/politicians for a while

edit3: sorry for that broken english, I am running on fumes, I somehow couldn't sleep more than 2 hours last night :D

20% paycut here. This comes after being laid off a few months ago when Docker sold their enterprise version (sort of, the new company made us all offers but they have terrible benefits among other problems so most people didn't take the offer or only stayed long enough to find something else), so we're all a bit sad. There was then an immediate around of layoffs right after that (though thankfully my department wasn't affected).

At least we still have a job, and I'll take the pay cut if it means we don't have to make anyone else redundant, but I wish the employees had a seat at the negotiating table for any of this.

-I just got laid off after 15 years at an engineering company, the last couple of which I was an engineering manager/technical authority.

Prospects aren’t too bleak - the local engineering scene is pretty sound and I’ve heard encouraging noises from a couple of companies I’d love to work for - however, while the country is in lockdown and everybody is burning through their cash pile, not much hiring gets done.

On the upside, I have a few weeks at a minimum to spend more time with my kids and bring my Russian and Portuguese skills back up to speed.

The company I'm contracting for is flaming out fast. It's sad to see the death spiral in action. It's a shame, because it's the best work I've ever done and I don't know if anyone will ever see it. The software team was 100% remote and they were the best colleagues I've ever had.

It sucks to have graduated in 07, and feel like you've hit your stride in 20.

[UK] Not me but my partner—classical music. Almost everyone is freelance, and everyone has had all their gigs cancelled for the next few months, leaving a lot of people for whom strings were tight to begin with in complete limbo. Performers obviously but also all the events, management, publicity, everything. The scale of it is almost incomprehensible, unless massive investment is made in the sector to keep it alive, it will just... die.

I work for a very large player in the print industry (which is transitioning to 'multichannel marketing solutions provider').

I feel like my company has done the best they can (given our industry has already been under a lot of pressure prior to COVID) under circumstances. We're in groups of rolling furloughs so folks have not been permanently laid off. While laid off, we still are receiving medical benefits, which is great.

As a remote worker prior to all this, I haven't had to change much of my day to day and our infrastructure has handled the influx of remote workers (thousands) very well.

However, it also makes the prospect of moving to another company daunting. I worked on-prem for years and developed relationships with co-workers prior to moving off-site. I have a lot of anxiety about not being able to create the same relationships at a new company or having to commute again to a city center for work (something I really can't see myself doing unless absolutely necessary). It's a scary prospect and one I think is absolutely possible given the precarious state of my industry and the economy on the whole.

I was on parental leave and my son was born on a beautiful day. The next day, I got an email announced that everybody in my technical team is marked as redundant. I am speechless and through conversation, there is a sudden withdraw of investors to fund our company. Without this funding, it is impossible to keep the company going. From what I know, it sounds like a way to minimise the loss.

I was sad. We have a big plan to roll out a big feature in May. Now everything I worked on in last 6 months will be put on hold. Probably it never push to production.

My latest joy of becoming a father was ultimately skewed. Now I have to find a new job in Australia while taking care of a newborn. Things become harder this time when many companies impose a hiring freeze.

I still keep my faith that one day I will escape from this unemployment. One day.

Fired officially next week but to be honest it was ongoing before the lockdown;)

On the bright side it seems the tech job market is not too much affected here in Paris but we'll see how it goes.

Well at least I can now finish some freelance gig that was taking my free time, and it gives me more time to continue learning elixir, I even finally took the time to open-source and deploy a demo of a LiveView game I made initially at the company that let me go. https://every-weak-tapaculo.gigalixirapp.com/potus

The company I work at is trying to avoid laying off people by asking everyone across the board to take a pay cut. I had recently received a raise, so they paid me at my raised rate up until the end of the month, but they let me know they would need to revert me to my un-raised salary moving forward. All in all, a reduction of about $7,000 to my salary. Some of the other devs (the most expensive ones) took a 30% pay cut.

They are hoping they can qualify for some of the $2 trillion stimulus and can recoup some of the losses (and if the economy recovers, they might be able to give us some of our reduced salaries back as bonuses at the end of the year), but we will just have to see.

Ultimately, I'm grateful that we aren't all getting laid off right now. I think more companies should offer salary cuts as an option instead of just blindly laying off people.

I landed my first job as full-time professional software developer doing React-Native development right before the Coronavirus pandemic struck. By the time I finished filling out all of the hiring paperwork, drug tests, etc., they reneged on the offer. Was pretty upset about it at the time, but I guess it's hit everyone else just as hard.

I haven't been laid off yet but I expect it to happen any moment. This will be my second layoff this year. I went through coding interview hell to get this job too, and I was so happy and things were really looking up. This is hard.

I’m a bartender. At least 75% of my friends have been laid off. Not just bartenders, but servers, bussers, most cooks, managers, and everyone I know who works in hotels as well.

I left voluntarily before I had something else lined up. We weren't really doing anything we were hired to do (pentesting), so I wanted something else. I got really restless and it's why I'll stay away from government contracting positions in the future unless desperately needed.

4 months ago this wasn't a completely bad idea as tech was known as a seller's market and taking time off to learn new things was normal.

It's obviously not realistic for the next year or so at least.

If many people at your company have been laid off it might be a good idea to check with a lawyer to see if the company has complied with the requirements to be exempt from WARN act compliance. Here's some relevant analysis from California:

https://www.californiaemploymentlawreport.com/2020/03/govern...

I found this list on Reddit if you're looking for a full list of companies that are laying employees off, pausing hiring, or still hiring:

https://airtable.com/shrpj2r4Kjc4YoMu4/tbl8m95GiuWehnIiT?blo...

I asked the owner for a 20% cut. We had some tough negotiations on my salary 2 years ago and I wanted to express my willingness to share the 'pain'. So far she hasn't taken me up on it.

*I don't know how to take the fact she hasn't taken me up on it :/ but I do adore the company ~ 13 years in service.

Not laid off, but in limbo. I accepted a new job at the end of February that was originally supposed to start on 3/30. Unfortunately, my start date is now up in the air due to logistical issues getting my hardware so I can start work. I no longer have a confirmed start date.

It's a bummer because I resigned from my previous position on 3/13 so I could have time in between jobs. Now I'm getting a lot more time than I planned and I'm hoping my new job doesn't evaporate. I'm excited to work with this company and team so I am keeping my fingers crossed for now.

If my new job does disappear, I would really like to find an opportunity working with Clojure(Script) and/or Kubernetes.

Perfect storm for the company I was working for. Had their worst fourth quarter in company history. Purchased another company in January as part of a pivot to a more profitable business model. They were a bit desperate to get the deal done, probably didn't even consider what was occurring in China at the time. They had significant operations in Southeast Asia. As far as I knew zero planning had been taking place until it was too late.

Essentially all revenue generating operations halted as of March 16th.

I was unfortunately leading the charge in a newly created division. We were not generating revenue yet, so the hammer fell for all of us.

Stay happy, stay safe, and keep hacking!

Really sorry to everyone who is out of work now :(, I wish I could do more then just give you some links and thoughts but hope this helps.

1. If you're looking to ramp-up your skills Pluralsight is giving away a free month of training this month: https://www.pluralsight.com/offer/2020/free-april-month

2. Large companies are still hiring I growth areas, I am not 100% sure but If I was a betting man anything at Google, Amazon or Microsoft that is cloud related is probably still booming to get people on board

3. If you wind up finding some work that is remote in this situation and don't have WFH experience check out this great set of tips for WFH by Scott Hanselman: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/LoveInATimeOfCoronaVirusTipsT...

I got laid off on March 25th, I was called to go to the office the day before, told it was that "the higher ups wanted to see the team", only it was to get me to sign the paperwork, and give back the laptop, they paid a taxi to get me to my apartment, but it felt like an ambush

luckily my mother instilled in me the value of saving money, so I can survive for a while on my savings, but the double hit of the anxiety from the pandemic, and getting laid off has been quite stressing...

I'm open to any software development job, full-time, part-time, remote, I've been applying to several positions, but my first choice for applying cancelled all hires (a friend of mine who works there told me their CEO sent an email saying that), and most other companies are probably doing something similar

Former SRE in Hamburg, Germany, laid off on the 27th of March. :(

Looking for data engineering roles

email at alex at alexandarnarayan dot com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandarnarayan/

I was supposed to intern at Shopify Canada this summer. I'm free for next three months and would love to work on some interesting projects or remotely. https://github.com/shashanoid

Here in the Netherlands, the government have taken the action to help out affected companies fulfil their payroll obligations, meaning the govt is effectively paying the salaries of an extra million people (12% of our total workforce).

As the only IT guy in a company that does pretty much all its business online, and being the longest-serving employee in the company, my job is safer than anybody else's, but we have seen revenue plummet and we're having to let some people go - which is heartbreaking. Even though our society will make sure that they will not be in real trouble, and it ensures the survival of the company, these are valued coworkers and genuinely nice people and I'm sad to see them go.

I had a one year contract terminated a month early today, with one week notice. Upon getting the news, I immediately starting searching and was lucky to find another contract. Finding work will become harder as the number of laid off workers increases.

Not me, but since it's been linked here a bunch and is related to the tech industry, everyone at The Outline was laid off today and is being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22769301

My workplace had furloughs, but all of the developers were excluded from it. Guessing the management had enough trouble hiring developers as it was.

I was laid off at my little startup a couple weeks ago, 6 people were affected.

I'm a 3D Artist with some software engineering cred, so I work pretty well with engineers in small teams that still need the asset pipeline figured out. Portfolio: https://penny-art.com/

LinkedIn still likes to send recruiters my way telling me about awesome C++ opportunities developer game dev keywords. Please no

I haven't personally had a change yet, although things have been a little slow here lately, so who knows.

My wife, on the other hand, was reduced to 3 days a week at her job for the next 90 days, with a reduced salary to reflect that, so 40% reduction in salary. At least she wasn't in the group at her office that was furloughed.

So things are still tighter for us, although we're still a lot better off than most people right now.

I'm fortunate enough to say that I haven't.

I work in tech for a media and publishing company. We're classified as an essential business in Ontario. We are all working remotely--editorial teams, production, tech, everyone save some of the press operators.

We have reduced to 4-days a week, and so we had to take a 20% pay cut for a 6 week term. I think they're hoping to buffer our collective coffers in case this is extended and ad revenue falls further.

On another note, our digital readership is setting internal records.

My partner works for a Canadian SaaS firm based out of Saskatoon. About 30% of them were laid off including her.

They had a heartfelt meeting with the founder but as soon as they got the official word the machine locked her out. She still meets over video for drinks with some of her coworkers.

Being that her company works closely with the restaurant industry we're hoping it won't be too hard for them to ramp up again, but that remains to be seen.

I found this forwarded layoff referral list

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HvI7axSIXsQRQH0IJ2GG...

not sure what the source is.

Me. I'm looking for recruiters to leave me alone and let me draw unemployment in peace for a while. This may not be THE answer to burnout, but it's AN answer.

This thread is unbelievable for me. In the US everyone is employed as if they are independant contractors? If your boss decides so you lose your job with a 5 seconds notice?

In my country if you have full employment you have a 2 month notice and they need to prove the need or cause for firing.

Not laid off but I did just finish my PhD in computational biophysics and the three companies I was interviewing at paused/stopped interviews. I was frugal during my PhD but I decided it was best to move back in with my parents in San Jose (I was crashing on a buddy's couch in Champaign). My sisters lost their service sector jobs two-weeks ago.

I've been applying non-stop so if anyone has any refs for data science positions that would be quite helpful; it's a weird time transitioning from Academia to industry.

Here's my linkedin: https://bit.ly/2UYJbbf

That said, my heart goes out to those that are in a tough situation.

Strange time 4 me here. Worked for 5 and half years and was getting the "Reduction in force" thingy with 24 other IT folks out there for a major healthcare insurer. I was looking for a job since Dec-2019 anyway.

At least I was fully paid to the end of March and now getting some form of supplemental $$$ till end of June. Then freakin' reality will hit as I will paying out for Cobra. This Covid issue is introducing the raw side of business, loyalty, connections, solitude and just watching bad news all day.

So, my advice is treat yourself better and be kind to yourself, your family and true friends.

I didn't get laid off due to the pandemic. But I've got a very generous notice at the end of January that I have until 30th of April to find a new job (I was told they have to reduce costs and can only guess it's due to investor pressure).

I started looking actively for a job somewhere at the start of February and had several very promising leads and eventually, at the start of March, several pre-offer stages of the interviewing process with several companies.

And then the whole thing happened. Some companies told me they are freezing hiring, others didn't say anything, and my best lead had to leave me hanging even though it was clear (signs that I read during our real-life meetings) he wanted to hire me for two separate projects and a full-time job.

I waited for about 3 weeks, thinking to wait out the initial panic. But it became increasingly clear that is not going to die out anytime soon.

I wrote a very short intro of my profile (with a link to a CV) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22752249

Not sure I will have enough savings to last me several months so not going to rely on that and will be looking to start a new job -- or consulting -- as early as possible.

Stay strong, people.

17.5% salary cut. Gonna have to get a new security job :-/

I am still employed luckily. But I am keen to try help out any developers. I was going to start a new project in nodejs Adonisjs and Vuejs but I might see about hiring someone to do it for me instead. Only problem is I won’t be able to afford a full time developer at normal rates. Maybe $5,000 AUD and I think it will take about 3 - 4 months works. Would anyone be interested? I understand if not as it’s not a great deal of money for the time.

My friend's contract is not extended. He works for a bay area company owned by Silverlake partners. His team has four full timers and six contractors. CEO sent an email to not renew contracts.

My contract is due for May 31. I am not so confident about renewal. And my team has 70% contractors. There is a large contingent workforce in IT. You don't see them in the official layoff list; instead, they are employees of unknown staffing companies.

Many track

I work for a big company in the news. We are still waiting on hearing about furlough details next week. Not a clue what will happen. There is no "what happens in a pandemic" page in the employee handbook. I have a feeling every top level exec everywhere has no idea what to do in such a situation. At least we are unlikely to lose our jobs in the long run, but who knows how long the short run will be.

Not let go, but voluntarily quit in Jan to work on a side project. Now everyone’s wallets are tight and I feel that was a terrible decision.

My thinking was “economy is mega booming, I can always land a job if things go south”.

I was very wrong, things have gone quite south. Savings I had in stock vanished 30% of their value. A lot of anxiety. I could ride a couple of months but then shit’s gonna really hit the fan.

Work in entertainment marketing (theatrical trailers and promos) as a finishing coordinator (uprezzing, overcutting, versioning with different dated cards, exporting different specs for different platforms, etc) and out whole industry has essentially been furloughed. It sucks and I don't think it will be temporary, I think a lot of shops will close.

An investor pulled out of a SIGNED term sheet because of covid19. The last year of growth undone, 70 people plus contractors laid off. I have domain knowledge that no one else in the company does so I was spared. For legal reasons here it won't be instant, but all my collaboration is with people who already know their job ends at the end of April.

Previously to this month I was a Senior Machine Learning engineer at Zest.ai. I have over a decade of professional experience as a backend engineer with Python before that.

I accepted a job offer at the highest salary I'd ever been offered late February. At the time some coworkers were stuck in China and I thought "there's a non-zero probability covid-19 f's everything up, but it'll be fine."

Started the new job on 3/16. The company didn't exist anymore after 3/27.

http://github.com/mvanveen https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanveenm/

If you think there's a good fit please reach out at hn22770643@mvv.email . Thank you!

There was a thread like this a little over two weeks ago, but things are moving so quickly that perhaps another is ok.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22618788

I was visiting Central America when things started getting bad. I was told I could work from here, but now I'm told I either have to travel home (US) or lose my job. Based off this thread, I might take that risk of traveling home.

(posted this on ShowHN last week)

I was on track to have this paid service offering launched in the coming weeks, but the economic uncertainty brought on by COVID caused me to rethink the go to market plan.

I iterated quickly on something I could offer to those in need now and in the coming weeks. This is one way I can give back.

If you have been impacted and will be, or is already scheduled to, interviewing soon, I want to help. If you know someone for whom this would be helpful, please share.

https://www.interviewat.com/prep-service-special-offer

Any and all feedback welcome

Half my team just got put on a 30-day minimum furlough (myself included). The other half has been reduced to working one week on and one week off. The car rental business is not in a good place right now.

I am a linguist in the UK, and our team is on a month's notice period due to a cost cut.

I am looking natural language understanding / natural language generation and analytics tasks but can also do other things from voice technology pipeline (ASR, TTS, voice QA) as well as QA and technical support for webtech projects. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariya-heyshtor-164a35157/

Laid off two days ago from Affirma Consulting in Bellevue, WA out of the blue. Not sure why they chose me, I guess my skillset wasn't wide enough because it wasn't like my pay was huge compared to my coworkers who live in Washington. After my separation pay, I'm going to be clueless on what to do next since most likely no one is hiring at this time. Ugh.

if you're dealing with student loans, you should check out https://debtcollective.org/ and join the student debt strike https://strike.debtcollective.org/

Made redundant last week. Company scrapped the project I was working on in order to cut costs. Industry FinTech

My wife, who was doing office admin and CRM management for a lawyer/marketer couple. Their work has dried up a bit, and they moved a young adult son back home to help deal with isolation and his own layoff.

She's looking for remote work in CRM operations, part-time. Or local to the Philadelphia suburbs.

Do you think the 'Who wants to be hired' post accomplishes this or are you looking for companies who are laying off workers?

linked below!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22749306

[Boston/DevOps] Not laid off yet, but we have been told that "Role eliminations" is coming. Those not getting laid off, are going on mandatory two-week furlough. Once week in April, and once in May. June onwards TBD. All as part of cost cutting.

Had a pretty steady contracting gig doing fun new things for a photobooth company. Not any more!

Fortunately I have a few other things to pay the bills (so far), and fortunately I have enough savings not to have any short-term worries, but that was my main source of income.

No but making a intl job hop soon in the middle of this mess and a little worried that it'll not pan out (despite signed contract).

Current job - Auditor - no indication of slowdown. Entire firm has laptop/vpn/phone so essentially ready for this.

Wife started a new Travel Tech Support role (Sabre, Concur,Sabre scripts etc) on 23rd of March, was Furloughed 2 days later then reduced to 2.5 days a week the next day (UK Furlough doesn't apply due to start date)

Bad time to be in the travel industry.

I have not been laid off myself, but I have a a friend that has been laid off, and an acquaintance that has taken a 10% pay cut. Separately I know 3-4 other people that have lost their jobs that are a degree apart, far more than in 08.

Everyone took a 20% pay cut, lots of people have been furloughed so workload has also increased. Would've been nice to have had a voice in the company's decision; kinda caught between a rock and a hard place at this point.

10% salary cut. Other people at my company (large civil engineering firm) who can't work remotely have been transitioned to on-call, and about 1000 were laid off. Salaries for highly billable employees are currently unaffected.

I got laid off last Friday in the middle of going over the test scenarios for a product launch this coming week. As a relatively new product manager, I'm curious to see how the prospects are against much more senior PMs.

20% cut in hours from one of my contracts but I haven't lost any yet.

OT, but I've been getting a lot more feelers for (remote) jobs over the last two weeks. I'm not switching, but I hope that that translates into more work for those who need it.

Software Engineer at a large software company (Fortune 500), 7.5% pay cut, but happy to still be employed. I am billable to our customers, and have a decent backlog of work, so I am hopeful.

Laid off;1 day notice given; slight severance. Ive never been laid off/fired/whatever from a job, and now in 2020 I get to hopefully find a new job (soon)

Yeah I finally moved from contracting roles to a fulltime salary, and this hits, and I'm laid off. Feels terrible.

Laid off. 1 month notice, no severance.

If you have been laid off and looking for a remote job, At Remote Leaf, we have been working on an initiative to curate the remote jobs from Hacker News who is hiring thread. Hopefully you will find some interesting openings here.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NVzygGYTmF3g_VPAh4lX...

I was not laid off, but my contract ended 3/30. The company I worked under offered me permanent employment around 3/15. I told my recruiter during an off site lunch meeting that I was pretty much unhappy with the work, people, and location. I also foolishly added that I will take the permanent role, but asked if they could find me another one instead as I continue looking.

It quickly occurred to me that wasn't the wisest thing to tell a person whose job it is to find a long standing candidate. So I asked if my complaints were between us, she said of course.

Later that day, my other recruiter calls me saying he has to tell the company I was contracted at that I will not continue past my term. His justification how it would look bad on there part.

So now I'm without any job, still looking, but without luck.

I know of an MSP that laid off all their non-critical-infrastructure field staff, and even the (now remote, THANK GOD) helpdesk staff had a paycut.