EDIT: To clarify, I haven’t literally been unemployed for 3 years straight. I’ve managed to land a few contracts, oddball gigs, manual labor, whatever i can find. I consider them all gig-work, seeing as they’re not consistent W-2 employment.

I started a coding bootcamp when I was 21, in 2021.

It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Ten months of feeling like I was being waterboarded with information, and ways of thinking I had never done before - wondering if I'd just thrown away my savings for nothing. But it worked. I landed a software engineering job making more money than I'd ever thought possible just six months after graduating. I got a raise. I moved into my own apartment. I started buying furniture instead of whatever I could find on street corners labeled "free". I stopped feeling like I was surviving and started feeling like I was actually building a life.

Then I found this house!

It wasn't some huge mansion. It was just... mine. A garage, a finished basement, a space for my hobbies. A place I could picture proposing to my girlfriend, marrying her, and starting our life together.

I moved in!

And got laid off two weeks later.

We got married anyway, just with me unemployed.

For the last three years, I've treated finding another job like it was my full time job. I wasn't casually sending out a few generic applications a couple times a week. I've spent almost every single day applying, networking, tailoring resumes, building side projects, learning new skills, reaching out to recruiters, interviewing (whenever I could get one), trying to stay relevant. The literal only day I didn't job hunt was our wedding day.

Three years.

I failed.

Next week we're moving out of this house because we literally can't afford food. I have two cavities, and my wife and I are having "welp, I guess this is it" chest pains. I rarely sleep.

The part that's genuinely almost funny (in the cruelest possible way) is that we're moving into my wife's old complex. One door down from where she used to live.

It feels like life realized I was actually starting to get somewhere, and promptly grabbed me by the collar and just kept swinging. Layoff. Final-round rejections. Contracts that stopped paying. Savings evaporating. Watching the future we'd planned slowly get traded and sold piece by piece to pay rent. The house is what hurts the most.

I'm not mourning the square footage. I'm mourning what the house represented. It was the first place that felt like the beginning of my adult life. It was where I was supposed to build things. Where I actually had space for woodworking, leather crafting, my darkroom, It's where I imagined the next decade happening. Instead, I'm packing what will fit into boxes. The rest goes to facebook marketplace.

I keep thinking about the version of me that signed the lease. That thought he'd finally made it. He had no idea almost everything he'd spent years building was about to disappear.

I'm going on 28. I'm tired of starting over. I want kids. I want to be able to afford to go to the doctor. I want to be able to buy toothpaste without feeling guilty. I want to rest with my wife.

I feel like I've been at the end of my rope for literal years. But the rope is just one of those clown-handkerchief routines where it just... keeps going. I'm genuinely getting tired of waking up.

Today, I told a laid-off-co-worker of mine to apply for the same job I applied for, I am deep into the interview and there are multiple positions open. He has experience that could be competing, but he has three small children and I could not overlook trying to help him. We both need work after layoffs. I hope both of us get hired in this ugly and terrible job market. Karma, go do your thing!

AMAZON CUTS JOBS IN AGI UNIT AMID STRATEGIC SHIFT...!! 🚨

- ​Unspecified number of roles eliminated from the AGI division.

- ​Shift in focus towards customer-facing AI and practical applications.

- ​Follows earlier companywide cuts of 16,000 roles in January.

- ​Affected U.S. staff receive 90 days of pay and support.

Hi everyone. So my (27F) husband (33M) has been jobless since November 2024. He is on employment insurance since. (Toronto)

He’s a software engineer by profession, graduated from UofT and worked on contract for like 5 years and then got laid off. He has been looking for a job since November 2024.

And in the meantime he has only got like 3 interviews which didn’t reached out to him after the 2nd round. What could it be? I don’t understand?

Is he not qualified enough? Is he not applying consistently? Is the market that bad that he can’t find a job at all?

Monday.com is laying off about 20% of its workforce (roughly 630 employees) as it restructures around an AI-first strategy. The company says the move is intended to create a leaner organization and accelerate investment in its AI Work Platform, "not simply to cut costs".

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/22/monday-com-lays-off-hundreds-to-focuses-on-ai/?utm_campaign=daily_pm

Well, as a silver lining, despite layoffs, Monday.com plans to continue hiring for strategic AI-focused roles. may be a sign that SW companies are looking for some additional skills ?

My company laid off a lot of employees without any prior hint within a day or two globally. My team got impacted, but I am safe (as of now, not sure of next quarter layoffs though). The workload has ever increased and people are not being nice at all to coworkers. There is a lot of bias, politics , keeping up the appearances and a general environment of mistrust among coworkers and my peers.

Just being good at your work and being ethical does not cut it anymore. Holding this job till next quarter (next round of layoffs) itself is a dread.

How do people, who remained in company after layoff, deal with such negative consequences so that each day is not a dread? How to keep sane till next quarter to be able to prepare for new job? I am stuck between keeping up my appearances, defending my work, and studying for next job and mental health deterioration.

TL;DR : Company laid off people in my team, there are more expected layoffs on the way and people are behaving paranoid and ugly with each other. How to deal? Atleast till the time I can study to prepare for another job?

3 years ago, when the local economy was burning, leadership begged us to stay. They introduced a USD-pegged allowance as a lifeline to keep the engineering floor from jumping ship. Now that we've spent the last six months building the company's new internal "AI-driven architecture," they are stabbing us in the back.

Word just leaked from HR who discussed and flaunted her top level connections on the shuttle that Rehans team with a consulting firm planning to axe the peg entirely at the start of next quarter for the vast majority of us. it will be executed gradually 50% , 25% , 7.5% like wise

Expect a All hands townhall on Thursday - Friday and Expect Lise Monohan to sweet talk on Monday onwards.

In a normal, functioning company, a massive structural change like this would be grandfathered in meaning existing employees keep the compensation they signed on for, and only new hires get the downgraded package. But not here. They are retroactively stripping it from the veterans who actually built the platform, enforcing an immediate 30-40% pay cut across the board.

Their justification? Thushera ,who joined year back from ADL ,he did the same to ADL before, claims our new AI tools "wink wink" have increased developer velocity so much that they no longer need a large, highly compensated engineering division. Instead of doing standard layoffs and paying out proper severance, this is a calculated stealth layoff.

They know people will be forced to quit, and they are relying on the very automation we built to cover the gaps.

But here is the absolute kicker: while they are pulling the rug out from the rank-and-file, they are simultaneously introducing massive "specialized retention allowances" for a select group of so-called "top talent." Thusheras favorites and the few AI leads who championed this platform are getting their pay padded. They are literally funding their own inner-circle bonuses by taxing the rest of us.

This isn't just about a payroll update. This is a targeted slaughter of senior / mid level engineering. They are using "AI" as a smokescreen to gut the payroll, force out tenured staff without severance, and funnel the savings directly to their chosen few.

If they get away with doing this to us, your company will be next. This is the new corporate playbook to starve developers out of the industry.

Who else is dealing with this dystopian nightmare? Are we supposed to just sit here and train our algorithmic replacements while funding the bonuses of the executives who sold us out?

Rehan Anthonis, who came from a third-class BPO, misled the management and played a central role in this major failure alongside Thushera, whose actions have been detrimental to the company.

The U.S. management deserves to know the truth: the Sysco Speaks survey was swept under the carpet, and no meaningful action was taken despite the concerns that were raised. This represents a serious failure of leadership, transparency, and accountability.

We will continue to bring these issues to the attention of the appropriate stakeholders and ensure that those responsible are held accountable for their decisions and actions.

TL;DR: Thushera and HR is retroactively robbing our pegged allowance instead of grandfathering it in. They are using "AI efficiency" to force a stealth layoff, while secretly funneling our lost pay into new "top talent" bonuses for their favorites. Polish your resumes.

24M.
I work at Wells Fargo and everything thats happening around here, I am convinced they are going to lay off me within 5-6 months.

I am preparing for job switch but not much hopes as I am not getting any interview calls

Dont know whats in the future.

Censoring the company because it was full on half of what I was making as a Product Manager but I cast no shade. Today is a good day.

Well it finally happened. First time and a lot of emotions. Not surprising - tech, private equity ran scale up. Company wasn’t meeting numbers and over hired. High churn among customers and employees, and with ai the product value is no longer there. Heavy micromanagement, proving of value was a constant with hard push to ai above all else; we even trained ai to do our jobs. Signs were there. At first I was sad, but then relieved, now worried but still relieved for it to be over. I don’t want to work in tech ever again. It’s too unstable and toxic.

What package did you get?

I recently got laid off, and I am trying to find ways to get my commuter benefits money back on my Clipper card. I asked multiple times of the Finance Institution about withdrawing from my commuter benefits account, and they said I can't unless there are receipts before the date of my layoff. And the institutions said any Clipper amount after that was deducted to my HSA account, and this is owed tothe IRS and I have to repay that amount. There is 400 dollars on the card. I just want to cash this out and repay the IRS.
Please help. DM me or ask around if someone would be able to buy the Clipper card.