today was hard. after spending so many years in tech, i’ve been on both sides when layoffs happen and honestly, there’s no easy way through it for anyone. having to tell someone their role is gone never gets easier.

my org went through a 5% workforce reduction and a lot of people i personally know got impacted. i understand why the decision was made, but there’s still this feeling of disbelief i can’t shake off. maybe it’s personal bias, maybe it’s because i know how good some of these people really are. some of them were already dealing with so much and still trying their best to keep up in this ai wave where everything moves faster every day.

for now, i’m just trying to be there for the people around me while giving them space to process things in their own way. i feel sad, but i know it’s nowhere close to what they must be feeling right now.

made me think a lot about careers too. people always say your career is the product you should optimize for, but somewhere along the way work stopped being just one part of life and became the whole thing for so many of us.

i really hope someday all of this slows down a little. people shouldn’t just be mapped to stock prices, valuations, or rows on a spreadsheet. they have families, lives, responsibilities. there was a time when companies grew slower, expectations weren’t this extreme, and people actually had time for things they loved outside work. i’m not against growth or ai or any of it, i just wish teams thought more carefully before hiring, before making promises, before chasing valuations at any cost.

anyway, maybe nobody reads stuff like this anymore. but if someone does, i hope you choose kindness whenever you can.