Welp...Got Laid Off Due to Company Restructuring...Help?

Legit had one of those meetings where 875+ people were invited outta nowhere. My manager didn't even know about it.

CEO and HR walked us through the company's redirection: AI-powered rebranding, renaming, unifying products, restructuring divisions and teams.

Some positions no longer fit in that vision, which meant a small number of people would get invites to a follow-up meeting about whether their role was being eliminated. Apparently, this was happening across the whole company.

I got the invite. Around 80 of us were let go in that second meeting. That mugg started 10 minutes early to allow everyone to show up. Then it ended 10 minutes after it's actual scheduled time.

To be honest, I kind of expected it. A year and a half ago, they laid off 10% of Customer Support across North America. The year and a half before that, about 8% globally. They said it would happen in three phases.

They weren't lyin' lol

I passed through the first two cuts but knew I wouldn't make the third.

Here's the thing, though...

I was already underpaid and aggressively job hunting because staying in my role was putting me in debt. I'm a caregiver supporting my Mom's and my own household with my husband.

I got no raises or promotions, no matter how supportive, collaborative, or helpful I was.

They gave me 3 months' notice and a month's severance, so I have "some" breathing room before I'm in the gutter.

What's wild is that my team isn't being replaced by AI. I can't even say I wrote myself out of a job. Two or three of us are being let go because they opened a headquarters overseas. I can't even say it was cheaper. (They lost a chunk of clients because of it.) The technology I support requires humans to set up, support, and maintain.

Now I'm wondering if an introverted 42-year-old Black woman with AuDHD-Combined like myself can keep making it in tech. I've hit a plateau. Constantly hearing "you'd be perfect except you don't have experience in this one area, so we're going with someone else."

I tried getting into management, HR, and different industries altogether but was unsuccessful. I've had plenty of mentors, but none had the agency to help me advance. I've even mentored others and helped them move up.

I have a Bachelor's degree, just not in STEM. I don't have the brain for SQL. Numbers literally turn into sounds, colors, smells, vibrations, flavors, and textures. Anything but what they are 🤣 (Thank you, synesthesia!)

The job market IS nightmarish right now. But I've been interviewing for targeted roles since 2024. I can't make it past round one or two.

If you went through a recent layoff, how did you power through to get employed again?

If you asked people in your network to help but they couldn't, how did you find people who could?