Debbie had just finished a company training session when everything changed. An interrupter burst into the meeting: stop everything, check your email now.
The Slack messages started flooding in. "I've been laid off." "Me too." Her inbox was chaos—Slack notifications and GitHub alerts mixed with the unfolding disaster. She searched for her personal termination email, but found only Jack Dorsey's public letter to shareholders. No individual notification. No confirmation of survival.
Was she still employed or not?
The answer wouldn't come until 12:30 AM. Debbie, in Spain, was subject to local labor law requiring DocuSign for formal termination. She lay awake, trembling, refreshing her inbox repeatedly. She tried showering to calm down. Nothing worked.
At midnight, the official termination arrived. "The worst part wasn't being cut," she later said. "It was not knowing if I would be. Once confirmed, at least you can start moving."
The irony: Debbie's team was all about AI. She built an automated release system that read GitHub Release Notes, analyzed issues, extracted key features, generated blog posts, and even created AI-cloned narration videos—all in 40 minutes.
She also worked on a commercial product using ChatGPT-style interfaces for restaurant ordering, integrated with Square and Cash App payments.
"You ask if I wasn't using AI? Of course I was. Was I efficient? Very. But I still got laid off."
This was Debbie's second layoff in months—previous severance from Microsoft went toward paying down her mortgage. That preparation kept her functional this time.
Her advice: calculate your cost of living, build an emergency fund, and prepare for the worst. "In this environment, I no longer believe in 'long-term stability.'"