I’d heard rumblings from my friends in other parts of the organization that there were going to be layoffs coming, so I’d warned my little engineering team. One of my team was vacationing abroad.

When he came back, one of my teammates told him it was all over and we were going to get fired.

He told me that he’d been told that and I said that it probably wouldn’t affect us and that I wouldn’t worry about it (I was under the impression that the layoffs would only really hit customer-facing roles).

The member of my team who just got back from vacation, the one who I reassured, was the only member of my team who was part of the group laid off.

Goddamn it.