Redundancy

Some not-so-great news

I have officially been laid off. I received the news on Wednesday in a sudden HR call. I have got to say, it was quite the surprise.

I guess I had seen it coming, but did not expect it to come so soon. With market downturns and AI running rampage in the software sector, I did see some danger to my role. But I had assumed that, with project dependencies and my work scope, I would be safe. Looks like I was wrong.

Considering it was my first layoff, I think I handled it with decent composure, but by the end of the week, the reality of the situation had started to clear in my head.

Looking back, it really seemed as though the past few days went by in a blur. After telling my girlfriend and family, most of my time was focused on finalising handover.

I have tried to take it in an optimistic way, treating this as an opportunity to look inward and finally have a rest. Being paid out my annual leave made me realise I really had not taken any breaks in my current role. It has also rekindled the idea of perhaps starting something on my own. Apart from this blog, there are a few other projects that I have been looking at. It might be time to bite the bullet and get Claude Pro to start them.

Keeping my head afloat has been a bit tough, though, with my recent mortgage and some problems with the house starting to drive up financial pressure. Browsing Reddit has not been great either, as reading the job opportunity horror stories has me slightly worried. Atlassian’s redundancies today have also not helped calm this anxiety. I have also been finding it a bit more difficult to sleep.

My lovely colleagues have been a great support too. My product designer was made redundant with me, so that was a shame. We had a nice coffee to start the day and told the lovely cafe owner that we were probably not going to be back for a while. Hearing this, they were generous enough to give us a free cookie. It was delicious. Our friendly Head of Compliance was also kind enough to give us both spa gift cards. I was very touched. We had a farewell lunch with her and the wider tech team at our local Thai spot, after which, completing my handover checklist, I had officially finished up in my role. Let’s see what the future has for me.

Colours

I guess this blog was initialised to talk about colour, and it has made me actually think about it every so often during this period. All I can say is that after the initial flash of white when I received the news, afterwards it was surprisingly just grey. As thoughts focused on worrying about future job prospects rather than the present, I found myself out of it frequently, and with it went the saturation.

I did try to consciously note the present, hence the small moments of gratitude in this period. It has helped a fair bit, even allowing me to think fondly of the daily view from my previous office. Perhaps that is it. Colour comes from making the effort.