I need to talk about this because I’m running out of people to talk about it with — literally.
In September, my tech lead’s role was “consolidated” with another team. In November, a backend engineer on my squad was part of a “strategic realignment” — five people across the org, no press release, no Slack announcement. Two weeks ago, the senior QA engineer who’d been here longer than anyone else just… wasn’t in standup on Monday. Her manager said she’d “moved on to new opportunities.” Her Slack went gray the same afternoon.
Three people in five months. None of it made the news. None of it was called a layoff. And every single time, the people left behind are expected to absorb the work, maintain the velocity, and act like this is normal.
The Slow-Bleed Experience
I’ve read the data — the Glassdoor numbers, the “forever layoff” statistics, the fact that 25,000 tech jobs vanished in January alone across 88 events nobody noticed. But data doesn’t capture what this feels like day-to-day.
It feels like sitting in a standup where someone’s name just stops being called. It feels like getting added to a Slack channel you didn’t ask for because the person who owned it is gone. It feels like opening a PR and seeing review requests assigned to someone whose account has been deactivated.
The worst part is the ambiguity. Nobody says “we laid off Sarah.” They say she “transitioned out” or “pursued other interests.” The language is deliberately vague, and that vagueness does something corrosive to trust. Because if you can’t get a straight answer about why your coworker is gone, how can you trust anything else you’re being told?
Survivor Guilt Is Real and Nobody Talks About It
I feel guilty for still having a job. That sounds absurd when I type it out, but it’s true. Every time someone disappears, my first thought isn’t “am I next?” — it’s “why them and not me?” followed immediately by “what am I doing that’s keeping me safe?” And then I start optimizing for visibility instead of quality. I write more Slack messages. I volunteer for demo meetings. I make sure my name is attached to things that executives see.
That’s not engineering. That’s survival behavior. And I know I’m not the only one doing it.
The Workload Creep Nobody Acknowledges
Here’s a specific example. When our QA engineer left, her test automation suite became “the team’s responsibility.” In practice, that means mine, because I’m the one who worked most closely with her. I’m now maintaining 340 integration tests on top of my feature work, with no reduction in sprint commitments and no conversation about adjusting expectations.
My manager — who I genuinely like and believe is doing their best — said “we’re working on getting that backfilled.” That was six weeks ago. The job posting went up, got twelve applicants, and then the req was frozen because of a “budget review.” Meanwhile, I’m doing 1.5 jobs for one salary and being told the OKR targets haven’t changed.
What Actually Helps
I’m not writing this just to vent (okay, partly to vent). I’m genuinely asking: what helps?
From my experience, the things that have made a marginal difference:
- Managers who say “I don’t know” instead of “everything’s fine” — @eng_director_luis’s approach of sharing what you know and don’t know is the only thing that’s kept me from updating my resume every weekend
- Scope reduction that’s real, not performative — don’t tell me you’re “reprioritizing” if the same work is still expected by the same date
- Acknowledging the loss — when someone leaves, say their name. Say what they contributed. Don’t erase people from the org chart like they never existed
For the other ICs out there in the forever-layoff grind: how are you staying sane? How do you keep caring about code quality when you’re not sure your team will exist in six months? I’d genuinely like to know, because I’m running low on my own answers.