In the meeting:

• Stay calm and maintain professionalism. Don’t show fear. Just try not to show any emotion.
• Take notes about anything that seems relevant to your layoff. PRO payouts, when your final day will be, any severance pay you might be getting, etc.
• Ask about COBRA benefits. But don’t go ahead with incoming those unless it’s necessary over the next few months, because they usually suck ass (cost a lot).

And some general advice:

• Look up how to, and then tee up, an application for state unemployment benefits. As soon as you’re laid off officially you can pull the trigger on that.
• Get personal contact info for anyone at your job who could be a good professional reference.
• Get copies of any work-related certificates that might be useful in future jobs.
• Try to find the good tech recruiters in your city or region. There’s usually at least one among all the crappy ones. Ask colleagues/friends if you don’t know where to stay. Avoid the sweatshops like Accenture unless absolutely necessary.
• Update your resume on LinkedIn and start looking for new opportunities. But I wouldn’t flip your status to ‘looking for work’ because you’ll probably just get flooded with spammers and scammers. But look on the down-low yourself.
• Determine which subscriptions you can cancel to save some money, because if you get laid off it’s belt-tightening time.

Good luck!

They may offer you a severance agreement. These are negotiable, you can always ask for more prioritizing what is the most important and/or where they will be flexible:

Larger severance payment amount Longer healthcare subsidy Pto types balance payouts not already mandated by law Keep your computer, phone or other hardware Reference (if important for your area/industry) or neutral employment verification Etc.

Where are you based? Labour law varies quite a bit worldwide.

Most of the advice here is good. The less you say the better. Don’t sign anything. If they ask if you can do anything for them that’s not COMPLETELY standard (returning keys and equipment is obviously fine.) say “I need to think about it”. Don’t let them push you around.

Ask for severance pay. I have previously been in your position and got 1mo/yr of employment. So you should ask for 7mos of pay as severance.

Why are you being laid off? Is it a company wide thing?

Make sure to get phone numbers from your coworkers and managers that you like for use as references for future jobs.

Hang in there. It sucks but you can get through this. Spruce up your resume. Think about what matters to you. Message me privately if you want to talk more. Take care and good luck.

probably a career change tbh.

yer not gonna like how hard it is to get another job in the field

Save anything you think you might need that’s attached to a work account, like emails/contacts. You might be locked out soon.

I don’t know how important or even possible a portfolio is for a dev job, but if the field is something where you need to provide examples of past work to future employers try to go ahead and save copies of your best highlights if you haven’t already been doing that. I hadn’t saved examples of my work from one of my first jobs but I made it a habit at future jobs after getting laid off from that job. It’s easier to do it as you go along. Even if you don’t show the actual project to a prospective employer, keeping them can help jog your memory for projects to highlight.

OP can you please give us an update about what happened? I see your edit but if you can share more please do.

Either way take care we are all wishing you well ❤️

I am from a developing country and my father got laid off on June or July. Luckily, he had some savings so he paid expensive fees of my university and we are living fine. Well, I tried to teach somewhere but they did not like my demo. And after that, I too have not gone anywhere. My dad is now selling insurance (idk his training is completed and he still goes but he says I got no money). My parents are POS but I am glad that I got basic necessities, sunscreen, and internet, and my uni fees got paid.

This just happened to me, too. There’s lots of great advice in here, but an important one is to apply for unemployment. It won’t be anywhere near what you were making, but it will definitely help stretch your finances.

Does anyone have thoughts regarding either hiring a resume writing service or just putting it through AI? AI is free and might help get past some early screening, but it also just feels… Wrong. On the other hand, I imagine these resume services just do exactly that. I’d love any thoughts or advice on this

Best wishes!

what should I ask for?

Nothing. They won’t go to hell just because you have asked for it :)

Think about the outcome of that meeting. What are the possibilities? Make a list. Is there any outcome that changes from discussion or asking? Then prepare for these possibilities.

They can ask you for signing a paper to confirm that they have told you this or that. You are not legally required to sign anything, but if it is really only that, then it makes no difference.

If it says more than that, do not sign, but take it into your own private bag immediately, faster than they can blink, and say you read it at home because right now you are too loaded to be able to read anything carefully.

If they get upset because you took the paper, you know that there is something very fishy in it.

Definitely don’t copy source code and any documents you have access to.