Well, new life experience for me. I took a job at a startup in the ed tech field around 3 years ago. Yesterday, I found out that that time was coming to an end. Around 25% of employees were laid off (300ish out of 1200ish) including me and my entire team.
They're venture-capital funded, and while I wasn't entirely surprised that layoffs were coming given some pretty rough financial headwinds this year, I wasn't at all expecting them to just cut my entire function. Kind of surreal.
I knew that startups were notoriously shaky when it comes to stability, and though it sucks to see it come to an end so abruptly, I suppose it's nice to have made a lot of money off of a bunch of investors. The severance package is, honestly, kind of crazy (4 months pay + 6 months paid health insurance + my laptop + free online classes + a plethora of job placement services). Thanks, VC funds!
In the end, I don't regret anything, but it's a very weird feeling to be out of a job for the first time since I was probably 14. It's hard to know what to do with myself, though I figure my "job" becomes job hunting...next week.
No need for sympathy - I'm actually kind of excited to look for something new. I'll at least have plenty of time to try and fail to fix my shit over the summer.
