As tech corporations such as Google, Discord, and others have shed hundreds of jobs and employees in recent weeks, some tech workers have taken to social media to share their experience about being laid off- going viral with their stories.
Some of these videos show people crying as they talk with human resources at their company, or as they go about their daily routine, knowing they have a mystery appointment which will likely result in their termination.
For many of the people participating, posting these videos is a way for them to process the emotions of losing their jobs. Joni Bonnemort, 38, from Salt Lake City, filmed herself crying as a credit repair company laid her off from her marketing job in April. Originally, she only planned to share the video with her close friends and family, but she posted it on TikTok after finding out that the company had paid out bonuses to the remaining staff a week after the layoffs. The video reached more than 1.4 million views and received thousands of supportive comments.
“I wasn’t going to come off bitter like an exposé, but at the same time, it’s my experience,” Bonnemort said. “This happened to so many people.”
This trend is part of a movement driven by Generation Z and Millennials that involves sharing many aspects of their personal lives on social media- from viral story times, to “get ready with me” videos, “daily routine” videos, and other forms of vlogging, The layoff videos and accompanying job-hunting posts on sites such as LinkedIn and X are shining a light on a private experience that many people would usually try to hide.
Sandra Sucher, a Harvard economist who studies layoffs, said, “The boundary between the personal and professional has been broken,” in reference to the online trend.
Another ex-employee who took to social media was Mickella Simone Miller, who worked remotely as a project manager based in Salt Lake City, and filmed a video about her day working from home that included her using a mug that said, “The world is falling apart around us, and I’m dying inside.” The video went on to show her listening to her company say it was terminating her from her position.
However, Miller has asserted that the video was therapeutic, and has even led to potential opportunities as she has since received roughly 30 invitations to apply to new jobs.
Vanessa Burbano, a professor at Columbia Business School who studies how company practices influence patterns of employee behavior, said that remote work seems to be the leading cause of people feeling the incentive to speak out about being fired online.
‘The interaction between individuals and their company has just fundamentally shifted with the increase of remote work,” she claimed.
In one scenario, Matthew Prince, the chief executive of the cybersecurity company Cloudflare, responded to a nine-minute video on X this month that showed an employee getting fired from the firm- defending the decision to fire the worker but also stating that the company should have been “more kind and humane” with the process.
“I don’t have any regrets,” said Brittany Pietsch, the former Cloudflare employee who posted the video, in an interview. “All I did was just be candid and show a conversation that wasn’t scripted.” Pietsch claimed she received over 10,000 LinkedIn messages from job recruiters after sharing her experience.
While experts say the posts are unlikely to harm people’s future career prospects, they cautioned that those who posted layoff videos should be be accepting of potential notoriety.
