Welcome to Laid Off
The coolest place on the internet to talk about being laid off.
Hi! I’m Melanie. I have more friends that’ve been laid off over the last decade than not.
Layoffs can be a radicalizing moment – you realize work is not your family, job stability when you’re not the boss is a precarious promise, and that even a depressingly widespread phenomena can feel crushingly lonely.
I want to go deeper than layoff posts on LinkedIn – I want to know how your boss handled it. If there were signs. Who the first person you told was. What you did for health insurance. If you have a group chat with your former colleagues (and what it’s called).
That’s why I started Laid Off, a weekly interview series with smart and cool people who were laid off.
I’ve interviewed former workers at Condé Nast, Google, Tesla, Paramount, and TechCrunch. I’ve also talked to people laid off on vacation, while chronically ill, as they’re financially supporting their parents, and on their birthday.
This newsletter isn’t just for people who’ve been laid off, though they’re at the heart of it. Laid Off is meant to illuminate the cracks in our systems and how work, stability, and identity are shifting for all of us. These stories help us understand what’s broken, what’s changing, and what we might build next.
Free readers get weekly (ish) interviews and access to the chat.
This is also a community, and a paid perk includes access to the Laid Off Discord with 800+ other members. It’s where you can share your layoff story, job hunting experiences, ask for feedback on your resume, share side hustle ideas and job opportunities, and plug your work.
Welcome to the Laid Off universe. I’m glad you found us.
Who am I? 🛹 🛹 🛹
Hey there, I’m Melanie Ehrenkranz. I’ve covered tech and power for the last ~decade for publications like Gizmodo and Mic. I’ve written about how the all-hands meeting, a creation of the Silicon Valley ethos of solidarity and free exchange of ideas, has evolved to be one of its greatest adversaries. I headed to D.C. to cover Google workers’ fight to end forced arbitration. I broke down Apple’s response to diversity criticism. I talked to Facebook fact-checkers on the front lines of fighting misinformation, and former Cambridge Analytica workers on what it was like during the company’s final days.
I’ve spent the last few years as a creative strategist and writer for early-stage startups, and I currently lead content and community for Sophia Amoruso’s Business Class.
I’m based in LA.
Love for Laid Off 🪩 🪩 🪩
Featured in Pop Sugar on how getting laid off has become a full-time job
A profile in CNBC on the vibe shift around layoffs
A profile in Slate describing Laid Off as “a newsletter about the seismic psychic transformation that hopefully occurs when someone in the C-suite decides that your services are no longer welcome.”
An
interview on how we’re all less shy about getting laid offFrom
— “I wish this had existed when I was laid off!”Has been called “a RIDE”
