Conference room at 10. Bar by 11.
117 stories of in-person layoffs
After getting laid off from the ad agency where she worked pre-Covid, a social media director bought a pack of cigarettes at 7-Eleven and sat in Madison Square Park, smoking them in the rain.
That morning, a colleague had texted her: some strange woman was in the office, pulling people into a conference room. Turned out, it was HR.
“She was dressed all in black and extremely pregnant and afterwards my ex-colleagues called her ‘The Pregnant Grim Reaper.’”
This was one of 117 responses from a recent survey I ran to get a better sense of what in-person layoffs actually feel like — an increasingly rare beast in today’s remote-first world.
Reading through those responses hit different than virtual ones. There’s an added layer of office dynamics and face-to-face tension that shapes how the whole thing plays out.
That’s not to say remote layoffs are any less brutal — you just miss out on the immediate solidarity. No one’s there to grab a drink with you, offer a hug on the way out. Or smoke a pack of cigarettes with you in the rain.
I heard from former employees of Condé Nast, Paramount, Adidas, Mic, The Wall Street Journal, Discovery Channel, Live Nation, ABC News, Pearson, Kohl’s, Nordstrom, TikTok, Disney, Netflix, and The New Yorker. To name a few.
“I walked 30 blocks to my train station,” said a former production associate at ABC News laid off last year. “It was a nice day and I had no sense of urgency. I didn’t want to be inside. I stopped by Magnolia Bakery and ate some dessert thing. Then, I stopped by a pizzeria and got a slice. I people watched. It was really nice. I love walking in NYC.”
I went down the rabbit hole. Today, I wanted to share a few findings from the survey.
A snapshot:
Industries hit hardest: Marketing and advertising made up 31% of respondents, followed by tech (11%) and media (10%).
First time getting laid off? 71% said yes.
Company size: 33% worked at companies with over 1,000 employees.
Where it happened: 49% were laid off in a conference room. Others got the news in someone else’s office (27%), over a video call in a shared workspace (8%), at their own desk (5%), or even a phone booth room (3%).
“It was an open concept office, and since we were all let go immediately in one swoop, it was a chaos of packing our bags with all the other teams watching,” a woman laid off in the entertainment industry pre-Covid said. “The office environment was always rowdy and chaotic, and this leaned into it, with people saying their goodbyes angry and crying. Everyone, even the people who weren't laid off, left to go to a bar at 11am.”
Notice given: 62% had zero warning. Another 9% had less than 30 minutes.