What You Named Your Layoff Group Chats

"A parody of our former company's name with a skull emoji."

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I was laid off on a Monday morning. I sat at my desk, waiting to be let into a last-minute Zoom call with a bunch of my coworkers. I had a pit in my stomach – the body knows – which was validated when my tearful founder came on to let us know that everyone on that Zoom would be let go. This would be our last day.

I had a group chat with two of my coworkers also on the call. When we were waiting for the call to kick off, it’s where we sent texts like “I’m nervous” and “the energy feels off.” When it ended, it’s where we dropped “oof” and “oh fuck” and “well shit.”

And in the weeks and months after, as we were all scrambling to find work and make sense of what happened, that group chat was a lifeline.

We sent each other job opportunities, helped workshop our LinkedIn #OpenToWork posts (and hyped each other up to actually hit publish on them), talked about unemployment and health insurance and severance and NDAs, and dropped corporate parody TikToks and vented about the layoff.

Who else was I going to text when a former colleague accidentally mailed me an empty box a week after layoffs? It was supposed to be a company-branded hat. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to sport merch from a company that just let me go, but hey. It made us laugh.

As part of the Trend Report survey I sent out a few months ago, I asked people about their layoff group chats. Of 856 people surveyed, it was pretty evenly split: 49.5% have a group chat with former coworkers compared to 50.5% that don’t.

And one of the best parts of starting a group chat with former coworkers is naming it, whether it’s over text, Slack, Discord, or WhatsApp, the four most commonly cited spaces people trauma bonded post-layoff.

I wanted to share a list of some of the best responses to group chat names from the survey. Enjoy. And if you have a juicy group chat story or name, share them in the comments, please.

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Finding comedic relief in your post-layoff group chat names:

• We have a discord called The fellowship of the RIF (Reduction in force)

• Unemployed Gang

• After Work Drinks

• Colleagues ➡️ Friends

• Ahhhhhhhhhh

• The sales ladiessss

• Xooglers

• Ex-Meta the best of

• Credentials Cweens

• Trauma Bonders

• ex-Indeed Slack

• dark mode - after the feature that took so long to prioritize in the app, lol.

• It makes fun of my old company’s new tagline so I can’t share it

• "Ahhhhhh" which is what I named it right before I got laid off

• Badass marketing babes

• I'm part of two Discord servers consisting of my former coworkers: panda palace and the swamp

• Survivors

• Pintok... as some of my ex coworkers now work for Pinterest

• Ex-(name of the company). We talk about the lawyers and things to get the money they owe us back

• Trash cans 🚮

• Marketing 101

• Marketing Homies

• Can’t share (not appropriate)

• Broke Bitches

• It's called no crying in contracts

• New Ventures

• Ex-Tesla Squad

• "Fired" WhatsApp group

• "no snakes allowed"

• It used to be called "the walkers" because we would walk a lot. But we don't talk much now.

• Fuck Aspire

• Redundancy for skilled workers, redundancy party, dyson escapees

• Life After MB (Morning Brew)

• ExSuperhuman

• The support group you never wanted

• The Departed

• We did, but then the company somehow spied on us and warned us not to speak ill of them even in private chats.

• Design 4 Life

• It was a Slack group that didn’t really coalesce. Other groups I’ve been involved with are NG Helping NG (Nat Geo)

• Designer Genes. We recreated the Design Team chat we'd used for our group Slack chats.

• It has a name, and a very cute name, but I want to keep it sacred (and secret).

• Ex LUVvers (the company’s name was TRU LUV).

• Ides of March (creator made it since the layoffs were in March)

• I have one from the first job I was laid off. It’s called Thursday night live because we used to have Thursday night video calls in 2020.

• A parody of our former company's name with a skull emoji

• Ex-Intuit. But it’s a private group

• because almost all of our department was wiped out: Aud Dev Union Friends

• Bochinchosa. Recently changed to "Does your TA Team read even?" after a snarky comment made by the CHRO

• Yes. Literally “👋🥴”

• [CompanyName-Alumi] with an emoji hatchet.

• We had a good one on Slack with a clever name, but I am blanking... our brains do a great job of forgetting traumatic experiences!

• The Hunger Games

• Bahar Temizliği (meaning spring-cleaning)

• Amazon Worker Resources (FKA Amazon Layoff Resources)

• RIP Culture Committee

• First it was called "abhi na jao" which means "don't go just yet", then when most of the other people in the group also started leaving Imaginarium and there was only one person in that group still employed with the company, it changed to "aa jaane ja", meaning "come on over, darling" - both very popular Hindi songs!

• No - mainly have individual chats. OH but did have one with former leadership team including my boss. I LEFT THAT CHAT as I left the building and it felt great :)

• Design Champs (Because most of the outspoken design team members got laid off.)

• Fuck (name of boss)

• Ritual Resurrected (our original agency name before the acquisition)

• Our company was called Sunday. The Chat was called the ex Sunday support group

• WeTransferred

• DREAM TEAM

• 🔥🔥🔥 (three fire emojis) - my manager, also laid off, created it on WhatsApp. It hasn't been active for a long while though.

• TED Alums

• I'd rather not say, but it's Pixar-related

• "SalesLeft" instead of company name "Salesloft"

• Ex-Grokkers

• Powerful Women

• It was called “Les miserables the original broadway cast recording”

• I wish, the last place i got laid off from we had one, but the vibe of this company was always everyone out for themselves

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More from the Laid Off universe…

• Laid Off Pen Pals is coming back soon. Fill out this form if you’re interested in joining the next class.

• I’m interviewing TikTok influencers who made videos about their layoffs. If you have a question for them, hit reply.

• Check out recent Trend Report coverage: People reported being laid off in a glass office where everyone could see what was happening, while getting ready to leave for their bachelorette party, on leave with a newborn, at Starbucks on speaker, and at their kid’s school for the Halloween costume strut.

• “They said that with the automation of several aspects of my job I had been made redundant. I believe them because I was the one that stupidly engineered my own demise by helping them streamline processes.” —An associate editor at Vox laid off last year.

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