Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

It's the same in most of Europe. A letter from a lawyer can be worth much more than from an employee and lawyers won't charge you if they expect the employer to pay the cost anyway.

Yes, happened to me about 6 years ago. I'm a software engineer. My daughter was about a year old then, wife had left her job because we'd moved cities and later to care for our daughter. I had a car loan and home mortgage. It was devastating and a blow to my self esteem, frankly. Took me about 2 months and a lot of sleepless nights to figure out what I wanted to do in life. I had savings to last about 10 months but that was it and my wife also wasn't finding anything since she'd basically been out of the work force for almost 2 years by then. Thankfully, a lot of stars aligned and a former boss who was starting up hired me. The first thing I did was pay up my car loan and home mortgage by selling another property we had (sold it for lesser than I wanted to, but I was done managing assets that weren't really bringing me enough). The next was building up finances. My wife eventually found a job and the last 6 years have basically been about saving money. I have around 70% of my retirement goal now and pretty happy about it. I've learnt that my job (and employer) are a means to an end. It's not my life. A job is a contract. One works for the man, and gets paid in return. That's all there is to it. My eventual aim is to leave a regular job in 4-5 years if all goes well, and work on something that interests me more.

PS: My manager sold the startup last year to a big corp and I have a bit of Stocks/RSUs from that so that'll also help in the retirement goal of 4 years.

Makes me want to lawyer up for relatively small shit than this but nonetheless shit, for an employer calling me low energy on taking a day off for flu and then telling me that my next 6 months' leaves are withdrawn.

I have been laid off 4 times over the course of my career. And to tell the truth, it has been the best of times.

Each time it galvanised me into action to further my portfolio of skills. As a software developer for the majority of my life, it showed me how much the landscape has changed over the years. You have to keep on learning new things, languages, products, just to stay on top of everything. Each time I was laid off I spent a few weeks learning new tools and languages ready for the next stage of my career.

Mind you, the last time I was laid off I only spent a week "unemployed" waiting for my next job to start. At a certain point you learn so much that you can adapt on the fly and my current employer saw that I had a shed load of skills that the fought off other companies who wanted me.

On another plus side, each time I got laid off I was paid a handsome tax-free payoff. I now have no debt (not even a mortgage) and have enough savings that I could retire now. Mind you, I only have a few years to go before it's my official retirement age.

Getting laid off is not the bad thing many people see it as. See it as a change for the better. It's gives you a new focus and purpose, and hopefully it's better for your wallet too.

Several times. The first two times were in the span of two years - 2001 and 2003, in the last gasps of the dot-com bust in the Bay Area. Both were due to the companies either going out of business or extreme restructuring to avoid going out of business. I was a middle manager both times. The hardest part was not having saved enough money during the good times, which is a lesson I've never forgotten.

The third time was later in my career and was something of a relief, even if I didn't realize it at the time. I had been in an executive leadership role, overworked, stressed out, and had become ineffective at executing because of the pressure and stress. Being let go didn't hurt as bad as it could have because I had learned the lesson of saving and investing from my previous layoffs, and even though it wasn't a stress-free period, I was able to take about 6 months to decompress, look for work and enjoy the time with my family.

Overall, I'm grateful for the lessons in each of the occasions I was let go. Two key lessons for me were: Save money while the times are good, and work to live, not the other way around. I'm a more balanced person as a result, and I've "grown up" in ways I don't think I would have without these episodes.