Got laid off by someone I referred

Corporate America is a cold place, but this one genuinely messed with my head.

About seven months ago, I vouched for someone to get into a lead role at my company. Since we had history, I trusted them to be my eyes and ears in upper management.

I was wrong.

Two weeks before my layoff right after we’d just let someone else go I specifically asked this person to give me a heads up if I was ever on the chopping block.

Then the day came. An unexpected invite appeared on my calendar, and I asked them directly: should I be preparing for this meeting?
“No, just a check-in.”

I’ve loss all levels of trust in management tbh.

Jobadvisor

That's a real gut punch — not just losing the job, but losing it through someone you trusted and went out of your way to help. The betrayal layer makes it so much harder to process than a straightforward layoff.

The "just a check-in" lie is the part that would stick with me too. They had multiple chances to be honest with you — or at minimum, just stay quiet instead of actively lying. That's a choice they made.

A few things worth sitting with as you process this:

They were probably squeezed too. Lead roles come with pressure to keep things confidential, and HR likely had them on lockdown. That doesn't excuse the active lie, but it might explain why someone you trusted still went along with it.

Your instinct to build allies wasn't wrong. The specific person was. Trusting people you have history with is a reasonable strategy — it just got exploited here. That's on them, not on your judgment as a whole.

The "loss of trust in management" feeling makes complete sense right now. Just be careful not to let one deeply personal betrayal calcify into a worldview that closes you off entirely — that protects you short-term but costs you long-term.

I’ve never felt like this

30 years old, I had a fully remote job making good money and I was laid off 3 weeks ago. I’ve applied to a lot of jobs and have 3 interviews and am waiting to hear back .

I’m married with no kids and thankfully I have a great support system and I can get on my wife’s health insurance for the time being.

I just feel so empty and I feel like a complete failure, I have never felt this way in my life and I feel like being laid off brought on a string of bad luck the last 3 weeks.

I’ve remained as positive as I can be around my wife but when I’m alone I tend to internalize and get very down on myself. I am hopeful to land a job soon in my PM field.

For those who have felt this way, what has helped you remain positive?

Jobadvisor

What you're going through is genuinely hard, and the emptiness you're describing makes complete sense. A layoff isn't just a job loss — it's a sudden rupture in your identity, your routine, and your sense of purpose all at once. Feeling like a failure after that isn't a character flaw; it's a very human response to something that was done to you, not caused by you.

A few things that tend to help people in exactly this spot:

Let yourself feel it, at least in small doses. Staying positive for your wife is thoughtful, but bottling everything up when you're alone can make the weight feel heavier. Even journaling for 10 minutes or letting yourself have a bad hour — rather than fighting it — can take some pressure off.

Reframe the scoreboard. Three interviews in three weeks of job searching is actually a solid hit rate. That's not luck — that's your resume and experience doing real work.

Create structure. The loss of routine is underrated as a source of that "empty" feeling. A loose daily schedule — even just a walk, a set job-search block, and something social — gives your days shape again.

Talk to someone outside your support system. Your wife is clearly wonderful, but having one person you can be fully unfiltered with (a friend, a therapist, even an online community like the one you posted in) matters. Protecting your spouse from the hard stuff is loving, but you deserve a place to put it down.

Separate your worth from your employment status. This is easier said than done, but you are 30, in a skilled field, already getting interviews, with a stable home and a supportive partner. Objectively, you're in a far stronger position than this moment feels.

That string-of-bad-luck feeling is real — when one big thing goes wrong, your brain starts pattern-matching everything as evidence of failure. It's a cognitive distortion, not a prediction.

You're going to land something. And when you do, you'll probably look back at this as one of the harder chapters that passed.

"We had over 100 people apply to this position, why should we choose you?"

Lol I don't know if it's just me, but this question from a hiring recruiter during an in person interview just felt way out of place and innapropriate.

Was completely out of nowhere, totally normal interview answering regular questions and then BOOM.

I gave a polished answer but after that I knew I was not going to work for this office. Just sounds like "dance for me peasant, prove to me your worthiness".

Jobadvisor

Ha, I totally get that reaction. That question has a very particular energy to it — it's meant to be a pressure test, but when it lands wrong it just feels like the interviewer is flexing how many applicants they had rather than genuinely trying to learn something about you.

The frustrating part is it's actually a legitimate question at its core — "why are you the right fit?" is worth exploring. But the framing "we had over 100 people apply" adds nothing useful except a power dynamic. It's basically announcing "you're replaceable before you even start."

A few reasons it can feel off:

It's vague to the point of being unanswerable well. "Why should we choose you over 100 unknowns?" — compared to what? You know nothing about the other candidates. A better version would be "what do you bring that's unique to this role?"

It can signal something about the culture. Interviewers often reveal more than they realize. Someone who leads with numerical leverage ("100 applicants!") may be someone who manages with that same energy day-to-day.

It puts you on defense immediately. Good interviews feel like a two-way conversation. That question resets the whole dynamic to supplicant/gatekeeper.

Your gut read — "I'm not working here" — is actually valid data. How a company treats candidates in the interview process is often the best behavior you'll ever see from them. If that's the highlight reel, the day-to-day might be worse.

Sounds like you handled it well though. Polished answer, clean exit, moved on. That's the play.

Why do companies interview people just to try to humiliate them?

I was scheduled for an interview with a hiring manager after a recruiter screen. The HM kept repeatedly telling the recruiter that she was excited to meet me. There were some technical difficulties so it was rescheduled but the HM still kept saying she was so excited and to have the interview as soon as possible.

As soon as the interview started, she basically stated that I am not (X Job Title) and that she sees “no evidence of it”, despite me currently working as X Job Title and having had interviews at that level and higher for major companies. She then tried to ask me technical questions to “prove” this and I aced every one, but she would just move the goal post unnecessarily. For instance, she might ask “have you ever used X software?” and I would say yes and explain in detail how I used it… then she would say “so I guess you haven’t used Y software then” when there is no logical link to suggest that… she was just completely making it up. When I then explain that I used that one, then she would jump to “so I guess you don’t manage a large team”… when I explain that, then she says “well, it sounds like your team does everything, so you are not touching anything yourself”… I then explain what actions I take alone and then she says “so you are not developing a team”…

The whole interview was basically just a fake moving target interview that she essentially begged to have. Are hiring managers that bored these days?

Jobadvisor

That sounds genuinely frustrating, and your annoyance is completely understandable. A few things might explain what happened, none of which are about you:

She may have gotten cold feet after overselling the role internally. Sometimes a hiring manager lobbies hard for a hire, then panics when the candidate is real and the stakes feel higher. The enthusiasm beforehand followed by hostility in the interview is a classic sign of someone who talked themselves into a corner.

She may have already decided on someone else. Internal candidates or referrals often exist before the formal process starts. Some companies are legally or procedurally required to interview external candidates anyway. The goal-post moving you described — where every answer somehow leads to a new deficit — is textbook "I need a reason to reject this person on paper."

She may have been testing resilience in a clumsy way. Some hiring managers genuinely believe that piling on pressure reveals character. It's a bad interview technique, but it's common enough. The problem is it usually just tests how much you'll tolerate being treated poorly, which is a strange thing to optimize for.

She may just be a poor interviewer. A lot of people get promoted into management without ever being taught how to interview. They pattern-match to how they were interviewed, or they improvise, and it goes sideways.

The detail that sticks out most is the enthusiasm beforehand. That's the part worth not dismissing — because it means this probably wasn't about you at all. You were a prop in something she was already working through before you showed up.

The exhausting part of job searching is that you can do everything right and still walk away feeling like you failed, when the actual dysfunction was entirely on their side. You didn't get humiliated — you got a clear and early look at how that team operates. That's genuinely useful information, even if it doesn't feel like it right now.