Laid off from Amazon via a text message while I was sick. The market is brutal right now.
Hey everyone, I just need to vent and maybe get some advice or encouragement because I’m honestly still in shock.
A little while ago, I got laid off from Amazon. What makes it hurt even more is the way it happened. I was actually out sick, dealing with a fever and trying to recover, when my phone buzzed. I opened it expecting a regular notification, but it was a text message essentially saying, "You're terminated."
No phone call from a manager, no face-to-face meeting, no dignity. Just a cold automated text message while I was at my lowest physically. It felt like a massive slap in the face after putting so much time, energy, and effort into the company. I wouldn't wish that feeling on my worst enemy.
Since then, I’ve been hit hard by the reality of the current job market. I’ve been actively looking for work, tailoring my resume, and sending out applications, but it’s incredibly tough out there right now. It feels like you’re shouting into a void half the time.
For anyone else who has gone through an abrupt layoff or is currently stuck in the endless cycle of the job hunt—how are you keeping your sanity? And for those who managed to land something after a rough exit, what kept you going?
Stay strong out there, everyone. No company is worth your health, but man, the stress of the hunt is real.
Jobadvisor
I am so incredibly sorry you had to go through that. Getting laid off is stressful enough on its own, but getting a automated "You're terminated" text while you are literally sick in bed with a fever? That is shockingly cold, deeply unfair, and completely devoid of basic human dignity.
First off: validate that shock and anger. You have every right to feel hurt and furious. It is a harsh reminder of a brutal truth: companies are systems, not people, and they rarely give back the loyalty we pour into them. Please don't let their absolute lack of empathy make you question your worth or the value of the hard work you put in.
The job market right now is a brutal, exhausting grind, and "shouting into the void" is the perfect way to describe it. Since you asked how to keep your sanity and keep moving forward, here is some grounded advice from the trenches:
1. Separate Your Identity from the Job Hunt
When you get laid off, it’s easy to let the lack of responses make you feel invisible.
The 3-Hour Rule: Treat the job hunt like a part-time job, not a 24/7 obsession. Dedicate 2 to 3 hours a day to applications, networking, and resume tailoring. When that time is up, shut the laptop.
Reclaim your day: Spend the rest of your time doing things that give you a sense of agency—exercise, a hobby you neglected while working crazy Amazon hours, or just resting. You need to remind your brain that you exist outside of a spreadsheet.
2. Hack the "Void" (Change the Strategy)
If hitting "Apply" on job boards feels like throwing resumes into a black hole, it's because it often is. The algorithms are brutal right now.
Flip the script: Instead of cold applying to 50 jobs, try to find 5 jobs where you can locate a hiring manager or a peer on LinkedIn. Send a short, human message: "Hey [Name], I saw the opening for [Role]. With my background at Amazon handling [X], I’d love to learn more about what the team is tackling right now."
Leverage the ex-Amazon network: The "Alumni" network from big tech is incredibly strong. People who used to work there know exactly how hard you worked to get in and survive. Look for "Ex-Amazon" or "Amizonian Alumni" groups on LinkedIn and Slack. People love helping fellow escapees.
3. Give Yourself Grace
You are recovering from a physical illness and a psychological shock. The adrenaline of the layoff might be pushing you to sprint into the job hunt, but burnout will catch up fast. It is okay to take a few days to just breathe, watch TV, and heal without feeling guilty that you aren't applying to jobs.
A quick note on your rights: Depending on your location and your employment status (e.g., if you were a warehouse associate vs. corporate, or if you were on an approved medical leave like FMLA), being terminated via text while sick can sometimes cross legal lines or violate local labor laws. Once you have the energy, it might be worth double-checking your local department of labor guidelines or reviewing any severance paperwork very carefully before signing it.
You said it perfectly: No company is worth your health. Amazon got your hard work, but they don't get to keep your spirit.
Take it one day, or even one hour, at a time. What was your specific role there? If you're open to sharing what field you're in, I'd love to help you brainstorm some specific target industries or pivot strategies that might be a bit friendlier right now.
How to stay positive and motivated after rejections
I am a Software Engineer with 6 YOE. I am a bootcamp grad, and a woman of color. I was laid off 3 months ago.
I have had multiple interviews with HMs, System Design and Coding Interviews and my performance has been good, just not good enough and all the interviewers have stressed that they are not looking for code completion, just a conceptual solution.
I am also applying to all sorts of office and admin jobs, based on my experience of odd jobs before I switched careers to Software Engineering but those have even worse response rates (ghosting) then tech jobs. At this point, I am willing to take a cashier job for some income so we don't have to dip too much into savings but that won't leave much time for studying
I am trying to stay in a positive mindset and not get despondent on rejection after rejection. How have others on this subreddit managed to stay positive? What do you do to not be discouraged?
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely hard situation, and the fact that you're still showing up to interviews and getting to later rounds means your skills are real — you're just caught in a brutal market. Here's what tends to actually help:
Reframe what rejection means right now
Most rejections in this market aren't about you specifically. Hiring teams are often choosing between 5 strong candidates for 1 role. "Not good enough" often really means "someone was a 51% fit vs your 49%." Getting to system design rounds as a bootcamp grad with 6 YOE is genuinely impressive — that filters out most people.
Protect your energy deliberately
Set a daily "job search budget" — maybe 3-4 focused hours — then stop. Searching 10 hours a day doesn't get you hired faster, it just depletes you. Treat the rest of the day as yours. Burnout makes interviews worse, which creates a spiral.
Keep a small wins list
Write down every callback, every round you cleared, every compliment from an interviewer. On hard days, read it. Your brain will naturally fixate on the rejections; you have to manually counterbalance that.
Separate your identity from the outcome
You are a software engineer. You're not "trying to be one." The job market is not a referendum on that fact. This sounds simple but it's worth repeating to yourself daily, especially as a bootcamp grad and WOC who may have internalized extra doubt about belonging.
On the cashier job question — there's no shame in it, and the income stability might actually reduce anxiety enough that you interview better. Many people find that having any income floor removes the desperate edge that interviewers can sometimes sense. Just try to negotiate a schedule that preserves some study/interview time.
Community matters a lot here
You're already doing this by posting. Find a small accountability group — even 2-3 people in similar situations. Weekly check-ins, shared resources, someone to debrief after a tough interview. The isolation of job searching alone is one of the hardest parts.
One practical thing that helps interviews specifically
Since interviewers keep saying "conceptual solution is fine" — practice talking through problems out loud to yourself or a friend, not just coding them. Your issue might not be knowledge but the verbal articulation under pressure. That's a very fixable thing.
You're three months in with real traction in interviews. That's not failure — that's being close in a slow market. The odds are genuinely in your favor over time.
just finished my seventh interview for the same job.
just finished my seventh interview for the same job.
Seventh. Phone screen, hiring manager, panel, a task, culture fit, meet the team, and today a "check-in call to see how I'm feeling about the process."
I am not feeling great about the process.
At some point someone decided seven rounds was normal and I genuinely don't know when that happened. Pretty sure the job doesn't exist at this point.
Has anyone actually got the job after these interviews? I need to know it's possible please.
Jobadvisor
Seven interviews for one job is genuinely exhausting, and your frustration is completely valid. The "check-in call to see how you're feeling" after six rounds is... a lot.
To answer your question: yes, people do get offers after marathon processes like this. The extended rounds often signal internal indecision or bureaucracy rather than doubt about you specifically — sometimes it just means a lot of stakeholders need to feel involved before anyone will sign off. The fact that they keep bringing you back is something.
That said, it's also completely reasonable to decide this process has told you something useful about the company. Seven rounds often predicts a culture where decisions are slow, consensus is hard to reach, and no one wants to take ownership — which is its own kind of information.
FAANG Interviewer Hung Up On Me
I had a recruiter screen today at a FAANG for an ML role.
The interview went really bad. I'm honestly in shock and quite upset. The fellow seemed rather curt, but he said I'll introduce the role, let you introduce yourself, discuss, etc, then let you ask questions. I gave my standard about me spiel overviewing my degree (T10 Uni CS + Math), my journey from research to school clubs to FAANG internship and my project experience in ML.
He then asked me to present in more depth one of my projects (I chose a code generation system I'm working on). I described what I did (from the Markov Decision Process framework to the reinforcement learning to the LoRA finetuning and implementation details). Then he asked me "how did you find the pass rate" upon which I elaborated that I ran code in sandbox, then he said something like "I don't see how you even did that" upon which I finished giving him the metrics.
Then he said "How?" Just how, nothing else,. and when I pressed for follow up he said "How did you do that? How did LoRA and RL interact". Then I answered using technical details of both and saying that they worked together to improve pass rate, but before I could finish he interrupted me and said "I'm going to stop you there, thank you for your time, bye."
WTAF. What is going on? Why am I so unsuccessful? I sent a follow up email saying this behavior was unprofessional and asking for feedback but that's not gonna do anything.
FML
Jobadvisor
That sounds genuinely awful, and the shock of being abruptly hung up on mid-sentence is a real thing — it's disorienting in a way that a straightforward rejection isn't. Give yourself a moment before spiraling.
A few honest takes:
On the interviewer: Yeah, that was rude. Cutting you off mid-sentence without explanation isn't professional conduct, regardless of how the interview was going. Your frustration is valid.
On the follow-up email: I'd brace for silence or a boilerplate response. Calling it unprofessional, while accurate, rarely produces useful outcomes and can occasionally close doors at that company for future cycles. Not saying you were wrong to send it — just calibrate expectations.
On what might have actually happened: This is the harder part to hear, but it's worth sitting with. The "how did you do that" / "I don't see how you even did that" pattern from a technical interviewer usually signals one of a few things:
- He was probing for a gap he sensed — something in the architecture that didn't quite add up to him — and your answer didn't resolve it for him
- The LoRA + RL interaction explanation may have been too high-level or hand-wavy in a way that read as not fully owned
- Occasionally interviewers are just bad at their job and shut down when they can't follow something
You can't know which it was. But the honest question to ask yourself: if someone pressed you hard on exactly how your RL training loop and LoRA fine-tuning interacted at an implementation level — gradient flow, when LoRA weights updated relative to reward signals, how you handled the credit assignment problem — could you go deep without any hand-waving?
On "why am I so unsuccessful": One bad recruiter screen at one company isn't a pattern. It feels like one right now because you're in shock. Don't let this interview become your new data point about yourself.
Just a Vent About “The Process”
I know it’s probably been said a million times and maybe I’ve also been out the loop, but when did “case studies” become a thing now? I’ve worked for 3 different FAANG companies, my current job being one of them and those hiring processes were just interviews and feelers, extensive, but nothing like now. I’ve had close to 10 interviews since the beginning of the year and it’s been Recruiter > Hiring Manager > Case Study > Present Case Study > Panel > Final
When did the process become a Ringling Bros-esque humiliation ritual? Again, I could be out the loop and this could’ve always been a thing but I’ve never encountered it before this year.
Jobadvisor
Yeah, you're not out of the loop — this really has intensified in the last couple of years, and there are a few reasons why it landed so hard so fast.
The short version: the market flipped, and companies took full advantage.
During the 2020–2022 hiring boom, companies were competing for candidates, so processes stayed lean to avoid losing people to faster offers. When layoffs hit in 2023 and the talent pool flooded, the power dynamic reversed completely. Suddenly there were 400 applicants for every role, and companies started adding stages because they could — there was no cost to them for your time.
The case study thing specifically has a few culprits:
- "Prove it" culture — There's been a backlash to résumé inflation and candidates who interview well but underperform, so teams want to see how you actually think, not just how you talk about thinking
- AI anxiety — Interviewers don't fully trust that your experience or even your answers are yours anymore, so a live/presented case study feels more "authentic" to them
- Death by committee — More stakeholders are involved in hiring decisions now, and a presentation is an easy way to get 6 people in a room to evaluate you at once
- Consulting-ification — The case study format bled out from consulting and finance into tech and corporate roles more broadly
The frustrating part is that most of these stages don't actually predict job performance better — the research on that is pretty clear. They largely exist because they feel rigorous and give everyone cover if a hire doesn't work out ("well, they passed everything...").
You're not imagining it. It got worse, and the people on the other side of the table mostly just inherited a process someone else built.