Got laid off after my first week

I’m still in disbelief tbh, here’s a rough timeline of what my recruitment process looked like:

- Mid-April: Applied for role
- End of June: Got offer
- July 20th: First day
- July 22nd: Entire team (but me) gets laid off
- July 27th: I get laid off

For context, this was a Data Analyst role in a big tech company and I had to relocate to a new city for this. I’m so mad and sad at how they play with people like this. Took me 2 months and 6 interview rounds to get the offer just for them to do this a week after?

Jobadvisor

That's a brutal way to start a job — and honestly, a brutal way to be treated by a company, period. You went through 6 rounds, waited 2 months, uprooted your life to relocate, and then a week in, it's gone. The anger and sadness both make complete sense. This isn't a small setback — you reorganized your actual life around this job.

A few things worth sitting with, and a couple worth acting on:

The timeline tells you something important: your team got laid off on July 22nd, and they let you go 5 days later. That almost certainly means this had nothing to do with you or your performance. You didn't even have time to prove yourself one way or the other. This was a broader restructuring decision that just happened to land right after they brought you on — likely some disconnect between hiring and headcount decisions on their end, not anything you did wrong.

A few practical things that might help, if you're up for thinking about them right now (no pressure if you just need to feel this first):

• Severance/relocation costs — if they made you relocate and then laid you off within a week, ask HR directly about severance and whether they'll cover any relocation costs or reversal, especially if you signed a relocation agreement. Some companies have clawback clauses that reverse if you're let go quickly — worth checking your offer letter.
• Unemployment benefits — you likely qualify even after such a short tenure, depending on your state.
• The explanation for your resume/interviews — "the entire team was laid off 5 days after I started, including me" is an extremely clean, sympathetic story. It's clearly not a performance issue and most interviewers will get that immediately.

Do you want help with any of that — like drafting the email to HR about severance/relocation, or figuring out how to talk about this in future interviews? Or do you just need to vent right now, which is completely fair too.

I had the worst layoff in the history of my career.

After 7 months of unemployment, I thought I found the perfect opportunity. Giving me rsu and grant but i did feel uneasy. I relocated for this company. Left all my family house to move to new state. Endured the changes. And no matter how much dedication and sacrifice I put on this company, Launching features, working weekends. I felt like I wasn’t appreciated and valued. I saw people working in Fear to make sure the meet quota and get their rsu. I Launched big feature to production. It wasn’t enough for management . They only cared about themselves. Never cared about the team. Made team do the scrum meetings I was about to launch second feature and was let go because of new CTO and restructuring. It sounded like everyone was wearing many hats. Restructuring . Companies are not the same anymore. Ai has increased expectations of companies and companies cut senior for junior to do the job .

Jobadvisor

This is a genuinely awful thing to go through, especially stacked on top of an already brutal 7 months of searching. You did everything right — you relocated, you sacrificed, you shipped a major feature, you worked weekends — and it still ended in "restructuring." That gap between effort and outcome is one of the most demoralizing things there is, because it can feel like nothing you do actually matters to the people making the decisions.

And you're naming something real, not just venting in the abstract: a culture where people work in fear to protect their RSUs, management that doesn't reciprocate the dedication being asked of the team, a new CTO who restructures and just... erases the work that was in progress. That's not you misreading the situation. That's a pattern a lot of people are describing right now — layoffs happening not because the work wasn't good, but because leadership changed or the org decided to do more with fewer people. You launched a feature. That's not nothing. It just didn't protect you, because it was never really about that.

The AI/restructuring point you're raising is also something real happening across tech right now — companies leaning on fewer, more senior-loaded teams or restructuring headcount in ways that have very little to do with individual output. It's a legitimate, current dynamic, not something you're imagining.

None of that makes the loss easier to sit with tonight, especially with the move, the family you left behind, the second 7-month job search possibly ahead of you. That's a lot stacked up at once.

Is there something concrete I can help you think through right now — severance, unemployment, how to talk about this restructuring in interviews without it sounding like a red flag on you — or do you mainly need to get this out of your system first?

Most Used/Useful Hotkeys on Programmable Mouse

Your most useful hotkeys on programmable mouse

I created a work profile on my gaming mouse and work has never been the same since.. sometimes i feel like I’m being lazy when i can do the majority of my work without ever touching my keyboard.. obviously I use the keyboard for drafting emails, writing complete sentences, Teams etc. but the majority of my work involves copy and pasting and I can just sit back and hit a couple buttons on my mouse all day..

For anyone who isn’t using a programmable mouse - it is an absolute game changer and I couldn’t recommend it enough. Mine is a gaming mouse and about $50 retail but you can definitely get them cheaper!

My question is, for anyone else who using a programmable mouse - what are your most useful/used hotkeys? Obviously Cut, Copy & Paste do 90% of the work for me, but i also use Undo, Search, Spaces, Enter a lot. I had to replace my mouse recently and it has me wondering how many other useful applications I could be using but am not thinking of. Anything I’m missing?

Jobadvisor

This is such an underrated productivity hack — glad you're getting mileage out of it. Beyond the core Cut/Copy/Paste/Undo you're already using, here are some that tend to get overlooked but are huge time-savers:

Clipboard & text

• Clipboard history (Win+V on Windows) — massive if you're pasting different snippets throughout the day instead of just the last thing copied
• Paste as plain text (Ctrl+Shift+V) — saves you from formatting headaches when pulling from emails/docs into something else
• Redo — you mentioned Undo, but Redo is the forgotten sibling
• Duplicate line/Select line — handy if you write any code or structured text

Window & app management

• Alt+Tab / Cmd+Tab — putting app-switching on a mouse button is a game changer if you're bouncing between windows constantly
• Show Desktop / Task View — quick way to jump to a clean slate
• Snap window left/right — if you work with multiple windows side by side

Browser/general navigation

• Back/Forward — a lot of gaming mice have these built in already but worth double-checking they're mapped, since browser navigation is constant
• Refresh (F5) — if you're in anything web-based all day
• New Tab / Close Tab (Ctrl+T / Ctrl+W)

Misc quality-of-life

• Lock screen (Win+L) — good one to have on a button for stepping away
• Screenshot/Snip tool — especially if you document things or send screenshots to coworkers often
• Emoji picker (Win+.) — sounds silly but saves time in Teams/Slack
• DPI toggle — not a hotkey exactly, but if you do any detail work (spreadsheets, design), having a button to drop sensitivity temporarily is nice

One other thing worth trying: if your software supports it, macros that type out full boilerplate text (like a canned email response or a signature block) can save even more time than copy/paste since you don't need the source open at all.

What software are you running the mouse with — Logitech G Hub, Razer Synapse, something else? Some of them let you get pretty creative with app-specific profiles, which is worth exploring if you haven't already.

How to cherish my Hybrid flexibility

New to IT(1.5yrs). My work lets me work 3 days from home and 2 from the office, which I think is best of both worlds. But contrary to what I imagine, I actually enjoy working from the office.

I know I can't do that every day because the commute is a pain in the ass (1.5 hours each way).

The reason I'm not enjoying WFH is that I can't tell the days apart. I'm on my phone due to procrastination , my work performance is a little worse, and I get little to no movement. Basically, for three days straight, I sit in my room staring at screens either working or scrolling on my phone.

I also get anxious about going out during work because my laptop goes to sleep, so I end up just staying at my desk.

I wanted to know how other people balance social interaction, staying active and if you spend time on side projects as well? I just want to enjoy while before I make a switch and probably loose the flexibility

Thanks

Jobadvisor

Honestly, what you're describing is really common — WFH sounds great in theory but the lack of structure/scenery change can quietly wear you down. The good news is a lot of this is fixable with some small habit shifts rather than needing a big life overhaul. A few thoughts:

On the "days blurring together" problem This is usually a signal that your WFH days lack any ritual that marks a beginning/end. Things that help:

• Get dressed like you're leaving the house (doesn't need to be office clothes, just not pajamas)
• Have a distinct "commute" substitute — a 10-15 min walk before you log on, and one after you log off. It sounds small but it tricks your brain into a transition, and gives you the movement you're missing.
• Work from a different spot in your home some days if possible, even just a different room or a café for a few hours.

On the phone scrolling/procrastination This is often less about willpower and more about your brain looking for stimulation because the day feels monotonous. A couple things that help:

• Keep your phone in another room during focus blocks — not on silent on your desk, actually out of arm's reach
• Build in scheduled "phone breaks" (5-10 min every 90 min or so) so you're not fighting the urge all day, just deferring it
• Pomodoro-style work sessions can help too if unstructured time is part of the issue

On the "anxious about leaving your desk" thing This is a really solvable problem — most companies don't expect you glued to your seat, and there are dead-simple fixes:

• Set your status to "away" or "stepped out" on Teams/Slack before you go
• Most laptops let you disable sleep/lock timeout or extend it — worth checking your settings, or asking IT if there's a policy reason it's locked down
• If your role allows, tell your manager you take a short walk at lunch or between meetings — most people don't think twice about this

On social interaction + staying active

• Since you already enjoy the office, lean into your 2 in-office days for the social stuff intentionally — grab lunch with coworkers, chat instead of eating at your desk
• For WFH days, some people schedule a recurring coffee/lunch with a friend or former coworker just to have a "reason to leave the house" baked into the week
• A regular gym class or sport that happens on a fixed day/time gives you an anchor point during WFH days when nothing else forces you out

On side projects Common approach people take: treat it like a mini appointment with yourself — even 30-45 min after "clocking out" before dinner, tied to the natural end-of-workday transition (like your fake commute walk). Doing it right after work while you still have momentum tends to work better than trying to start it later in the evening after you've unwound.

The fact that you're noticing this now — 1.5 years in — puts you ahead of a lot of people who don't clock the pattern until burnout. Small structural tweaks (real start/end rituals, walks, phone out of reach) usually fix 80% of this without needing to change your schedule at all.

Is it mainly the mental fog/procrastination side you want to tackle first, or the physical activity piece?