The Ones Who Stayed: A Survivor's Story
What it costs to keep your job when everyone else loses theirs
My name is David. I'm a CTO. And today I fired my entire cloud engineering team.
Well, not my entire team. Just half of it.
Maya, my lead engineer, survived. She's still here. She's sitting at her desk right now, doing the work that used to take fifteen people, in an office that feels like a graveyard.
I saved her job. That's what I'm supposed to believe, right?
So why does it feel like I destroyed her anyway?
Round One: Eight Months Ago
The first round of layoffs came on a Tuesday morning in March. Five engineers. The email from our board was simple: "Cost reduction initiative. 15% workforce reduction. Effective immediately."
I had three hours to decide who stayed and who went.
Three hours to play God with people's livelihoods.
I made spreadsheets. Evaluated performance metrics. Analyzed project contributions. Tried to be objective, data-driven, fair.
But here's the truth: There's no fair way to destroy someone's life because the company's growth projections didn't materialize.
I sent the termination emails at 9:00 AM. By 9:15 AM, I watched their Slack avatars turn from green to gray as IT revoked their access. By 9:30 AM, I was in the bathroom trying not to throw up.
Chris, our founder, found me in my office afterward.
"You okay?" he asked.
"No."
"Yeah. Me neither." He sat down heavily. "But we're stable now. This is it. No more cuts."
I wanted to believe him.
The team that survived was quiet for weeks. Maya stopped making jokes in standup meetings. The office felt like we were all attending a funeral but nobody knew quite what to say.
After a month, things started to feel almost normal again. Not good. But functional.
I told myself we'd made it through the worst part.
Round Two: Four Months Ago
The second round came in July. Twelve more engineers.
"We need to cut deeper," the board said. "Market conditions have changed."
Chris delivered the news to leadership with dead eyes. "I know I said no more cuts. I was wrong. We have to do this or we don't survive at all."
This time, I had two days to decide. Two days to look at the people I'd assured "you're safe now" and figure out who wasn't safe after all.
Maya was in my office when I was making the list.
"Am I on it?" she asked directly.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you're the best engineer we have."
"David, half my team is about to disappear. Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
I didn't have an answer.
I sent twelve termination emails on a Thursday morning. Watched twelve more Slack avatars go dark. Attended twelve awkward final meetings where people cleaned out their desks while their former teammates pretended to work.
One of them, Marcus, stopped by my office on his way out.
"I just bought a house," he said. "Closed three weeks ago."
"Marcus, I'm—"
"Don't. Just... don't."
He left. I sat there staring at my desk for twenty minutes.
That afternoon, Chris gathered the remaining team.
"I know you're scared," he said. "I know you don't trust me when I say no more cuts. But we're done. We've made the hard decisions. Now we rebuild."
I watched Maya's face. She didn't believe him. Neither did anyone else.
The office got quieter. People started leaving at 5:00 PM sharp, like they didn't want to invest extra energy in something that might disappear. The Slack channels that used to buzz with technical discussions and random jokes went silent.
Maya stopped eating lunch in the break room. She'd sit at her desk, headphones on, working through lunch and sometimes dinner.
I tried to talk to her once. "You doing okay?"
"Fine."
"If you need anything—"
"I'm fine, David."
She wasn't fine. We both knew it. But what was I supposed to do about it?
Round Three: This Morning
The third round came today. Another fifteen engineers.
I didn't even pretend to be surprised this time. When Chris called me into his office yesterday afternoon, I already knew.
"We're not going to survive unless we cut to seventy-five people total," he said. He looked like he'd aged five years in the past eight months. "I need you to make another list."
"You said we were done cutting."
"I know what I said."
"You said it twice, Chris. After round one and after round two. Why should anyone believe anything we say anymore?"
"They shouldn't." He rubbed his face. "But we're doing it anyway. Because the alternative is shutting down completely and everyone loses their job."
So I made another list. Fifteen names. Fifteen emails I'd have to send. Fifteen people who probably didn't believe me the last two times I said they were safe.
I sent the terminations this morning at 9:00 AM.
By 9:30 AM, the engineering team had gone from thirty people to fifteen. Half the department, gone in eight months.
Maya is still here. Still at her desk. Still working.
Still dying inside, and I put her there.
The Exit Interview
My own exit interview was scheduled for 3:00 PM.
Wait. Let me clarify that. I wasn't being laid off. I was leaving. I'd given my two weeks' notice yesterday, before the third round was even announced. I couldn't do it anymore.
Jennifer from HR met me in the small conference room. She's been with the company for eight years, longer than anyone except Chris. Professional, composed, kind in that careful HR way.
She pulled up the exit interview form on her laptop. Her hands were shaking slightly.
"Coffee?" she offered.
"Sure."
She poured. Spilled a little. Laughed tiredly. "Sorry. It's been a week."
"Tell me about it."
She looked at me—really looked—and something broke in her expression.
"We had to cut three people from HR this week," she said quietly. "Angela, who sat next to me for six years. Marcus from recruiting, who helped me through my divorce. And Chen, who just bought a house."
I set down my pen. "I didn't know."
"Nobody knows. We're HR. We deliver bad news. Nobody thinks about who delivers bad news to us." She wiped her eyes. "Sorry. That was unprofessional."
"No. That was human."
We sat in that for a moment.
"You know what the worst part is?" Jennifer continued. "I had to write the severance packages for my own team. Had to calculate how many weeks they'd get. Had to click 'submit' on my friends' terminations. Then I had to sit in this room and conduct their exit interviews like I wasn't falling apart."
"Yeah," I said quietly. "I know that feeling."
"Of course you do. You've been doing it for eight months." She looked at me directly. "How are you still functioning?"
"I'm not. That's why I'm leaving."
Jennifer nodded slowly. "That makes sense. That's... actually really healthy. Get out while you still can."
"What about you?"
"I can't leave. I need the health insurance. My mom has cancer. The treatment costs..." She trailed off. "So I'm stuck being the person who destroys people's lives because I can't afford not to be."
We finished the exit interview in silence. When I stood to leave, Jennifer stopped me.
"David? For what it's worth, I think you're one of the good ones. You actually cared. That's more than most people in your position."
"Caring doesn't undo the damage."
"No. But it means something anyway."
The Founder's Confession
I was packing my office when Chris appeared in the doorway. Hands in pockets. Looking ten years older than he did when I joined the company.
"Hey."
"Hey," I replied, not looking up from the box I was filling.
"How's it going?"
"Okay," I said flatly.
Chris winced. "That bad, huh?"
I stopped packing. Looked at him. "What do you want me to say, Chris?"
"I don't know. Something that makes me feel less like I destroyed everything we built."
We were quiet for a long moment.
Chris stepped into the office. Closed the door. "Can I be honest for a second?"
"Sure."
"I thought we'd be growing forever. I really did." He sat down heavily in the chair across from my desk. "Every board meeting, every investor call, I had this vision of us hitting five hundred employees, going public, changing the industry. I ran scenarios for downturns. I had plans. But I never... I never imagined it would be like this."
"Like what?"
"Watching people I hired, people I promised futures to, people I convinced to leave good jobs to join us—watching them get cut in waves because we couldn't make the numbers work." His voice cracked. "I told Maya she'd lead a team of twenty someday. Now she's a team of one."
I softened slightly. "It's not all on you."
"Isn't it? I'm the founder. I made the growth projections. I took the funding rounds. I hired too fast because I believed my own story about hockey-stick growth curves." He looked up at me. "I'm sorry, David. For making you execute those layoffs. For putting you in that position. For all of it."
I sat down across from him. "You know what's funny? I blamed you for months. Thought you were just another founder who cared more about valuations than people."
"Maybe I was."
"But you're here. In my office. On my last day. Looking like you haven't slept in a year. So maybe not."
Chris laughed bitterly. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"No. But it makes you human."
We sat with that for a minute.
"What are you going to do?" Chris asked.
"Find something smaller. Something that doesn't require cutting people to survive. Maybe just be a senior engineer somewhere. Less responsibility. More sleep."
"That sounds nice."
"What about you?"
Chris shrugged. "Keep this thing alive with seventy-five people instead of two hundred. Try not to cut anyone else. Probably fail. Wonder every day if I should have just shut it down instead of trying to save it."
"Are you going to shut it down?"
"I don't know. The board says we have eighteen months of runway. But we said that twelve months ago too." He stood up. "Anyway. I just wanted to say I'm sorry. And thank you. And... I wish I'd been better at this."
"Yeah," I said. "Me too."
Chris left. I went back to packing.
Then I stopped.
I sat down at my desk and stared at my resignation letter, printed and signed, sitting in my outbox ready to submit.
And I thought about Maya, sitting at her desk in an empty office, doing the work of fifteen people.
I thought about Jennifer, trapped by medical bills, conducting exit interviews for her own friends.
I thought about Chris, trying to keep seventy-five people employed when every instinct probably told him to just shut it all down.
I picked up my phone.
"Maya? Can you come to my office for a minute?"
The Conversation We Should Have Had Months Ago
Maya appeared in my doorway three minutes later. She looked exhausted. More than exhausted—hollowed out.
"What's up?" she asked.
"Close the door. Sit down."
She did, warily. "If you're going to tell me there's a round four—"
"There's no round four. I'm not leaving."
She blinked. "What?"
"I was going to leave. I had my exit interview today. But I'm not leaving. Not yet."
"Why not?"
"Because you're still here. And I can't just abandon you to deal with this alone."
Maya's expression shifted. Something between relief and anger. "David, I don't need you to save me."
"I know. But I need to stop running away from what I did." I leaned forward. "Maya, I destroyed this team. I picked the names. I sent the emails. I watched thirty-two people lose their jobs over eight months. And then I was going to just... leave. Let you and everyone else deal with the aftermath while I found something easier."
"That's not—"
"It is, though. I was taking the coward's way out." I looked at her directly. "Your face, every day for the past eight months. You look like I looked after my dad died. Like you're just going through motions, waiting for it all to end."
Maya's eyes filled with tears. "I don't know how to do this anymore, David. I used to love coming to work. I used to get excited about solving hard problems. Now I just... sit at my desk and try not to think about all the empty chairs."
"I know."
"Do you? Because from where I'm sitting, you got to be the executioner and then leave. I have to stay here in the graveyard and pretend everything's fine."
"You're right. And I'm sorry."
We sat in that silence for a long moment.
"What do you need?" I finally asked. "Really. What would it take for this to not be hell anymore?"
Maya thought about it. "I need us to stop pretending we're still a two-hundred-person company. I need realistic expectations. I need to build something I'm proud of instead of just keeping the lights on with duct tape and hope."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Let's do that. Let's stop pretending. Let's figure out what seventy-five people can actually build that matters."
Maya looked at me skeptically. "You really think we can?"
"I don't know. But I think we owe it to everyone who's still here to try."
The Weekly One-on-One That Changed Everything
For the next month, nothing really changed. Maya and I had our weekly one-on-ones, but they felt performative. Both of us going through motions.
"How are you doing?" I'd ask.
"Fine," she'd reply.
"The CloudSync project on track?"
"Yep."
"Need anything from me?"
"Nope."
Then we'd sit in awkward silence until one of us found an excuse to leave.
I could see her getting worse. Coming in later. Leaving earlier. The dark circles under her eyes deepening. The way she'd zone out in meetings, like she was physically present but mentally somewhere far away.
I didn't know how to help her. I didn't know how to help anyone, including myself.
Then one Thursday in late September, Maya showed up to our one-on-one and said: "My parents are visiting next week. They're taking me to lunch at that Indian restaurant in Capitol Hill. You should come."
"To lunch with your parents?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Because I think we both need someone to tell us the truth about what we're doing to ourselves."
The Lunch That Slapped Us Awake
The restaurant was small, tucked into a corner of Capitol Hill, the kind of place with three tables and the most incredible smells coming from the kitchen. Maya's parents were already there when I arrived—her father in a crisp button-down shirt, her mother in a beautiful blue sari.
"You must be David," her father said, standing to shake my hand. "Maya's mentioned you."
"Mostly complaining, I'm sure," I said, trying for humor.
"No," her mother said warmly. "She says you're a good person in a bad situation."
We ordered. Her father took charge, ordering for everyone in rapid-fire Telugu with the owner. Then we made small talk—the weather in Seattle, their flight from Mumbai, how long they were staying.
But I could feel Maya tensing up beside me, waiting for something.
Then her father set down his menu and said: "So. Maya tells us things have been difficult at work."
"That's one way to put it," I said carefully.
"In 1991, I lost my job at the textile factory in Delhi," he continued, as if I hadn't spoken. "The economy collapsed. Foreign competition. They cut three hundred workers in one day. I was thirty-five years old with two daughters and a mortgage."
Maya stared at her plate. I shifted uncomfortably.
"For two months, I sat in our apartment doing nothing," he continued. "Your mother would go to work"—he nodded at his wife—"and I would just... sit. Staring at walls."
Maya's mother picked up the story. "He wouldn't eat properly. Wouldn't talk to the girls. I was terrified he was disappearing."
"I was," he said simply. "I felt like I had died but my body forgot to stop."
Maya looked up. "Papa, I never knew that."
"You were seven years old, beta. What were we going to tell you?" He smiled sadly. "But yes. I was... what's the word? Not alive. Just existing."
"What changed?" I asked quietly.
"My father—Maya's Nana—he came to visit. He looked at me sitting there and said: 'When did you become a coward?'"
Maya's eyes widened. "Nana said that?"
"He said: 'You lost your job, not your hands. You lost your position, not your mind. Why are you acting like a dead man?'" Her father took a sip of water. "It was the first time anyone had spoken to me like that since the layoff. Everyone else was being so gentle, so careful. But he just... slapped me awake."
"That sounds harsh," I said.
"It was exactly what I needed," he replied. "Sometimes kindness isn't gentle. Sometimes kindness is someone telling you to stop being a corpse and start living again."
The food arrived. We ate for a few minutes in silence.
Then Maya's mother leaned forward. "Beta, your father called me last week. He said you sound like he sounded in 1991. Like you're going through motions but not living."
Maya's eyes filled with tears. "Mumma, I don't know how to live anymore. Half my team is gone. I do three people's jobs. I can't leave because of my visa. And I feel guilty that I'm still here when people I loved got cut."
Her father nodded. "Yes. That's grief. You're grieving."
I spoke up. "I delivered those layoff emails. I'm the reason she's grieving."
Maya's father looked at me directly. "Did you want to?"
"No. God, no."
"Did you have a choice?"
"I could have quit."
"And then someone else would have delivered the emails, and my daughter would still be grieving, and you would be unemployed with your own family to support. So what did you actually accomplish?"
I sat with that. No good answer came.
"Here's what I think," Maya's father continued. "You both lost something. My daughter lost her team, her energy, her joy in work. You lost... what? Your sense of yourself as someone who protects people?"
"Something like that," I admitted.
"So. What now?" He looked between us. "You both sit in that office like zombies? Or you do something?"
"Like what?" Maya asked.
"That's the wrong question," her mother said gently. "The question is not 'what should I do.' The question is 'what is the next small thing I can do.' You can't see the whole path. You just take one step."
Her father nodded. "After I lost my job, you know what I did? I started my own business. Small accounting practice. It almost failed five times. But I built something. Not because I was brave. Because I was too stubborn to stay dead."
He looked at both of us seriously. "You have a choice. Every day. You can be dead people who still show up to work. Or you can be alive people who build something worth showing up for."
"But how do we know what's worth showing up for?" I asked.
"You don't. You build something small. Then you see if it matters. Then you build something else. This is not about finding the perfect answer. This is about moving instead of staying still."
We finished lunch. The conversation shifted to lighter things—their plans to visit Vancouver, a funny story about Maya's childhood, my daughter's upcoming college graduation.
But something had changed. The air felt different.
As we were leaving, Maya's father pulled me aside.
"My daughter is not your responsibility to save," he said quietly. "But she is your colleague. Your friend, maybe. So here is what you do: You stop pretending everything is fine. You tell her the truth. You figure out together what is worth staying for and what is not."
I nodded.
"And if the answer is 'nothing is worth staying for'? Then you both leave. Better to be unemployed and alive than employed and dead."
The Walk Back
Maya and I walked back to the office in silence for three blocks.
Finally, she spoke. "My dad's right. We've been zombies."
"Yeah."
"I don't want to be a zombie anymore."
"Me neither."
We stopped at a crosswalk. Waited for the light.
"What if we actually tried?" Maya said. "Not to get back to what we were. But to build something new with what we have."
"What does that look like?"
"I don't know. But I know what it doesn't look like. It doesn't look like me doing three people's jobs badly. It doesn't look like you executing layoffs and then running away. It doesn't look like any of us pretending this is sustainable."
The light changed. We crossed.
"Monday," I said. "Let's talk to Chris. Let's figure out what seventy-five people can actually build that we'd be proud of."
"You think he'll listen?"
"I think he's been a zombie too. Maybe it's time we all wake up."
The Conversation With Chris
Monday morning, Maya and I walked into Chris's office together.
"We need to talk," I said.
Chris looked up from his laptop. "That sounds ominous."
"It's not. Well, maybe it is. But it needs to happen."
We sat down. Maya spoke first.
"Chris, we're not okay. The company's not okay. And we need to stop pretending we are."
Chris leaned back in his chair. "I know."
"Do you?" I asked. "Because from where we're sitting, we've been in survival mode for eight months. Cut costs, keep the lights on, hope something changes. But nothing's changing. We're just slowly dying."
"So what do you want me to do?" Chris asked, and there was an edge to his voice. Not anger. Exhaustion. "We have seventy-five people left. We have eighteen months of runway. I'm trying to keep everyone employed. What else is there?"
"Meaning," Maya said simply. "We need to build something that matters. Something we're proud of. Not just 'keep the servers running and pray someone buys us.'"
Chris was quiet for a long moment.
"You're right," he finally said. "I've been so focused on survival that I forgot we're supposed to be building something. What do you propose?"
Maya pulled out her laptop. "I've been thinking about this. What if we stop trying to be a platform for everyone and focus on one specific problem we can solve really well?"
"Which problem?"
"Cloud cost optimization for mid-size companies. It's what our best customers actually use us for. Everything else is feature bloat that requires a huge team to maintain."
I jumped in. "We kill half our product. Focus on one thing. Build it better than anyone else. Seventy-five people can do that."
Chris rubbed his face. "The board will hate this. They want us to expand, not contract."
"The board wants us to survive," I countered. "Right now we're doing ten things poorly. What if we did one thing excellently?"
Chris stared at us. Then he started laughing. Not happy laughter. The kind that comes when you realize you've been thinking about a problem the wrong way for months.
"Okay," he said. "Let's do it. But I need you both all-in. No more going through motions. No more zombie mode."
Maya and I looked at each other.
"We're in," Maya said.
"Yeah," I agreed. "We're in."
The Company-Wide Meeting
Two weeks later, Chris called an all-hands meeting. All seventy-five people crammed into the largest conference room.
He stood at the front, and for the first time in months, he didn't look like he was barely holding it together.
"I know you're all scared," he began. "I know you don't trust us when we say 'no more cuts.' I know half of you are probably looking for other jobs, and I don't blame you."
The room was dead silent.
"Here's what I can tell you: We cut too many people. We made promises we couldn't keep. We tried to be everything to everyone and nearly killed ourselves doing it." He took a breath. "So we're changing. We're focusing on cloud cost optimization. We're killing everything else. And we're building something that seventy-five people can actually be proud of."
Someone raised their hand. "What about the features we promised customers?"
"We're going to disappoint some customers," Chris said honestly. "But I'd rather disappoint customers than continue destroying our team. We're done pretending we're a two-hundred-person company."
Another question: "Are there more layoffs coming?"
"No. We have eighteen months of runway. If we can build something people want with seventy-five people, we'll make it. If we can't, we won't. But I'm not cutting anyone else. This is it."
David stood up. "And we're not going to BS you anymore. If things get bad, we'll tell you. If we need to pivot again, we'll involve you in that decision. No more surprise layoffs. No more 'everything's fine' when it's not."
Jennifer from HR added: "We're also starting real check-ins. Not performance reviews. Just honest conversations about how everyone's actually doing. Because I think we've all been pretending we're okay when we're not."
After the meeting, people lingered. Talking in small groups. The energy was different. Not optimistic, exactly. But less dead.
Maya found me afterward. "Think it'll work?"
"I don't know. But it feels better than what we were doing."
"Yeah," she agreed. "It does."
Three Months Later
The rebuild was slow. Painful. Nothing like the hockey-stick growth Chris had once imagined.
But something was changing.
Maya rebuilt her team—not to fifteen people, but to five. Small enough to be nimble. Large enough to actually ship features without everyone burning out.
We killed seventy percent of our product. Customers complained. Some left. But the ones who stayed loved what we were building.
The office didn't feel like a graveyard anymore. People ate lunch together again. The Slack channels had actual conversations instead of just status updates.
Maya stopped coming in looking like the walking dead. She smiled during standup meetings. Made jokes. Seemed... alive.
One afternoon, she stopped by my office.
"My parents asked about you," she said.
"Yeah?"
"My dad wanted to know if we took his advice. If we stopped being zombies."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him we're working on it."
I smiled. "That's probably the most honest answer."
"He also said he's proud of me. For staying and fighting instead of just running away."
"You should be proud too."
"I'm getting there."
Six Months Later: The Customer Meeting
Six months after that lunch with Maya's parents, we were in a conference room with just four people: Chris, Jennifer, Maya, and me.
A customer had requested a new feature—significant enough that it would require real planning, real commitment, real belief that we had a future worth building for.
Chris pulled up the requirements on the screen.
"GlobalTech wants a real-time cost analytics dashboard. Custom implementation. Six-month timeline. Four hundred thousand dollar contract if we can deliver."
Everyone was quiet. Not the defeated quiet from before. A different kind of quiet. Thoughtful.
Maya spoke first. "We can do this."
I looked at her. "You sure?"
"I'm sure we can do it with the team we have. Five engineers, realistic timeline, clear scope. Yeah. We can do this."
Jennifer made a note. "What do you need from HR? Hiring? Contractors?"
"No," Maya said. "We have the people. We just need to actually believe we can build something again."
Chris leaned back in his chair. Looked at each of us.
"David?"
"It's doable. Tight, but doable. We'd need to deprioritize some maintenance work, but yeah. I'm in."
"Jennifer?"
She smiled—a real smile, not the professional HR smile. "I think we can support this. The team is... different than it was. Smaller. But I think we're actually functional again."
Chris nodded slowly. Looked around the table at each of us.
Then he asked the question:
"Are you ready to move forward?"
David looked at Maya. Maya looked at Jennifer. Jennifer looked at David.
"Yes," Maya said.
"Yeah," I added.
"Absolutely," Jennifer confirmed.
Chris closed his laptop. "Then let's build something."
We stood up to leave. At the door, Maya turned back.
"Chris?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For not giving up."
"Thanks for staying."
As we walked out of the conference room, I heard Chris and Maya talking animatedly about the technical architecture. Jennifer was already planning the project kickoff.
We weren't the team we used to be. We were smaller, scarred, carrying the weight of everyone who'd been cut.
But we were moving forward. Together.
And maybe that was enough.
Epilogue: One Year Later
A year after the third round of layoffs, our company had ninety-five employees. Growing slowly. Sustainably. No venture capital pressure. No desperate pivots. Just steady, meaningful work.
We still used an open-source tool built by a former employee named Meera—someone I'd laid off in that third round. I'd reached out to her months ago to apologize and thank her.
Her response had been gracious: "I heard you all made it through. That's good. Not everyone does."
"We almost didn't," I'd admitted.
"But you did," she'd replied. "That counts for something."
I thought about her words often. We'd survived. But survival wasn't the same as winning. It was messier than that. More complicated. More human.
Maya was now Director of Engineering, leading a team of twelve. She still had hard days. We all did. But she was building something she was proud of.
Jennifer had gotten a promotion to VP of People Operations. She'd completely redesigned how we handled difficult conversations, making space for honesty instead of corporate-speak.
Chris was still CEO, but he'd given up the growth-at-all-costs mentality. "I'd rather build something sustainable than something spectacular," he told me once.
And me? I was still CTO. Still carrying the weight of those thirty-two layoffs. Still remembering the faces of everyone I'd cut.
But I was also building something that mattered. With people I trusted. In a way that felt sustainable.
Maya's father had been right. You don't heal from something like this. You just take one step. Then another. Then you realize you're moving again.
Some mornings I still woke up at 3 AM, thinking about everyone we'd lost. The guilt never fully disappeared.
But I also woke up excited about what we were building. Proud of the team we'd become. Grateful that we'd chosen to fight instead of just giving up.
Three months ago, our company hit profitability for the first time in two years. Small profits. Nothing spectacular.
Chris sent a Slack message to everyone: "We did it. Against all odds. Thank you for staying."
Maya replied with a single emoji: đź’Ş
That felt about right.
We weren't the success story VCs write about. We weren't going to IPO or get acquired for billions. We were just a group of people who'd survived something hard and chosen to keep building anyway.
Some days, that felt like failure. We should have grown faster, hired more, reached further.
But most days, it felt like something more important: We'd kept our humanity. We'd refused to become zombies. We'd built something worth showing up for.
And maybe—just maybe—that was the real victory all along.
Author's Note:
This is the story we don't tell about layoffs. We talk about the people who lost their jobs. We don't talk enough about the people who kept theirs—and what that survival actually costs.
If you're one of the ones who stayed, and you're feeling guilty or hollow or like you're just going through motions: You're not alone. And taking the next small step forward isn't betraying the people who left. It's honoring the fact that you're still here, still capable, still alive.
Sometimes staying is harder than leaving. But both are valid. Both are brave in their own way.
Keep moving forward.
Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer at tech-reader.blog and the author of Think Like a Genius.
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