I’m 90% I’m about to be laid off from my job tomorrow and this is my first time being laid off and this was my first dev job. I’ve worked here for over 7 years which is a long time at a dev job I know.
I’m just wondering what I should do in the meeting, what should I ask for? I’m having a range of emotions from fear of losing my house and health insurance (thanks usa) to relief and hope that I’m going to find something better and more fulfilling.
Thanks for reading
Edit: it’s confirmed I am getting laid off. Thanks everyone for the advice and well wishes. It really helped and means a lot.
If you have time still, it can be good to just go over all the projects you’ve worked on and just give yourself a quick summary of what you did on them, and if there are any concrete examples of ways you contributed to them. It can make things easier for you to sell yourself in interviews afterwards, but it’s one of those things that we often don’t think of until we’ve already lost the job and no longer have access to the files we would need to reference to put it together.
Aside from that, there are some big questions on the financial side of things, if you happen to be based in the US. Do you qualify for severance, and if so, how long will it be? If you get it, will you also have access to your medical insurance during this period, or will you have to consider COBRA coverage? If you are based in the states, then this should like serve as a qualifying event to let you register with your state health marketplace and sign up for subsidized insurance there, which will likely be much cheaper than COBRA coverage long term. However, if you do get severance, you may have to wait until your severance period ends.
Also, take care of yourself. It’s never fun going through a layoff, happened to me about 2 years ago. Finances permitting, give yourself a few days or a week to just get yourself together and decompress, then start bombing out applications and looking for something else. I like to try and give myself a target date, that way I can take a bit of a breather, but I’ve got a hard deadline on it so I don’t let things drag on too long and just waste my time and make things even worse for myself in the long run.