Getting laid off is like a breakup, except you get paid a lot of money afterwards. It's not much like bull riding, which is over in minutes and where falling of

Getting laid off is like a breakup, except you get paid a lot of money afterwards. It's not much like bull riding, which is over in minutes and where falling off is a deliberate design choice; a lay-off is the slow culmination of things going wrong over months or years, many of which have nothing to do with you. Telling yourself you'd recover quickly, if you've never been laid off before, is as unreasonable as telling yourself you'll never have a bad breakup[0]. Instead: - it's okay for getting laid off to suck in the hours and days afterwards - it's also okay to be totally fine and get another job right away - be loyal to people and missions, never to companies - do not tie your identity to your employer - you're allowed to do things differently next time: you don't have to find someone who's identical to your ex, you don't have to choose to ride a bull instead of a bicycle, and you're not limited to working for companies with a similar culture or business model as the last one - at the end of the day, an engineer who gets laid off is probably going to get a bunch of severance and go back into another job pretty soon, so it's unlikely things are as bad as you think they are [0] of course, many people don't ever have bad breakups or get laid off, but expecting the best case can mean getting blindsided by the worst case