This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Iren Azra Zou, a 27-year-old in New Jersey. She is a founding engineer at tech startup Double Nickel, and previously worked as a software engineer at Amazon until being laid off in October 2025. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
The day before Amazon announced layoffs in October, there were rumors that something big was coming.
I had a strange feeling in my gut that I might be affected, even though I felt I was performing well and had met my goals earlier than expected. I’d been laid off from my previous tech job the year prior, in 2024, and I knew how, in situations like these, people can quickly become just numbers on a spreadsheet.
It was hard to sleep that night, and the next morning, I woke up to a 6 a.m. automated text from Amazon telling me to check my email for a message about my role. At that moment, I was pretty sure I had been laid off, which the message soon confirmed.
The first person I told was my husband, who was next to me in bed. After that, I messaged a few close coworkers to figure out who else had been affected. When I found out that some rock stars on my team had also been laid off, I was shocked.
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I landed a new job two weeks after being laid off
I was mentally prepared for my layoff — due to the speculation that cuts were coming — but I was also financially prepared.
My husband and I had taken steps to save aggressively and ensure we had enough savings to last for a while if we were both laid off. That financial cushion helped me stay calm when I found out I’d lost my job.
I made a point to stick to my daily routines: coffee, exercise, and sleep schedule. I didn’t want everything to feel chaotic.
I quickly started looking for new job opportunities, and two weeks later, I landed and accepted an offer to start a software engineering role in December.
Here’s my advice for anyone who’s recently been laid off:
Read more about people who’ve found themselves at a corporate crossroads
1. Take time to process and grieve if you need to
When you get laid off, you can’t help but ask yourself, “Why me?”
Eventually, you come to terms with the reality that you can do everything right and still be included in a layoff simply because you’re a number on a budget sheet. I know I worked hard and brought a lot to the table; a layoff didn’t erase that.
I was prepared for interviewers to ask about my Amazon layoff, but it didn’t really come up. I think other companies recognized the scale of the layoff and that it wasn’t performance-based, in many cases. I also think that, despite the layoff, having a household name like Amazon on my résumé was probably helpful.
2. Take a day or two to reflect on your next career move
Reflect on what you want in your next role and create a targeted job search plan to maximize your chances of landing it. I wanted to make sure I found the right fit, so this was really helpful for me.
Upon reflection, I decided that the best fit for me might be at a smaller company with less bureaucracy than Amazon — and where I could better see the impact of my work.
The pro of working at a big company was that you could do one thing and it could affect millions of people in less than 30 minutes, which was exciting. However, the downside was that it sometimes felt like you were a very tiny piece in a giant machine.
I was also hoping to land a remote role. For the last few months of my time at Amazon, I’d been required to commute one hour each way from New Jersey to the New York City office five days a week, which was really draining. I figured I might have more leverage to ask for remote flexibility at a smaller company than at Amazon, where so many people are competing for job postings.
My team at Amazon also didn’t have many women, so I wanted to be in a place with a bit more diversity.
I narrowed down my target: a software engineering role at a small company that offered remote flexibility — and where I felt I could grow and thrive.
3. Reach out to your network and ask for help
This is not the time to be shy — most people will be sympathetic and eager to support you.
I believe my LinkedIn presence — where I’m very active, posting career advice tailored to young professionals — helped me boost my visibility.
The day after my layoff, the chief technology officer of Double Nickel — a tech startup focused on truck driver recruitment — reached out to me on LinkedIn about a software engineering role they were hiring for. She said she’d seen my post-layoff LinkedIn post and, as a former Amazon employee herself, decided to reach out.
The role seemed like a good fit, so I applied and quickly landed an interview.
Following the interviews, I was given an offer, which I accepted. We agreed to an arrangement where I’d work in a hybrid setup for the first few months to help with onboarding, and then transition to remote work around the end of February. So far, I’m very happy with the role.
Looking back, I see the layoff as a turning point because it helped me clarify what I wanted in my next role. It was still a difficult experience, but I felt more grounded and optimistic as time went on — and ultimately landed a role I feel great about.
