You knew the rules. Study the right things. Work hard, keep learning, and the industry would hold up its end.
You held up yours. You learned to code, or to sell, or to run the thing that kept the product alive. You took the demanding job. You answered on weekends. You believed the sacrifice was buying something more durable than a salary.
Then the industry changed the terms.
The deal you were offered
The promise had a shape. Effort in, security out. Not wealth, and not fame. Security. The sense that if you kept your skills sharp and your head down, there would be a place for you.
That deal is what made the sacrifices reasonable. The years of study, the relocation, the missed weddings. They were payments toward something.
What changed
Layoffs stopped being news. Skills that took a decade to build started expiring in a few years. Companies reorganised, and whole roles went with them.
None of it was aimed at you. That’s part of what makes it hard to place. There’s no one to be angry at, and no moment where somebody told you the terms had moved.
Why it lands as your fault
Here’s what I see in the room. People who were laid off in a mass cut, for reasons they can list and explain, still talk about it as something they failed at.
That makes sense once you see the logic. If hard work creates security, and your security is gone, then the arithmetic points back at you. You must not have worked hard enough. You must have picked the wrong specialty, or stayed too long, or not learned the new thing fast enough.
The arithmetic is wrong. The first part of it stopped being true, and nobody announced it.
The grief nobody names
What people lose in this isn’t only income. It’s the belief that the rules were real.
That belief is load-bearing. It’s what let you plan, what made the long hours feel like an investment instead of a cost. When it goes, the past changes shape too. Years that felt like building start to feel like something else.
That’s grief, and it deserves to be called that. People come to therapy about the job search and end up talking about the ten years before it.
What helps
Start by separating the two losses. One is practical and it has practical answers. The other is about what you believed, and it doesn’t respond to a better CV.
Then ask the harder question, which is the one the fear keeps you away from. If security was never actually on offer, what do you want from your work now?
That question sounds bleak. In the room it usually goes the other way. People who stop waiting for the old deal to come back tend to make clearer decisions than people still trying to earn it back.
If you’re in this, read about tech burnout or about what comes after a big change.
FAQ
(H2 “Frequently Asked Questions”, each question as H3)
Why do tech layoffs feel so personal?
Because the industry sold an exchange: work hard, stay current, stay safe. If you believed it, losing the job reads as proof that you didn’t hold up your end. The layoff was structural. The feeling is personal, and the two don’t cancel out.
Is it normal to feel betrayed by the tech industry?
It’s common, and it makes sense. A promise was made about what effort would buy, and the terms changed while people were still paying. Betrayal is a reasonable word for that, even when no single person did it to you.
How do I rebuild confidence after being laid off?
Separate the practical problem from the identity one. The practical one responds to a plan. The identity one responds to a different question: what you believe about yourself when the external structure that confirmed it is gone. People who work on the second one tend to job-search better than people who avoid it.
Can therapy help with career grief?
Yes. Existential therapy works on questions that don’t have technique-based answers, including what your work is for once you stop expecting it to guarantee your future. It’s one of the most common reasons people in tech come to see me.
First session is fifty minutes, with no charge. We’ll see whether it’s a fit.
Orian Tal, existential psychotherapist. Levontin 12, Tel Aviv, and online.
