“I’m going to be fired,” Folashade Ade-Banjo spoke to the camera as she put down her phone, “and you’re going to see it.”
In a five-minute TikTok video this month, Ms Ade-Banjo, a 30-year-old marketing professional from Los Angeles, was seen sitting quietly at her desk and staring at her computer, a pained look on her face as she nodded . she was ready to go. He was fired from a tech giant. The video garnered half a million views and thousands of comments within hours.
“One of my resolutions for this year was to be a lot more open and honest about things I struggle with in my life, so part of that is really showing parts of my life that might not be so glamorous,” said Ms. Ade- said Banjo in an interview.
As companies from start-up Discord to Google have shed hundreds of jobs in recent weeks, some tech workers are taking to social media to share their layoff experiences, and many of those videos have gone viral. They show people crying as they talk to HR or go about their daily routine knowing that a mysterious appointment on their calendar is likely to lead to their termination.
The trend is part of a movement led by Generation Z and millennials to share every aspect of their lives on social media, from stories about a bad date to deeply personal revelations during “get ready with me” videos featuring daily routines like makeup. to career specialists. Layoff videos and accompanying job search posts on sites like LinkedIn and X shed new light on a private moment many people try to hide.
“The line between personal and professional has been broken,” said Sandra Sucher, a Harvard economist who studies layoffs.
Some workers say they use the videos to process the feelings of losing their jobs. Joni Bonnemort, 38, of Salt Lake City, filmed herself crying as a credit repair company fired her from her marketing job in April. She planned to share the video only with her family, but posted it on TikTok after discovering that the company had paid bonuses to the rest of the staff a week after making layoffs. The video garnered more than 1.4 million views and supportive comments.
“I didn’t mean to be bitter as an apocalypse, but at the same time, it’s my experience,” Ms. Bonnemort said. “This has happened to so many people.”
Vanessa Burbano, a professor at Columbia Business School who studies how company practices affect employee behavior, said telecommuting has encouraged people to talk online.
“The interaction between individuals and their company has changed radically with the rise of remote work,” he said.
After receiving a 30-minute meeting invitation from a new manager this month, Mickella Simone Miller, who was telecommuting as a project manager based in Salt Lake City, made a video about her day working from home, including of choosing a coffee mug that said: “The world is collapsing around us and I’m dying inside.” The video eventually showed her listening to her company announce that it was axing her role.
In addition to being therapeutic, Ms. Miller said, the video led to recruiters reaching out to potential opportunities — and about 30 invitations to apply to new roles, even though she hadn’t yet found a new job.
Companies need to realize that everything can be recorded and shared, at a time when people are increasingly comfortable posting things online, said Lindsey Pollak, author of career books for multigenerational workplaces. He sees it as positive that people are sharing layoff experiences and doesn’t think it will hurt their future employment prospects.
In one instance, Matthew Prince, the CEO of the cybersecurity firm Cloudflare, he responded on X this month in a nine-minute TikTok video shooting at his company. He defended the decision to fire the worker but said the company should have been “kinder and more humane”.
Brittany Pietsch, the former Cloudflare employee who posted the video, said she was going through over 10,000 messages on LinkedIn, including many from recruiters.
“I have no regrets,” she said in an interview. “All I did was just be honest and show a conversation that wasn’t scripted.”
While experts said the posts were unlikely to harm people’s future career prospects, they warned that those who posted the firing videos had to be okay with possible notoriety.
Ms Ade-Banjo, the Los Angeles marketing professional, made her video private shortly after it was posted to protect the identity of the managers who fired her. She said her goal was simply to shed light and destigmatize the process.
“If anyone else is going through this, at least they know they’re not alone,” he said.
