I got laid off back in March from my first real job after graduating university, and I’m still trying to make sense of it.
I was working at a land use planning / consulting firm, and the reason I was given was low billable hours. The thing is, I repeatedly told my manager that I wasn’t getting enough work to stay billable. I brought it up multiple times and asked for more work or direction, but nothing really changed.
What confuses me even more is that during my performance review, I only received minor feedback and was told that I was improving overall. There was never any indication that my job was at risk.
Then one day I was invited to what was labeled as a “check-in meeting” on my calendar. I went in thinking it was a normal conversation, and instead I was told I was being let go on the spot. It felt like a complete ambush. There was no HR present in the meeting either.
I wasn’t perfect, but I met deadlines, got generally positive feedback on my work, and never had any discussion/meetings regarding poor performance. We were constantly being told to speak up if billables were an issue, and I did this on multiple occasions but nothing changed and I lost my job for it.
What’s frustrating is that it feels like I got let go for something that was out of my control. If there isn’t enough work being assigned to you, how are you supposed to hit utilization targets?
Now I’m a couple months out, about 70 applications in, barely getting responses, and just feeling stuck and honestly pretty bitter about the whole situation.
I’m in my early twenties, and it especially sucks because I had finally started saving and was hoping to move out of my parents’ house due to a somewhat toxic family dynamic. This completely derailed those plans.