{"id":51031,"date":"2026-05-23T12:01:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/when-i-was-laid-off-from-meta-4-years-ago-i-didnt-know-what-would-come-next-but-then-i-pivoted-to-my-dream-career\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T12:01:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:01:23","slug":"when-i-was-laid-off-from-meta-4-years-ago-i-didnt-know-what-would-come-next-but-then-i-pivoted-to-my-dream-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/when-i-was-laid-off-from-meta-4-years-ago-i-didnt-know-what-would-come-next-but-then-i-pivoted-to-my-dream-career\/","title":{"rendered":"When I was laid off from Meta 4 years ago, I didn&#8217;t know what would come next. But then I pivoted to my dream career."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a10977c51ede568c7e179cd?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Tom Gilmartin in front of the facebook sign\"\/><figcaption>The author was laid off from Meta.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Tom Gilmartin<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>My team was my favorite part of my role at Meta, but then I got laid off and lost them.<\/li>\n<li>While unemployed, I realized what really inspired me at work: helping and mentoring people.<\/li>\n<li>I&#039;ve traded corporate boardrooms for college classrooms, and I love it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I spent over 10 years at Meta, joining in 2012 when the company was still called Facebook and the newly acquired Instagram team occupied just two rows of stand-up desks in a half-filled Menlo Park campus.<\/p>\n<p>As a global director, I helped lead a creative group launching campaigns with Marvel, Disney, Mini, Lexus, Wendy&#039;s, Activision, and a fleet of innovative agencies and brands that trusted us to bring their stories to life on our platforms. I loved my job.<\/p>\n<p>My team became my work family, Meta&#039;s hallways became my work home, and the security badge hanging from my belt became a big part of how I saw myself.<\/p>\n<p>Then, at 3 a.m., that all changed.<\/p>\n<p>I saw an email from the Meta Leadership Team addressed to Thomas (uh-oh, that formality must mean trouble). I opened it and read, &quot;We&#039;ve made the hard, but necessary decision to lay off 13% of the company. Unfortunately, you&#039;ve been included in the layoff.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Gulp. I was on the list. I was laid off from my job.<\/p>\n<h2>I was hit with a few realizations later that morning<\/h2>\n<p>My first thought after absorbing the news was, &quot;Who else on my team was affected? How can I help? Who needed to talk? Who is taking it the hardest?&quot;<\/p>\n<p>They were my team, and I needed to be there for them. But then it struck me. Effective immediately, I had no team.<\/p>\n<p>Next, I considered how I&#039;d break the news to my family over toaster-cooked waffles and orange juice.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We&#039;ll be fine, we&#039;ll figure it out,&quot; said my wife. And the kids seemed more concerned about making the bus than the severance and COBRA options.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>I didn&#039;t know how loud my life was until it suddenly went quiet<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Instead of waking up early to an onslaught of internal team meetings, soul-twisting client fires, and an endless marching of BHAG quarterly goals, I found myself with a different morning agenda.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;d quietly tiptoe out of the house at 4:30 a.m. and make my way to the moonlit beach.<\/p>\n<p>Groggy morning hellos from co-workers in the micro-kitchen were replaced with a community of beachside foxes, coyotes, owls, and an occasional dolphin, effortlessly bringing a human mind that had been running at full throttle for years to a much-needed halt.<\/p>\n<p>In the stillness, I started to hear my inner voice again. It told me that I had grown to love building up the people on my teams far more than building up the ideas we delivered to clients. It had become about the people. And I was still without a team.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The time to myself helped me rethink my career<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Soon after the layoff, a professor friend asked me if I&#039;d like to lecture in his college class. I loved it. Word spread, and I found myself accepting more invitations to lecture at universities close to my Los Angeles home and as far away as Virginia.<\/p>\n<p>College campuses are filled with talent brimming with ideas, ambition, and wide-eyed excitement. Students share many of the same anxieties as my corporate teammates about their projects, performance, and future. When I realized I had answers to give, I decided I didn&#039;t want to chase another corporate badge.<\/p>\n<p>I became an adjunct professor and am now a lecturer. I&#039;ve begun mentoring college students and recent grads, helping them find their voice and land their own dream roles. Years as a people manager, team leader, and hiring manager give me the ability to help students see behind the curtain and find their footing in a job search landscape full of AI black holes, unexplained ghosting, and never-ending digital applications.<\/p>\n<p>I now help them navigate the madness and find their own work family, work home, and work purpose. I suddenly find myself feeling like I am exactly where I belong.<\/p>\n<h2>A message to those recently laid off at Meta<\/h2>\n<p>If you&#039;re reading this and you&#039;re one of the tens of thousands who have been told you were laid off as part of a &quot;necessary business decision,&quot; I know how incredibly lonely that can feel.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#039;s what I didn&#039;t see at 3 a.m., staring into that soon-to-be-returned company laptop: I wasn&#039;t actually being kicked out. I was being kicked toward a place where I could do truly authentic work and help people the most.<\/p>\n<p>And that team I lost? I found a new one. They just happen to be sitting in college classrooms.<\/p>\n<p><em>Tom Gilmartin is the founder of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gilmartincoaching.com\/\" rel=\"noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Gilmartin Career Launch Coaching <\/em><\/a><em>and lives in Los Angeles. Connect on <\/em>LinkedIn<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The author was laid off from Meta. Courtesy of Tom Gilmartin My team was my favorite part of my role at Meta, but then I got laid off and lost them. While unemployed, I realized what really inspired me at work: helping and mentoring people. I&#039;ve traded corporate boardrooms for college classrooms, and I love [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-51031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}