Week 2 Should I Let People Around Me Know?

This is week two after being laid off. I've been avoiding a difficult conversation, which is telling my parents. Every time I imagine their reaction, that knot in my stomach tightens. I've already told basically everyone else. My siblings, even my cousins, and of course all of my friends, I shared it on an Instagram story, so it was as easy as that. But my parents, deep down, I knew they wouldn't be receptive about it. And I was kinda right. When I called them last week, the timing couldn't have been worse. Trump was talking about tariffs, and the stock market took a hit. So somehow they weren't in a great mood.

And then, the conversation, I don't know how, but it wound down to Tesla doing the 6,000 people layoff a while ago. And there it was. My parents started blaming the people who got laid off, saying that they weren't hard workers. And if you don't work hard enough, you'll also get laid off. I asked them, are you sure? How do you know those 6,000 people aren't hard workers? And that's when things got tense. We ended the conversation on a sour note, and I never actually told them about my own layoff. I just couldn't. They don't feel particularly supportive, and I don't think I'm strong enough yet to take the blame that they will put on me right now.

Through the conversation, it became very clear to me that my parents and I believe completely different things. To me, layoffs aren't about being a bad person or worker or an employee. They're just business decisions. Companies look at numbers, not people. But my parents, they believe it's all on the individual. This generational gap makes everything harder. They come from an era where you stayed with one company until retirement. In their world, layoffs only happen to people who deserve it. So I'm still wrestling with whether to tell them at all.

As an adult, I don't share everything with my parents anymore, and that's normal. But work is such a huge part of life, almost like getting married or moving to a new city, something I think I should share. For now, I've decided to give it some time and maybe find the right moment, or when I'm much more stronger mentally.

On a completely different note, something unexpected happened this week. A friend reached out asking for help with mock interviews. So going through the dynamic programming problems together forced me to dust off my technical skills and refresh all those LeetCode questions I grinded through a couple years ago. It reminded me that even without my old job title, I still have valuable expertise to offer. Since I'm not planning to look for a new job immediately, maybe offering mock interviews may be a good way for me to passively prep for future interviews. As people say, the best way to learn is to teach.

This is me week two after the layoff, signing off.