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There was a time when layoffs felt like failure.
A bruising, reluctant move. A last resort.
Now? They’re a business model , a recurring ritual in the quarterly earnings liturgy.
A cleansing ceremony to reassure investors that “discipline” still rules.

Let’s rewind.

The Pandemic Years  “We’re All in This Together!”

2020 changed everything.
Or so we thought.

As the world shut down, companies broadcast empathy from their home offices:
“Due to unprecedented uncertainty, we’re forced to make tough decisions.”
Translation: It’s not you. It’s margins.

Millions were laid off “for the greater good.” That “good” turned out to be the balance sheet.
When markets rebounded and stock valuations hit record highs, the same companies discovered a new crisis: “overhiring.” The solution? Another wave of layoffs.

Corporate resilience, it seemed, meant the CEO’s yacht stayed afloat.

The Great Recovery  “Oops, We Did Growth”

The numbers glittered.
Microsoft posted billions in profit yet cut 9,000 jobs (Q1 2025 filings).
UPS, fresh off a record delivery year, said goodbye to 20,000 employees in a “realignment initiative.”
Intel trimmed 4,000 under “manufacturing optimization.”
Tata Consultancy Services bragged about its “biggest-ever workforce restructuring” — 12,261 people, gone.

 Nestle plans to get rid of 12,000 white collar jobs on top of 4,000 other roles across the board within the next two years

Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts

The list goes on and on. The paradox became routine: profits up, payroll down.
Somewhere, HR pressed send on another “Exciting Changes Ahead” email.

Growth, it turns out, is only good news for shareholders.

The AI Renaissance “Efficiency Will Set You Free”

2025 brought a shiny new excuse: artificial intelligence.
Executives announced “transformative investments in AI,” often right before announcing job cuts.

IBM, Dell, and Google cited “AI-driven efficiencies” across multiple reports. But in practice, AI wasn’t replacing tasks … it was replacing justification.
PowerPoints got smarter; human beings, redundant.

As one HR chief joked at an investor meeting, “We’re not downsizing … we’re future-sizing.”

The Circle of Corporate Life

Bad economy? Layoffs.
Booming economy? Layoffs.
AI revolution? Layoffs.
Solar eclipse? Pending.

In March 2025 alone, U.S. companies slashed 275,000 jobs … the largest monthly wave since 2009 (Challenger, Gray & Christmas report).

Corporate America doesn’t need a crisis anymore. It just needs a quarter.

Corporate Enlightenment

The language evolved.
Layoffs became “rightsizing.”
Cuts became “strategic agility.”
Suffering became “efficiency gains.”

Executives now speak with Zen minimalism about “optimizing workforce alignment,” as if people were spreadsheet cells misbehaving.
They talk about “doing more with less.”
Mostly, the less is us.

The Forgotten Equation

Somewhere along the way, we lost basic math:

People are the economy.
Consumers need income.
Income comes from jobs … the ones being systematically deleted.

You can’t fire your way to prosperity.
You can’t automate empathy.
And you definitely can’t build a thriving society by erasing its workforce one “optimization” at a time.

Still, somewhere at sea, a CEO raises a glass aboard his yacht … Synergy II ….smiling as he tells investors,
“We’re doing great things with less.”
He’s not wrong.
They’re doing great things.
With less of us.

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There’s this quote that’s been stuck in my head:
“Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.”
Naya Rivera said that. And the truth in it is hard to ignore.

Most of us go through life not seeing ourselves clearly.

We see the mistakes. The missed chances. The things we wish we could’ve done better. We focus on our flaws—what we’re not—so much that we lose sight of what we actually are.

That’s the irony. The people around us—our friends, our kids, our partners, our coworkers—they see something else entirely. They see our strength. Our decency. The way we show up when it counts. They see the quiet grace we carry through hard days. The good we bring into the room without even knowing it.

But because we’re the ones living it—inside the struggle, inside the uncertainty—we’re blind to it.

That’s not a failure of character. That’s being human.

I’ve met leaders, artists, teachers, single parents, old and young people with nothing but heart—folks who’ve carried the weight of entire communities—and still don’t believe they’re enough. They downplay their brilliance. Shrug off their resilience. They’ll say things like, “I’m just doing what I had to do.” But that’s the point. That’s what makes it remarkable.

See, the world conditions us to constantly question our worth. To wait for someone else to validate us. We’re always reaching for some milestone—some external proof—that we matter.

But the truth is, some of the most powerful things you’ll ever do… you’ll do quietly. And you might never get the full picture of what you meant to someone else.

That doesn’t make your contribution any smaller. It makes it real.

So here’s what I think:
We need to get better at telling each other the truth. The good kind.
We need to say: “Hey, I see you. You’re doing more than you think. You’re carrying more than people know. And you’re handling it with more grace than you realize.”

And we need to get better at hearing it—without brushing it off. Without changing the subject. Without turning away.

Because if a butterfly could see its own wings, it might fly a little differently.

If you could see what others see in you, you might too.

You don’t need to become someone else to be worthy.
You don’t need to perform to matter.
You just need to remember: the wings are already there.

And maybe today’s the day you start learning how to use them.

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therapycuriousbrain

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