Techie laid off from Microsoft after 14 years shares how she landed a job at Meta
A techie laid off from Microsoft has revealed how community support and referrals helped her secure a role at Meta.
A techie who was laid off from Microsoft earlier this year has shared how she managed to land a new role at Meta, without going through the traditional application process. After 14 years, Deborah Hendersen was laid off in May from Microsoft's Xbox division, according to a report by Business Insider. She was among the 9,000 employees affected in a sweeping company-wide reduction.
Hendersen said speculation about the layoffs had been widespread internally. She said it eventually became the "worst-kept secret" that additional layoffs were coming, and that her team was likely to be affected.
“It wasn’t so much like watching a car wreck,” said the 45-year-old, who lives in Seattle. “It was more like you were in the car, knowing it was going to wreck,” she told Business Insider.
Hendersen said that earlier rounds of layoffs had been shrouded in silence. “It’s just very uncomfortable, in my experience, to not know who has been affected,” she said. So this time, she chose transparency. Within an hour of receiving the invite that signalled bad news, she posted about her layoff on LinkedIn and began messaging colleagues internally.
This move proved pivotal for her as it eventually helped her land a new role at Meta two months later.
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Hendersen's journey
The 43-year-old shared that her journey to a new role began less than an hour after she learn she had been laid off. She instantly messaged colleagues on her team, letting them know she had lost her job. As people replied, she started a Teams group of laid-off employees - a space that quickly became a support hub for advice on unemployment, severance, and morale.
"I would vastly have preferred that I'd have been the only person who was laid off. But the fact that we could immediately build community was just incredibly helpful,” she said.
Hendersen revealed that she also prepared financially, selling stock ahead of time when she first sensed layoffs coming. After her severance terms were finalised, she and her husband also sat down to rework their budget. “There was very much a sense of stunning anxiety,” she said.
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How did she find a job without applying for it?
The 43-year-old further shared that initially she wanted to take some time to decompress and get organised before beginning her job search. However, she didn’t decompress quite as much as she had intended.
By sharing her situation openly, she began receiving leads from her network within days of her LinkedIn post. Many came through referrals rather than job portals, which meant she bypassed the standard application pipeline entirely. “It was just like this ocean of warm hugs and kindness that came from people who were here to help me," she said.
One of those referrals then led to a user experience researcher role at Meta’s Reality Labs division. After interviews, she received an offer in late August and joined full-time in October.
Hendersen shared that her biggest takeaway from the transition is the importance of community support. “Everybody gets turned down and gets their hopes up,” she said. “It's so helpful to have the support of other people who are going through it — both the highs and the lows. Because everybody gets turned down, gets their hopes up, and is just figuring out how to remain sane in a really challenging time,” she said.
