Seeing peers lose their jobs has a way of making people weird. It’s not much different from grief. When someone loses a loved one, you can almost feel the tension: people fumbling for the right words, hoping not to say something insensitive, then saying something insensitive anyway. “Everything happens for a reason.” “They’re in a better place.” That is, assuming any condolences are shared at all.

Many of us have been there. You don’t want to overstep. Don’t want to make the person feel worse. I get it: Showing sympathy can feel like a minefield. The same thing happens when companies downsize their staff, only the loss isn’t life. It’s employment.

When someone gets laid off, it’s a kind of corporate death. One day, you’re working alongside someone, swapping memes on Slack, surviving the

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