Preface: A few days ago I saw a popular thread on V2EX titled “Laid off even as a Leader — kind of surprising, just chatting.” The author was among the first wave of technical leaders who delved into AI and engineered it into production, yet in the end he and his entire project team were “swept out in one go.” It reminded me of my own experience of being laid off at 35 — as the AI wave sweeps in, where exactly will the fate of ordinary people head?
01 Two Stories of Being Laid Off
My Story: 35, an “Optimized” Middle-Aged Man
On December 4, 2025, the day after I turned 35.
At 2 p.m., my direct TL messaged me: “Come chat in meeting room 214.” I understood instantly, and quietly pulled out my phone and hit record. Walking in, I was calmer than he was. Negotiating the departure, the N+1 compensation, haggling over the 14th-month bonus, a two-week standoff… in the end I gave up the year-end bonus and the 14th-month bonus, took only N+1, and worked until the end of the month.
Six years, from peak to trough.
In the first three years, I was a “core” member of the team — a top employee three years running, building automation systems that processed forty to fifty thousand tickets a year. In the last three years, with a new TL, I was suppressed, PUA’d, and sidelined. I “hung on” for nearly three years, dealing with work by day and relying on sleeping pills at night.
The moment I was laid off, I felt no reluctance — only relief.
His Story: A Leader Who Went All-In on AI, Also “Swept Out in One Go”
The author on V2EX had the title of Product Director, with more than a dozen projects on GitHub, leading a team that engineered AI to the extreme:
- All UI produced by AI
- Product manager prototypes fully connected to AI
- Built a fully automatic matrix system that crawls news and generates copy 24/7
- Built a real-time lead-analysis platform based on large models
- Trained over 100 people in AI programming
He said: “I used to think that as long as my engineering ability was strong enough and I ran fast enough, I could leave most of my peers behind and hold onto this bowl of rice.”
Until “Lobster” (AI tools like OpenClaw/Claude) came out. A few executives met and concluded: the vast majority of To B businesses on the market no longer need heavily-manned engineering teams at all. You just write a bunch of Skills, throw them to a large model, and it runs.
The entire project team — swept out in one go.
Our two stories are somewhat similar.
In 2021 I joined my previous company and worked hard building lots of automation and efficiency tools, helping the business department cut costs and boost efficiency, and helping my own department save several headcounts. Top employee almost every year, going up on stage to receive awards.
But the moment the environment turns bad, I am that most expensive cost.
I saved the company money and improved efficiency, yet in the end I was optimized out for being “too expensive.” He built the company’s AI infrastructure and did the engineering, yet in the end was swept out because “it no longer needs heavy manpower.”
Ironic, isn’t it?
This is the truth of the workplace: the value you create won’t be the reason you stay; your salary will be the excuse for you to go.
02 The Truths of the Workplace in the AI Era
Truth One: High Pay ≠ Safety, Ability ≠ a Layoff-Proof Badge
I once thought that as long as my skills were solid enough and my output high enough, I could keep my job. That V2EX author also thought that as long as he ran fast enough and his engineering ability was strong enough, he could leave his peers behind.
But we were both wrong.
The essence of high pay is the platform “buying you out” — buying out your time, energy, health, and the possibility of being replaced at any moment.
I earned a decent salary, worked on constantly changing requirements, took sleeping pills to fall asleep, and wrecked my health. He was obsessed with AI, frantically shipping it, training teams — and in the end the whole project team was swept out in one go.
When a company needs to “cut costs and boost efficiency,” high-paid employees are always the first target for optimization. Cutting one of you can cover the cost of several junior roles. A company’s essence is profit-seeking; survival always takes priority over “supporting people.”
Truth Two: AI Isn’t Creating Jobs, It’s Eliminating Middle Links
Many people like to compare AI with the first three industrial revolutions:
- The steam engine broke the textile workers’ rice bowls, but created factories and factory workers
- The electrical revolution replaced carriage drivers, but built a vast industrial system
- The internet killed traditional media, but spawned programmers, product managers, and operations roles
But the fourth AI revolution is completely different.
The V2EX author put it very clearly: “The first three industrial revolutions broke the rice bowls of hand-loom weavers and carriage drivers, but they built vast factories, assembly lines, and the internet system, creating more worker, white-collar, and programmer jobs.”
“But this fourth AI revolution is completely different. Its ultimate form is ‘minimalism’ and ‘disintermediation.’ Its purpose isn’t to create new workflows, but to eliminate the middle links.”
When a single sentence can run an entire business, when intelligent design is simplified to the point where you don’t need an IDE or a command line, does the IT industry still need this many people?
Absolutely not.
Truth Three: If You Can’t Catch Up, Better to Flip the Table and Quit
The choice that author’s company made was: “Retreat from the rapids; survival first.”
“Right now the whole industry is chasing ‘Lobster.’ Even if you burn all your resources and survive this wave, in a few months a ‘King Crab’ or an ‘Abalone’ pops up — how do you keep up? You can’t. Better to just flip the table and quit.”
Cruel words, but they’re the truth.
Last year, countless companies that raised funding to build Workflows and Agents died en masse after the foundation models were upgraded. The pipelines they painstakingly drew were directly replaced by a single Skill from a large model.
In the AI wave, an ordinary person’s effort is like rowing upstream — you paddle desperately forward, but the waves push you further back.
03 After Being Laid Off, the Things I Finally Figured Out
Job Stability Is an Illusion
After getting the layoff notice, I reviewed many years.
I found a pattern: I seem to keep going through cycles of “peak to trough.” Every company — I enter full of ambition, and a few years later leave in the shadows.
The empty promises a company makes, as long as they’re not cashed, are just scrap paper. Promotions and raises are just management tools, essentially “value exchange + risk binding.” When the industry bonus fades and company profits decline, “cut costs and boost efficiency” replaces “promote and raise.”
Putting all your eggs in one basket is extremely risky. However high the return, once the basket breaks, it all drops to zero in an instant.
The Path Up for Ordinary People Was Locked Down Long Ago
I’ve worked for over a decade and changed several employers, all doing ordinary jobs.
In 2014 I came to Hangzhou. My first job was outsourcing for Alibaba, 3,000 yuan a month, and I had to work night shifts; my second job paid 5,000 a month, and I still worked shifts. Long-term irregular hours gave me an immune-system disease that can never be cured.
Later I desperately studied tech — after night shifts I’d still go downtown for training, and spent weekends in training classes. My salary did rise, but always by job-hopping.
I gradually realized: the path up for ordinary people was locked down by this society long ago.
So-called internal promotions and performance reviews are just tools to prod ordinary people into giving more. Anything not written into the labor contract doesn’t count.
In the AI Era, Skills Depreciate Faster Than You Can Imagine
That V2EX author started going all-in on AI back in 2023, wrote more than a dozen GitHub projects, and engineered things to the extreme.
But what was the result? A single foundation-model upgrade, and all his accumulation could be “replaced.”
In the AI era, skills depreciate faster than you can imagine.
The framework you learn this year may be replaced next year; the design skill you’ve painstakingly honed, AI can generate in seconds. For ordinary people to break through by working for others and grinding on skills is as hard as reaching the sky.
My Interview Experience: Effort Doesn’t Buy Reward
In the months after being laid off, I didn’t lie flat; instead I studied AI like crazy and built quite a few personal projects — from automation tools to AI apps — continually updating my skills.
But the interviews over the past few days hit me like a club.
The market is colder than I imagined: little money, high requirements, ruthless screening, extremely low ROI.
Many roles have their monthly salary pressed extremely low, yet requirements are higher than before — you need to know this framework, understand that model, and be able to independently own the whole project. In plain terms: do three people’s work, get half a person’s pay.
What chilled me even more was hearing from a colleague that the replacement my former company hired earns just over 10,000 yuan a month. When I left, my salary was more than double his, but now the company spends less than half the cost to hire someone younger and more grind-ready — with even higher demands.
This is the workplace reality in the AI era: if you won’t do it, there’s always someone who will; if you ask for too much, the company would rather find a cheap young person and train them slowly.
Skills are depreciating, experience is depreciating, and even age has become an original sin. Only after being laid off at 35 did I discover that the so-called “core competitiveness,” in front of companies and the market, is fragile beyond belief.
His Story: A 14-Year Baidu Veteran, Also “Optimized”
The day before yesterday I arranged another interview. The interviewer was this company’s operations director, around 40.
I was very direct right away: “I was laid off.” He nodded, calm: “Very normal.”
It turns out he had worked at Baidu for 14 years, and was also laid off. He joined Baidu right out of graduation and stayed fourteen years, outlasting countless versions and iterations, surviving the golden age of the internet, but in the end he didn’t outlast “cut costs and boost efficiency.”
Now he’s moved from Beijing to Hangzhou, working as an operations director at a small company of about a hundred people. The pay and benefits are certainly hugely discounted, and he has to leave home and come to Hangzhou to work.
Two laid-off people, across an interview table, silent.
He said something that stuck with me: “Every advance in technology throws a bunch of people out of their rice bowls. We just happened to catch this wave.”
Fourteen years of big-company experience, 40 years old, solid skills, rich management experience — yet in the job market he has to compete with countless young faces for a role whose salary has been halved.
This isn’t an isolated case, it’s the norm. Whether you’re 35 or 40, whether you’re a backbone of a small company or a veteran of a big one, in the face of the wave of technological iteration, no one is safe.
04 In the AI Era, Where’s the Way Out for Ordinary People?
Way Out One: Accept the Possibility of “Downward Mobility”
This isn’t pessimism; it’s reality.
AI won’t wipe out all jobs, but it will restructure work. Basic IT will become operations companies, designers will become “AI prompt engineers,” programmers will become “AI system maintainers.”
There will be fewer roles, lower pay, and fiercer competition.
Ordinary people need to be mentally prepared: future income may be less than now; future status may be less than now.
But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Way Out Two: Lower Your Cost of Living, Look for the Essence of Life
After being laid off, the V2EX author bought a wagon and, starting from Shenzhen, went around Hainan island, then to Guangxi, then Yunnan and Guizhou.
He said: “The cost for a person to survive really can be shockingly low. A whole day costs just a few dozen yuan, with the calm and comfort of the sea waves — an experience I never had during all my time working.”
This reminds me of how I felt after being laid off: out of the boiling-frog predicament, every step forward is worth looking forward to.
For making money, this may be the worst era; but for sheer survival, it seems to be the best.
Our generation has been held hostage by houses, cars, and kids for too long. Mortgages picked up at the peak, salaries that never rise, work that gets more and more cutthroat… If you let go of these “must-haves,” life can actually be very simple.
Way Out Three: From “Chasing Efficiency” to “Experiencing Life”
That author spent an hour at the seaside just to cook a pot of rice while enjoying the sea breeze. He said: “After stepping out of that efficiency-chasing framework, slowing down is the physical state most in tune with human nature.”
The IT industry pushed efficiency to the extreme, and AI turned that extreme into a black hole that devours everything.
But do we really need to live this fast?
After losing my job I started running, going from only being able to run 3 km to finishing a half marathon. Running freed me from my dependence on sleeping pills and gave me a sense of accomplishment outside work.
Spending time with my kid, reading books, slowly cooking… these “low-efficiency” things, on the contrary, let me rediscover the joy of life.
Way Out Four: Build an “Anti-Fragile” Life System
Taleb says in Antifragile (《反脆弱》): the wind extinguishes a candle, but it makes a fire burn brighter.
Ordinary people in the AI era need to build their own “anti-fragile” system:
- Multiple-basket strategy: Don’t bind all your income sources to one job
- Low-desire living: Reduce fixed expenses, increase financial flexibility
- Diversified skills: Don’t dig deep into just one field; cultivate cross-domain abilities
- Physical and mental health: Without health, everything returns to zero
- Social network: True security comes from connections between people, not from a company
Way Out Five: Stop Internal Friction, Learn to Subtract
Recently I’ve been reading From Internal Friction to Flow: An Entropy-Reduction Action Guide for a Complex Age (《从内耗到心流：复杂时代下的熵减行动指南》), and the book has given me a lot of insight.
The author proposes an interesting concept — an “entropy-increasing society”: a world that endlessly adds.
In this society:
- The work ethic tells us: hard work is the moral standard
- Consumerism tells us: buying more is being good to yourself
- Social media tells us: you must display a perfect life
We keep adding, adding, adding — adding materially, and adding mentally too. But when all external stimuli fade, what’s left is only deeper emptiness and anxiety.
After being laid off, I actually learned to subtract:
- No longer anxious about “why was it me who got laid off,” accepting that this is the trend of the times
- No longer churning over “was I not good enough,” admitting some things can’t be changed by effort
- No longer fixated on “I must find a job with the same salary,” lowering expectations, surviving first
Fighting internal friction isn’t about thinking harder, but about acting more effectively.
As the book says: “People who can frequently enter a state of flow are surely insulated from internal friction.” When we focus our cognitive energy on the goals of “engagement” and “meaning,” we can reduce entropy in all aspects of life and regain control of our lives.
📖 Further reading: From Internal Friction to Flow reading notes
05 Final Thoughts
Back to the question at the start of the article: in the AI era, where will the fate of ordinary people head?
My answer is: Uncertain, but not hopeless.
That V2EX author chose to retire early and roam the country. He said: “The first half of my life I handled virtual data in servers; the second half I just want to measure the real soil with my feet.”
I chose to rest first, spend time with family, and rethink what I want to do in the future.
Being laid off isn’t the end; it’s a reshuffling of life.
AI will change a lot of things, but what it can’t change is this: we can still choose how to live. We can be driven by anxiety, running ragged in the waves; or we can let go of our fixations and seek our own solution.
Either way, I hope every ordinary person struggling in the torrent of the times can find the answer that suits them best.
“For making money, this may be the worst era; but for sheer survival, it seems to be the best.” — timespy
Further reading:
- Laid off at 35: a passive yet fortunate escape from the workplace - my layoff experience
- Laid off even as a Leader — kind of surprising, just chatting - the original V2EX thread
This article first appeared on Awen’s Blog
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