Tech giants love to tell you you’re special. They lie. Brittney Ball learned this the hard way after Meta cut her loose in February 2025. She was a documentation engineer and led a major employee resource group. She figured her resume would do the heavy lifting. It didn’t. More than a year later, she is still hunting for a full-time gig. The golden ticket is officially expired.
“I underestimated the market,” Ball admits. It is a common trap. You think the big name protects you. It doesn’t. Her advice to the newly jobless is stark: cut your spending to the bone immediately. Assume you won’t find a job for twelve months. Downsize. Plan. Do it today, not next month when the severance runs dry.
Survival in this climate requires hustle, not just hope. Sending out resumes is a dead end. Ball had to pivot. She built and sold an AI-powered documentation startup. She launched a Substack auditing AI tools. She started a podcast. These side hustles brought in cash, but more importantly, they kept her visible.
The market is flooded. Thousands of brilliant, desperate tech workers are fighting for the same scraps. If you have a gap on your resume, you need to prove you weren’t just sitting on your hands. Build in public. Write. Speak. Do something to show you still have a pulse. It is exhausting, but in this economy, complacency is career suicide.
