Shadowing Practice: Laid Off After 4 Months as a Software Engineer - Learn English Speaking with Video

Last year in May, I was wiped up by the 5% mass layoffs from CrowdStrike after just four months of working there.

And the whole experience was pretty insane.

I had just joined the weekly team meeting at 8.30 a.m.

There were quite a few people missing,

and then also everybody looked like they were about to cry.

And so immediately I was like,

oh man, what's going on?

I checked my Outlook email,

and then I saw the calendar,

had an invite for the VP of engineering at like,

I forget what time it was,

or sometime in the morning.

And yeah, obviously as a software engineer level one,

you're never meeting with the VP of engineering for a good reason.

And so I immediately knew something bad had happened.

I'm sure some of you have experienced this before,

but when I saw that calendar invite appear on my Outlook,

I just remember my heart rate like absolutely skyrocketing.

That is the most stress I've ever been in my whole life.

Like nothing can even compare to that,

like no testing college, no, nothing like that.

So my heartbeat was just going insane.

It felt like I couldn't really hear anything.

I just felt this complete sense of like dread and doom

and like just yeah just complete devastation

because it felt like what I had been working for all those years in college

and then you know leaving my prior job after just one

year being there to get to this point it just felt like all

that had just come crashing down within you know just two minutes of joining the meeting.

So I messaged my manager who was in the Zoom meeting and I said hey check out this calendar invite

looks like I'm getting laid off.

He said, send me a screenshot.

I sent it over.

And then he basically said,

yeah, that's what it looks like.

Let me know if you want to hop on Zoom and discuss.

The Zoom meeting with my manager was pretty short.

It basically just consisted of him telling me,

you know, sorry, this is happening.

And then I asked, was there anything I could have done to secure my spot or made a difference in this decision?

And he basically said, no,

you know, I've only been there four months.

It's not like I could work on something high impact.

I had pretty much just finished onboarding,

especially as a software engineer level one.

and my feedback on the team so far has been great.

So after the meeting with my manager,

I pretty much just had to sit

and wait for a little bit until the actual meeting with the VP of engineering was going to start,

AKA layoff time.

And so when that started, it was pretty weird.

I thought I was going to have a chance to talk to HR,

maybe ask to be repositioned within the org or something along those lines,

but that was not the case basically all 500 of us got dumped into a Zoom webinar so we couldn't even chat,

no reactions, no one-on-one contact obviously because they're laying off so many people at one time.

And so the VP of engineering was there with whoever from HR was there.

Together they basically told us you know,

effective immediately you're being laid off.

Thank you and there's nothing else to really say so let's end the meeting here.

And I don't know if any of you guys have watched Succession

but it really reminded me of when Greg laid off like an entire team at ATN.

Not sure if you guys get that reference,

but that's really what it felt like in that moment.

It was almost so bad it was comical.

So I messaged one of my friends on the team that I talked to the most and I said,

hey this is what's going on and being laid off and he was like, no way.

And we were doing a little bit of communication.

I got his phone number just as a contact and then right as I was messaging him to say,

hey could you see my LinkedIn and the Slack channel,

my computer went black, everything shut down

and my laptop was basically completely bricked within like two minutes of the 500 person webinar meeting.

So then I had to text message him and say,

you know, hey, I just got locked out of my computer.

Could you send my LinkedIn in the Slack channel,

which luckily I was working on a pretty large team.

So it hit a lot of people and he agreed.

Once my LinkedIn got posted in that channel,

a lot of people reached out,

which was really nice to see.

Basically some of them were just saying,

you know, so sorry, this happened, doesn't make any sense.

And then others were saying,

you know, I'll reach out on my network and see

if there's any job openings I can find for you or refer you to anything.

So I'm super grateful to everybody who reached out to me

and especially the person who sent my LinkedIn in the channel for me after getting locked out.

And I was super lucky that somebody senior on the team reached out to me and said,

hey, so sorry this happened, doesn't make any sense.

I have a friend who has a startup and,

you know, let me know if you'd be interested in that position.

I obviously said yes immediately.

I said, let me send you my resume,

my information, and you can forward this over to them and they can get in touch with me.

One thing I want to note here before I keep going on about the layoff experience is

that I was extremely lucky in my position when I got laid off.

Not only did I get referred to that startup,

which I did end up working for and I'm still working for now part-time,

I also had another AI startup that I was already talking to that I was able to fall back on as well.

But yeah, that's basically all I wanted to say before moving on to the rest of the layoff stuff.

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So going back to my layoff experience,

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what's crazy is that before the layoff happened,

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I think it might have been less than a month before I was having lunch with my manager

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and he was just you know asking me where's my head

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at you know what am I thinking how things have been

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so far and I remember telling him

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that I feel like I'm in a race against time here

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you know junior level roles seems like they're getting slashed you know all across the U.S just worldwide

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and I was basically saying you know with the advent of AI regardless of whether it's truly boosting productivity

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or not seems like that's the direction companies are moving in

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and so it just feels like I'm in a race to basically get promoted before I get cut.

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And he told me something along the lines of,

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yeah, it's possible, but ideally,

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that wouldn't happen here because,

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you know, the company needs to invest in the future.

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And if we only hire senior engineers,

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then what are we going to do,

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you know, in 10 years time when they all leave?

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And that wasn't very reassuring to me.

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And it turned out to be not true.

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So it's just kind of strange having that exact conversation about me being replaced by AI.

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And then, you know, CrowdStrike releases an email basically saying we're laying off people because of AI efficiencies.

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And what's super ironic about this whole situation is that,

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you know, I'm being told I'm being laid off by AI, productivity boosts, basically.

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But, and I want to be careful here saying this,

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when I joined, I was pretty much the only one on the team,

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you know, being young, that had any experience with,

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you know, AI development tools like,

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you know, cursor, cloud code, codex, et cetera.

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And none of them had really seen it before when I was talking to them about it at lunch and they,

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you know, were super interested once I showed them,

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you know, videos of it and things like that.

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And then I actually poked around and found the internal AI company tool,

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which I won't go into too much detail,

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basically just think about it like Copilot, nothing special, right?

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Like they're always behind on the tooling because they have to develop it internally at these large companies.

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And then I showed it to the team.

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I gave a pretty, you know,

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big presentation to the team during one of the meetings

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and then they all started using it more and more and

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so it's just funny to me

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that you know I'm being told I'm being laid off by AI

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when I'm the one who's kind of showing the team the power of it

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so that pretty much concludes my whole layoff experience um

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and my you know kind of quick life update on my current job situation

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which you know again super grateful and super lucky to be in this position

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but what I will say is

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that it's pretty shocking well honestly at this point it's not

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shocking like it's just crazy to see you know it felt like to me when Crosshack laid off 500 people,

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that felt insane because after,

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you know, there was a spreadsheet of all the people who got laid off

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and I was just scrolling through it and I was like, this is insane.

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Senior engineers, principal engineers, staff engineers,

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just full of high level people that just got wiped out probably after like 10 years of being at the company.

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And, you know, especially now after seeing the Amazon layouts,

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which is 16,000, which I can't even fathom.

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It's just pretty insane how these layouts just keep on coming.

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So, you know, let me know in the comments

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if you have any questions about my experience

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and you know let me know if you guys have gone through anything similar thanks for watching

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Este vídeo tiene 159 frases y 1707 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 7:07. El hablante habla rápido, unas 240 palabras por minuto, así que espera sonidos enlazados y reducidos. El 86 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

15 palabras menos comunes del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:

insane /ɪnˈseɪn/ (adjetivo) — enfermo mental, enajenado. Exhibiting unsoundness or disorder of mind; not sane; utterly mad.
calendar /ˈkæl.ən.də/ (sustantivo) — calendario. Any system by which time is divided into days, weeks, months, and years.
invite /ɪnˈvaɪt/ (verbo) — invitar, convidar. To ask for the presence or participation of someone or something.
startup /ˈstɑɹtˌʌp/ (sustantivo) — arranque. The act or process of starting a process or machine.
shock /ʃɔk/ (sustantivo) — choque. A sudden, heavy impact.
refer /ɹɪˈfɜː/ (verbo) — referir, remitir. To direct the attention of (someone toward something).
boost /buːst/ (verbo) — aupar, upar. To lift or push from behind (one who is endeavoring to climb); to push up.
grateful /ˈɡɹeɪtf(ə)l/ (adjetivo) — agradecido. Of a person or their actions, feelings, etc.: expressing gratitude or appreciation; appreciative, thankful.
productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/ (sustantivo) — productividad. The state of being productive, fertile, or efficient.
layout /ˈleɪ.aʊt/ (sustantivo) — maquetación, impaginación. A structured arrangement of items within certain limits.
wipe /waɪp/ (verbo) — enjugar, trapear. To move an object over, maintaining contact, with the intention of removing some substance from the surface. (Compare rub.)
regardless /ɹɪˈɡɑɹd.lɪs/ (adverbio) — pese a todo, a pesar de todo. Without attention to warnings or indications of bad consequences.
cloud /ˈklaʊ̯d/ (sustantivo) — nube, nimbo. A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air.
compare /kəmˈpɛɚ/ (verbo) — comparar, parangonar. To assess the similarities and differences between two or more things [“to compare X with Y”]. Having made the comparison of X with Y, one might have found it…
whoever /huˈɛvɚ/ — cualquier, cualesquiera. Who ever: an emphatic form of who.

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

lay off (verbo) — despedir, destituir. (of an employer) To dismiss (workers) from employment, e.g. at a time of low business volume or through no fault of the worker, often with a severance package.
go on /ˈɡoʊˌɒn/ (verbo) — continuar. To continue in extent.
check out (verbo) — investigar, chequear. To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
end up (verbo) — terminar, ir a parar. To bring to a conclusion.
get in (verbo) — acceder. To get into or inside something, literally or figuratively.
go through (verbo) — atravesar. To travel from one end of something to the other.
keep on (verbo) — seguir. To persist or continue.
move in /ˌmuːv ˈɪn/ (verbo) — mudarse para acá. To start living or working in a new place; to transport one's belongings to a new home or workplace; to make one's home or workplace into a suitable…

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 30 contracciones y formas reducidas, como I'm, they're, couldn't. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: shock /ʃɔk/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, presentation /ˌpɹɛzn̩ˈteɪʃn̩/, screenshot /ˈskriːn.ʃɑt/, devastation /ˌdɛ.vəˈsteɪ.ʃən/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, ideally /aɪˈdi.ə.li/, internally /ɪnˈtɜːnəli/, devastation /ˌdɛ.vəˈsteɪ.ʃən/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como insane, calendar, invite.

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora	have experienced · I've ever been · I've only been
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	was wiped · be repositioned · being laid
Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa	person who sent · friend who has · people who got

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

Técnica de shadowing: lee la guía completa paso a paso →

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Gramática en este vídeo

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?