India, Feb. 16 -- An Indian-origin tech professional based in Washington has shared how he coped with being laid off from Amazon after more than a decade, and how his teenage daughter helped him see the situation more positively.

In an as-told-to essay published by Business Insider, 47-year-old Hemant Virmani said the October 2025 layoff came as a shock. "Amazon was part of my daily life for 11.5 years, and suddenly it was gone," he wrote, recalling the middle-of-the-night email informing him that he had lost his senior software development manager role.

Virmani said there is "no right way or easy way" to conduct layoffs. Although he had seen team members lose their jobs in 2023, experiencing it himself felt very different.

The morning...