“It’s definitely that vibe,” Ms. Ehrenkranz said. “The whole point of Laid Off is to show that it’s not a personal failure.”
Anu Lingala, 33, spoke to Ms. Ehrenkranz about losing her job at Nordstrom in a feature published in March. “Her interviews are so humanizing,” said Ms. Lingala, who lives in Brooklyn and now works in marketing at a jewelry company. “They unpack the shame around being laid off.”
The newsletter has a confessional-like quality that Lindsey Stanberry, a former editor of the Money Diaries column on the website Refinery29, appreciates. “There’s a voyeuristic element to it,” said Ms. Stanberry, 44, who now writes The Purse, a Substack newsletter about women and money. “It’s like, it could happen to me, or it has happened to me, and, like, I want to feel this camaraderie.”
Maya Joseph-Goteiner, 41, was among Laid Off’s first subjects: Her interview about losing her user-experience job at Google ran in the newsletter last August. In it, Ms. Joseph-Goteiner recalled going bowling with her family the day she was laid off and how the experience pushed her in new professional directions. Participating was an opportunity to offer a “counter narrative” to the desperation and shame that can bubble up when talking about losing a job, she said.
“My story felt like one of resilience, and I want there to be more stories like that,” said Ms. Joseph-Goteiner, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., and now runs her own research and design agency called Velocity Ave.
Ochuko Akpovbovbo, the writer of As Seen On, a Substack newsletter about business trends that is geared toward her fellow Gen Z-ers, said some in that cohort had shown less interest in careers in media and technology than members of older generations. Laid Off’s interviews with people who have lost jobs in those industries have helped contribute to “the end of Big Tech and journalism worship,” added Ms. Akpovbovbo, 26, whose newsletter was introduced last May and has about 22,000 subscribers.
