Watch me lose my job on TikTok

“I'm about to get fired,” Folashade Ade-Banjo said to the camera as she positioned her phone, “and you're about to see it.”

In a five-minute TikTok video this month, Ms. Ade-Banjo, a 30-year-old marketing professional from Los Angeles, was shown sitting quietly at her desk and staring at her computer, a pained look on her face as she nodded. she was ready to start. She was fired by a tech giant. The video was viewed half a million times and received thousands of comments within hours.

“One of my resolutions for this year was to be a lot more open and honest about the things I'm struggling with in my own life, so some of that is showing parts of my life that might not be as glamorous,” says Ms. Ade- Banjo said in an interview.

As companies from start-up Discord to Google have shed hundreds of jobs in recent weeks, some tech workers are taking to social media to share their layoff experiences, and many of these videos have gone viral. They show people crying as they talk to human resources or go about their daily routine, knowing that a mysterious appointment on their calendar will likely lead to their firing.

The trend is part of a movement driven by Gen Z and millennials to share every aspect of their lives on social media, from stories about a bad date to deeply personal revelations during “get ready with me” videos on daily routines such as applying makeup, career experts said. The layoff videos and accompanying job search messages on sites like LinkedIn and X shed new light on a private moment that many people try to hide.

“The boundary between the personal and the professional has been broken,” said Sandra Sucher, a Harvard economist who studies layoffs.

Some employees say they use the videos to cope with the emotions of losing their jobs. Joni Bonnemort, 38, of Salt Lake City, filmed herself crying when a credit repair company fired her from her marketing job in April. She intended to share the video only with her family, but posted it to TikTok after learning that the company had paid out bonuses to remaining staff a week after the layoffs. The video was viewed more than 1.4 million times and received supportive comments.

“I didn't want to come off as bitter as an exposé, but at the same time it's my experience,” Ms. Bonnemort said. “This has happened to so many people.”

Vanessa Burbano, a professor at Columbia Business School who studies how business practices influence employee behavior, says remote work has encouraged people to speak out online.

“The interaction between individuals and their businesses has fundamentally changed with the increase in remote work,” she said.

After receiving an invitation to a 30-minute catch-up meeting from a new manager this month, Mickella Simone Miller, who was working remotely as a project manager in Salt Lake City, filmed a video about her workday from home, including choosing a coffee mug with the lyrics: “The world around us is falling apart, and I'm dying inside.” The video ended with her listening to her company announce that her role was being eliminated.

The video was not only therapeutic, Ms. Miller said, but also led to recruiters reaching out to potential opportunities — and about 30 invitations to apply for new positions, even though she had not yet found a new job.

Companies need to realize that anything can be captured and shared, in an age when people are increasingly comfortable posting things online, says Lindsey Pollack, author of career books about multigenerational workplaces. She sees it as positive that people share redundancy experiences and does not think this will harm their future employment prospects.

In one case, Matthew Prince, the CEO of the cybersecurity company Cloudflare, said: responded on X this month to a nine-minute TikTok video of a shooting at his business. He defended the decision to fire the employee, but said the company should have been “kinder and more human.”

Brittany Pietsch, the former Cloudflare employee who posted the video, said she went through more than 10,000 LinkedIn messages, including many from recruiters.

“I don't regret it,” she said in an interview. “All I did was just be candid and show a conversation that wasn't scripted.”

While experts said the posts were unlikely to harm people's future career prospects, they warned that those posting redundancy videos should consider potential fame.

Ms. Ade-Banjo, the Los Angeles marketing professional, made her video private shortly after posting it to protect the identities of the managers who fired her. She said her goal was to simply shed light on the process and destigmatize it.

“If anyone else is going through this situation, at least they know they are not alone,” she said.