For 11 and a half years, Amazon was not just Hemant Virmani’s workplace. It was routine, rhythm, identity. Meetings, product reviews, team check-ins, that was daily life. And then, in October 2025, it stopped. “I watched my team members get laid off in 2023, and I know how difficult it is,” Hemant told Business Insider. “Still, when I received an email in the middle of the night in October 2025 saying I’d been laid off from my senior software development manager position, I was shocked.”
There is, he said, no right or easy way to do layoffs. But when it happens to you, it feels deeply personal, even if you know it’s not.
After 11 years at Amazon, a midnight email changed everything
“The morning after my layoff, I had a mandated 30-minute meeting with my manager, and it actually went very well,” Hemant recalled. “We talked about the layoff, and he offered me support. He delivered it all to me in a very positive, human way, and it was really affirming.”
Despite the shock, Hemant is clear about one thing: “I loved my time at AmazonAmazon, and I really feel as though it’s a place for exceptional people. The number of quality brains in the office, throwing around ideas and solving a custom problem, was amazing.”
The lesson came from his teenage daughter
The first few days were heavy. “I felt attached to the layoff,” he told Business Insider. But he also knew something important: he could not control what happened. He could only control how he responded. “My daughter is a senior in high school, and she had an adverse situation happen to her last year that required recovery. How she reacted in that difficult time inspired me.”
Her mindset stayed with him: “Challenges don’t have to keep me from showing up for myself or for others.” “I kind of learned from her that I had to take this layoff with positivity, keep my cool, and focus on what was next.”
Just weeks after losing his job, Hemant lost his father. He spent the next month in India supporting his family. “I took about a month to settle my mind, reflect on what I wanted next for my career, and help my daughter finish her college essays.” It was a difficult stretch, job loss and personal loss close together. But it also created space. Space to think.
“It’s been a very refreshing change to think about what I want next in my engineering career,” he told Business Insider. “I’m less focused on the size or name of the next company I work for, and more on what I’d be doing there.”
Learning AI, this time hands-on
At Amazon, his team used AI tools. But like many leaders, his time was limited. “My team at Amazon used some AI tools, so I’m familiar with some, but I was only able to spend a fraction of my workday using them,” he recalled. Now, he is going deeper. “I want to be proactive, not reactive, about the AI skills I’ll need in the future.”
Heman is now focused on building a hobby AI project from scratch instead of just reading or overseeing. He wants to stay ahead of the curve, not scramble to catch up later. At the same time, he has reset his priorities. Work used to come first. Now, his health does. He hits the gym four to five times a week and is following a routine he plans to stick with even after he’s back in a full-time role.
His days are split evenly. Half spent learning AI, the other half applying for head of engineering roles and reaching out to his network. He sends out two to three applications a week.
When he shared news of his layoff on LinkedIn, the response caught him off guard. Messages poured in, from old colleagues, friends, and even someone from college he hadn’t spoken to in over 25 years. Some of those conversations have already led to job leads. In an unexpected way, the layoff reconnected him with people he had lost touch with.
He admits there are moments of worry about when the next role will come through. But he also sees the upside. The time off has allowed him to focus on family, health, and skills he had long put on the back burner.