I never told anyone this, so I’m posting it here under a throwaway name. My name doesn’t matter anyway. After 11 years in IT, I’ve learned that names don’t matter much. Employee IDs do.
Mine was 40318. Remember that number.
I joined a mid-size services company in Pune in 2013. My father sold his wheat land in Bihar to pay for my engineering college. When I got my offer letter, he held it like it was a land deed. He couldn’t read English well, but he kept touching the company logo with his thumb.
“Beta, ab sab theek ho jayega,” he said.
Everything will be alright now.
I believed him. Why wouldn’t I?
The Rise
Those early years were beautiful. I worked nights, ate Maggi at 3 AM, and learned everything on the job. By 2018 I was a team lead. By 2021 I was managing 14 people, with a flat in Hinjewadi, an EMI I was proud of, and a Creta in the parking lot.
My mother started telling relatives, “Mera beta MNC mein manager hai.”
I stopped calling my father on weekdays. Too busy, I’d say. Sprint deadlines, client escalations, a release at midnight.
What I didn’t say was that I’d started enjoying being needed. Every Slack ping felt like proof that I mattered.
The First Crack
Early 2023, a client asked us to “explore AI productivity.” Management made it sound exciting. We ran a pilot where a few developers used AI coding assistants.
Priya, one of my juniors, only three years in, finished a module in two days that I’d have estimated at two weeks. I stared at her screen and felt something cold in my stomach.
I smiled and said, “Great work.”
Then I went to the washroom and stood there for ten minutes.
That night I told my wife, Neha, “It’s just a tool. Tools don’t replace people.”
I said it with so much confidence that I almost convinced myself.
The Slow Bleed
In 2024, hiring froze quietly. Nobody announced it. Resignations just weren’t backfilled. A team of 14 became 11, then 9.
The client contracts changed too. They didn’t want “30 resources” anymore. They wanted “outcomes.” Fixed price, fewer people, faster delivery.
In every town hall, the leadership slides said the same words: “AI-first. Reskill. Upskill. Adapt.”
I did the courses. I collected certificates like a man collecting lifeboats. Prompt engineering, cloud, GenAI fundamentals. I’d study at 1 AM after my daughter slept, and I’d think: I’m 34. When did I become someone who has to prove he’s still useful?
The Night I Won’t Forget
October 2024. My daughter Anaya, then 6, asked me to attend her school annual day. I said yes.
Then a client call got scheduled for the same evening. A call about “team optimization,” which any manager knows is code for headcount cuts.
I chose the call. I told Anaya, “Papa will come next time.”
She didn’t cry. She just nodded, in a way no six-year-old should. Like she’d already learned how this works.
In that call, I was asked to rank my own team by “AI-replaceability.”
I sat there with 9 names in front of me. People whose weddings I’d attended. Rakesh, whose mother had cancer. Priya, who had trusted me as her mentor.
I did the ranking. I’m not proud of it. I told myself that if I didn’t, someone else would, and they’d do it worse.
At 9:40 PM I closed my laptop. Anaya was already asleep, still in her little dance costume, the glitter on her cheeks half rubbed off.
Her teacher had sent a video. I watched it alone in the dark. She was on stage, scanning the audience for someone, and then her face just went quiet.
I cried in the car for an hour. In the parking lot. Like a coward.
The Fall
In March 2025, they called it a “role realignment.”
A Teams invite titled “Quick sync.” 15 minutes. HR, my director, and a stranger from “People Transition Services.”
My director couldn’t meet my eyes. I’d worked under him for 8 years. He’d once driven me to a hospital at 4 AM when Neha went into labour.
“Your role is being impacted,” he said.
Impacted. Like I was a village hit by a flood.
They gave me a package and a deadline to sign. My access was cut before I’d even left the call. My laptop went black mid-sentence. I tried logging in to say goodbye to my team, and my ID was already deactivated.
40318 didn’t exist anymore.
Eleven years. Gone in the time it takes to boil rice.
The Lowest Point
I didn’t tell my family for 19 days.
Every morning I put on my formal shirt, kissed Anaya, took my bag, and drove to a café near the highway. I sat there applying to jobs until evening. I’d return at 7 PM and say, “Long day.”
The Creta’s EMI, the flat’s EMI, Anaya’s school fees. Every notification on my phone felt like a small hammer.
Then I started getting the replies. Or rather, the silence. 300 applications. 11 responses. Most said: “We’re moving forward with other candidates.”
One recruiter, kindly, said what nobody else would: “Honestly, sir, the roles you’re targeting don’t exist in the same form anymore. Companies want one person doing what three used to.”
On day 19, Neha followed me. She’d noticed I never had any work stress anymore. I’d stopped complaining about my manager. That’s how she knew.
She found me at the café, staring at a cold cup of chai.
She didn’t shout. She sat down, took my hand, and said:
“Tum akele itna bojh kyun utha rahe the?”
Why were you carrying this much weight alone?
I broke down in front of strangers and didn’t care.
The Call I Dreaded
That night I called my father.
I hadn’t spoken to him properly in months. I was terrified. This was the man who’d sold his land for my “secure future.”
I told him everything. The layoff, the lie, the EMIs, the shame.
He was quiet for so long I thought the call had dropped.
Then he said: “Beta, jab main kheti karta tha, toh kabhi baarish nahi hoti thi, kabhi baadh aa jaati thi. Fasal har saal nahi bachti. Par zameen hamesha rehti hai.”
When I farmed, sometimes there was no rain, sometimes floods came. The crop didn’t survive every year. But the land always remained.
“Tu zameen hai, beta. Naukri fasal thi.”
You are the land, son. The job was just the crop.
I’d been a manager for years. I’d read hundreds of motivational posts. Nothing ever hit me like that sentence from a man with a fifth-grade education.
The Rebuild
It wasn’t a movie montage. It was ugly and slow.
I sold the Creta. I told Neha we’d move to a smaller flat, and she said, “Mujhe ghar chahiye, EMI ka status nahi.”
I didn’t want a job for the sake of a job anymore. I wanted to understand the thing that had replaced me. So I stopped fighting AI and started learning it properly. Not certificates this time. I built things. Broken, embarrassing things that I deleted. Then slightly less broken ones.
I started helping small businesses in my city automate their boring work. Local clinics, a textile exporter, a coaching centre. Nobody was paying much at first. One client paid me ₹8,000 and I stared at the transfer for ten minutes. I’d earned more per hour at my old job, but this money felt mine.
And I noticed something that changed me. The AI could write code faster than me. But it couldn’t sit with a nervous clinic owner and understand why he was afraid of technology. It couldn’t read a room. It couldn’t tell when a client’s real problem wasn’t the one on the ticket.
That was always my job. I’d just buried it under ticket numbers and status reports.
Where I Am Now
It’s been 18 months. I’m not rich. I’m not a “thought leader.” I run a tiny consulting setup with two part-timers, one of them being Priya, the junior I once ranked on that list.
She found out about the ranking. A former colleague told her.
She came to my place and I braced myself for the worst. Instead she said, “Sir, you didn’t have a choice. I knew it even then. But thank you for never lying to my face.”
I wept again. Apparently I do that now.
Last month, I went to Anaya’s annual day. Third row, phone off.
She danced. She scanned the crowd. She found me. And this time her face didn’t go quiet.
What I Want You to Know
If you’re in IT and reading this at midnight with a knot in your stomach, here’s what I learned the hard way:
Your employee ID is not your identity. Mine got deleted in 15 minutes. I’m still here.
Don’t carry it alone. I lost 19 days to shame that I’ll never get back.
Don’t fight AI. Don’t worship it either. Learn it, then do the human things it can’t: judgment, empathy, trust, accountability.
Call your parents. Not on weekends when you’re free. Now.
The ones who matter will stay. The rest were just crop.
I still miss the old life sometimes. The canteen, the Friday lunches, the feeling of belonging to something big.
But I wouldn’t go back to being someone who chose a client call over his daughter’s face on a stage.
If this story reached you, share it with one person in IT who’s quietly struggling. They might be pretending, just like I did.
Because somewhere, a man in a formal shirt is sitting in a café right now, with a cold cup of chai, not telling anyone.
Tell him he’s not alone.
If you’re going through a layoff or career transition, you don’t have to pretend everything is fine. Talk to someone. Ask for help. The crop may fail, but the land remains.