Laid Off, Lit Up
How Deb Haas Rebuilt from Rock Bottom
Want to follow Deb’s next chapter?
Find her on LinkedIn
What role and industry were you in before your layoff?
I was in a huge consulting firm – Accenture – which at last count had well over 700,000 employees. I was a Talent Supply Chain expert, which is a discipline, specific to professional services and internal staffing(essentially getting the right people, with the right skills, to the right place, at the right time, within the right cost envelope). This is how professional services companies make their money – consultants billing their time to client projects.
How did the layoff happen, and how did you feel?
We had a warning. It started with Senior leadership in my global group of 55+ people being laid off with a 3-month warning saying their role was being eliminated (January 2023). In March 2023, Our CEO got on the public Q2 Earnings call and announced there would be ‘severance’ payments that year. That same day, the CHRO got on a Global HR Townhall and announced that 20k Corporate Functions people (e.g., HR, Recruiting, Marketing, Finance, CIO/IT, Legal, L&D) would have their roles ‘offshored’ to other locations, namely Buenos Aires & India. The party line we were given was that this was all part of a transformation that had been in the works but now was being ‘accelerated’.
What made the first few weeks difficult or surprising?
They dropped the bomb, told us to give them 2 months to get their plans organized and then it was SILENCE. For weeks. I was already deep into burnout I’d been ignoring for months, and the silence was unbearable. , That same month, my father passed away unexpectedly and that was the last straw for my burnout. I went on LOA for depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. On my first day back, I was notified of my layoff date.
How have you made ends meet since?
Right now I have about $200 in my checking account and will likely need to take another chunk from my 401k to cover debt payments. Let’s just say my retirement savings are less than ½ what they were when I was laid off.
I had a severance that covered me for about 2 months, then was on unemployment for a few months, and I secured a decent contract with a company for 2 quarters to hold me over. My husband was also unemployed; however, he recently landed a permanent job, which is a huge relief both financially and from a health insurance standpoint (COBRA was costing $1700/month for the 2 of us).
I’m still eligible for unemployment and that’s what’s been getting us by – hopefully now with my hubby having a full-time job, I’ll have a little more breathing room.
How did you decide what direction to take next—did you pivot by necessity, or was it a long-held dream?
I’m an introvert and that’s what had me push for and stick with remote working the past 18 years. I toyed with starting my own business back in 2018 but never followed through on it. So when this layoff happened, on top of burnout and partial hospitalization, I was ready for something of my own.
The pivot was a mix of necessity and a dream. All my working life, I focused on making more money, slowly moving up the ladder. Not because I wanted to, but because of the freedom that more money gave me for travel and fun experiences with my friends and family. In my generation, you did what you got paid for and anything else happened on your own time. Then I fell into virtual design thinking during an internal global transformation project in 2017. And I LOVED it. And I was good at it. Facilitating creative collaboration sessions was the closest thing to a music jam I’d experienced in the work environment.
That’s the other thing – I’m a trained vocalist – have sung in the chorus of The Minnesota Opera, run karaoke, performed online in SecondLife, etc. I despise how work has become so performatively serious and urgent. How people rarely laugh or know each other outside of trauma bonding. There is transformation available in play, fun, and joy. And that’s what I want to spend the rest of my life doing.
What helped you start to heal—mentors, routines, resources, therapy, time off?
Community is what helped me the most. I started a Fishbowl, which became a LinkedIn group, which became a private internal Team while we were still all at Accenture. We started having weekly calls and after I left, I kept them going on Zoom. I was determined that our group would be one where people could show up just as they were with no judgment and no toxic positivity. I think that stance is a big reason why the calls continue. These are people I didn’t know while we were at Accenture, but who have become good friends through those weekly calls.
What parts of your old career identity did you have to let go of to relaunch yourself mid-career?
I hadn’t realized how much my identity was collapsed within the company I worked for until the burnout revealed that my values were no longer aligned with the company. There was a whole stretch of time when I had to actively work on identifying my value apart from my job. Then there was the future vision I had become attached to. That was almost as hard to let go of as it was identifying what I was good at.
One thing that’s shown up in the year since I left Accenture is that I have multiple people tell me that they ‘love’ my ‘energy’. I never got that when I worked in big corporate. I really do feel more alive than I have in the last 15 years.
What’s one system, habit, or mindset shift that helped you get through the chaos?
The last 6 months I’ve been living out of 4 mindsets: Abundance (there’s plenty for everyone), Growth (nothing is set in stone), Curiosity (actively avoiding assumptions), and Awareness (I have the power of choice.)
What did you learn about yourself through all of this?
I was officially diagnosed as being ADHD (hyperactive/impulsive) with Executive Function deficits in December 2024. That has been the BEST THING for me. I had no idea how much I was masking, to the point of hypervigilance, and (I believe) a big reason why I ended up in partial hospitalization. Now I am learning new ways to work WITH my brain rather than against it I really needed to receive the therapy and healing I got while recovering from burnout. And all of that training made it possible for me to show up for my former colleagues as a community leader.
If someone in your exact shoes read this today, what’s the one message you’d want them to hear?
That they are perfect just as they are. There’s nothing wrong with them or missing. The decision of a corporation to eliminate their position or lay them off says more about the company than about them.
I would tell them that they must find and protect their joy. It’s not something that’s outside of us (although it’s sometimes easier to access using external items/experiences). Joy is an inside job, and it’s always there. You just have to uncover it.
Want to follow Deb’s next chapter? Find her on LinkedIn
