Hi, it’s Ethan & Jason from Level Up: Make career breakthroughs with AI-proof leadership skills.
Content for you to checkout (or revisit):
Watch Ethan and Boris Epstein discuss why Big Tech may no longer be the best career move long-term and how the conventional wisdom around AI may be backward.
Watch Jason and Andrew Yeung break down how to build a strong network authentically and make relationships that compound over time.
Steve Huynh’s Technical Behavioral Interview: An Insider’s Guide offers a practical, structured way to prepare more effectively (and avoid common mistakes).
Today’s Level Up: Inside Executive Coaching explores what to do when a layoff turns the relationships you built at work into one of your most valuable career assets.
This conversation shows how to approach senior leaders for recommendations, references, and introductions without sounding awkward or transactional.
We share these conversations to give you insight into what other strong performers really struggle with and ask behind closed doors. You may recognize yourself in someone else’s situation.
Layoffs have become a common fixture in a modern career.
In 2025, there were 783 distinct layoffs in tech, affecting almost 250,000 individuals.
And, 8 months into 2026, the layoffs have not slowed.
I am not sharing this to scare anyone. However, we need to strategize for them, not ignore them and hope they do not happen.
Nothing will stop a layoff from being a painful, scary experience, but there are ways to make it slightly better. One of the most important things to think about during a layoff is what comes next.
Your current role may be ending. But the relationships, credibility, and reputation you built there can still help shape your next opportunity.
That was the focus in my recent coaching session with “Manu“, a senior product leader at a large tech company.
We discussed how to turn the trust he had built inside the company into referrals, recommendations, and introductions for future roles.
For Manu, this discussion was not theoretical.
He had just been informed that he was getting laid off.
And he needed to strategize fast.
The Question
Manu had been successful at his company.
He built strong relationships with senior leaders, delivered meaningful results, and earned the trust of people across the organization.
But now that he was going to be laid off, he needed to turn those strong internal relationships into support for what came next.
He had to figure out how to ask those same leaders for recommendations, references, and introductions outside of the company without making the conversation feel awkward, transactional, or overly self-serving.
This was his exact question:
“I’m getting laid off.
I’ve built good relationships with senior leaders here.
How do I approach them for recommendations and future opportunities?”
Don’t Make the Layoff the Conversation
Manu was surprised by my first piece of advice.