What I learned about Sacrifice after a layoff and a loss

What are you sacrificing today that you'll never get back tomorrow? Is it worth it?

My Early Burnout and the Myth of Quiet Quitting

In early 2023, I hit a brick wall. 🧱

I was burnt out, exhausted, and running on fumes.

This was when I had to shoulder an overwhelming scope of responsibilities because there was a mass resignation at my then-employer, and I was one of the few who chose to remain.

Writing about this today brings back painful memories. But guess what?

I deserved every ounce of pain.

Because I am one of the many who're caught in the relentless grind of hustle culture.

Or what I'd like to refer to as the rat race, which I willingly participated in.

The old me would tell myself to keep going.

"It's just a phase lah", "Don't be weak can. Push through, and it’ll be worth it."

But it wasn’t.

The 'pushing through' part never seemed to end.

The emails piled up.
Slack messages pinged incessantly and my scope of responsibility seem to widen everyday, without the matching compensation to go with it.

Every workday felt like a marathon with no finish line. 🏃

Soon, work-related stress started to seep into my personal life, affecting my relationships with my friends and family.

Something had to be done.
My sanity was on the line.
So, I made an unexpected decision, something I'd never thought I'd do.

I "quiet quit."

That was the best option at the time, given that I wasn't ready to leave at all.

I had nothing lined up and my two colleagues in my team had just become new fathers.

As the tech lead, I knew I had to hold the team together. We were practically a unit; it was either we all stayed or we all quit (and obviously they couldn't afford to quit).

Quiet quitting usually gets a bad rap, often painted as laziness or a lack of ambition. But for me, it was a survival tactic.

That was my response to the quiet hiring, secretly done by the new management (but I caught wind of it and warned the others).

What is quiet hiring?

From wikipedia:

In human resources, quiet hiring refers to the practice of having an employee take on a new responsibilities or a role within their company due to need.[1] The role may be temporary or permanent, and the reassignment may not align with employee interests.[1] Quiet hiring often occurs during economic slowdowns as a cost-saving measure.

Note: The added responsibilities usually do not come with additional pay.

But even as I quiet quit, the workload felt insurmountable.

I soon realised something had to give. That’s when I made one non-negotiable decision: I protected my weekends.

No emails.
No Slack.
No exceptions.

It felt radical, almost rebellious.

Being someone who was brought up to be a hardworking, law-abiding and rule following Singaporean, this definitely wasn't in my character.

My colleagues, sensing there was a change in pace and my attitude, questioned if this was the right move.

With as much confidence as I could muster, I told them that it was.

But the truth was that I had no idea what was going to happen for 2024. Deep down, I knew that our fates in 2024 were absolutely out of our control.

What was in our control, was ensuring we maintained our sanity while planning our next move, just in case we lost our jobs (spoiler: we did).

As the tech lead, it kills me everyday to do this:

I had to reluctantly drag out deadlines, create tasks out of thin air, all to convince management that we were stretched beyond the actual workload.

This to me, was the only way to avoid taking on too much, because I knew if given the chance, they were ready to pounce on us, overloading us with everything and anything beyond our job scopes, while they did nothing themselves (this is a story for another day).

Yet, despite doing that, what we ended up with was barely manageable for an understaffed team. We could barely keep our heads above water. But at least we were breathing.

For 2 years, I felt like I was betraying myself, my work ethic and my conscience.

But looking back today, it paid off greatly. Why?

Because the layoff actually came true.

In the months leading to the layoff, I had the opportunity to start another side project (not Tired Millennials, but it led to it), make plans on my financials and advise my team to do the same. I practically had to force my mindset to shift from working a 9-5, to potentially other sources of income, such as working for myself.

As I shifted my focus away from my full-time job, I started to accept the fact that the job I had wasn't going to be my main driver of income anymore.

In fact, all jobs had the same risk that your income could suddenly be taken away from you at a moment's notice!

To be frank, that mindset shift was a psychological barrier that was extremely hard to overcome, especially in Singapore, where many of us tie ourselves tightly to our jobs.

Not to mention, in my 10-year professional career, my work experience only revolved around being a salaried worker. I had absolutely zero experience of working for myself.

Unfortunately, my other colleagues were too busy to have a plan B. Nevertheless, I was able to drastically reduce their workload so that they at least had time for their their fathering duties. It was better than nothing.

Confession

I wasn’t always like this. I used to be the top performer - the person who launched products in record time and made others’ lives easier. That work ethic got me far, but at what cost?

Even before I entered the workforce, I was a diligent student. I never broke a school rule and I was a modal pupil. I took every instruction from my teachers like my life depended on it.

It's unbelievable how a person could change, when forced by the situation.

"Luckily", it wasn't long before we all got laid off in August, because today, I couldn't fathom how we could have lasted another week longer. It was a mental battle and we were losing.

And yes, I know what you're thinking.

You're wondering how a company that's on its last legs could still have so much work to be done by the tech team.

If you've followed my stories earlier, I've mentioned that my former employer was deep in the red, and was not making a profit for years. The pandemic had hit us hard, many people, including the core team left. Sadly, no replacements were hired. It was a downward spiral from that point on.

Also, it wasn't just tech related work that the tech team was dealing with. We had all other sorts of work pushed to us, just because we were the OG team members.

In short, everyone else who joined in 2023 looked for us for solutions to problems that were outside the scope of tech.

My biggest shock came when even the newly parachuted C-level executives, who were supposedly hired to lead the company out of the abyss, were clueless and also looked to the tech team for questions relating to finance, hr, audit, operations, and marketing. 🤦‍♂️

And don't even get me started on the politics.

When Everything Changed

Fast forward to the first week of August 2024. Everything started to change.

I got laid off from my job.

A month later, my father-in-law passed away.

It was a whirlwind of emotions - grief, uncertainty, and an overwhelming sense of loss. But amidst it all, one emotion stood out: Relief.

Why relief?

Because those protected weekends had given me something irreplaceable: Time.

Time with my family.
Time with my father-in-law.
Time I could never get back if I had sacrificed it to work.

I shudder to think how I would have felt if I hadn’t set those boundaries.

If I had spent every waking moment consumed by work, only to find myself laid off and grieving, I would have carried regrets I couldn’t undo.

I was glad I always took the time to rent a car and drive him around to explore places and food he’d never seen. We did this for 3 years before he left.

No promotion or project could have replaced those final months of conversations, shared meals, and quiet moments.

The moments you save today are the ones you’ll treasure tomorrow.

The Real Cost of Hustle Culture

Hold up.

Read this slowly:

The salary you’re earning today reflects the minimum you’ve accepted to do your job.

It’s your minimum, not your employer’s.

And here’s the irony: when you go above and beyond, the price isn’t theirs to pay.

It’s yours.

And you're paying for it with your time, energy, and moments you’ll never get back.

When my father-in-law passed away, I reflected on how much time I had spent with him in his final years.

"Had work consumed too much of me?"
"Did I let it take away the moments that mattered?"

Thankfully, the answer was no.

Despite the demands of my job, I always made it a point to protect my weekends and carve out time for family.

Those weekends weren’t just boundaries; they were lifelines.

Those conversations I had with my father-in-law, hearing his stories, laughing at his jokes. Us being the last two still chatting at the dinner table when everyone had left. Those memories became irreplaceable treasures.

My proudest moment was cooking for my in-laws when we invited them over to our place for Mother's Day (I made ten portions of chicken chop!).

When the day was over, my father-in-law told me that he enjoyed the food very much when he left my house.

I was elated.

Looking back now, I see how those decisions prepared me for what came next.

The layoff didn’t feel like a loss, it felt like clarity.

Hustle culture had sold me a dream of endless sacrifice for future rewards, but I realised something fundamental: Later isn’t guaranteed.

A Different Kind of Sacrifice

Sacrifice comes in many forms. Some are deliberate, like setting boundaries to protect your time. Others, we only understand in hindsight.

When I was 17, I faced a decision.

My friends were planning a graduation trip to Japan. It was a tight-budget adventure, McDonald’s for every meal and just enough to cover the basics, including the air tickets.

I actually had the money saved, $1,000 from odd jobs that I worked during the school holidays.

But in the end, I chose not to go. I didn’t want to use up my savings.

At the time, it felt responsible.

"I’ll have other chances," I thought.

But what I didn’t realise was that I wasn’t just saving money. I was missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

It was a two way transaction. This for that. When a certain window passes, it passes. Doing it later isn't the same thing.

I didn’t see Japan until I was 34. That's 17 years later. I couldn’t recreate the magic of being 17 and carefree with my friends.

That would've been a heck of a story to tell. But it never happened for me.

Some sacrifices feel responsible at the time, but their true cost is only clear in hindsight.

Reclaiming What Matters

Life today isn’t just about hustle anymore. For some, the grind is still relentless.

For others, the distractions have shifted to endless social media feeds, doomscrolling, and notifications that never stop.

The result?

Time is slipping through our fingers in different ways.

The real cost isn’t just burnout.

It’s the moments we let slip away unnoticed.
The meals skipped because we were glued to our screens.
The calls we postponed because we thought we had more time.
The experiences traded for the comfort of scrolling.

So, to every Tired Millennial out there, here’s my message:

Take a hard look at your life. Your calendar. Your screen time.

What are you sacrificing today that you can’t get back tomorrow? Is it worth it?

...

Take a pause right now.

Think hard about the following: 👇

• When was the last time you fully disconnected to spend time with someone you love?

• How often do you trade real experiences for the allure of notifications and never-ending feeds? (i'm guilty of this)

It’s time to set boundaries.

Not just from work, but from everything that keeps you from truly living.

The Path Forward

Hard truth:
The pressures to hustle, perform, or stay connected 24/7 aren’t going anywhere.

But you don’t have to buy into the myth that busyness equals success.

Because here’s the real truth:

No job, no app, no social feed is worth more than the moments you spend with the people who matter. No career milestone or digital trend can replace the memories you’ll carry for a lifetime.

Reclaim your time. Protect what matters.

...

And lastly, remember this:

Sacrifice is inevitable, but what you choose to sacrifice defines your life.
Choose wisely.