Sixty Thousand

The headline is one line long.

Microsoft. Sixty thousand people. Laid off.

R reads it once. Then again, slower, as if the number might blink and change if he stares long enough. It doesn't.

Sixty thousand. Engineers who badged in, pushed code, sat through standups. People with titles like his. Lead. Senior. Principal. Titles that felt like armor right up until the morning they didn't.

His jaw sets. He isn't happy about it, and he isn't going to pretend he is.

This isn't some startup bleeding out its runway. This is one of the great fortresses of the industry, and it just opened its gates and marched sixty thousand people out into the cold.

If they can do it, anyone can.

The thought comes in clean and cold, the way the bad ones always do. Things are getting difficult. Not someday. Now. The ground is moving, and standing still on moving ground is just a slower way to fall.

Two options. Do something about it.

Or perish.

He sits with that word for a second. Perish. Too dramatic, maybe. Then he thinks of the headline again and it doesn't feel dramatic at all.

Then the second blow lands, and this one he throws himself.

He doesn't learn anymore. He doesn't upskill. Somewhere along the way he stopped sharpening the blade and kept swinging it anyway, and told himself that was experience. Rust doesn't announce itself. It just shows up one day when you finally look.

He's looking now.

Fine. Then he learns the way a soldier drills. Not casually. Not when there's time. Aggressively.

And he builds. That's the other half of the decision, and he makes it without negotiating with himself. Build. Ship. Keep shooting. Miss, reload, shoot again. No retreat condition, no "we'll see." He keeps firing until the goal goes down.

There's already one round on the board.

Seven hundred calories. Burned today. Whatever the headlines say, his body did the work, and now the number sits there like proof that the machine still runs when he tells it to.

So he makes it policy.

Seven hundred. Every day. Not a target. A floor.

Sixty thousand people found out today that the system doesn't owe anyone a seat. R found out too.

The difference is he's still in the room.

Tomorrow the counter resets to zero.

Seven hundred to go.