On my usual day in work I started off my day with an unexpected news. I headed to my usual morning meeting with Jason and my other coworkers expecting to talk about what we are planning on doing today. However, one of my coworkers Kyle wasn’t there. Jason explained to us that the company decided to lay off some employees in our department and Kyle was one of them.

Jason explained to Ayano and I that it wasn’t any performance reason and that it was just differences in views and some work politics mumbo jumbo. He didn’t want to go more into detail and told us that the company gave him a nice severance package.

I know I haven’t gotten to know Kyle long enough, but I expect it may have something to do with him being in the department for a long time and they may be looking to hire another designer with a new perspective to work in the MTV app. I also found out that they also laid off other senior designers in my department.

Experiencing this news during my internship was shocking, but it made me realize that it is common for people to leave or quit their jobs at a company like Viacom. Everyone has to perform on the same level as everyone else and there is a lot of expectation in terms of designing a wonderful app for one of Viacom’s many channels that they own. What happened this day has motivated me to work even harder during my internship so I can be up to par with my fellow coworkers at Viacom.