When you get laid off, you hope for some humanity. Maybe a phone call. Maybe a sincere email. Maybe even a little honesty.
What you don’t expect, however, is to be handed a prompt list for ChatGPT and told to go talk to the robot. But, sadly, that’s exactly what happened this week.
You see, in the middle of yet another brutal wave of layoffs at Xbox, with thousands of jobs lost since early 2024 and entire studios shuttered, one Microsoft executive thought now was the time to offer… chatbot advice.
Matt Turnbull, Executive Producer at Xbox Game Studios Publishing, posted to LinkedIn (now deleted) a list of AI prompts for those affected by the cuts. He suggested using large language models to plan your career, rewrite your résumé, and even process your emotions.
One prompt read: “I’m struggling with imposter syndrome after being laid off. Can you help me reframe this experience in a way that reminds me what I’m good at?”
Another: “Act as a career coach. I’ve been laid off… Help me build a 30-day plan.”
This wasn’t satire. This wasn’t parody. This was real advice posted by a high-level executive on a platform built for networking, after Microsoft proudly committed $80 billion to AI investments.
People were losing their jobs. Microsoft was betting on machines.
And the message was unmistakable: real empathy has been replaced with artificial guidance. This is what corporate support looks like now… AI-generated consolation served cold. Empathy as a service.
The post has since been deleted. Likely not because it was inaccurate, but because it exposed something grotesque. Something that corporate PR would rather keep under wraps.
It showed just how dehumanized the modern workplace has become.
Instead of accountability, we get prompts!
Instead of severance improvements or job guarantees, we get synthetic pep talks!
Instead of leadership, we get LinkedIn coaching from people who still have jobs!
This is not just about one exec or one post. It’s a growing trend: fire the workers, fund the algorithms, then let the bots mop up the mess. Welcome to HR by API.
But we can’t let this pass quietly. American workers (especially those in tech) must reject the idea that post-layoff grief can be “streamlined” through chatbot interaction. We are not edge cases. We are not bandwidth. We are not tokens.
We are the people who build the software, ship the games, and write the stories. And we deserve better than a copy-pasted list of prompts while executives keep their salaries and say, “Good luck.”
If this is the future Microsoft envisions, where bots handle your trauma so leaders don’t have to, then it’s time to speak up before the next pink slip comes with a Copilot-generated sympathy card.
