This happened about 6 months ago, and overall it turned out all the best for me, but definitely shows corporate capitalism's true colors.
I was hired about a year and a half ago by a startup that was building out their team for online marketing and operations. It was venture capital backed and expanding rapidly.
It was an upgrade in pay and responsibility from my previous job, offered solid benefits, seemed like a no-brainer. Not to mention it was a remote position for a baby company that was super family oriented… Very aligned with my own growing family situation and values. Their benefits package offered 3 months fully paid maternity/paternity leave – a huge reason I accepted the job.
To lay a little more background, completely unrealistic goals were in place because of incredible performance the year prior (first year of COVID boosted online sales tremendously), then we ran into supply chain issues the next year due to COVID, which led to serious underperformance based on our unrealistic goals. Sales did grow, just not nearly as much as projected by the C suite.
I did my job well, worked about 10 months and took my paternity leave. Things were going well, but a lot of plans were in place that were unfinished and crucial for long term future success. It just so happened that my first day back was a couple days after their new fiscal year started. Well, performance was not good enough and they decided to lay off people so their balance sheet looked better for their investors… So much for family values. I was laid off on my last day of Paternity Leave, given one month of severance and paid out my vacation pay.
Fortunately, my expertise was in high demand and I landed a new gig that started about 2.5 months after I was laid off. My new job pays even better, still remote, and bosses are cool and flexible. For me, I received about 5 months of paid paternity leave, which really was one of the best periods of my life. I'm really fortunate, because it rarely works out this well for people. But overall, realized family is most important and your job is just a job – try to enjoy what you do but the “career mindset” is BS, just go enjoy life with your people!
Moral of the story though, no matter the company values, they're always beholden to the money. Even though sales grew, they didn't grow enough. They had to show profitability to investors, and the easiest way for them to do it was to fire people and disregard their family and livelihoods despite their “family values”.