By Jacob Zinkula
Publication Date: 2025-12-01 10:06:00
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lee Givens, Jr., a 57-year-old product manager in Seattle who works at Woven by Toyota, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation. Business Insider has verified his employment with documentation. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.
I’d worked at Big Tech companies for more than a decade, but a year ago, I found myself in the middle of a humbling job search.
I started working for Microsoft in 2011 as a product manager, but in 2014, I was among thousands of employees who were laid off. I never actually left Microsoft — I was given 60 days to find a new role internally and successfully moved into a program manager position in a different department.
By 2020, my job at Microsoft had become somewhat boring, in part because there was a lot of legal and compliance work. I also thought I needed a new challenge and more money.
I left Microsoft for a new opportunity, but looking back, I maybe…
