I was laid off from my contract position after just one month, and honestly, it feels pretty terrible. I had been job hunting since summer 2025 and finally landed a contingent role at a company I used to work for, albeit on a different team. During the final interview, I had a gut feeling something was off with the hiring manager; she seemed robotic and rushed, sticking to business jargon without much warmth. I brushed it off at the time. On my first day, I didn't receive any instructions on what to do. The equipment arrived in the mail, but I had to rely on my recruiter to figure out how to set it up because there was no guidance provided. Onboarding was a struggle; they expected me to grasp the entire business immediately. While I had some knowledge of the line of business, there were significant changes and new technologies, like cloud and AI, that I wasn't familiar with. Whenever I had questions about the database structure, the response was to consult AI instead of a human, which was frustrating. Accessing training materials was a nightmare; I kept hitting roadblocks with restricted links and couldn't find anyone to help me navigate it. To make matters worse, the project manager they hired for the team quit after just three days, overwhelmed by the expectations placed on her. For three weeks, I wasn't assigned to any Jira user story, and when I finally was, it was the wrong one based on the title, with no description filled out. Feeling uneasy about the situation, I wanted to reach out to my recruiter to discuss how to navigate the challenges, but before I could, I received a call on Monday saying that funding had been cut, and I was off the team. My recruiter was surprised, mentioning that this sort of thing rarely happens at the company and they would try to find me another position, but it wasn't guaranteed. I'm really upset and worried that I didn't speak up sooner. I fear they might have interpreted my confusion as incompetence. After the call with the recruiter, I sent a message to my manager to acknowledge the situation, but her response was curt, making me feel like I was just another expendable resource. It's a tough pill to swallow.