Four years at my job - time to ponder my next career move

That all sounds very unpleasant and stressful. And I’ve been there,. (although maybe not as often as you have.)

  1. it’s standard practice that one isn’t allowed to tell people if you know they will be laid off. I had a really awkward situation where my employee was being let go (as was I) but she was on vacation, so she hadn’t heard, yet. And I wasn’t allowed to tell her. She wrote me a chatty, “I’ll be in on Monday, what’s up?” email. I decided the most honest thing I could do was to simply not respond at all, which she told me later had succeeded in warning her. That was pretty nasty. It’s a shitty position for the manager, too.
  2. there’s not much you can do right now. So hold tight, don’t blame yourself, and wait until the dice are rolled.

Best wishes.