Therapy for tech workers in Seattle: layoffs, burnout and a job that never logs off
What can a therapist do about a layoff that hasn't happened yet?
People in tech often bring that question to a first call, usually with some skepticism, and it's a good one. The risk is real, and I won't tell you otherwise. But there's a large gap between a real risk and living braced for it every hour of the day. That gap is where therapy does its work.
I'm Dania Uritskiy, LICSW. I've been practicing in the Seattle area since 2021, first at a group practice in the city and now in my own practice in Edmonds, which means I've been doing this work through several rounds of big local layoffs. Engineers, product managers, designers, recruiters, and the managers above them make up a real share of my caseload. Most sessions happen online, anywhere in Washington.
"I work in tech and initially came to therapy because I was feeling burned out and never able to fully shut my brain off. Dania helped me gain insight into my challenges and make meaningful progress." — James W., Google review
Calibration season and the comparison engine
Performance systems in tech are often built to sort people against each other. Calibration and forced curves, ranked against colleagues you respect, produce a very particular anxiety. It's sharpest for people who arrived already convinced they had to be exceptional just to be tolerated.
Then there's comparison as a background condition. Levels, total comp, who got promoted, who left for an AI startup, the twenty-six-year-old staff engineer down the hall. Your trajectory would look enviable to almost anyone outside the industry, and that does nothing at all for you.
People sometimes apologize for talking about RSUs and levels in therapy, as if it were shallow. I disagree. In this industry, level and comp are where worth gets measured out loud, every year, in a meeting you're not in. Of course they come into the room. We talk about them plainly, and then we talk about what they've come to stand for.
A PIP deserves its own mention. You're asked to perform at your best while being told you're failing, often with a fair guess about how it ends. Nobody needs a pep talk during a PIP. They need somewhere to put the shame so it doesn't run every decision.
On call, Slack after midnight, and the I-5 commute
Distributed teams and follow-the-sun rotations mean the workday doesn't end so much as thin out. That ambiguity is harder on a nervous system than a clean finish. On-call weeks swallow sleep even when the pager stays silent, because part of you is listening for it.
Return-to-office mandates added a local layer. For a lot of people living north of the city, three days a week in the office means an hour or more each way on I-5 or I-405, and the evening that used to hold dinner and bedtime now holds traffic. I take that seriously as a clinical issue. A family's whole routine can get rearranged by a policy memo, and the resentment has to go somewhere.
This is how burnout in tech tends to build. It rarely takes one dramatic crunch, just months of never quite recovering, while everyone around you runs the same way. Here are the signs you're heading toward burnout, and my post on the Monday scaries covers the Sunday-evening version. If exhaustion and detachment are now the main thing, my page on burnout therapy goes deeper.
Layoff anxiety between rounds
Layoff anxiety rarely looks like panic. It looks like vigilance. You reread Slack messages for tone. You do arithmetic on your runway in the shower. A canceled 1:1 becomes a signal about something larger, and you perform a calm you don't feel for a team that's watching you for cues.
I don't do reassurance here. It would be false, and you'd see through it by the second session. What we work on is what the uncertainty is costing you in the meantime:
Whether you can be braced only as much as the situation calls for, instead of all day.
Whether your whole sense of worth is being held by an employer that has already shown it won't return the favor.
Whether you can do the sensible things, like savings and keeping your network warm, without living inside them.
Whether you can be present at dinner while nothing is resolved.
Something I've noticed across those layoff rounds: the people who were cut often recover their footing faster than the people who stayed. Survivors inherit a bigger scope and a lingering sense that the next list is already being drafted. If you're one of the ones who stayed and feel worse than you think you should, that's common, and worth taking seriously.
If the layoff has already happened, there's grief in it, and often a hit to confidence that outlasts the job search. I've written about rebuilding confidence after a career setback, which applies whether you were laid off or managed out.
Golden handcuffs, visas, and a job that is also your status
Vesting schedules can keep you in a job you'd otherwise have left long ago. That's a real constraint, and it can also become a story you hide behind. We can look at both.
If your immigration status runs through your employer, everything changes. "Just find another job" isn't a fallback with a few comfortable months of slack in it. It's a clock that's already running. Treating your vigilance as an overreaction would be a clinical mistake on my part. You can come in and say "I'm being managed out and my green card is tied to this job," and we'll start right there.
Many people in tech are also the first in their family to work in a field like this, or spend every workday in their second language. My page on immigrant and first-generation therapy speaks to that part directly.
For tech managers and executives
If you lead a team or an org, you may know about the reduction before your reports do, and you're expected to look steady while you help decide who stays. The week after a layoff you had to carry out can be one of the loneliest of a career. And when your identity has become your title and your org, a reorg lands as an existential event instead of an administrative one. Getting your sense of self to rest on more than one leg is some of the most protective work we do. For the leadership side, see therapy for high achievers.
What engineers, PMs and tech managers ask me on consult calls
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Yes, the way it helps with any risk that is real and can't be settled yet. I won't tell you whether your role will exist in five years. I don't know, and neither does anyone predicting it with confidence.
What we look at is what the fear is doing to you now. For some people it's panic-driven upskilling that never feels like enough. For a lot of engineers it lands on identity: if a tool can do what I do, what am I for? That question deserves more than a hot take.
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You don't need to share anything confidential. I don't need the product, the codename or the numbers. "My skip-level killed the project I spent a year on" is plenty to work with. What matters here is what happened to you, and that part is yours to talk about.
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Use a personal device if you can. Many companies monitor work machines and networks in ways employees never see. Even if nobody is looking, it's hard to talk freely about your manager on hardware your manager's company owns. A personal phone is enough.
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Often, yes. A bad manager can take over your free time and your sleep long after you've closed the laptop. We look at two things: what's actually happening with this person, and why this particular person gets to you as much as they do.
Sometimes a manager echoes someone from much earlier in your life. Sometimes the manager is simply bad at the job, and the work is deciding what you want to do about it.
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Yes. Two-tech households have their own pattern. You're in the same layoff rounds, and each of you assumes the other has more slack this month. Couples therapy can help you sort out who is carrying what at home, and how to talk about work without it becoming a contest over whose week was worse.
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It can be. People call it the Seattle freeze: friendly on the surface, hard to get past. Whatever part the city plays, a lot of transplants end up with a social life made almost entirely of coworkers, which means a layoff can take your friends along with your badge.
We look at what has gotten in the way. Sometimes it's time and energy. Sometimes it's that you've never had to make friends as an adult. If it's fear of how you come across, my page on social anxiety therapy may fit better.
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I don't do formal ADHD evaluations. If you want one, I can help you find a clinician who does. Meanwhile we can work on what's making work hard right now, including the shame about missed deadlines and the late-night catch-up work. It's also worth knowing that chronic anxiety can look a lot like attention trouble, and sorting the two apart is part of what we'd do.
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Both. Startup stress has its own flavor. Equity that may be worth a lot or nothing, and a company whose cash is counted in months. If you're the founder, the loneliness of being the one everyone looks to can be the main thing we work on.
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Very. A jump to staff or to managing people usually means more scope and less of the hands-on work you were good at and liked. The skills that got you promoted aren't the ones the new role runs on, so for a while you're a beginner again with everyone watching. Grieving the old job a little while you grow into the new one is normal, and we can talk about both.
What happens next
You pick a time for us to meet directly on my calendar. Fifteen minutes, free, video or phone. You don't have to have the words ready or fill out long forms, I understand the first step can be difficult.
We meet virtually and talk about what's going on. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit, and if I'm not, I'll point you toward someone in my network who is.
If it feels right, we schedule your first full session, usually within a week. I see clients at my office in Edmonds on the waterfront, or virtually across Washington State.
