Author
Tara Bird
Founder & Editor, Layoff Calculator. Writing here since 2025.
Bio
I'm a software engineering manager. I write occasionally on Medium about engineering leadership; the rest of my professional history sits on LinkedIn.
Layoff Calculator came from a different impulse than my day job. Friends and former colleagues kept getting laid off without access to the same benchmarks and statutory references that the people sitting across the table from them already had. The asymmetry is fixable, and most of the work is plumbing.
The calculator's data layer, citation policy, and trust gates reflect engineering work, not legal practice. Every dollar figure on the site drills to its component math. Every statutory claim cites a working public URL. Nothing paywalled. State data refreshes monthly against authoritative sources, and a build-time test gate refuses to ship if any cited URL fails to resolve. For legal advice on a specific severance offer, consult an employment attorney licensed in your state.