A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work

That's what happened during my first job almost 10 years ago. "we're different than other companies, we're family", "business is always personal", yadda yadda

Then one day out of nowhere "hey btw we're not going to renew your contract, we're nice so we give you an extra 10 days of vacation don't bother coming back tomorrow, oh and all your accesses have been revoked". At least I got the reality check right away, some people get that way down the line when their whole persona has already been built around their job

I think one has some deeper issues to tackle if one is basing their whole persona around their job. This is not a healthy thing to do, regardless of layoffs.

Difficult to avoid when there's lots of culture encouraging it, and especially once your hours are long enough that the rest of your life gets eroded.

We also start, or encourage starting work quite early on in our lives, and so it naturally grabs a place in people’s existence in their formative years as “a thing that they do”. Is it any surprise then, that it naturally ends up becoming at least a non-trivial part of people’s sense-of-self?