I certainly was let go under a type 3 scenario recently. I can empathize with poor Bob (and the firing manager!). It was a bit abrupt in that my second serious set of conversations was the one where I was notified I was being let go. I discussed that with the head of engineering and I think he felt terrible about that since we'd talked about a "multiple conversations" route on the way out. It was also hard and emotional for a number of us. Both the head of engineering and the head of HR came near to tears twice throughout. My (former) head of engineering was basically grumpy cat personified as a human, but a big softie inside. So the display of emotion was exceedingly rare. Also, one of my closest coworkers was completely shocked, and a number of other people I knew at the company seemed pretty surprised too.

Ultimately I think there were a variety of factors always. Our company did less and less cutting edge neural network research, and more software development. It slowly turned from informal and small to scaled and rigorous software development. I couldn't keep up, career-wise, and I can definitely say everyone of us involved gave it our best shot to make it work. Despite everything else, it was hard to leave. The employees are good employees, and I like them a lot. I'll miss that group of people.

Something I found interesting too was that there's an interesting budget trade-off between struggling in a job position and struggling emotionally when moving towards a fire/layoff threshold. I went through a rather terrible time a year or two ago when a lot of cumulative trauma came to head and opened up in my personal life. We had a pretty generous vacation policy -- 45 days a year (yes), and all of that for ~1.5 years was used to supplement my hours, though I technically swapped in FMLA for some of it. Not having vacations definitely added to things. But there was an interesting tight race that happened that as I recovered, there was some pile of damage that had built that I wasn't able to really resolve yet, but was able to just stay productive enough to keep it from triggering a letgo condition.

Then of course the present. Feeling a lot better about my interactions with self and other, but enough of a period of struggle that only actions really can show that turning around. Buoyed by some confidence, I took a few risks and fell on my face, and tipped off a signal I'd thought I was pretty far from. It was a hard process for all of us.

Of course there's the feelings of shame, etc. But I think getting to have an empathetic conversation and knowing it was a "lack of work" rather than behavioral primarily (or much at all) really salved it. Now I'm tangled in a huge mess with a very overarching IP clause that's tangling the job search, but after a long break for the burnout just to keep the job, I think maybe it's time to go part time and just travel the country or something. Make friends, focus on a garden plot, and catch up on all the life I missed. With how strict our hours were plus other obligations, I was spending 10-12+ hours on work and work-related stuff each day. Humans weren't designed for that.

Anyways, hope that was an interesting account. I think I can see the struggles, and like most things I think it was out of most of our hands despite best efforts. I still thrive in nn research, so it will be nice to really get back to that more.