Like many tech workers, my summer started with getting laid off over Zoom. Just after the call ended, I started laughing. The last task I’d done as an employed person was to put the finishing touches on a blog post highlighting my now-former place of work’s strong company culture. C’mon, that’s funny.

For the cynically minded worker who believes that everyone who’s not a member of the C-suite is just a replaceable cog—or a “line in an Excel doc,” as I’ve seen more than one LinkedIn post bemoan—the term company culture is just another example of empty corporate yoga-babble upper management uses to keep the lemming’s eye on the prize.

As one of these sorts of workers, I’ll say there’s some truth to this. For example, I’ve always considered “We’re like a family here” a huge red flag. Research shows that fostering that familial sense of belonging has helped companies keep salaries low and, more insidiously, curtail whistleblowing.

While my initial instinct was that it sucks I got laid off, I’ve tried to remind myself that it’s part of choosing to work in an industry (tech/software as a service) and field (marketing) prone to layoffs. Remembering to hate the game and not the player is important.

There’s also an impetus to be more than a little revisionist about your experience when the rug is pulled out from under you. But the reality is I was let go from a company I enjoyed working for and a position that’s probably been my favorite role. It was my idea to write the blog post about fostering a strong company culture, which I wouldn’t have done had I found my last job toxic.

In fact, I still believe there’s something legitimate to the idea of building a positive company culture, despite the fact that I eventually lost my job. Here’s why:

WORKPLACE CULTURE MATTERS

I’ve worked in places where a bad company culture breeds toxicity, hampers creativity, and stresses you out. I’ve also worked at places where it fosters innovation and makes work genuinely enjoyable. Company culture has been important to me during job hunts, and I’m not alone. Glassdoor found that 77% of job candidates “consider a company’s culture” before applying.

But the thing is, no matter how rational you consider yourself—and how confident you are in your skill set—layoffs mess with you. You question whether there was anything you could’ve done differently and why you were chosen versus other department members who weren’t. You wonder if you said something wrong or didn’t do great work. Then, if you’re me, you wonder whether you are, in fact, a sucker for buying into—and celebrating (or evangelizing, if we’re going the corporate new age-y route)—the mission and values of a company that ends three years of hard work and enthusiasm in a five-minute call.

In my last role, I wrote a lot about corporate culture. In doing so, I often employed the stat that we spend up to a third of our lives—an average of 90,000 hours—at work. When writing about company culture, I’d position this stat positively, taking the “Since most of us spend up to a third of our lives at work, let’s ensure it’s somewhere we get value from” route. While I believe that spin, generally, it’s depressing how intrinsically U.S. culture ties our value to how hard we work, which most of us have to do for financial reasons. It’s no surprise that we embrace any corporate spin that makes us feel like we have some agency.

HOW COWORKERS SHAPE CULTURE

Layoffs make you feel powerless. Because while I earlier sort of mocked those who posted about being just a “line in a spreadsheet,” it’s true. At every job you take, you’re buying into something you often don’t have a ton of say in. But two things can be true at once: You can realize that reality and seek work that brings you value. An astute former colleague I talked with in preparation for that company culture blog put it best. Company culture isn’t just about leadership setting the tone or HR creating the initiative (though both of these are important), she’d said, it’s about how the people working for a company at any given moment help to shape their shared environment.

Colleagues shape how you work. I’ve had great experiences at toxic companies because I worked with creative, empathetic, funny people. I also had not-great experiences at companies that were good places to work because of bizarre managers or overly competitive coworkers. While leadership certainly sets the tone, we employees do have some agency regarding making work somewhere that enriches our lives.

We have agency in what we will and will not accept in a workplace moving forward, and the ability to take ourselves out of the running for jobs at companies that don’t respect our time or efforts. (I recently had an interview that felt more like an interrogation than a conversation, so I decided to withdraw from that application process.) We can continue actively working to make our workplaces a positive place for ourselves and our colleagues while acknowledging that we unfortunately work in a system where, if you’re not working for yourself, job security is almost never certain—regardless of work ethic or talent.

I’ve been floored and touched by how many people from my last company, whether still working or recently untethered like me, have reached out with encouragement, offers for references or introductions, or job search advice. They’ve collectively made a challenging experience easier. I’m more than okay with choosing to celebrate—sorry, evangelize—that.