I found out I was laid off from a coworker in another department.
She DM'd me asking if I'd heard anything. She'd just been let go. I told her I hadn't, wished her luck, and opened Slack.
No access.
I messaged a coworker on LinkedIn. No idea. I messaged my previous manager at the company. He checked and confirmed HR had sent me an email. An email. That's how I found out.
I messaged my direct manager. He replied with something like "sorry to hear that." I thought he was just washing his hands of it.
About an hour later he messaged again. He'd been laid off too.
It was a massive restructuring. No warning. No transition period. Access gone, just like that. Years of work, projects, wins, context. All sitting behind login screens I'd never see again.
The next two days I spent reconstructing my own history. Slack messages I'd happened to screenshot. Performance reviews saved to Google Drive out of habit. Calendar history on my personal phone.
I knew I'd done good work. I couldn't prove it.
That's when I decided to build Tally.
Not as a product at first, just for myself. A simple way to log wins as they happen, in my own words, so the next time something like this happened I'd be ready. Two minutes after a project ships. A quick note when feedback lands. Just enough to keep the record.
It worked. And when I started talking to other people, engineers, PMs, designers, I realized everyone had the same problem. Review season scrambles. Promotion cases built from memory. Resumes updated in a panic.
Nobody was capturing their work while it was happening. And it was costing them.
So I kept building.
Tally is still early. But the idea is simple: your career record should always be ready. Not reconstructed under pressure. Not assembled from fragments. Ready.
I could use the feedback from people who get this problem firsthand. If that's you, try it for free and tell me what's missing.
— Alex