I was really confident. Then I lost a job to AI. Then they hired me back a few months later after realizing that replacing half the support team with an AI was not working out.
I was in a very, very rough spot. Was mostly worth taking the offer. It sure beat wasting 13 years of obscure product knowledge at some new job for the less pay others were offering.
Yeah that's totally understandable. It's just so scummy that suits know they can fire people for some idiotic whim like the current "AI" craze, and then when it inevitably blows up in their faces they can rehire the folks they just fired and for no extra cost because they know people will be desperate. Small wonder they didn't cut your pay.