A seasoned software engineer reflects on a 25-year career in technology, marked by professional success and financial gain, but ultimately leading to a layoff that prompts a re-evaluation of life priorities, time, and the true meaning of work.
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Hello world. I'm a software engineer
technologist in my mid4s working for big
tech or rather I was one. I was laid off
from big tech just about two weeks ago.
This layoff has led me to feel very confused,
confused, disoriented,
disoriented,
a little bit excited as well.
It's my first layoff um in 25 years of
So where do we begin with all of this? I
had started working with technology, you
know, writing code, building computers,
doing these sort of things really early
in high school. And by the time I was in
college, I already started working right
as um not only in in internships but
also in in little contracts or gigs
writing little scripts and visual basic
applications and these sort of things.
So coming out of college, I worked as a
consultant for various digital agencies
and those were some very awesome years,
right? because I had the chance of
learning new programming languages and frameworks
frameworks
and the world seemed limitless, right?
Like I was one of those guys that you
find in bookstores reading like an
O'Reilly technical book, learning all of
the this code frameworks, platforms, and
I worked really really hard at my craft
and tried my absolute best to apply
myself, right? trying to learn as much
as possible and and try to do the very
best job that I can. For a time, I
became very good at software. I felt
like I was very very strong at it and it
felt like I could build everything,
anything I put my mind to.
I got so strong at software development
that at the time early in my career, my
company would send me specifically to
hackathons. And in almost every
hackathon, myself or the team that I was
part of would come out in the top three
almost consistently.
And that was pretty wonderful. I I dove
into technology into learning languages,
frameworks, design patterns,
understanding the infrastructure of
computing and all the wonderful details
that's involved in it. Now, one of the
biggest shocks of my early career is the
2008 financial crisis. During that
crisis, I saw that many of my older
colleagues, well, many of my older
colleagues lost their jobs. And it was
very [snorts] hard and very much a shock
to me to see that happening. Right?
There's people that, you know, I
respect, a mentor of mine that that
literally was broken down in tears
because she couldn't provide for her
family, right? she lost her position at work
work
and that's very hard for someone to
take. At that juncture in 2008 2009 I
discovered this whole concept of um
financial independence right uh there
was this book called your money or your
life and that book essentially taught
people or at least taught me that there
is this concept of of life energy right
where where you're essentially trading
your life for money and those concepts
kind kind of got my mindset into one
where where you want to live frugally.
You want to live more sort of below your
means and then from that you're able to
save more to save more money from your
job, from your work and then to put that
towards investments. And the end result
is that essentially you're you're using
your frugality and your savings to buy
your freedom. the the freedom of your
time from working for corporations.
So that kind of like was a kind of a
pivotal moment and it changed my
family's behavior. We got way more
frugal and we did sort of live below our
means. So over time my career
progressed. It sort of blossomed, right?
I I went from being a developer to being
a tech lead of a of a squad of uh
developers to being a software or
enterprise architect that is designing
higher level software platforms. And
eventually that career trajectory led me
to becoming a leader within the
organization that I worked in. And I did
change jobs a few times right over this
25 year span of time. uh but eventually
I became senior technical leadership at
the company that I work for and this
career in tech gave me a lot of
opportunities as well. So I I was able
to learn all of these things. I was able
to work with cutting edge technologies.
It gave me the opportunity to travel
around the world. I I traveled
throughout North America. I went to
Europe. I went to India. And that was an
amazing experience. This career allowed
me to be innovative. I have patents to
my name. And probably the most wonderful
thing about tech in general is the
people. I can't say enough good things
about the people that I worked with over
these decades. For the most part, the
vast majority of folks that I worked
with have been incredibly smart,
talented, disciplined, and the
camaraderie and the willingness to work
together on a common goal and to build
things and make magic happen that I've
seen that almost throughout my entire
career. Sure, there there's there's a
few there's always a few bad apples
anywhere you go, but for the most part,
the people
was one of the best things about working
as an engineer and as a technologist. Oh
yeah, and one other thing, the money in
technology is good, right? So for most
of my career, the vast majority of my
career, I earned a six-f figureure
salary and that's a decent comfortable salary.
salary.
About 7 years ago, I switched from
consulting to a big tech company. And
that switch essentially like opened up
this massive money faucet where I was
getting paid absolutely insane amounts
of money. this whole concept of like,
hey, you can get these restricted stock
units that that then you can you can
sort of vest and then convert into even
more money. It's absolutely absurd how
much money I was getting paid. And I try
to learn from the lessons of 2008 and
2009. So throughout all that, I never
stopped saving and investing. I always
tried my best to live below our means.
Now over the years
there have been definite downsides of
working in tech for me.
It is a very hard business. I was
working very long hours
and because of the globalized
geographically distributed nature of
this business, teams began to be
distributed across the world in
different countries. And that led to not
only long working hours, but also very
odd working hours, right? Where you're
up super early in the morning and then
you're working super late at night. Tech
is a business that moves fast. There's
constantly new languages, new
frameworks, new paradigms that are
coming out. And to be relevant in this
industry, you have to constantly be
learning. And that constant learning
came easy to me early on in my career.
But certainly within the last 5 years or
so, I've noticed that I'm getting
slower. It's harder to learn. When
you're in your mid40s, it just takes a
while to learn new things. It takes
longer. I can still do it, but it's
taking me longer now. So, all of this
time being spent on this work.
And yet over the years I realized that
what I was building didn't really make
much sense. It felt like
we were solving the same problem over
and over again. And the solution that I
was helping to create, it never really
benefited anything.
these solutions that I was building, it
didn't solve the big problems of the
world. It didn't make the world a better
place to live in. So, it's sort of like
you spend all of this time and you spend
all of this effort, all this heart to
build things and it doesn't make a
difference. That is a real downside of
this business. So, now we spent all this
time, right? I spent all of this time
working. That's time then that's taken
away from other aspects of my life like
my family, my wife, my children. For a
matter of years, I had maybe like an
hour every weekn night with my kids. I
just just an hour to hang out with them,
to read to my children, to tuck them
into bed,
and all the rest is spent working,
planning, taking calls, commuting, and
so on. My son and I, one of the
activities that that we really enjoy
together is going out on these outdoorsy
trips. Sometimes we'll go camping,
sometimes we're going to go fishing in
different places.
And I was thinking to myself that
gosh, my boy will be a man pretty soon.
He's a teenager. I only have a couple of
years before he's fully grown and then
he may not want to hang out with me
anymore. It's really kind of rough when
you think about that, right? that that
this precious time with your family
is actually being spent to build things
that that in the grand scheme of things
may not matter. Speaking of time,
there was this really good colleague of
mine. This is from a couple of years
ago. The man was smart as a whip, an
excellent engineer. He worked hard, too.
And it was around this time of the year,
right before Christmas, there was this
huge digital transformation initiative
that that we were both working on. And
this colleague, let's call him Jay, Jay
told me that he has a child and he was
looking forward to hanging out with his
kid. That that finally during Christmas
break he was going to get some time,
quality time with his kid.
And you know what happened?
We were working super super hard pulling
late nighters. And Jay, he got sick. It
was some sort of a heart issue. Th this
is a man in his late 40s. And one day he
didn't show up for work. We heard that
he went to the hospital and then a week
later Jay passed away.
Now, the company I was working with
treated him really well. Leadership
spoke well of him. We had a moment of
silence for him and it was all good. But
then I realized about a month after this
happened, it's almost as if the man
didn't exist.
He was entirely forgotten in the
workplace. It's as if he had never been.
So, so that's pretty rough. Something
that really troubled me in this area
happened earlier this year. My wife had
a health crisis
and from it she became disabled. Well,
partially disabled.
in this crisis and the aftermath of it,
I just realized that tomorrow isn't
promised to us that we're we're not
guaranteed to have these good days and
good years ahead of us. And so with with
sort of like the limited amount of time
that we have,
it just seems
almost not worth it to spend that kind
of time with big tech. So yeah over the
years these kind of thoughts were
swirling in my head right certainly in
the recent couple years
but aside from these sort of intrinsic
factors there there are practical
exttrinsic factors as well in my industry
industry
there's been these macro factors like
interest rate changes like the
availability of offshore resources the
emergence of AI tools
These sort of things dramatically
reduces the incentive for big tech
companies to keep their US employees dramatically.
dramatically.
So naturally in the entire sector there
has been layoffs, mass layoffs one after
the other and my former employer is no
different. There were several rounds of layoffs
layoffs
and in this last one
I learned through the grape vines that I
was on the list
but there were others that are on the
list too. I had an opportunity of saving
the jobs of several of my more junior
colleagues and that's what I decided to do.
do.
I put myself
to the top of that list
That's how I got laid off. Now, my
employer is a very good company. They
gave us an adequate warning period while
we were still technically employed, but
I could look for jobs outside. and they
gave a very decent severance.
So all of that I have to be thankful to
my former employer and and there's no
question about it. So that leads me to
where we are now.
Basically, I was on a journey with a
known destination
and now I'm off of that track.
It feels as if I've been dropped into
this sort of wilderness, no man's land,
where there are many different trails
and paths forward,
but nothing is decided, nothing is concrete.
concrete.
So, I've been sitting here, it's been 2
weeks since I was laid off, and I was
thinking about how do I move forward?
What should I do?
because this is a real inflection point
in my life, right? I need to figure out
how do I structure
a life that is productive, mentally and
physically healthy and wholesome and
rich after this event.
And that's pretty much why I'm vlogging
myself. I just wanted to document my own
internal thoughts and rants for the
future. And maybe I can sort of document
this journey for others who may be in
the same boat as me. The future is the
undiscovered country. It's unwritten.
I got to figure out and write that
story. Anyway, thanks a lot for
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