Not a lot in here about being on a visa: you can do everything right, but your life can be uprooted by work authorization being artificially limited to x days after you’re laid off. Getting on a more permanent visa isn’t actually possible for a lot of devs.
Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
301–310 of 594 posts
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#302My advice: Have one or more side projects going all the time. If you get laid off, immediately start doing a startup, open-source project, or volunteering full time. A year of unemployment? Lonely, depressing, and not good on a resume. A year of launching an unsuccessful venture? Running coding classes for the underserved? Focusing full-time on contributing to pytorch? That's a lot better, both at the time and in ret…
This is terrible, possibly toxic advice. Software devs are people too. They burn out, take time off to travel, reflect, take care of family, or just down on their luck being unemployed. The only advice I'd consider paramount is to take stock of themselves financially and mentally, to assure themselves that they can take on the chaos and uncertainty that follows. Honestly, if someone showed up with a gap in their resu…
If you're not passionate about coding, that advice isn't for you. There is a class of people for whom coding is 'work', as in the actual act of coding is work and they would prefer to be doing anything else, but they have bills to pay.
There is another class of developers who like to code so much, that 'work' is merely a project that they don't have directional control over, but the act of coding is a relaxing activity. I know because I'm one of them. I am pretty relaxed at work when I can just sit down and code, then I go home and if I get some free time to work on my own code, I find it relaxing too. It's not that I don't enjoy work and have to supplement with a personal project, I just like the feeling of having absolute control over the project and trying to write the best code possible, because making money or providing some shareholder value is not the goal.
For people like me, I think this is a great advice. I am always thinking of side-projects that can become startups anyway, and I'm tinkering every day to the extent that time allows. I've been doing that for 20+ years. If I ever got laid off, my only hope is that at that point I will have a side-project that can magically be launched to make enough money to keep paying the bills.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reversing a binary tree is a reference to a FAANG interview. Money makes life easier. It isn’t the goal of your life. We aren’t playing a video game where the person who made the most money “wins” at life.
See my other reply for more context. But given a choice in 2020 of working at any large company as a software developer where I would have had to relocate and staying at smaller companies, I would have definitely chosen smaller companies. By 2020, I already had the big overvalued house in the burbs, decent retirement savings, a good work life balance, etc. I fell into a role at BigTech almost by accident doing the ty…
Your situation seems unique - not many people are game for 50% travel as they hit mid career.
Consulting does offer an alternative path to engineering at big cos - usually the interview focus is on your experience and ability to interface with a customer rather than leetcode, etc.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#304Getting laid off is a great introduction into class solidarity with your fellow workers. We have literally nothing in common with the capitalists at the top. You are closer to homelessness than you are to being a billionaire.
Most capitalists are not billionaires or even millionaires, the divide you are creating is outdated and frankly asinine.
Reading your other comments, you've aggressively decided to dismiss the historical definition of the capitalist class because it doesn't suit your worldview. In that case there's essentially no conversation to be had because you're already operating from an alternative reality.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#305Good thoughts, but (not as a criticism of the author), some of the pain points are at least partially self-inflicted: To minimize post-layoff loneliness (and not only for that!) make sure you have a life outside of work: the people you like to spend some time with and things you like to do. To minimize money-driven stress of the layoff, build up a cash cushion that can last at least 6 months; with unemployment, vacat…
> But do not go through the motions of getting an offer with a company you have no interest to work for. Strong disagree. In this economy, you regularly want to hip pocket job offers.
Being unemployed, I can't support this. Keeping an offer on hold blocks the company from making the offer to someone else who actively needs it. Maybe you meant something else, like a handshake agreement with a manager friend who works there that they'll try to make room for you if you ever want to join.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#306> You’re going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic programming problems. Really? I would think contributing (significantly) to an open-source project would look better than spending time on leetcode, though I've never tried leetcode.
That would require the hiring staff being able to evaluate your contribution. Unlikely, unless the job you're interviewing for is interviewing because you made a useful contribution to a software that they use themselves.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or its "if you enjoy what you do you will never work" attidude I have met soo many sysadmins and devs that absolutely hate computers, hate programming, hate everything about IT. They were in some career fair at some point in high school and simply picked that because it had high pay with out the 6 or 8 years being a Doctor or lawyer took, and it seemed easier than Electrical Engineering or something. Me, I have alway…
> I have met soo many sysadmins and devs that absolutely hate computers, hate programming, hate everything about IT > Me, I have always loved programming and computers. They are both my work and my hobby I think you're being too harsh, and clearly, you've never experienced burnout, which will make you loathe programming as work and as a hobby. Unless you are self employed, it is possible to hate your programming job…
This is incredibly true for me.
I like problems, but mostly the technical ones. Starting programming young, loved computers and networking. Became a sysadmin.
Turns out that at work, the problems are often different to what I want to be solving. Approvals and process can be a real downer. Some problems are people problems and not technical problems at all. Waiting on somebody else to complete their part while you wait sucks. These are the things that burn me out.
At home, I am the approval process. Maintenance is whenever I think is reasonable. Don't like a service/app, throw it away. Found a new project, tinker away. Something is down, I'll get around to it.
Completely different.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
See my other reply for more context. But given a choice in 2020 of working at any large company as a software developer where I would have had to relocate and staying at smaller companies, I would have definitely chosen smaller companies. By 2020, I already had the big overvalued house in the burbs, decent retirement savings, a good work life balance, etc. I fell into a role at BigTech almost by accident doing the ty…
Your situation seems unique - not many people are game for 50% travel as they hit mid career. Consulting does offer an alternative path to engineering at big cos - usually the interview focus is on your experience and ability to interface with a customer rather than leetcode, etc.
That’s true. But there was nothing stopping us from staying at home and traveling like normal people.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is terrible, possibly toxic advice. There are two sides to every coin. Possibly toxic advice for some, but why should anyone give up platforms or avenues that make them standout from the crowd? OP's suggestion is a perfectly valid piece of advice for anyone who has the energy, time, resources, ability, will, and integrity to keep chopping at a meaningful side project. It is not easy, sure. But I don't think we…
> There are two sides to every coin And there are six sides to every cube. In a world of tortured dichotomies, nobody ever mentions those.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
With three kids, my current side project is my day job, at least if measuring by workload. Taking on more work, voluntarily or not, will be at a significant personal cost for me.
I don’t get the constant peddling of hussle porn in SWE circles.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#310> dynamic programming problems Truth be told, most of the dynamic programming problems in Leetcode are relatively straightforward: find the recursive relation or state transition equation in general, identify the initial condition, and then build up the transition from bottom up. What's much harder, at least to me, are those ad-hoc LeetCode-Hard problems that require insights or clever tricks.
You're already ahead of most people interviewing. My advice if you're currently prepping: Don't worry too much about hard problems. They're much more rare. While true you may get an interviewer who hasn't properly calibrated their question, but more often than not, it's easy or mediums. Invest your time into telling a convincing story about your previous experiences, the impact you made at companies, and how great it…
Thanks for the advice!