Googler... ex-Googler

As an ex-Googler I say: blessing in disguise. When working at a $MEGACORP it's easy to think there's barren wasteland out there beyond the walls, so it's scary. But that is very much not so. I get that opportunities to work on browsers are relatively few and far between, but if you can do something else, try working for a smaller company which treats you more like a human being, and less like a replaceable cog.

Not much of a consolation, I'm sure. I've never been laid off, so I can only hypothesize what that'd feel like, but know this: this too shall pass.

It is much easier to handle when departing is voluntary. Layoffs, especially surprise ones, are the opposite.

For someone young with no dependents, it can be scary but doable. For those with kids? Not so much.

OP spent several years at Google. Kids or no kids, if they managed their finances well, they have a lot of latitude wrt next moves.

outside of having stupid money what percentage of people (excluding people living paycheck to paycheck) manage their finances well, especially in the first decade of their career? I’d ballpark that at 0.78%

Are you pessimistic or is that a serious estimate? It’s so … low.

I want to get enough time at $MEGACORP to have FU money. After that, my fear is a lot of smaller companies are working on thing even more boring, but with less scale. Gluing a domain-specific API to a few LLMs sounds boring. I got into tech because I liked learning it, but a lot of it is getting repetitive.

Not necessarily. Nobody on HN knows OP’s finances. He might have extended family relying on him. He might have crippling student debt. He might have expensive health problems. Do you know? I don’t.

Also, not all Google employees make great money. People act as though you work there for 5 years and that automatically means you’re off to buy your third house in Monaco.

Point is, he might “manage his finances well” and still be on insecure footing.

Exactly. Plus I think we're forgetting a lot of Google employees are on visas, meaning they might have expenses both in the US and in their home country.

You may be correct in general, but in this particular case I do not see how Adam should have any difficulties in finding a very good paying job at another company.

being a realist ... I think in the US no one is (purposely) thought basic financial literacy and it spills over into probably the first decade of working life

The finances are important but possibly not the first thing on their mind. The first thing on their mind is likely how their entire world has just changed around them, beyond their control.

People who left voluntarily can prepare for the lifestyle change, and maybe they can objectively look at this and say it's not all bad. For people who are laid off, it hits really hard in a gut wrenching way. The sense of despair about everything else comes first, the money part of it might not come until all the severance is exhausted.

No such thing as FU money. As you get more you want more, or if you don't then your spouse does. There is such a thing as "I can tolerate a 3-6 month job search no problem and not jump at the first opportunity" money. It makes 90% of the difference, especially in the long run.

Of course there is such a thing.

Lifestyle inflation is a known phenomenon which you (and your spouse) can choose to avoid if you prioritize it, not some immutable rule of nature.

If the treadmill of accumulation that lets someone believe "there's no such thing as enough" ever stops, I think they would be shocked at how quickly they realize what enough actually means.