Googler... ex-Googler

Yep, it sucks. Speaking from experience - I was laid off a few years ago. I was sad my time ended, but my path forward was to leave SF with money and time to visit countries I'd always wanted to see.

It's a trend away from the post-WW2 "promise of lifetime employment". Over the decades, companies have crept toward "human autoscaling" so slow no one noticed. You're far from alone - every other company is doing it. Go see the numbers at https://layoffs.fyi . When the whole industry is doing something, companies must follow suit to stay alive.

Nurture your network! Keep being present on their feeds. Reach out to the ones on your team that you had personal relationships with. Some will shun you; it's not personal, they're ashamed and fearful. It is human nature, same as the company's behavior toward you is a company's nature.

There was never a better time to take things into your own hands. Go look at @IndyDevDan's content on youtube and test the limits with agentic coding: https://agenticengineer.com/state-of-ai-coding/engineering-w...

Spend your 8-20 paid weeks agentic-coding (not vibe-coding) silly projects for your nieces and nephews. You'll come back stronger and more employable than ever.

Don't be sad to be kicked out. The boot that kicked you was attached to a Hills Hoist.

Human autoscaling. That's a good one. I mean it's not good.

We live in weird times. Companies are drowning in earnings. Their stock sky rockets. But they are unable, or not interested, to put people to work to grow their business. Because they are so big it distorts the entire economy. Because they are so big and so entrenched it's also hard to compete with them.

Less people makes the stock goes up?

And then AI too in the mix with many executives apparently believing it can just replace all the people. Who is going to buy the products then?

I have a feeling this is temporary. The wheel will turn and suddenly companies will hire like there's no tomorrow on some new shiny thing. It's gotta - right? Otherwise what?