On September 10, 2019, I lost my job in a mass layoff. Now, after having endured a month-long unemployment, fortunately concluded by signing another job offer today, I decided to sit down and retrospectively document my journey, which, although arguably small and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, was important and transformative for me. As the cliché goes, you learn a lot about yourself when going through obstacles. Indeed, over the span of this month, I have subsequently come to identify my weakness, my insecurity, my solitude, and later, my resilience and my self-worth. I don’t think I have necessarily emerged from this setback as a stronger person, but I believe I have just become a bit more confident, a bit less confused, and a lot more alive. Hence, reading through my correspondence in this past month and reliving the ups and downs, I decided to document all of them if only to remind myself in the future of what I have learned today.
Tuesday, September 10
It happened exactly as one would imagine. I received an unexpected meeting invite from the human resources team and four hours later, I handed over my laptop and was out of the door. Although it was a mass layoff affecting hundreds of people, the brutal question remained: “Why me?” Was I really not performing well? Was what I had delivered not good enough? What could I have done better? It was not until weeks later when I received the definitive answer that it was not performance-related, that it was rather a business decision above everything else, did I finally receive my closure. But at the time, before the self-pity turned to anger and before the adrenaline kicked in, my innate impostor syndrome, which I thought I had succeeded to suppress, woke up and screamed at me: “Of course, it was you! What else did you think?”
That night, unable to sleep, I got up at 2 am and started updating my resume. While characteristically fretting about word choice, font size, and paragraph structure, I found myself finally calming down. I then set out to do what I did the best - making a meticulous to-do list: the companies to reach out to, the people to talk to, and, most importantly, my study plan to prepare for the interviews given that I was badly in need of a refresher. It was during these wee hours of the night that I decided I wouldn’t and practically couldn’t dwell on my sadness, that I would force myself to be focused, and that soon enough, I would be fine.
Wednesday, September 11
Everything felt strange. Staying at home past the commute hour was strange, seeing no one around me was strange, and, although I was embarrassed to admit this, having to worry about lunch was also strange.
Before noon, I dialed into a video conference given by the immigration law firm that handled my work visa to learn about my options. For those who are curious, as immigrants working on H-1B visas, once laid off, we have 60 days to find a new employer to transfer our visas to and the clock starts right on the day of the layoff. Once the time is up, we lose our visas and, depending on how far one has gotten in the green card application, one may or may not need to leave the country immediately. Scanning my apartment and mentally evaluating my possessions to decide which ones to lose and which ones to carry back to where I came from, I found myself quickly fall back to a spiral of depression. It had already been one day.
Meanwhile, on a positive note, I had not stopped receiving messages and calls from friends and coworkers, some of whom I honestly didn’t know very well. People connected with me online just to say they are sorry and that I didn’t deserve what happened to me. Coworkers messaged me to tell me they missed me. Friends called to check if I was okay and offered to arrange referrals for me. A collaborator from work, with whom I had only worked for a couple of months, called me the minute he heard the news, asked me for my resume, and forwarded to his contacts from three different companies. Feeling overwhelmed with joy and gratitude, I came to realize that the most valuable asset one gains in one’s career is not the title or the compensation, it’s the reputation one builds and the acknowledgment one earns in the eyes of one’s peers. It was thanks to this realization that I decided I didn’t really do anything wrong and that I was still very much employable. I just needed to get ready.
That night, I fumbled on my phone to find Headspace. (In my defense, it just had a very minimalist logo.) And for the first time in perhaps six months, I meditated again. At least I tried. As the guy’s soothing voice started to sink in, I saw the past couple of days reenacting in front of me, lingering, and finally, passing me.
Thursday, September 12
I went out to meet a friend for lunch. Having holed up in my studio apartment for the past two days, I was happy to go out and talk to someone in person again. (While exiting the building, I momentarily wondered if the concierge could tell that I had lost my job.) My friend worked at one of the largest tech companies in the world and had just referred me to a position internally. Between bites of soup dumplings, he tried to explain to me the focus areas of the interviews. As I was listening and eagerly nodding, the confidence that I had built up since the previous day gradually tumbled down because I came to realize not just how much I needed to study, but how many different areas I needed to know by heart. Back at home, I mechanically added more items to my study plan. Feeling tired, I wanted to take a nap. After a moment of hesitation, I went to make coffee instead.
Some time ago, I came across a book called Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. Although I had never gotten around to read it, I stumbled upon this quote from the book, which always managed to come to me in moments like this:
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said. “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
And so I did, starting from the top of the list.
Friday, September 13
I had my first call with a recruiter today. This was a company with which I had interviewed a while ago and although things did not work out then, I had somehow gotten the impression that I had at least impressed some of the interviewers. Talking to the recruiter while pacing around in my room, I was unreasonably nervous and overly apologetic for “bothering” them again. My voice was high pitched and I nodded profusely to no one. The recruiter ended the call by promising to check with the hiring manager if there was an open position for me and I responded by thanking her over and over again. After hanging up the phone, I sat down and felt like a loser.
Three days later, she would get back to me and tell me there was unfortunately none.
When the evening came, my parents called from China and asked the routine question if everything was all right. Without hesitation, I hid my layoff story from them and quickly averted the subject from me. I couldn’t tell them. There was no way.
Monday, September 16
Things started to happen fast. A friend of mine introduced me to a hiring manager, who, without an open position that fit my profile, introduced me internally to another manager, who swiftly scheduled a phone screen with me all on the same day. I was amazed and more than intrigued.
The manager called and I started by giving him a narrative of my experience, which I had been polishing over the weekend. Sure, I still needed practicing but at least my voice was no longer high pitched. The call ended with a promise of a technical phone screen. I was happy to get back in the game.
What I didn’t expect at the time was that, thanks to all the help that I had received in the previous week, soon enough, my calendar would be filled with these calls and screens so much so that I had to sometimes take two back to back with no break in between. Tired of waiting for something to happen, I was more than happy to be busy again, unaware of the stress and fatigue that was about to creep in.
Tuesday, September 17
It was almost midnight and, since 1 pm today, I had been working almost nonstoppingly on a take-home challenge which I was told should take around 4-6 hours. What happened was that my perfectionism kicked in. And soon enough, my insecurity too. Was I making an obvious mistake somewhere? Did I miss something from the instructions? Was my code too ugly? Was this enough documentation? I went back and forth on different methodologies and, when I finally allowed myself to go to bed later that night, I was still debating them in my sleep.
There was another reason that I was becoming obsessed. I realized early in the day that it had already been a week since my layoff, which meant I had used up the first week of my 60-day grace period. I stared at my calendar and mentally calculated by what day I should ideally have an onsite interview, by what day I should have an offer, and by what day I should freak out. The clock was ticking. I could not afford a break.
Wednesday, September 18
It was 6 pm and I was still working frantically on the same exercise that I practically redid today. Despite having slept fitfully the night before, I strangely did not feel a bit tired. Yet, I needed to make a decision. About a month ago, unbeknownst to my imminent layoff, I bought a ticket to see the opera Romeo and Juliet on the exact night. “Should I still go?” I debated internally. For one thing, I was obviously no longer in the mood. I bought the ticket not because I was necessarily a fan of opera (I had only seen one before) but because I was curious to learn more about this art form. Art - who still has time for it when one has to worry about unemployment? More practically, going meant not being able to finish the exercise today, which I really wanted to given that I would have more phone screens tomorrow. After having mentally debated for half an hour and found myself making no progress whatsoever, I slammed shut my laptop and got up to leave.
As soon as I stepped on the street in the early evening, I knew I had made the right decision. Having not left the apartment for another few days, I had missed the liveliness of the world outside. The opera house was situated in my favorite part of the city, whose dazzling light mingled playfully with the darkening shade of blue that was slowly canopying the street. I entered the grand building, climbed the elegant stairs, and sat down in my seat.
When Juliet burst into singing Je veux vivre dans ce rêve (I want to live in this dream), my anxiety faded, replaced by an overwhelming admiration for the artists’ perpetual and determined quest for perfection. I remember reading the principal ballet dancer David Hallberg’s autobiography A Body of Work and felt moved when he described how he slipped into the costume of a prior dancer in the historic Bolshoi Theatre, how he felt the weight that generations of dancers before him had carried in perfecting this role and this art form, and how the torch was now being passed to him. In short, he had found his mission and, while reading it at the time, I had been painfully aware that I hadn’t.
This is probably a good time to explain that, in a humorously ironic way, before I was laid off, I had been subconsciously waiting, almost hoping, for something serious like this to happen to me in order to shake me awake from the auto-pilot mode under which I had been secretly operating. Truthfully speaking, I had not been completely happy at work and hungry for something new. However, due to a bunch of practical reasons (most importantly, my immigration status), I had decided to stay, that is, until someone else made the decision for me.
I suppose this was why it hit me so hard when Juliet, in her youthful confidence and exuberance, fearlessly declared that she wanted to live in this dream-like rapture so much so that she was willing to risk her life for it because I, too, wanted to be that alive.
Later that night, I left the opera in a daze not so much because of the music itself, which, to be honest, I still needed more experience with, but because of a shift in perspective. I had decided that I would no longer treat this layoff as a setback. Instead, I would try my best to see it as an opportunity. Just as I had hoped, it had successfully shaken me awake. I just needed to stay that way.
Friday, September 20
My first technical phone screen had finally arrived and, despite my anxiety beforehand, I was surprised at how at ease I felt when talking through the problem and brainstorming the solutions with the interviewer. In fact, I missed doing it and I wanted more. I finished the interview not so much with confidence but with joy. An hour later, I received an invite to come onsite in a week. Looking at the email, I felt unreasonably happy. Yes, I had only passed the first round (my interview would go on to have two more rounds), but 10 days after being laid off, I knew the worst was behind me and I was now ready to bounce back.
Wednesday, September 25
After spending most of the prior week on recruiter screens and take-homes, the week had so far been filled with technical phone screens. Truthfully, I did not do well in all of them but that was not at all unexpected. In my earlier desperate attempt to cast a wide net, I asked for referrals to positions for which I was honestly not a good fit. Although I made sure to treat each opportunity seriously and tried to at least do my best, it was clear that I just didn’t fit the profile that some of the teams were looking for. On the other hand, for those that were indeed a good match, I was on a roll. With more first rounds turning into second rounds, my insecurity steadily disappeared and the balance was quickly restored. What started as a survival instinct to find a job as soon as possible and take the first one I could get had now become more and more like a real recruiting experience in which both the companies and I had equal bargaining power and I got to choose what I wanted in this exchange too.
Friday, September 27
I took a train to go to my first onsite interview. As the train traveled through the entire Bay Area, I was once again amused by how peculiar this place was and wondered for the hundredth time if I indeed fit in. I remembered listening to the podcast StartUp, in particular, this one episode where the legendary investor Chris Sacca explained to Alex Blumberg, the founder of Gimlet Media, that to be a successful startup founder, one needed to be really weird, like the Uber founder Travis Kalanick whose obsession with obtaining a goal propelled him to become one of the best Wii tennis players in the world and found the equally impressive Uber. As I was listening to the anecdote, I had to admit that I was, in fact, not at all like that. I didn’t have that kind of obsession, at least for neither business nor Wii sports. I liked to take time to do a single thing well but I had no intention to grow it. In fact, when it became too big, I got worried. When I first joined my prior company, it was in a whirlwind phase of hyper-growth. My PM once half-jokingly asked me why I didn’t look more excited when we were “literally sitting in a rocket ship.” The truth was I felt more excited when my code ran.
Three hours later, I finished the interview. It was smooth and amicable, but I was unable to gauge my performance. Sitting on the train back, I suddenly realized how tired I was after these past few weeks. Allowing myself a break, I set aside the studying materials that I was planning to read on the train and fired up the latest episode of Reply All. Trying hard to not laugh out loud while picturing Alex Goldman doing a Naruto Run in the studio, I felt strangely at ease with this uncertain state of things and even started to like it. Yes, I might or might not pass the interview. I might or might not need to find new companies to apply for. I might or might not lose my visa. But damn it, I was doing my best. I deserved to stop worrying.
Wednesday, October 2
I found out on Monday that I passed the onsite interview and was invited for the final round, which I finished on the day before. Feeling rather optimistic, I gave myself a break today and went to meet a former coworker of mine for lunch. We had worked together when I first joined the company more than four years ago and had spent many a late night together pulling our hair out hunting down pesky bugs. Those work products obviously didn’t matter anymore (even our codebase was deleted a long time ago), so what exactly was our legacy? It was a funny question to ask because one would be hard-pressed to call a significant chunk of my work legacy. For the remainder, they might have paved ways for future work inside the company, but what value did it add to the world outside? This was exactly the kind of question that threw me into an existential crisis a year ago and now a year later, I still didn’t have a good answer to it. At least, at the micro level, our work bounded us together, growing into friendships and promises of mutual support. I looked at my friend, hoping genuinely to work with him in the future again.
On my way home, I received an email delivering the news of my first offer. I stared at it for a while and started messaging my friends one by one.
Thursday, October 10
Realizing that it was exactly a month after my layoff, I jokingly messaged my friend saying that today was my one-month anniversary of losing my job. Moments later, He wrote back and called it the one-month anniversary of my new life.
Having finally finished all my interviews, I took a long walk in the city, reaching as far as Fort Mason. Sitting by the ocean and watching the cargo ships go by, I felt finally relaxed. I took out the book that I had not opened in a month, found the page where I had left off, and fell right back to the story.