onprema

I got laid off, then I got another job

On February 27th I got a call from an organization leader at Autodesk. I was on paternity leave, on a walk with our new son, when I saw an unfamiliar phone number from the bay area appear on my phone. I was told that I was being laid off, and I would have 24 hours to do some stuff on Workday before I would lose access to all my ties to the company.

I started working for Autodesk in July 2020. Over the 4.5 years I was there, I was given the title "Principal Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure" and was a key contributor to Autodesk's data platform infrastructure, automation and tooling. There was a big reorganization in 2023, where a bunch of leaders left and were replaced by some engineering leaders from another company. It was a stressful work environment at times, and morale was usually very low.

Another infrastructure team started to form, based in India. Although it was nice to get some extra support (our team was very lean for the amount of services we owned), it felt like there was more and more being invested in building teams in India. Perhaps a canary for layoffs coming.

When I got the news, the feeling in my heart was more relief than it was sadness. I took it as a clear sign that it was time for me to move on. But to what?

As mentioned, I was on paternal leave. I've heard people tell you that becoming a parent changes you: it gives you a profound purpose, and you become the guardian and provider for this little baby that you love. It's all true. So I resolved on the idea of soaking up the time with our son, and looking for new opportunities in the meantime.

I also played around with ideas of starting my own business. My ideas were scattered, and I didn't come up with anything that seemed feasible. The closest thing I got to that was a web application I built called What Grows Well -- A website that helps people determine what food they can grow, and how to grow them.

It was a fun project, and I still might pick it up again later, but based on our family's goals, it made more sense to try to get another full-time job. So I start applying for jobs, starting in March.

Spoiler alert, I got an offer (two, actually) in mid-July. It took about 5 months of searching to sign a deal. This whole ordeal was actually a lot of work, and quite draining.

  1. The job market is incredibly competitive. Companies can be very selective on which engineers that even want to consider for the role.
  2. With floods of applicants, companies need to use automation to filter out good candidates. These systems, like everything else, is flawed. The best candidates can slip through the cracks because the resume parser didn't catch a specific string, so they don't even get noticed. Under-qualified candidates get noticed because they have dense resumes that list a ton of technologies that they might not even be familiar with. It's a mess.
  3. Since, the job market is so competitive, I needed to do a lot of studying, practicing and building. For me, that meant learning about machine learning, security, Kubernetes, Linux, dbt, Airflow, Go... Gosh, there's so much to learn. Fortunately, I enjoy this. But I sometimes wondered if I'm spending my time and energy in the right places.
  4. A lot of companies that I got responses from required me to do some coding puzzles. Leetcode type of stuff. I never practice these and I don't find them very interesting, so I had to draw a line in the sand, and basically forfeit any opportunity that required such puzzles.
  5. Being a parent is a full-time job in itself. Actually, more than that. It's awesome, and it's hard. Especially if there are sleeping troubles, which there tends to be for me. Balancing parenthood, relationships, taking care of the house, and trying to find a job. It took a toll on me, to the point where I actually went to an urgent care facility because I was getting awful headaches (due to stress, they suggested).

After 5 months, I ended up getting two offers on the same day, and recently signed with Astronomer, where I will be working as a Senior Solutions Architect.

If I could give one piece of advice to anyone who is looking for a job, it would be use your network. When someone first told me this, I was like, what network?

If you haven't already, make a post on LinkedIn telling your story and what you are looking for. It took me a minute to get over my pride and let "the world" know that I'm looking for a new job. This act ended up to me getting offers. Tell your friends and family (yes, that is part of your network). Post in your Discord channels, Twitter, or whatever communities you are part of.

There are other "hacks" that you can try that might be helpful:

Other than that, I would just say to keep your head up and stay consistent. There is a lot of waiting, which can be unnerving. Do your best, and surrender the fruits of your actions. Get support wherever you can, keep building up your skills, and share your work even if it feels like no one will see it or care about it.

#personal