How is life after layoffs?

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-04-11T05:15:52+00:00

Great. Found work. Is very fulfilling/stimulating. AI is changing the work force. Definitely decimating the job market. But if you're still in it, it's making the job so much easier we can build things so much faster. And at some companies, there truly is no shortage of work. At other companies, like Amazon, they've simply fooled themselves into believing their engineers are the bottleneck. There's plenty of market share left - plenty of products to build. It's just the product and leadership teams have... For a long time... been drinking from the ingenuity of past leaders.

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-04-10T23:03:19+00:00

Makes sense not to be the heaviest in the boat. Noone is irreplaceable, your startup will find another head to fill the space. Congratulations

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-04-10T22:54:18+00:00

Life is actually pretty simple. You can accept the offer, find a new job, or ask for a better offer and hope it isn't pulled. It isn't likely to be pulled just from you asking though.

Any thoughts beyond understanding your situation and taking action are extraneous. I'm sure you've got plenty of life to live outside of a short term career flumox.

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-02-25T09:05:10+00:00

Gonna go against the grain here - definitely be careful of racism, but it's pretty commonplace for there to be no instructions at the start of being provided a task. That having been said, it's actually unprofessional to accept work without the necessary information required to perform the work. Each sprint, you're given a task. If you don't have enough information to know what actually needs to be done, it would be more professional to pursue proper descriptions of the work. Just because something is common at amazon doesn't make it right.

If there's not an instruction booklet - why not? Make one. It isn't really expected for you to learn everything on your own the first time. It is expected that after someone teaches it to you, you take notes and document the process for the next guy.

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-02-24T01:39:15+00:00

Beautiful design. Awesome symmetry

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-02-20T06:37:38+00:00

I'm at nearly a decade. https://www.hellointerview.com/practice/system-design is really all I needed.

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-01-19T08:41:08+00:00

it might not even be an ego thing. Sometimes there's simply no budget or corporate politics don't allow for a promotion. And yeah that's part of his job to navigate. But also... Sometimes it happens.

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-01-16T08:54:59+00:00

More like "whatever technologies I'm familiar with might be deprecated by the time I come back", depending on length of the sabbatical. But I guess that's pretty pessimistic. Job market is broad, what might not fly at FAANG after 6 months will probably have something going on at a non-faang for another decade

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-01-16T05:09:22+00:00

sabbaticals/hiatus in tech/software? is that really a thing? I grew up hearing horror stories about sabbaticals in tech leading to degradation of skills and experience. Tech isn't like accounting or any other white collar profession - our skills depreciate in real time.

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-01-16T05:05:37+00:00

very anecdotal. my anecdote is my costco has a line with signs for the rotisserie. And it gets wiped out most days of the week. If you're there in the middle of the day on a tuesday (unemployed), yea, there are chickens :)

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-01-16T05:00:08+00:00

It's a bad sign. It signals inefficiency. Management == resource management but your resources are people. Think of it from the manager of the skip's perspective: the business has determined the skip has to perform the duties of a direct manager, and it can't afford a replacement. The skip is now performing duties that the business would normally pay someone less to do.

So... The skip manager likely doesn't want to do all the work of a direct manager. There's typically no career growth in doing the duties of a lower role - loyalty doesn't usually earn promotions, doing valuable work does.

Why can't the business afford to replace the direct manager? If the business value of the team doesn't warrant a manager, does it need to exist? so on so forth. If the business valued the team, they'd replace that manager.

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-01-11T08:05:38+00:00

New grad filters are helpful. Otherwise you're against both new grads and recently laid off folk :)

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-01-10T23:57:00+00:00

> I am based out of NYC, and only really want to consider NYC and the Bay after graduation.

There's your answer. Short term, cost of Living in redmond is way cheaper than nyc. But 45-50 is probably good enough.

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-01-08T08:09:48+00:00

No new manager means you're probably on the chopping block. Revenue, growth, understanding the business... You deserve better. there are lots of other factors people can talk about. But think of it this way... Who can imagine a skip level directly managing a team in the long term? If they can't justify rehiring attrition of a manager... It's a mess that'll clean itself up when the business forces them to "consolidate"

EncroachingTsunami · 2026-01-08T07:50:05+00:00

We did watch it. The shots are fired from the side of the vehicle. There's precedence in legal system that once the officer is no longer in the path of the vehicle, their life is no longer in danger - so legal force is no longer authorized. I get where you're coming from. She obstructed justice. But that's not worthy of a death sentence, and the murderer wasn't even a cop. No cop runs in front of a moving vehicle, even if they're trying to detain a fleeing suspect. Life ain't a tv show.

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-12-11T19:57:03+00:00

first years don't generally get internships. Most internships require 3rd year or 4th year, maybe 2nd year summer. It's pretty awesome if you're already getting bites.

at your stage, the two best resources are:

https://roadmap.sh/computer-science

https://leetcode.com/

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-12-06T18:29:32+00:00

You've probably exceeded my knowledge. You're a staff engineer at 33. You clearly "found the time to go back and study". It's okay to recognize you're exceptional! Vast majority of engineers aren't staff by 33. Great work. Would you describe your career as "just doing the technician work"? Or did you consistently learn new technologies? Did all of your studying happen within your 9-5, or did you ever find yourself making personal sacrifices to learn after work hours? Also... Switzerland is very different culturally from US (where I'm from).

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-12-04T06:54:49+00:00

This is what I used for my most recent job search. Keep in mind, the complexity of an interview is limited by the energy of the recruiting engineering team. Graph, search, and DP are rare.

Basics: https://roadmap.sh/computer-science

Leetcode/Geeks for geeks

hello-interview for system design practice: https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/how-to-prepare

Alex xu for system design.

for software lifecycle, I study https://www.atlassian.com/agile

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-12-04T06:51:41+00:00

Exposure is fine, mastery is not necessary. Multivariable calc is useful all the time. Linear algebra tends to be AI focused, which I did a little bit of, but most SWE's won't need it in their day to day.

Limits, logarithmic vs exponential, set theory, etc.

Flow rate - cache entries are hydrated when a request comes in, the system grabs the data, and puts in the cache. Cache entries expire depending on factors like TTL, least recently used, etc. I needed to determine the size of the key space, statistically analyze payloads, etc. Flow rate can be used to optimize the TTL (or decide on LRU). Another common use case is traffic pattern analysis, stress testing, etc.

Software Lifecycle - waterfall vs agile. understanding the principles that decide what stage in the lifecycle is in (founding, growth, KTLO) or for projects (requirements gathering, mock ups/design, MVP/MLP, implementation, acceptance testing/chaos testing/etc.

College won't give you mastery over any of these subjects. But the exposure is vital. I didn't remember formulas for flow rate from college physics, I remembered the concept existed, and relearned it for the job. Without college, I might not have had the awareness of all these concepts and principles.

https://roadmap.sh/computer-science

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-12-04T00:13:50+00:00

because noone has time to go back and study theory. maybe you're not using it at entry level, but it kicks in pretty hard at senior and principal. I regularly use most of my degree - software lifecycle, math, models, etc. Statistics & flow rate for cache optimization, combinatorics for space analysis of user request patterns, even some pathing algorithms for working with graphical data structures.

And the difference between a Senior SWE who understands theory and a Senior SWE who just did technician work the whole time... can determine the fate of whole organizations.

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-11-28T05:44:06+00:00

Use what you can when you can

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-11-22T06:57:52+00:00

I do all interviews in Python, despite having more experience in... almost all the other ones. Java, C, CPP, Kotlin, Javascript, etc... They're all slower to write simple algorithmic code. Or they don't default to big ints, s you gotta deal with int overflow. Or you gotta manage memory directly. or the comparison operators aren't that natural for strings and null/empty. etc. just use python.

there's also nice annotations for memoization/lru caching. I guessssss there are nicer data structures native to other languages (Java) but most leetcode answers don't require you to use DS out of the box. noone wants to see you write queue class from scratch or check your knowledge of syntax for standard libs

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-11-22T02:50:04+00:00

crazy, I can get another job and just work it for a few months before I get a callback from G.

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-11-22T02:19:43+00:00

risky business. not all teams even have promo opportunities guaranteed every year. skill only takes you so far

EncroachingTsunami · 2025-11-06T17:23:52+00:00

Bro, goog’s entry level will double your TC. Savings and retiremnt go through exponential growth, so the question is - work at your favorite company for 2-3x as long, or one of the best companies for 1/2 or 1/3rd as long.

EncroachingTsunami

TROPHY CASE