Tech Unemployment: How Setbacks Became Opportunities

The time has come to share my experience on how to “survive” without a recurring income from a full-time job. While each situation is unique, my purpose is to convey a message that will help you be prepared and effectively face a circumstance that many of us might encounter at some point: being without active employment.

It’s important to remember that this situation doesn’t depend 100% on us. External decisions, beyond our control, can result in the loss of that recurring income we count on. Although this article primarily focuses on unexpected job loss, the advice can also apply if you voluntarily decide to leave your current job.

The Reality Check

After 9 months, I managed to re-enter a new company (thanks to FuzzyFlags) to continue my professional growth and work on new projects. The journey here wasn’t easy and represented a real reality check that I had to face for several weeks before being ready to start applying for new vacancies.

In 2022-2023, when I was still working, job offers were abundant, both from Latin American and global companies. Even recruiters frequently approached me. It was tempting, as offers came from interesting companies with better benefits and attractive projects. However, I rejected them or didn’t pay attention, as I felt comfortable in my job at that time.

A thought that I now recognize as erroneous crossed my mind: “If at some point I resign or look for another job, there won’t be a problem, as I’m receiving many offers.” This overconfidence would become important later on.

The Unexpected Day

The day came when, without warning, I was laid off from the company. I didn’t inquire about the reasons, I simply went through the exit process. At that moment, two thoughts dominated my mind:

1. I felt a great relief, as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. In my article Overcome Burnout in Software Development: Key Tips, I share how I felt about this, and this change was a big step in overcoming that situation.
2. I saw an opportunity to take a significant break, recover mentally, but knowing that at some point I would have to look for a job again, because money isn’t infinite.

As the days passed, I realized it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Comparing my current self with the one from 9 months ago, I feel really good mentally and physically. Both aspects were in a bad state and needed to hit rock bottom to improve.

The Recovery Plan

I dedicated the first weeks to completely disconnecting from everything related to programming. I didn’t want to interact with anything on the subject. I focused on gradually preparing myself to create a plan for the year 2024 that was about to begin.

Once I felt prepared and could visualize how to approach the plan, I divided it into two parts from a macro perspective:

1. Improve physically
2. Improve mentally to reacquire knowledge effectively and permanently

I decided to start in that order, as improving physically would drive me to improve mentally in parallel.

The Exercise Challenge

Implementing step 1 meant exercising “recurrently”. Not every day, but I wanted to keep it very present, as I had gone years without physical activity, which had contributed to my recent burnout.

This is where the parallel mental work comes in. Implementing a new habit in daily life isn’t easy, especially when it comes to exercise. There are many barriers to overcome to achieve regular exercise.

The key is to be consistent, have discipline, and start small. You shouldn’t demand too much of yourself in the first weeks, because you’re more likely to fail and give up. It’s better to have small achievements, complete short sessions, and reward yourself for it.

Getting Back to Programming

As the days went by, I reincorporated myself into the world of programming: reading resources, practicing, etc. My approach was to put myself in the situation as if I were starting to program from “scratch”. Although I wasn’t really starting from zero, I wanted to revisit the fundamentals of the concepts I already knew to strengthen my foundations. From there, I could continue programming and regain interest and curiosity, recovering that hunger to learn and build new things.

Job Search: A New Reality

After a few months, I felt ready to look for a job again and started applying for vacancies that seemed interesting to me. However, days went by and I didn’t receive any response. This seemed strange to me, especially when compared to the time when job offers came more than usual, as I mentioned before. Although I wasn’t excessively worried, it did catch my attention how different the situation was.

The Economic Factor

This is where an economic issue comes into play that can explain my dilemma. The rise in interest rates in the United States in recent months had been increasing, which can eventually affect the unemployment rate by reducing consumption and investment, cooling the economy, and slowing job growth.

Although in the short term a strong labor market can resist these effects, and the unemployment rate may not increase immediately, these changes had already been in effect for several months. When reviewing unemployment rate data, they had indeed increased compared to previous periods.

This economic reality is one of the possible answers to what I was experiencing compared to other years. I had to adapt to the situation and move forward with what I had at my disposal.

The Importance of Saving

Something I want to emphasize greatly from this experience, and which I strongly recommend always applying, is: save and invest your money. You never know when you might face these types of situations, so you always have to be prepared for the worst.

I assure you that if I hadn’t saved in previous years, my experience would have been completely different. Always, in any activity you do, don’t spend it all. Invest a part. This topic could be extensive in itself, but at a minimum, save a percentage of your income and put it to work. You have to be prepared for the worst in the future.

Although I didn’t experience a life-or-death situation, I thank my past self for having made these key decisions. This allowed me to face this situation in the calmest way possible and turn it into a learning experience.

The Battle Against Oneself

Starting in April, when I began applying to companies, a stage began where I would mainly face myself. This was due to mental fatigue and negative thoughts that arose from the lack of responses or results from companies.

Having lived through this, I now better understand the comments I read in forums or on YouTube from people going through similar situations. I can’t imagine what these people must be feeling in their particular contexts. The only thing that is really in our power to overcome this situation and come out victorious is:

• Consistency
• Patience
• Luck
• Having saved “enough”

As I mentioned before, having good savings is what will give us peace of mind and tranquility in our daily lives. This is vital, as to get out of this situation we must be mentally well to be constant and not give up.

The Action Plan

Having resolved the savings issue, the next step is to be consistent. We must move forward no matter what and stick to the plan. Progress, study, read, improve, advance as a programmer (or in your area), show your work to the world so they know what you’re capable of and can achieve the goal you’ve set for yourself.

This plan obviously won’t show results overnight. That’s why I mentioned the issue of patience, which plays an important role here. What we have planned to move forward won’t be perfect and won’t turn out exactly as we imagine. Obviously, we want to obtain the result we envision, but many issues are not within our control. We must have that patience with ourselves to be able to move forward with the plan despite the setbacks we may encounter along the way. We will receive many, if not too many rejections from companies, projects, etc. This is where patience plays a crucial role.

And last but not least, luck, whether we like it or not, always plays a part in any situation.

The Final Result

To close this story, the plan I had from the beginning was to be able to get the next job position in a company. This took me 4 months of constant effort, doing almost the same thing every day to improve and maintain a balance in life:

• Exercise
• Study, create test projects
• Learn new technologies

Finally, I managed to reach my next challenge: starting to work at FuzzyFlags. I’m very excited to return to this routine, which isn’t bad in itself, but now I’ll be able to apply better processes learned previously, as well as the knowledge I acquired during this “mini-retirement”.

Looking at the end of this experience that I wanted to share, I realize that, without having planned it, it was a mini-retirement (which lasted a bit longer than expected 😅) that I had wanted to apply for a long time but couldn’t find the right moment. I read about this concept of mini-retirement in Tim Ferriss’s book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. Basically, it suggests taking a good amount of rest or vacation time at certain stages of your life, instead of working your whole life “without a mini-retirement”. This allows you to return to your projects or ideas with much more motivation and energy.

Ferriss suggests taking “mini-retirements” throughout your life rather than waiting until traditional retirement age. This involves incorporating regular breaks and vacations to maintain energy and motivation

All that’s left is to thank FuzzyFlags for the opportunity and to continue growing and sharing experiences in this area that I’m so passionate about. I will continue learning and building great products.