I am Not Layoff Proof

A little less than four years into my career. That is how long I made it before experiencing my first round of layoffs. The event was exactly like I have seen it described in the tens of blog posts I have read from people experiencing layoffs. Random email, "join the meeting now". Stomach drops and your heart rate goes through the roof. Something along the lines of, "Unfortunately you are being laid off". A few more words after that about insurance and severance and done. Signed out of everything and the laptop locks.

At least give me a chance to commit my changes...

Here I am a month later, still wondering why me? While I can sit here and tell myself it's likely a finance and funding issue like many startups face, and I was one of the unlucky ones. At the end of the day, I didn't make myself layoff proof. I survived a round or two of layoffs previously. This probably gave me an invalid sense of security. What was different this time?

I wasn't at the top of my game. Weeks before, the entire engineering team got access to start using Claude Code. It was a game changer. People instantly became extremely effective with it, moving faster than ever. I wasn't one of those people. It took me time to ramp up, and I also hadn't used it outside of work like others. I love writing code and solving problems and was in the mindset of "I don't want to replace what I love doing". For the past six months I've basically been tuning out the AI world for the sake of sanity and peace, but that was a mistake. I should have at least tried things beyond Copilot attached to my IDE.

So here I am now, a month on from my first (hopefully only) layoff. I have reflected and have been improving my weaknesses with all my free time. It's been enjoyable. Claude Code is crazy.