Today, April 27, marks exactly one month since I was told my job was over. Looking back, the signs were there - when the mass layoffs started and good people began disappearing, it was hard not to read it as a signal that nobody was safe, including me. And yet, when the moment actually came, it still landed differently than I expected. That gap between knowing it is possible and having it happen to you is where the shock lives. Do not be surprised by it. It does not mean you were naive or unprepared. It means you are human.
The first week is the hardest part, and it is worth saying that plainly so you do not interpret the fog as weakness. Your mind is processing a real loss - not just income, but structure, identity, purpose, and the daily rhythm of being somewhere that needed you. Give yourself a few days before demanding anything from yourself. That is not laziness. That is the necessary cost of absorbing something difficult.
The Weight You Are Carrying Alone Is Too Heavy
Before anything else - before the CV, before the LinkedIn updates, before the plan - talk to someone. Your spouse, a close friend, a sibling, a parent. Whoever is in your corner. Not because they will solve it, but because carrying this kind of anxiety in silence compounds it. The mind left alone with uncertainty tends to catastrophize. A conversation - even a short one where you just say “this is hard and I am not sure what comes next” - releases pressure that would otherwise build.
The people who love you want to know. And telling them is not burdening them. It is letting them be there for you, which is something they want to do.
This is not a detour from solving the problem. It is part of solving it. A clear mind, a supported mind, works better.
Your Body Knows Before Your Brain Does
At some point in those early weeks, do something physical. Go for a run. Lift something heavy. Take a long walk without your phone. It might feel like the least productive thing you could do when you have a problem this large sitting in front of you. It is actually one of the most productive.
There is something about physical movement that cuts through the mental noise. The realization that things would eventually be okay - that this was a problem and not a catastrophe - often does not come from sitting and thinking harder. It comes from moving, from breaking a sweat, from getting out of the space where the problem lives. Your body processes stress in ways your brain cannot shortcut. Let it work.
Define the Problem Before You Try to Solve It
At some point - maybe after a week, maybe after two - the engineer brain will reassert itself. And when it does, the most useful thing you can do is resist the urge to start executing immediately. The instinct is to fire off applications, spray your CV everywhere, update everything at once. That energy is valuable, but it needs direction first.
Good engineers know that a poorly defined problem leads to wasted work. This is no different.
Start by getting honest about who you are at this point in your career. After years in the field you have accumulated real data about yourself - what you are genuinely strong at, what energizes you, what you find draining, what kinds of teams and problems you do your best work inside. That self-knowledge is not a soft thing. It is the most important input to the search that follows.
What domain do you belong to? What kind of company actually needs what you are best at? What does a role look like where you would be contributing at your ceiling rather than working below it? These questions narrow the field in a way that makes every subsequent action more effective. A targeted application to the right place beats ten unfocused ones sent to the wrong ones.
Take the time to look hard at your skills. Some will be sharper than you realize. Others may need refreshing. Knowing the difference is part of defining the problem well.
Your Job Now Is Finding a Job
Once the problem is defined, the work begins - and it is real work. It deserves the same discipline and consistency you brought to the job you just left.
Update your CV. Not a cosmetic pass - a genuine rethink of how you are presenting your experience and what it says about the value you bring. Open yourself to opportunities on every relevant platform. Reach out to your professional network directly and personally, not with a mass broadcast but with real messages to people who know your work. Former colleagues, managers, collaborators - these people are often the shortest path to the next opportunity, because they already know what you can do.
Treat your calendar like you are employed. Set hours. Have a rhythm. The discipline of showing up to the search, even on days when nothing moves, is what gets you through the long middle stretch.
And plan for that long middle stretch. This can take months. That is not a sign that something is wrong with you or your search. It is the nature of a careful, targeted search in a technical field. Companies move slowly. Processes have steps. Decisions take time. If you go in expecting a quick resolution and it does not come, the wait becomes demoralizing. If you go in expecting months and it takes less - that is a bonus.
Patience here is not passivity. You can be patient and persistent at the same time. Keep the applications moving. Keep the conversations alive. Keep refining. But do not interpret the absence of immediate results as failure.
This Is Another Problem in Life
You have solved hard problems before. Problems that, at the start, seemed larger than they turned out to be. Problems that required you to stay in them longer than felt comfortable, to iterate, to adjust, to keep going without being sure of the outcome.
This is one of those problems. It is solvable. You have done hard things before. You will do this one too.
The fog of the first week will lift. The clarity of what to do next will come. The right opportunity exists - finding it is simply a matter of doing the work, systematically, over time, without giving up.
And if you are reading this again someday because it has happened again - you already know you got through it once. You will get through it again.