Laid Off Diaries 1: Welp, that's life

All opinions expressed in this post my own, and not represent the opinions of Angi.

First post of 2026! I wish I was coming here with some of my more fun technical explorations, but instead I’ve been laid off.

Queue the music.

Background

This morning, around 8:04am, I was informed that me and everyone on the zoom call was getting let go. This was partially shocking, as it was a standard meeting that was used as a RIF announcement, and on the other hand it really wasn’t. I’ve been trying to be a good colleague and refer people I know who are out of work and in doing so I have been pretty aware of the lack of open positions and hiring for engineering the past couple months.

I do want to say, as everyone has zoom call layoff horror stories, that I appreciate how Kris Boon our VP(?) and Jeff Kipp our CEO handled the call. I don’t believe it’s professional to speak in detail, but I will say I appreciate how they didn’t pretend to be my friend or the ones cut up by their decision, and that their end of employment offerings are to my accounts very kind.

Job hunt anxieties

But, this doesn’t really make me feel better :(

My wife and I have been doing financal planning to get into a house in the next couple years, and this definately throws a wrench in things.

With severance, cost cutting in our budget, savings, and unemployment we’ve got about a year of runway. This, to some extent, is supposed to make me feel better, but it’s really not easing my job hunt anxieties. I’ve been seeing a rising number of people in long term unemployment and I really don’t want to be laid off even more then 6 months.

What next?

It’s quite funny that I just freshened last week on my old job hunting habbits from earlier in 2025. If you wanna read that, go for it but here’s my plan to land my next role!

Apply Apply Apply

Current plan is 10 applications a day, roughly sorted into 5 from Welcome to the Jungle, and 5 from Linkedin. If I’ve managed to score a reference or someone has handed in my resume, that counts for one and fits in a referrals catagory.

Looking for Software Engineer II ~ Senior Software Developer roles, preferable ones with a hybrid option in Fort Collins, but full remote is fine and full in office in denver will be a if I’m desparate enough :/

Hearth and Hammer

Next is going to be skills development and going back to “the forge” of old interview books. Software Engineer’s Guidebook, Cracking the Coding Interview, and The System Design Interview by Alex Xhu will all be on rotation, and I’ll see if I can read through all of them again in this period (depending on how long it lasts).

After that, I will probably crack out the leetcode, and maybe some practice interview questions.

Conclusion

Thanks for tuning in to my little blog reader! I’m wrapped up for this post but maybe I’ll make some more posts with time

- Hoolagin