It's been a long time since I've written anything. As I've recently suffered the impact of a workforce reduction, I'll be documenting not only my job searching process and results, but also little bits of things I'm working on and learning, as well as problems I'm solving for practice to stay sharp. I'm going to be writing about my experiences as a software engineer and the things I've learned along the way. I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy writing it.
I may also delve into some off-topic things like cooking and my daughter's various activities as summer rolls around and school ends. I'm looking forward to the time I'll have to spend with her and the things we'll be able to do together. I'm also looking forward to the time I'll have to spend on my own projects and learning new things. I'm excited to see what the future holds for me and my family.
As the company was kind enough to allow me to keep my laptop, the first order of business was re-setting up my dev machine after it was factory reset.
The next item on the agenda is/was updating my resume, my personal site, and linkedin profiles. I want to get everything up-to-date and presentable for any opportunities that may arise unexpectedly. I also cleaned up unused or obsolete repositories from my personal github account that I had set up doing various things at work, like creating websites to test features or to validate bugs.
I joined Rands leadership slack at the advice of a colleague to follow some channels around the industry, including the #jobs channel as well a few other slack groups that I've been a part of in the past. I've also been looking at job postings on LinkedIn and Indeed, and have been reaching out to recruiters and former coworkers to see if they know of any opportunities.
Last but not least is to stay sharp and continue to improve my techincal skills. As someone who was in several different teams at Netlify, I did not gain mastery over any one stack, and split my work between Go, JavaScript and Ruby. I'd like to begin to identify a "primary" language of the three (Go!), while also keeping the others passable. This means continuing to build projects on the side, do the Leetcode grind, and read up on best practices.
With any luck this phase will soon be but a happy memory. I know the job market is challenging, but with perseverance and a little luck, I'm confident I'll find something that's a good fit for me. I'm excited to see what the future holds.