the post-layoff job hunt

as some of you may know, my previous company went through a major layoff. i was part of it — and for the past two and a half months, i’ve been actively searching for a new job.

but i’ve decided to stop that, and dedicate my time to something different — becoming a goose farmer. you see, geese are just better than computers. geese give you eggs. when’s the last time a computer gave you something you could eat?

jokes aside, this post is about my experience trying to find a job after the layoff.

the video interview saga

so, i applied to this one company. their job posting was a Notion page — pretty neat, i thought. i read through their requirements and company story. the description was a bit vague, but the culture (at least on paper) seemed decent. so i applied.

the application process was simple: send them an email with your resume. so i did.

two weeks later, they responded. they wanted me to send a video of myself explaining my experience and past projects — basically, what’s already in my resume.

now, i’m not a fan of companies that make candidates do asynchronous interviews like this. if you’re not even willing to talk to your potential hires, that’s a red flag to me. but still, i made the video — twenty minutes long — and sent it over.

a month later...

a month and a half later, i got another email from them. they wanted me to complete an “assessment.” at that point, i had completely forgotten they existed.

so i ignored the email and trashed it.

the company, by the way, does “AI insurance.” whatever that means. i’m sure their pitch to investors was incredible. the kind of pitch that makes you wonder if money has any real meaning anymore.

my point is, this kind of nonsense is becoming common. no interview, no conversation — just endless tasks and delays. the audacity is impressive, in a tragic way.

the pattern

this pattern isn’t unique. across multiple companies, i’ve seen the same behavior: vague job postings, endless assessments, and automated rejections.

and honestly, if any HR person is reading this — if you send me a link to an “assessment,” i’ll send you back a zip bomb.

that aside, there’s also the ridiculousness of being rejected by companies whose entire product could be built in a week. we’ve all been there — you send your resume, maybe even write a custom cover letter, and a day later: automated rejection. nice.

the real challenge

the hard part isn’t just finding a job. it’s finding one that’s worth it. a place that actually does interesting work.

in my case, because of location limitations, i’m automatically disqualified from a huge chunk of the jobs i apply for. fun times.

some advice

if you like working in startups like i do, here’s my best advice:

• build genuinely impressive projects
• get visibility — ideally on X (Twitter)
• be in the US (yeah, i know)
• preferably in SF — and if you’re there, all you need is Claude Code

surprisingly, frontend devs are still in high demand. no one is more shocked than me. but to be fair, most startups just offload their backend to Supabase anyway.

and no, Leetcode doesn’t matter. i was never asked a single DSA question — only design and architecture stuff.

a dumb idea

another thought i had — building impressive projects takes time. what if unemployed engineers collaborated on projects together? it’d look great on a resume, and it’d show you can work with others on something meaningful.

then again... maybe that’s just called open source. lmao.

the joy of programming

on another note, these past few weeks, programming feels more fun. it’s not rushed anymore. i can work on interesting things. i’m not thinking about KPIs or whatever the fuck else. i can just work on genuinely fun problems, juggle between projects that excite me, and wake up actually excited to build stuff.

i can experiment freely again — i can write more haskell, maybe even learn lean (though it looks a bit intimidating, not gonna lie). programming feels like it did when i first started — playful, exploratory, and deeply satisfying.

eliminating ai tools from my workflows

i’ve also decided to cut the only ai coding tool i was using before. now, i know people are obsessed with these things — claude code, codex, opencode, cursor, v0, whatever else. there are hundreds of them by now.

personally, the only one i ever used for more than a day was claude code — but i stopped using it too. it’s less fun. you end up depending on it. and i don’t want that.

and no, you’re not missing out by not using these tools. unless your idea of “missing out” is shipping slop faster. anything meaningful, you can (and should) build yourself.

besides, these ai tools drive me insane when they get things wrong. so basically, i’d be paying a subscription or burning api credits just to get rage-baited. no thanks.

what’s next

as for me — i’m done with job hunting for now. it’s boring. i’ll probably focus on freelancing and launching my own products (some already have paid users, actually).

internet money is too easy, y’all.

that’s all for now.