Today, I was cut in layoffs. I’m so gutted because I loved this company, & my team was the best; I’ll miss my team most.
Now, as I look ahead, I’m searching for a staff/principal role where I can help other developers level-up through mentoring, tooling/infra, architecture, & improving DX. I’d love to work with a company contributing to open source & even to the #PHP programming language itself.
Update (27 Feb 2024): Thanks, everyone! I’ve accepted an offer. Please see update in thread below.
I’d like to close the loop on this and thank everyone who shared the above post and offered support.
I’ve accepted an offer, and next week, I will be starting a new job.
In my 25+ year career, this was the first time I’ve ever been laid off. It was humbling and the most stressful three-and-a-half months of my life.
I know many others are going through similar experiences, and I was privileged to have resources and savings to keep me afloat during this time. (1/2)
I know others are not so fortunate, and many have been out of work far longer than I was. I cannot imagine how I would have kept it together much longer.
Give everyone a healthy measure of grace. It’s rough out there.
If I can be of help to anyone (e.g., networking/contacts, advice for resumes/interviews/job offers, referrals, etc.), feel free to ask. I will try to help where I can. (2/2)
@ramsey Wow gosh, glad you could find an offer that suits you!
I'm looking for the same kind of opportunity right now, and having a hard time finding a fit, even though I haven't been laid off (I actually resigned 4 years ago after 3 burn-outs in one of the most known Symfony-related company because of issues with its upper management, and been a freelancer since).
I hope your new adventure will go well and that you found peace with this harsh layoff! 🕊
@ramsey Congratulations. That's an excellent news 😌
Please share more detailed information and your experience.
1. How and where have you searched for a new position?
2. Did you search for a job in a US-based company only?
3. What was working and what was not (networking, GitHub projects, being an open-source developer)?
4. How much time do you spend daily or weekly? Which activity took most of the time?
5. Did you get helpful feedback from recruiters? What did they say?
Thanks 💪
3/ Not my experience (and yes, I know I'm a bit weird, but so are you). FB 1000% hired me on my OSS chops, and I didn't even touch anything vaguely PHP related for my first two years there. (Granted, that changed...)
Yahoo and Mongo were slightly different stories as I had inside contacts there, so harder to draw a clean line, but FB was pretty focused on the OSS stuff IIRC.
Environment today is VERY different though. It's not the salad days of our youth, brother.
@pollita @ramsey @kniziol I think the BIG difference today is that most mature tech companies are *really* numbers-driven.
Unless the company is explicitly developer-focussed (e.g. Microsoft), doing OSS work during office hours that doesn't directly benefit the company's bottom line is unwise.
Working on Psalm negatively impacted my career for a number of years, even though the expertise I acquired ultimately got me my current job.
hello Ben
I'm so happy to read this
congrats to you an to the lucky company that hired you
@ramsey I'm glad you've found something, and sorry the search has been such a hard thing.
Onwards to brighter things I hope though! 💖
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