He started looking in June, when the layoffs began. Shortly after, he declined a retention agreement for personal reasons, planning to leave quickly. The market was not the one he had navigated in 2021. He was let go at the beginning of October with a decent severance.
Then the search proper: well over fifty interviews — phone calls, video calls, in-person — and hundreds of applications. He was rejected at the finish line more than a dozen times. He had prepared himself to accept a pay cut.
Instead, two verbal offers landed on the same day. He preferred one; it would not negotiate. So he took the other offer to the first and negotiated hard. The result was a 25% raise over his old job.
He wrote that he had learned a lot from the mess, and that he was out here cheering for everyone still in it.