This “as-told-to” essay is based on a conversation with Clair Todd, a 40-year-old job seeker from New Hampshire, who worked as a site reliability engineer for Oracle until being laid off in 2023. Business Insider has verified her employment with documentation. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.
I started at Oracle in January 2020 as a site reliability engineer. In November 2023, I started hearing that my Oracle coworkers were getting pulled into Zoom meetings and told they had been laid off. I hoped I wouldn’t be next, but I was. My entire team was let go.
I didn’t start looking for work right away because I’d received some severance pay, and I’d heard it was difficult to land a tech role during the holiday season. I took some time to reassess what I wanted from my career and began my job search in February 2024.
I was optimistic at first because most of my prior job searches hadn’t taken too long. As the months dragged on, it became clear I had the wrong impression of the tech hiring landscape.
More than two years after being laid off, I’m still unemployed.
My long job search has taken a real toll on my finances
When I was let go from Oracle, my severance, unemployment benefits, and my emergency fund helped for a while. After going through more than $50,000 in savings, I’m now in a tougher position.
I earn between $500 and $1,000 a month by reselling antiques I find and refurbish, including old instruments, electronics, and collectibles that I purchase on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. It’s a huge drop from the roughly $5,500 a month I used to take home at Oracle.
In addition to my mortgage, I have about $45,000 in student debt I need to pay off. I’m covering my mortgage and bills by dipping into savings and selling stocks when necessary.
When my washer and dryer broke last year, I had to buy a new set on a payment plan — something I’d never done before. In the past, I would’ve just paid for it outright.
My search has made me reflect on my career pivot
In my early 30s, I decided to go back to school and pursue a bachelor’s degree. I had spent most of my career in sales and customer service roles, but I didn’t see a path to earning the kind of income I wanted. I was still living in a small apartment, and I wanted to own a home someday.
When I started thinking seriously about a career change, tech was the obvious choice. My dad, mom, and brother all worked in the field, so it felt like I’d be joining the family business. In 2015, I began pursuing a bachelor’s degree in information technology.
After graduating in 2018, I landed a software engineering role at a small tech firm. I left that position later that year to take on a quality assurance engineering role at Hitachi Vantara.
I took the role because I saw it as a great opportunity, but the downside was that I lived three hours away from the office. The long hours on the road quickly took a toll.
At the end of 2019, I accepted my former remote position at Oracle, a role I landed after receiving an employee referral.
My pivot to tech gave me the income I needed to buy my first home. However, after being laid off and struggling to find work, I’ve sometimes wondered whether it was worthwhile.
Clair Todd
I tried to prepare for a tech layoff, but the market is so tough
My job search has been challenging because I’m looking for midlevel roles, and a lot of the positions I’ve seen appear to be targeting either senior-level or entry-level candidates. I’ve also been targeting competitive remote roles due to a health situation I’m navigating, which makes it difficult for me to commute or work from an office.
I’ve had several interviews, but I haven’t been able to secure an offer. The technical interviews have been challenging. In one interview, it felt like I was on “Jeopardy!” because I was being asked what felt like software engineering trivia questions, and most of them didn’t seem relevant to the actual role.
My family warned me that layoffs are fairly common in tech and that I should be prepared. I built a “just-in-case” savings fund over the years, but there’s not much left.
The stress of job searching has taken a toll
A few months ago, after more than a year of searching for work, I decided to stop actively looking for employment and focus on building a website development business.
I would like to return to tech, but I need time to recover from the difficult process of applying and getting repeatedly rejected. I also worried that being out of the workforce for so long made it even harder to land a job, so I figured it was wise to start my business as a backup plan.
My business is still in its early stages and isn’t generating income yet, which is one reason I spend time reselling goods.
I’m not sure if my job search will be successful
It’s been challenging mentally because it feels like you’re not good enough when you keep getting rejected. On top of that, you have to worry about paying the bills without money coming in. I don’t want to say I’ve given up, but my search has been extremely discouraging.
I’m also not as passionate about tech as I used to be, which is kind of a shame because I was so excited to get my degree and work in the field. If I hadn’t been let go by Oracle, it probably would’ve been a different story.
Before I scaled back my job search, I’d started focusing less on Big Tech jobs and more on roles at smaller businesses and startups. The interview process at these companies felt more human, and I was more likely to get updates on my applications — even if it was just a polite rejection.
If I re-enter the job market, I think I’d definitely focus on smaller companies rather than large corporations.
