How I Found a New Tech Job in 3 Months

Amy Blankenship
8 min readSep 23, 2023
Jobless man sitting on city sidewalk with his dog
By Sergey Novikov Adobe Stock Photos

It might not sound all that exciting that it took me 3 months to find a new job, but word has it that tech hiring is much slower this year compared to last year. I have friends who have been out of work for close to a year at this point. I actually plan that I’ll be out of work for up to 6 months every 2–3 years, so at this point I have a routine down. It may not be the best routine, but if you’ve been laid off from a job where you’ve been for 10 years, you probably don’t have any routine, so this might help you.

Finances

Since I plan that sometimes I’ll take an involuntary vacation, I do have savings. While I have always found work within 6 months🤞, I never assume that will be the case. I don’t know how long my savings will need to last, so I take steps to stretch them as long as possible.

  1. I immediately file for unemployment. Some people feel weird about taking this money. In my state, the more people from a company file for unemployment, the higher that company’s unemployment taxes go in the future. One way to look at it is that by filing for unemployment, you make it more expensive for the company to fire your ex-co-workers. Do it for them 😇.
  2. I cancel any memberships and other recurring services I’m not using. If you have savings, keep the self-care memberships you do use, like gym…

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Amy Blankenship

Full Stack developer at fintech company. I mainly write about React, Javascript, Typescript, and testing.