It’s February 10, 2024, the start of a new lunar new year. Happy new year, or as they say in Manadarin: 新年好 (shin nyan how, or “new year goodness”)!
The Chinese calendar system rotates through the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac and separately through what the ancient Chinese called the 5 aspects of qi (life energy) or elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. In this system, the current year’s animal is the dragon and the current year’s element is Wood, making this year the Year of the Wood Dragon.
In 오방색 (Obangsaek), the traditional spectrum of traditional Korean colors — blue, red, yellow, white, and black — are associated with the 5 elements as follows:
Color
Element
Blue
Wood
Red
Fire
Yellow
Earth
White
Metal
Black
Water
In the Korean system, this is the Year of the Blue Dragon. Since blue is my favorite color, I prefer to use “Blue Dragon” over “Wood Dragon.”
As the only mythical and magical animal in the Chinese zodiac, the Dragon is considered to be the most auspicious, most powerful of them all. The Dragon is associated with power, leadership, strength, good luck, wisdom, and prosperity. It is considered to be celestial and divine, with the ability to control elements such as wind and water. A Dragon year is one filled with the promise of opportunities and advancements.
The element of Wood is considered to be the most human, and is associated with growth, flourishing, and creativity. It is related to the season of Spring, which associates it with achievement, looking forward, expansion, and decision-making.
The Wood Dragon year is believed to cultivate progress and abundance, making it an ideal time to embark on new projects. This year is particularly favourable for innovative minds and problem solvers, as it offers stability in business operations and an energetic drive for creative ideas. Additionally, it presents a wonderful opportunity for individuals to pursue their dreams, express their ideas, and expand their horizons.
Remember this paragraph! I’m going to call back to it in a moment!
You’d read this far, and you might already be asking: “You’re not really into this Chinese horoscope stuff, are you, Joey?”
As a system for predicting what will happen, no.
But as a handy starting point for a new journey, since it’s a new year, the traditional time for new beginnings and new ventures? As the perfect time to write some new resolutions? As an inspiration for a personal theme for the next 12 months? As a way to frame the way I’ll approach things for the next little while? As a lens through which I will see what’s happening around me and respond accordingly?
What if you viewed your layoff not as a catastrophe, but as the catalyst for embarking on a new project? A project that required creativity and problem solving in business? An opportunity to pursue a dream, express your ideas, and expand your horizons?
Use this to reframe your situation. Think of it this way: THIS IS YOUR YEAR.
🐲🐉 Happy New Year! 🐉🐲
I’ll close with a little musical inspiration: This Will Be Our Year, by OK Go:
A recent Tweet (or X-crement, or whatever they’re calling posts on that platform) from Sesame Street’s Elmo got way more attention than it would have in less stressful times:
It’s not every day that a social media post from a cutesy character from a children’s show sparks a discussion on mental health, but these are the times we live in.
And I “get” it — as I write this, it’s been only a week since I and 400 co-workers were laid off, and I’m still feeling a lingering apprehension. As I’ve written before, this is my fifth layoff, so while the experience is unsettling, I at least have come up with ways to deal with it. I’ve talked with people facing this for the first time, and they’re stunned by the combination of feelings that come with it: shock, sadness, anxiety, fear, and probably worst of all, betrayal.
If you’ve been laid off…
Let me remind you of an important truth: if you’ve been laid off, it’s okay to not be okay.
There’s a thing called the Life Events Inventory (LEI), which is a ranked list of stressful life moments devised by the research psychologists Raymond Cochrane and Alex Robertson in a paper they published in the early 1970s. An updated version of the LEI is still used today.
Losing your job is the 7th most stressful item on the LEI. To get a sense of just how stressful it is, it ranks higher than finding out your partner cheated on you (14), a close friend dying (13), an immediate family member going to jail (11), and even divorce (9, but I would disagree, as mine damn near killed me).
Let me drive home the point by listing the LEI top ten:
The other thing you should know is that the effects of a layoff linger. Here’s the key paragraph from a 2013 Wall Street Journal article titled After Divorce or Job Loss Comes the Good Identity Crisis (with added emphasis from me):
Experts say most people should give themselves a good two years to recover from an emotional trauma such as a breakup or the loss of a job. And if you were blindsided by the event—your spouse left abruptly, you were fired unexpectedly—it could take longer.
A layoff isn’t something that you can easily shrug off, and you shouldn’t feel shame for feeling the way you do. You need to acknowledge that being laid off is one of modern life’s most stressful situations, and then do the things to help you deal with that stress.
If you haven’t been laid off…
If you haven’t been laid off, but you know someone who’s been laid off, please reach out to them and ask how they’re doing. If you’re in a position to offer help, do so, but even the act of checking in is a great help.
It’s nice to get congratulatory messages when things are going particularly well, but you’ll find that what really makes an impact and what you really remember are the friends who reached out to you when things were rough. Those people’s names are etched forever in my heart, and they have my eternal gratitude. Be one of those people for someone.
I’ll close with the advice of Florida’s own “Tommy the Tech Recruiter,” who posted this excellent suggestion on LinkedIn:
If you know someone who is on the job search…
No, no they’re not okay. Especially in these times. They are tired. Exhausted. Frustrated. Scared.
Each passing day brings a rollercoaster of emotions. Each rejection or time they never hear anything back leaves them questioning or doubting themselves.
It’s a soul crushing process.
If you are on a job search… I am here for you and making it my mission to help shorten how long that search takes.
And if you see someone who was just laid off or has that green banner, comment on their posts for visibility. Share it. Leave a kind and uplifting comment or send them a DM of support.
April 2017 from the RFID chip/label company SMARTRAC, when the project I worked on was canceled.
April 2020 from the mobile CMS company Lilypad, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
…and the most recent one — February 1, 2024 from the identity management company Okta, in a 7% reduction of staff.
Because this isn’t my first rodeo — and because there are a lot of people in the same situation — I’m putting together a series of articles that I hope you’ll find helpful and useful.
I knew layoffs were coming
Blind, as seen on my iPhone, with my finger and “googly-eyes” ring in the foreground. The ring’s from Flying Tiger Copenhagen.
I knew there was a chance that layoffs would be announced on February 1st. For weeks, there’d been a lot of talk on Blind’s discussion board for my now-former employer on that topic and specifying that date.
The Blind app will kill your soul if you use it too often. It’s an ugly agglomeration of late-stage capitalist cynicism, career despair, envy-inducing discussions of total compensation, and occasionally a place for sexually frustrated tech bros to vent.
But like that lemonade they’ve been serving at Panera, while it’s toxic if you consume the full serving, Blind is useful for keeping you awake and aware if you keep your dosage small. As nasty as its content can get, if you really want to get a sense of what’s going on in the business world or get the inside scoop on what it’s like inside a given company, you should download Blind and peruse it occasionally.
Because I’d been following the discussion about my now-former on Blind, I wasn’t completely (ahem) blindsided by the layoff announcement on Thursday. While some predictions and analyses on Blind turn out to be wrong, most of the posts about my now-former employer have been spot-on. So I took the rumors seriously.
In anticipation of possible upcoming layoffs, I’d been doing a little extra work — writing extra articles (including one that got a lot of praise from the security awareness group), updating old ones, doing additional reviews of my teammates’ articles, writing a “state of mobile development” report, and even recording four videos in a week.
It’s a shame all that extra effort was wasted.
The “first worst” 15 minutes
“Your fate will be determined in the next fifteen minutes.”
On Thursday, February 1st at 8:27 a.m., an ominous email was sent to everyone who worked at my now-former employer. Here’s the key part of the email:
If you work in the US, you will receive an email in the next 15 minutes notifying you if your role is impacted or not. If your role is impacted, your leadership will schedule a meeting this morning to discuss next steps. For employees outside the US, the notification process may be different due to local laws and practices.
I’ve been in the game long enough to know that the worst possible thing to do would be to sit at the computer and constantly refresh the Gmail screen. I got up from my desk, set a 15-minute timer on my phone, and walked away to get some coffee.
My coffee wasn’t this fancy. Mine was two parts Stok cold brew, one part mik.
There was a new email, timestamped 8:37 a.m. — ten minutes after the ominous email. It started with this:
Today, [my now-former employer] made the decision to eliminate a number of positions across multiple organizations. Unfortunately, your position has been eliminated as part of this reduction.
Helluva way to start the month, I thought.
That’s when I noticed that a new appointment had spawned on my calendar. A 15-minute appointment with the VP of Developer Engagement and an HR person scheduled for 9:30. I had 45 minutes to prepare.
💡 Here’s a suggestion for anyone planning a layoff: Don’t do this “You’ll find out in the next 15 minutes” thing. Just rip the band-aid off and let us know with a single email.
The “second worst” 15 minutes
If you’ve been invited to a meeting to discuss your layoff, do whatever it takes to steel yourself. Whether it’s deep breathing, counting to ten, reciting your personal mantra, or firing up your “poker face”, you want to get ready to conduct yourself at the meeting with as much grace, aplomb, and professionalism as you can muster.
This is because this meeting is the second most important meeting you’ll ever have at this job. (In case you were wondering, the most important one was the interview that landed you the job in the first place.) No matter what you’re feeling at the meeting, you want your termination to be as good a breakup as possible. This means that you must handle it professionally.
The way you behave and your demeanor at this meeting will set the tone for your departure. If it is full of bitterness, acrimony, and the gnashing of teeth, they won’t be inclined to do you any favors. On the other hand, if you conduct yourself with grace and decorum, you may gain some extra concessions and a willingness on their part to do what they can for you.
Just as regular guitar playing will build calluses on your fingers that enable you to repeatedly press down on those strings without feeling like you’re running them through a wire cheese slicer, having been laid off four times previously gives you the necessary “mental calluses” to handle the meeting with stoic grace. I was mentally prepared when the call started.
I felt bad for the VP and HR person — both were in the Pacific time zone, which meant that it was 6:30 a.m. for them. On instinct, I greeted them by saying “I’m sorry you have to do this so early in the morning. I’ll try and make this easy.”
It wasn’t just the oddest Zoom call I’ve had in a while, but the oddest layoff meeting I’ve ever had. That’s probably because I was prepared and had plenty of rest, while the VP and HR person were sleep-deprived and probably had a full morning of these calls. I met regularly with the VP and have even met the HR person a couple of times, so I knew them as people rather than as randos who happened to work at the same place as me. They were more misty-eyed than I was, which while awkward, showed that they empathized.
At one point, the HR person was tearing up, and I felt for them. I stopped and took a moment to say “Everything will be all right. Don’t worry.” And I meant it.
Your first instinct might be to immediately take all the standard job search actions the moment after you’ve been laid off. Fight it. You need a little time to deal with what just happened.
This is going to sound terribly woo-woo new-agey, but I’m going to say it because it’s an important step: at your first opportunity, get away from whatever you’re doing, get out and go for a walk. Physical activity is a key part of this step, so don’t get into a motorized vehicle. You want to get moving, and you want to do it outside, preferably in your own neighborhood.
The walk is important because it gets you away from anything work-like and gives you a chance to clear your head. It gives you a chance to come down from one of the most stressful experiences you’ll ever face in your working life and come to terms with what’s happened. It is not the time for figuring out what your immediate next steps are. It’s the time to collect yourself so that you’re in a better position to figure out what your next steps are.
Don’t do the walk in a fugue state. Take note of your surroundings. Chances are you’ll see things that you passed by every day but never noticed before. This is good, because it’s preparation for what you’re going to be doing for the next little while: seeing things differently.
I went on a ride — this time, without a podcast or audiobook playing; just me and the outside world. I made my way to Spaddy’s Coffee to sit and enjoy the scenery:
I also enjoyed a coffee and checked my messages, which were beginning to come in:
I also found out who else got cut, which included a number of superstars on my team.
It was then that I noticed that because it was a chilly day, I’d put on a fleece that had been shipped to me only the week before — by my now-former employer:
As I said, it had arrived only the week before, so this was my first time wearing it. It’s nice and warm, it looks good, and hey, it’s a Patagonia! Maybe I won’t include it in the upcoming “swag purge.” Maybe I can cover the now-former employer’s logo with a patch. Does anyone have a patch they’d like to send me?
It was a far more productive way to spend the evening, and far more fun than wallowing in self-pity at home. It also gave me a chance to let some key people know that I was back on the market, which is one of the most important things to do after getting laid off.
A sleepless night
I will confess that after going to bed that evening, I woke up at 4:36 a.m. and was unable to get back to sleep. Even a five-timer isn’t immune to the stress and anxiety that comes with a layoff. I very quietly got out of bed, went to my office and…
Did a little housekeeping on my personal computers (a PowerBook, a Wintel gaming laptop, and a couple of Raspberry Pis),
Unfollowed the now-former employer on various social media, unsubscribed from their newsletters, and put their swag into a big bag that I’ll drop off at Goodwill next week, and
It’s only day one of the new year and I just fulfilled one of my resolutions: to land a conference speaking session on AI outside my usual stomping grounds. I’m going to be a speaker at Civo Navigate North America, which takes place on February 20th and 21st in Austin, Texas!
What’s Civo Navigate, and what is Civo?
What’s Civo Navigate, you ask? Here’s a one-minute video that answers your question:
Civo is a cloud hosting provider based on Kubernetes, with a focus on developer-friendliness and wallet-friendliness. It’s a refreshing change from this state of affairs:
I met the people at Civo last year when they held Civo Navigate North America in Tampa — and not in a convention center or hotel conference rooms, but at Tampa’s big riverside food hall, Armature Works! Here’s the promo for that event:
The 2023 edition of Civo Navigate North America was a great conference with interesting talks and a warmer, more personal “feel” than a typical vendor-hosted event. Civo’s contributions continued long afterward, with their being great supporters of the Tampa Bay tech scene and this blog.
I’m looking forward to the 2024 edition in Austin?
What’s my talk about?
My talk is titled You’re not too late to the A.I. party, and it’s for people who’ve been too busy with their actual work to get into AI and have been feeling increasing amounts of FOMO.
Here’s the description of the talk, with additional AI-generated photos (that are deep in the uncanny valley):
Have you been too busy getting your actual work done to join the artificial intelligence party and feel that you’ve already missed out on the technical career opportunity of a lifetime? If you answered “yes,” this talk is for you.
The good news is that you’re not too late to the A.I. party. It’s just getting started and you arrived at a good time — perhaps even “fashionably late!” You just need someone to take you around the room and make some introductions.
To help you “work the room” as you enter the party, you’ll get an overview of artificial intelligence technologies, from the rules-based models and expert systems of A.I.’s early days to the present era of neural networks, machine learning, transformers, and large language models.
This party won’t be limited to just hand-waving small talk in the living room. We’ll go into the kitchen — the true heart of any party — and look at actual code in action. We’ll start with ELIZA, the original chatbot from the 1960s, observe a neural network, and look at an LLM-powered “What should I wear today?” app. You’ll even be able to download them for yourself!
This talk aims to be like the best parties — the ones you’re glad you were at. You’ll leave this one knowing more about AI’s underpinnings and a much better idea of the next steps in your AI journey, whether it’s catching up with AI developments, harnessing your current skills to integrate AI into your work, or even pivoting into AI development.
In my talk, I’ll discuss:
Generative vs discriminative AI
“Old School” rules-based AI vs. the “New School” version powered by neural networks, data science, and lots of data
How the internet changed AI
The intersection of data science, statistics, and AI
The paper “Attention is All You Need,” what it means, and how it changed AI forever
Large language models (LLMs)
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Vector databases
This talk won’t be all hand-wavey and descriptions, but will also feature demos of actual working code that you can also download, including:
ELIZA, the original 1964 chatbot, but written in present-day Python.
A basic neural network demo that shows how you implement them — perhaps the one that recognizes handwritten numbers, perhaps something a little more interesting!
“Sweater or no?” — a large language model-powered application that tells you what to wear based on your location, the weather, and the event you’re attending.
I’ll also talk about potential “next steps” that you can take, including:
Reading material, including the funniest book about AI (for now): Janelle Shane’s You Look Like a Thing and I Love You. Of course, you don’t have to wait for the talk (or even attend) to read it; you can get it now!
There Will Be Math — or, the math you’ll need to know to get into AI.
Effective Altruists, Effective Accelerationists, and how to Effectively Avoid both.
How to send the right signals to employers so they’ll know that AI is your jam!
Back in June, I posed a question on this blog: Would you like to know how computers REALLY work “under the hood?” Tampa Devs, a very active nonprofit with a mission to support the local developer community though this would be a good presentation topic. On Wednesday, I gave that presentation to this crowd:
I started by telling the attendees that while knowing about microprocessors and assembly language isn’t absolutely necessary to function in a lot of developer and tech jobs today, there’s value in that knowledge:
Photo by Richard Schmid.
I talked about transistors…
…made note of the fact that it was the 52nd birthday of the commercial microprocessor…
…introduced the 6502…
…got deeper into its inner workings…
…and then we dove into 6502 assembly language programming!
Tampa Devs recorded the entire thing, and you can watch it here:
All the material from the presentation is available online:
Tampa Devs for inviting me to speak at their meetup — it’s always an honor and a pleasure to work with a group that contributes so much to the Tampa Bay tech scene!
Kforce for providing the venue, which I like to say has “the comfiest meetup chairs in Tampa Bay.”
Civo for sponsoring the pizza, sodas, and water for the attendees, and taking such an interest in supporting the Tampa Bay tech scene.
In my two decades doing developer relations work, I’ve found that every metropolitan area with a decent tech scene has a tech school whose people drive a lot of local tech events. Here in Tampa Bay, it’s Computer Coach!
If there’s a tech conference, meetup, or gathering happening in Tampa or St. Pete, Computer Coach is probably part of it — organizing it, sponsoring it, or providing volunteer support. If someone in the Tampa Bay area has recently picked up some tech skills, chances are that they got them via Computer Coach. Wherever Tampa Bay tech is, so is Computer Coach, and I’m always pleased to work with them.
What more can I say about Python? It’s my overall favorite programming language, it helps generate the weekly list of Tampa Bay tech events that appears on this blog, and thanks to its prominence in the fields of data science and artificial intelligence, it’s the hot language of the moment — despite having been first released in 1991 and being eclipsed by Ruby in the 2000s.
If you want a really solid grasp of the principles of programming, Python — whether or not you already know another programming language — is worth learning…
…and how you learn it matters. Consider this screenshot from September 2022, session 4 of the 10-session class:
It shows us using a classic Python data structure — a list of dictionaries (which for all intents and purposes is a spreadsheet) — to analyze the salaries and stock grants of anonymized software developers at Google, as listed on levels.fyi, a site where you can see the compensations and benefits for different jobs and levels across tech companies. This isn’t the sort of example you’ll see in most courses or textbooks, but my goal is to try and make the exercises as meaningful as possible to the people taking the course. And you’ll learn interesting non-Python things along the way, including the existence of sites like levels.fyi and the inner workings of large tech companies!
(And you’d better believe we’ll cover harnessing ChatGPT’s and DALL-E’s power via the OpenAI APIs…)
Most importantly, I want to show aspiring Python programmers how to think in a problem-solving manner. Programming is really about finding the intersection of “I have a specific problem I’m trying to solve” and “I know how to get the computer to perform a certain set of tasks.”
Does this sound like the kind of course you’d like to take? If so, head on over to Computer Coach’s page for the Python Programming course, which describes the course in a more official way, and sign up! Don’t forget that the class starts November 27th!
