I moved to Silicon Valley in the fallout of the dot com bust, and I had this amazing HR director named Rex who gave me a fantastic intro to tech career life. One thing he told me that has stuck with me is "You need to live your life like you may not have a job tomorrow." The full weight of this didn't register for probably a decade or more, but I take it now to be this:

1. You may have zero income tomorrow. Plan for that, especially if you have a family. Tech companies pay good money, and you need to stash that money away while you have an income because there are pretty good chances that some day you'll wake up and not have a job.

2. You need to foster the professional relationships you make while doing your day job, because almost nobody is going to be working at that company until they die or retire, which means everybody is going to be looking for work. When it comes time to look for work, you will want a network to reach out to. When you find yourself in a position where you have something great and you need to hire great people to help you achieve your vision, you will want a great network to reach out to. Take time to look after the folks you care about. Pay special attention to the humans you have done great work with. Those people are probably going to be more valuable to you personally and professionally than the company you are working for, and the same goes the other way for them looking out for you.

This wisdom was later supplemented by a contractor we had hired at a different company, who came back to meet with us after we hadn't used all our paid hours and said "Look, I know you're upset that (some guy you loved working with) is no longer with us. We're also bummed about that. But we have done great work together as a combined team. Not as companies, but your engineering team and our engineering team. We hope that you will think about that when you need help with anything, at this company or in the future, just like we will think about you individuals when it comes time for us to solve problems that you would be good at solving."

Every time there is a layoff, I think about this nugget that Rex told me, and that supplemental anecdote, and every time they are just as relevant. This wisdom has saved me so much stress, and opened so many doors for me. I admit that it hasn't always let me take my unemployment completely worry free, and that I have made some desperate decisions while unemployed which I later regretted. That being said, I still think this is solid advice, not just for the tech industry, but for everybody everywhere. This is especially so if you are a humanist or are anti-bigcorp. It has helped me find peace with having to walk away from jobs when I needed time for me or my family, or when things just weren't working out. After the blood bath of 2023, I am living this advice more than ever, and the last few times I have wondered if I was on the chopping block, aside from the emotional response of visceral existential fears that come up in such cases, I've found peace in the rational knowledge that having planned for not having a job tomorrow, I can set those fears aside and look for the opportunity in my new circumstance.