AsianDadEnergy's Substack Podcast

Hello world. I’m an unemployed former Big Tech software engineer with 25 years in the technology industry. These days I joke that I’m in “involuntary early retirement.” One unexpected side effect of that situation is time, a lot more time with my kids. Recently, that time turned into a long and surprisingly heavy conversation with my teenage son. It started casually. It ended with a question that...

Many years ago, I was a mid-level developer at a consulting company. I remember staring up at the org chart and wondering how people became architects, then senior architects, then technical directors. It felt mysterious. Political. Reserved for the chosen few. And yet, over roughly six years, I climbed that ladder:Developer → Architect → Senior Architect → Tech Director. At the time, it felt brut...

Hello world. I’m an unemployed ex–Big Tech software engineer with 25+ years in the trenches of the software industry. I’ve ridden the dot-com bubble, offshoring waves, mobile revolutions, cloud migrations, and whatever we’re calling the post-pandemic tech reckoning. And now? I’m watching the AI gold rush from the outside. Depending on which headline you read this morning, artificial intelligence i...

Hello world. After more than 25 years in the software industry, and an unexpected exit from Big Tech, I found myself in an unfamiliar situation: time. Lots of it. The kind of time engineers rarely have, the kind that invites curiosity, experimentation, and occasionally, questionable ideas. This is the story of one such idea. A Simple (and Slightly Dangerous) Thought Experiment What if you could bu...

Hello world. After more than twenty-five years in the software industry, I now find myself in an unfamiliar position: an ex–Big Tech engineer with time to think. And when you suddenly have time, real, unstructured time, you start asking questions that never quite fit into sprint planning or quarterly OKRs. Questions about where all of this is going. About what kind of civilization we may be constr...

Hello, World. I’m an unemployed, ex–Big Tech software engineer with 25 years in the industry. That sentence would have terrified me a decade ago. Today, it feels strangely calm. We’re living through another brutal cycle of tech layoffs. Thousands of engineers: smart, capable people are refreshing LinkedIn feeds and grinding through interviews that feel increasingly like Squid Game with better ligh...

Hello world. I’m an unemployed, ex–Big Tech engineer with twenty-five years in the software and technology industry. That sentence alone would have felt impossible not long ago. And yet here we are, living through another wave of mass layoffs across American tech an era where résumés pile up, inboxes stay silent, and explanations are reduced to slogans. One of the most common refrains I hear is si...

Hello world. I’m an unemployed, ex–Big Tech software engineer with 25 years in the technology industry. And like many of you, over the past week I’ve been watching yet another wave of mass layoffs sweep across tech, tens of thousands of engineers, designers, and product leaders suddenly finding themselves on the outside. Every layoff cycle brings back a memory I can’t quite shake: my first. My Fir...

Lamb Saag, Layoffs, and the Bug That Broke Me Hello, world. I’m an unemployed ex–Big Tech software engineer with 25 years of experience, which in today’s economy apparently qualifies me for involuntary early retirement . One unexpected perk of this phase of life is that I now do a lot more cooking for my family. Today’s menu: Indian lamb saag. Slow, deliberate, and unforgiving if you miss a step,...

Hello, world. A few months ago, I became what feels like a new tech archetype: an unemployed ex–Big Tech engineer with over 25 years in the industry. In today’s climate, that sentence alone is enough to spike blood pressure. Yet, strangely, my recent layoff hasn’t felt like a crisis. It’s felt more like a quiet pause, a semi–early retirement, or at least a transition into the next chapter of life....

Hello world. Until recently, I was a senior engineer at a Big Tech company, with 25 years in the technology industry behind me. Today, I’m unemployed, watching the industry I grew up in sprint headlong into what feels like the largest speculative bet of its lifetime. Not long before I was laid off, my former employer held a company-wide AI hackathon. By that point, the company had already invested...

Hello world—and welcome to the uncomfortable side of tech. I’m a recently laid-off ex–Big Tech software engineer with 25 years in the industry. In the middle of what feels like an endless wave of tech layoffs, I keep hearing the same question from people outside the industry and from junior engineers just starting out: “With those salaries, shouldn’t senior software engineers all be rich and finan...

Hello, world. I’m a software engineer who was recently laid off from Big Tech after more than 25 years in the industry. Over the past few weeks, I’ve received a steady stream of questions from college students studying computer science, mostly young guys asking some version of the same thing: “Is it still worth it?” “Should I even keep pursuing tech?” Those questions have taken me back to my own e...

Hello, world. Two weeks ago, I was laid off from Big Tech. After twenty-five years in the technology industry, it was my first layoff and it landed with a strange mix of confusion, disorientation, and, unexpectedly, a flicker of excitement. When you’ve spent most of your adult life on a clearly marked path, being pushed off it feels less like failure and more like suddenly waking up in unfamiliar...

Hello, world. After 25 years in the tech industry, I recently found myself laid off from Big Tech, an experience that has become increasingly common over the last couple of years. With some unexpected time on my hands, I’ve been doing what engineers do best: thinking deeply about systems, incentives, and failure modes. This time, the system in question is AI and more specifically, what the current...

Hello, world. A little over a week ago, I shared a vlog about being laid off from Big Tech after twenty-five years in the industry. I didn’t expect what happened next. The response was overwhelming, in the best possible way. Messages of encouragement, thoughtful advice, shared stories, and hard-earned wisdom poured in. I want to start by saying thank you. Truly. I also want to acknowledge somethin...