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Reselling antiques to try to replace his former six-figure income and pay off debt.
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She said her job search made her question whether her mid-career move into technology was worth it.
This “as told” 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 she was fired in 2023. Business Insider verified her employment with documents. 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 colleagues were being pulled into Zoom meetings and told that they had been laid off. I hoped I wouldn’t be next, but I was. My entire team was released.
I didn’t start looking for work right away because I had received severance pay and heard that it was difficult to get a tech role during the holidays. 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 previous job searches hadn’t lasted very long. As the months went by, it became clear that I had the wrong impression of the tech hiring landscape.
Over two years after being laid off, I am still unemployed.
The long job search took its toll on my finances
When I was let go from Oracle, my severance pay, unemployment benefits, and my emergency fund got me through for a while. After saving over $50,000, I am now in a more difficult position.
I make between $500 and $1,000 a month reselling antiques that I find and refurbish, including old tools, electronics, and collectibles that I buy on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. That’s a huge drop from the roughly $5,500 a month I was taking home at Oracle.
In addition to my mortgage, I have about $45,000 in student debt to pay off. I cover my mortgage and bills by dipping into savings and selling stocks when needed.
When my washer and dryer broke last year, I had to buy a new set on a payment plan – something I had never done before. In the past, I would have paid for it.
Over the course of the year, Business Insider spoke to people who worked at some of the world’s biggest companies and found themselves at a corporate crossroads—whether through a layoff, resignation, job search, or changing workplace expectations.
Share your story by completing this form, contacting this reporter by email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com or by Signal at jzinkula.29. Read more about the topic:
My search made me reflect on the pivot of my career
At 30, 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 couldn’t see the path to making the kind of income I wanted. I was still living in a small apartment and wanted to own a house one day.
When I started seriously considering a career change, technology was the obvious choice. My father, mother and brother all worked in the field so I felt I would join the family business. In 2015, I started 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 this position later that year to take up 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.
In late 2019, I accepted my former remote position at Oracle, a role I obtained 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 sometimes wondered if it was worth it.
Clair ToddClair Todd
I’ve been trying to prepare for a tech layoff, but the market is so tough
My job search has been challenging because I’m looking for mid-level roles and many of the positions I’ve seen seem to target senior or entry-level candidates. I’ve also been targeting competitive remote roles due to a health situation I’m navigating that makes it difficult for me to commute or work from the office.
I had several interviews but was unable to get an offer. The technical interviews were challenging. In an interview, it felt like I was on “Jeopardy!” because I was asked what felt like trivial software engineering questions, and most of them didn’t seem relevant to the actual role.
My family warned me that layoffs are quite common in tech and that I should be prepared. I’ve built up a “just in case” savings fund over the years, but there’s not much left.
The stress of looking for a job took a toll
A few months ago, after more than a year of job hunting, I decided to stop actively looking for a job and focus on building a website development business.
I would like to go back to tech, but I need time to recover from the difficult process of applying and being rejected repeatedly. I also worried that being out of the workforce for so long made it even more difficult to get a job, so I thought it was wise to start my business as a backup plan.
My business is still in the early stages and not yet generating income, so I spend time reselling goods.
I am not sure if my job search will be successful
It was a mental challenge because you feel like you’re not good enough when you keep getting rejected. Plus, you have to worry about paying bills without cash coming in. I don’t want to say I’ve given up, but my search has been extremely discouraging.
I’m also not as into technology 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 let myself go from Oracle, it probably would have been a different story.
Before scaling back my job search, I 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 were to re-enter the job market, I think I would definitely focus on smaller companies rather than large corporations.
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