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Long reads for the layoff nobody warned you about.

Guides for life after a layoff.

Six categories, written for specific moments. Each guide is full-length, not a checklist. For short answers, see /faq.

Contents

Six topics.

  1. 01
    The first week

    The first 24 hours. The first weekend. The first Monday. Honest steps before any strategy starts.

    10 guides

  2. 02
    The job search

    Diagnostics for when the search is not working, and tactics for the parts that do.

    10 guides

  3. 03
    Interviews and offers

    How to explain a layoff, what to say in the first ninety seconds, how to read an offer honestly.

    8 guides

  4. 04
    Changing careers

    A pivot is not a panic move. What transfers, what does not, and what timeline to expect.

    7 guides

  5. 05
    Money and runway

    Plain numbers you can act on. Severance, COBRA, ACA, runway, side income.

    8 guides

  6. 06
    Identity and grief

    The shame, the silence, the muscle memory of a job that ended. What helps. What does not.

    7 guides

Recently updated

What was added or revised most recently.

  • Changing careers

    How to go from corporate to startup after a layoff

    Moving from corporate to startup after a layoff works when you bring judgement, complexity tolerance, and vendor management — and accept that process expectations, prestige signalling, and large-team scale do not transfer. Test the founder's honesty, the runway, and the role definition before you sign. Most corporate-to-startup moves that fail do so because one of those three was unclear and the candidate signed anyway.

  • Changing careers

    How to break into tech after a layoff from another industry

    The realistic paths into tech from another industry in 2026 are operating roles — program management, operations, customer success, and sales — not engineering unless you have already coded. Bootcamps no longer deliver the entry-level engineering job for most graduates. The pivots that work are adjacent moves where your existing function exists at tech companies. Lateral first, then climb.

  • Changing careers

    How to change careers after 50

    Changing careers after 50 works best as a deliberate narrowing, not a clean restart. The pivots that close at this stage route around age bias by using your existing network, smaller companies, and roles where seniority is an asset — consultative, regulated, public sector, healthcare. Mass applications to large companies are the path most likely to surface bias. Targeted, referred conversations are the path most likely to close.

  • Changing careers

    Should you start a business after being laid off

    Start a business after a layoff only if you can answer three questions honestly: is there a customer who would pay you tomorrow, do you have at least 12 months of personal runway, and are you running toward something or away from a search you would rather not run. If any of the three is uncertain, the right move is usually to find a job first and build the business slowly while employed.

  • Changing careers

    How to change careers after 40

    Changing careers after 40 works best as an adjacent move, not a clean restart. Translate the skills you already have into the language of a new industry, build a short list of companies where your background is an asset, and use your existing network for the first ten conversations. Going back to school by default and starting at entry level when you don't need to are the two most common, most expensive mistakes.

  • Changing careers

    Skills that transfer across industries

    The most portable skills across industries are the ones AI cannot yet replace: judgement under uncertainty, persuasion, working through ambiguity, managing real-world complexity, and decoding incentives inside organisations. These survive any title change because they solve problems every industry has. The work of a career change is naming them in the new industry's language and proving them with two or three specific stories — not listing them on a resume.