Layoffs, discomfort, and Angular

I have recently been laid off from my main job. It was a really good job, I liked it. It paid well, I wasn't stressed, I had fun. However, the company simply doesn't need me anymore. The project I was working on is finished and they are moving on in a different direction. How sad... for me at least. That's a very uncomfortable situation to be in. I have people counting on me, and I sure cannot let them down. Hearing that the job market is bad certainly doesn't help either.

Instead of worrying and complaining, I found a new job in just two weeks (no, I am not selling a course promising to teach you do the same). How on earth did I find a job so quickly in this economy? The answer is actually very simple, and deep down, you know it already. It's not bootcamps, having a degree, or attending sick parties with the excuse of networking. It's the fact that I have been doing my best to learn and improve myself for years instead of doing just enough on my job to not get fired and watching TV afterwards. On my former job, I was a frontend engineer and was mostly using React, now I am a fullstack engineer using Angular, .NET and many more technologies. This transition simply wouldn't be possible if I didn't push myself to learn after work and on weekends.

Working long hours, building side projects, learning new languages and technologies; all of that is uncomfortable. What would be even more uncomfortable though, is inevitably being laid off, and not having any skills or competence to find a new job. Pushing yourself to do more will eventually pay off, and you will be insanely grateful for it.

On another note, being put in difficult situations can be a great opportunity to make your life better. To give you an example, on my new job, I had to learn Angular. I had previous experience with React, Svelte and Vue, and I probably wouldn't learn Angular if it wasn't necessary, but now I did. Now, I can actually form my own opinion whether Theo is right when claiming that Angular sucks. I think he is not. In my opinion, Angular is a great framework for large projects and big client side applications, especially if you are using an object oriented programming language on the backend. Maybe I'll even do a comparison post between Angular and React in the future, that would be a fun challenge.

Since I have nothing else on my mind right now, I'll wrap things up here and keep this post short. My final thought is that you can do a lot, you just have to do it and accept that it will not always be comfortable.

Btw, thank you @anthdm for making me pick up blogging again. I know this one sucks, but the next one will be better. lfg