I was let go.
Why I won't be looking for a job and what I plan to do for the next 90 days.
“I don't think this is working out”.
My stomach dropped.
Am I getting let go?
I was sitting in a Starbucks trying hard to hold back the tears for myself and everyone else around me.
To me, work relationships are like dating. You enter the relationship with the aspiration of something long-term, promise to be your best self and work towards a common goal. You commit to fostering open communication, ensuring a platform for both giving and receiving feedback, but it doesn’t always work out like that.
Sometimes no matter how much you try, two people, just aren’t meant to be, and that’s okay. No shade to anyone, sometimes you just need to find a different partner that compliments you better.
Back story.
I had been struggling at work for a while. I literally wrote two confessional pieces about it.
TLDR: DevRel (developer relations) isn't just what you see on Twitter. Skills such as technical debugging, education, marketing, public speaking, and relationship management are just a few of the tools you need in your toolbox to be an efficient DevRel.
Ultimately the reason I was let go was because I was picked for a role I couldn't quite fit into quickly enough.
Trust your gut.
About a month before I was let go, I came across this tweet about how B players kill your company. If you settle for anything less than exceptional, your company isn’t going to make it. It’s cutthroat, but I get it. This type of culture isn’t for everyone, but it is for me.
My one year was around the corner and so I decided that come this September, I would reevaluate my position at work. Little did I know that this decision had already been made for me at the time.
My leadership team broke the news just as one of the biggest crypto conferences in Europe, ETHCC, was about to start. It was perfect timing to hunt for new opportunities and for that, I am extremely grateful.
Even though I got dumped, the feelings were mutual.
What’s Next
I found myself currently:
Unemployed
In Paris with some really great friends
6 weeks into a 5 1/2 month trip around Europe and Asia
A spouse who quit her job less than 1 week after I was let go
Maybe I’m crazy, but chaos screams growth.
Code is binary and so is life.
You either do, or you don’t.
I can either go back home and look for a new job, or I can regroup, stay traveling and start learning about the things I’m really interested in.
Times are different now. I’ve lived a bit more, and I’ve gotten to know myself a bit more too.
After getting the news of getting let go, I decided to take myself out to a cafe later that evening to write. I was feeling so many different things, I needed a place to vent and create a plan. As I sat on the patio and watched all the people walking I couldn’t help but smile and think to myself, I’m in fucking Paris. Losing my job really sucked, but I couldn’t have asked for a better place to be, a better time, a better circumstance for life to just align this way.
I realized that getting let go was actually an opportunity of a lifetime.
I decided that I have two paths forward:
A. The safe option and look for a new job
B. Do what scares me by working for myself.
Plan B all the way.
90 days
This experiment needs to be time-boxed. I can’t go indefinitely without income.
We’re not rich, but we have saved enough to be in a cushy place that neither one of us needs to work for a few months without severely altering our lifestyles. We decided that instead of chasing a paycheck we would make some fire lemonade with the newly acquired lemons life had tossed us.
What happens after 90 days?
TBD.
Best case, we’ve found a project we’re really passionate about building while getting paid. Worst case, we have an updated portfolio of things we’ve worked on for the past three months and we begin to look for a full-time job. Either way, seems like a win-win to me.
At the end of the 90 days, I want to be able to answer this question:
What did I build when there was no financial incentive?
The Plan
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. Sometimes the easiest plan is the best plan. You don’t need to overcomplicate it. I know I want to enhance my skills in writing, reading, and coding, so I’ve decided that daily practice in these three areas is essential.
The Three Pillars
Read
Nonfiction: This one was hard to narrow down, but then I remembered I don’t need to. The Ethereum industry basically follows daddy Vitalik's thought leadership blogs, so that’s where I’m going to start. His blogs will ultimately lead me to all the web3 rabbit holes such as zk, account abstraction, identity, and more.
Fiction: I don’t give fiction books the credit they deserve but it’s time to spend some time in magical lands and let my imagination flow. As a web3 enthusiast, it’s only fair to start with 'Snow Crash', the prescient novel that foreshadowed many of the ideas we're now seeing come to fruition in the space.
Write
Document the journey. What fun is all this if I don’t get to share the ups and downs of this transitional period? If you’re reading this, hopefully, you’ve already subscribed to my newsletter. It will be a weekly blog that will include things like, what I’ve built, what I’m reading, and what I’ve learned.
In school, you usually demonstrate your understanding of a topic by writing an essay or research paper. I'll follow a similar approach, but instead of focusing on assigned subjects, I'll delve into topics I read about.
Code
I decided to divide this one into two parts as well. I started listing all of the side projects I’ve been wanting to start, but could never find the time. After narrowing it down to just 2 projects, I can estimate these two projects should take me 30 days to complete. I guess we’ll see. lolz
Build: A native alarm clock and a native Schengen calculator
Learn: Could there be any better time to go through Patrick Collins 32 hours course? I didn’t think so either.
For the full course:
Time
The finite resource we all want more of.
I remember prepping for the Series 7 exam when our instructor started to share this story about time management. She brought out an empty bottle with two jars. One jar was filled with rocks and the other with sand. She explained that the rocks represented the things that were the most important to us and the sand was everything else. She demonstrated that if you begin to fill the bottle with everything else, there isn’t room for the actual important things in your life, but if you start with the important ones (rocks), there always seems to be room for everything else (sand).
Using this mental model, I divided the day into 3 sections, needs, pro, and free time.
Needs
Sleep. My sweet spot it between 7-8 hours. This number can and will fluctuate, but I’m not going to set my plan not allocating enough time to sleep, that’s just dumb. I’ve been in a relationship for over 6 years. You don’t get there by not spending quality time together. Whether that’s going for a walk together leaving the phones at home or having dinner, it’s important for our relationship to get the water it needs to continue growing. Running is my anti-depressant and lifting keeps me in shape to run. It’s that simple.
Pro
This is where shit gets done. When I was researching how to structure my day, I had to slap myself out of the Monday to Friday 9-5 way of thinking. I don’t need to ‘work‘ five days and have a two-day weekend. I control my time, no one else.
I settled on 4 full days and 3 half days.
On the full days, I’ll be spending 9 hours between coding, reading, and writing, and on the half days, 4.5 hours.
Outcome
What is the outcome I am looking for after reading, coding, and writing every day for the next 90 days?
To level up. To fall in love with the process.
If I can just be 1% better every day, then I will call this experiment a success. The way I’ll measure this is by my follower count on Twitter.
I know, I know, followers are such a vanity metric, but hear me out.
The idea of this experiment is to learn out loud and document the process. That’s it. Twitter will be the main platform I’ll be using to post updates. More to come on social media in a future post…
At the time of this writing, I have 1,009 followers. If increase my follower count by 1% every day, after 90 days I will have 2,481 followers.
If I can continue that growth for a whole year, 38k followers.
That sounds crazy, but this shows the power of consistent, compounded growth.
Final Thoughts
A special thanks to the friends I’ve had a chance to spend time with over the last two weeks. I can’t help but think I’m living in a dream with how things just perfectly lined up. Know that each and every one of you inspires me.
An extra special thanks to my partner in crime, Claudia. We’re about to embark on one of the most exciting and growing periods and there’s no one else I’d rather have on my side than you.
Today begins the 90-day marathon. If you wish to follow along, you can follow me on Twitter and subscribe to this newsletter if you haven’t already.
LFG ✌🏽