#173 Laid off but not afraid with X-senior Microsoft Dev MacKevin Fey
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Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of freecodecamp.org. And today we are talking with McKevin Fay. He's a experienced software engineer who just got laid off last week from his role at Microsoft. Now, I did not plan on talking about this. He just got news well after we'd scheduled this interview. So why not lean into that and talk about that experience? McKevin, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Quincy. Yeah. And we're going to talk in addition to like the post-

layoff job search. We're going to talk about tips that Mac has for building your own safety net, something he and his wife have been working on for many years in terms of like diversifying your investments and all that stuff. We're going to talk about how you can use developer skills to help the people around you when you have downtime like this. And Mac maintains several different websites for friends and for his wife's speech pathology.

And we're also going to talk about how Mac trains himself mentally and physically for the rigors of modern work.

Spoiler alert, Mac has won some trail running competitions around the Portland area. So he's serious about fitness. Would that be an accurate statement? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So let's just start by talking about the past couple of weeks and what the experience has been like. Yeah. So actually going back to maybe a month or two ago, we had...

we had heard some rumors just kind of both internally and externally, um, that there might be some layoffs. Um, so in that sense was a little bit prepared for it also. Um, but yeah, then, then when it actually came was kind of just totally blindsided. Um,

And actually the kind of the dark humor of it, in my opinion, is that, you know, layoffs are somewhat normal. They happen every year, every couple of years. And so you always want to be kind of prepared for it. And as, as prepared as I was for it, you know, the day that it happened,

None of the red flags caught me. So I'm going in, logging into work just like I usually do. And this random meeting comes up on my calendar and it's just like business critical update. And I'm like, oh, that sounds like something like earnings just happened. Like there's probably some fun announcement that's going to happen.

And then I joined the meeting and everybody's anonymous in the meeting and my mic's muted and my camera's shut off, not by my own. And I was like, oh, that's a little weird. But I was like, I didn't know what was happening yet. And then my VP of the org comes on to the phone call and they were on the verge of tears. And at that point I was like, oh, no.

Um, this is what's going to happen. And, you know, sure enough, they gave the news and, you know, they kind of talked through what the next steps for all of us were going to be. Um, and then since then, about the past week, um, I actually haven't been like, I've been busy with personal stuff, but I haven't been too busy on like searching for jobs just because I wanted to take some time to kind of unplug and really, um, you know, be there for my friends and family and everything. So I've been doing a lot of that stuff, uh,

Like actually last, uh, on Saturday we had a five K at the WSU Vancouver, um, campus for my wife's, uh, nonprofit. Um, and so that was a lot of fun. I got to, you know, I designed the course and I marked the course right before the race and everything. And, um, there's a lot of other stuff with the event too, but it was a lot of fun. So that's a five kilometer trail running course. Um, there was a little bit of trail, um,

It is, in my opinion, it's kind of nice that the campus is very similar to the actual WSU in Pullman. It's very, very hilly. And when you say WSU, is that Washington State University? Yeah, Washington State. Okay. And you're like Portland and Vancouver, Washington, where you live, I understand, are like pretty close to one another. Yeah. Is it kind of the same metro place? Yeah, it's the same metro area. Okay.

So I'll often be referring to like the Portland area, but it's technically Washington, which is why Washington State University factors in for anybody who's confused or hasn't spent a lot of time in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Yeah, whenever I'm telling anyone where I'm from, I always just say Portland because if I say Vancouver, they're going to think Canada. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so it sounds like you got the news. I don't know the extent and just –

I don't want Mac to be negatively impacted by this podcast recording. I don't want to say anything he's going to regret. So keep that in mind. When I'm asking these questions, I know I could ask more pointed questions like, what is your exact comp? How was this handled? XYZ. I'm not going to be prying in a lot of those things just out of respect for Mac and his desire to not sully his reputation in the eyes of future employers and stuff like that. And I would generally say it's probably not like...

Going to suit your purposes to trash your former employer that just laid you off. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, at the same time, you do see like those sycophantic posts on LinkedIn. Like, oh, you know, you know what I'm talking about. If you're listening to this, you've probably seen people like... It's a weird dynamic. How are you navigating that dynamic? I mean, you know, just like...

just like any of those people, it's like you feel those flashes of emotion in the moment. And, you know, part of both my, you know, physical training as well as, you know, I've been in therapy for years to manage that stuff because I've, you know, I've had some issues in the past with like, you know, kind of, I guess, anger and stuff. But yeah, it's like, you know, those,

writing something like that and just, you know, kind of bursting off, um, you know, can make you feel good in the moment, but, um, you know, it's just not worth it in the long run. Um, and also it's like, you know, you don't want to be defined by something that you felt, uh, very flippantly in a moment. It's like, you know, that emotion might be very strong and very real. And, you know, whether it's an hour a day or a week or whatever, you know, eventually it's going to dissipate. And so to go out and, you know,

you know, trash people or, you know, just to kind of go on a rant like that, you know, just really isn't worth it. So, yeah. And at the same time, like, did you post anything on LinkedIn? Do you recall like where you're like, Oh, like saying goodbye to a lot of colleagues or anything like that? Like,

Or were you just totally silent? No, I'm just totally silent. Yeah. And I mean, like, I've never been through a layoff. I've been fired for cause for just sucking at my job before as an accountant when I attempt at some, like, you know, fuel company, essentially doing fuel taxes. I was very bad at that. And so I have been through that process of them sitting me down and saying, like, see ya. But I haven't been through, like, some sort of structural layoff where I'm on a giant, you know, video call or I guess, like,

Not video call, but it's like a video call where the cameras are turned off so you don't have to see everybody crying. What were the surprising aspects of that? And again, I'm not trying to dig into grisly details, but I just want to take people to what that situation is like so they can mentally prepare themselves should that befall them. You just mean from the fallout of having it happen to you? Yeah. What are some things people should expect if they're getting laid off from a big tech company?

Um, it's like once that call happens, like you're dead, like you don't, you don't exist anymore. Like just immediately I got, I think I, uh, got an email like 30 minutes after notification of like, Oh, your co-pilot, your GitHub co-pilot, uh, has been expired and stuff like that. And, uh, um, fortunately with the, uh, Washington state law, I think, uh,

there's we're retained on payroll for like 60 days or something like that. Like we have to have a 60 day notice. Um, so that's kind of, that's included with the severance. Um, so that's kind of nice, but, um, and that's part of the reason why I haven't like gone out and like proclaimed that I'm laid off and looking for work. Cause I,

I know that that's not going to help me for leveraging negotiation or anything. And also technically I'm still on payroll till mid July. So that's part of that. So when you say it doesn't help you to do that, you don't believe that there's a tactical advantage to letting people know? Do you think it worsens your negotiating power? I think so. And mainly that just comes from

Yeah. I mean, if, if, if you're laid off and you're looking for work, I mean, people are going to assume you're desperate in my opinion. So, yeah. You know, I, I,

There's, you know, like anything, there's two sides to the coin. And I think there's probably, there's certainly probably ways that it can help you. And there's ways that it's a disadvantage, but I always think that, you know, divulging less information is usually more beneficial to you. Yeah. And we're going to talk about some of the reasons why you aren't in a desperate situation. But first I do want to like get a little bit more background on the

you know, you're like how you came to be who you are, how you came to be this software engineer who's worked for like 10 years in big tech and has taught courses on electrical engineering and, uh, things like that. Uh, first I want to thank the many, many kind people who support free code camp. Uh, we have about 11,423 kind folks who support three free code camp through a monthly donation. Uh,

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Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out of the box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at wixstudio.com. So, McKevin, you didn't have like a conventional childhood. We think of, you know, kind of like...

nuclear family of the mom and the dad and maybe the brothers and sisters and all that. Can you walk us through, and I want to be sensitive about this because I don't have this lived experience myself. My parents

my parents uh i still talk to them and like i live with them i did have a rough patch where i like moved out and lived in my car for like a year and just didn't because like misunderstandings and stuff like that but we've since repaired that uh but you had like i guess a much more extreme uh childhood if i if i can use that adjective yeah so uh

Yeah, my parents were never married. I was born out of wedlock. I was raised by my paternal grandparents. So, you know, that brought its own set of challenges. I always just felt a little bit alienated and odd growing up. And even, you know, like the main sport that I played was tennis growing up. So like even that was different from everybody else. Although I did also play baseball, but tennis was my main thing. Yeah.

And then, yeah, going through school, I was always, I just loved math. I always, I was always a few years ahead in math. And I always just from four and five years old, like I just wanted to solve math problems all day. And so I had the great fortune of growing up. I was on competitive math teams and like later elementary and middle school. And we were really fortunate because our coaches were engineers. And so like we learned a lot of really advanced math and that, that helped me out.

through high school. Like I already knew all of high school math by the time I got to high school. Um, and I even knew a little bit of college math as well. And so like that, those foundational learnings also helped me succeed in college. Um, so that was a big, big part of what got me to where I'm at. Yeah. And then when it came time to go to school, um,

Like, so you've been playing tennis a lot. Were you able to get any sort of scholarships or anything for school? What was school like? No, actually at that point I had kind of stopped. I was a little bit burnt out on it. And I had played tennis my freshman year of high school because I tried out for the baseball team, didn't make it. And then I was just like... At that time I had also started doing cross country in high school because I was... Cross country running. Yeah, so I was...

i was really small and so i had played football in middle school which was kind of a joke and then i was like well i don't i don't want to die because i was like under 100 pounds my freshman year high school um so i was like i need to do something to stay active so i'll start running i had no real interest in it like i just had a few friends that were doing it and i was like oh yeah i'll go do that um so i started with cross country and then

Yeah, when I didn't make the baseball team, I played tennis. And in fact, at that point, I had already not been playing tennis for at least a year. And so I just jumped in, worked my way up to number one pretty immediately on the team. On the cross-country team? No, in tennis. Oh, in tennis. Okay. And then after that season, then I just decided I like running more. And if I want to be good at cross-country, I got to do track also. So I'm just going to...

you know, focus my time on just running. Yeah. So what was like the process of like applying to college and, uh, for you, like you had all this math skill. Uh, you said that was like a primary focus at this point. Had you done very much programming or like, like engineering? None. I didn't even, I didn't even start on any of that stuff until like halfway through college. Okay. Um,

But yeah, in terms of it, just like most things I do, it was a pretty deeply analytical process in the search for where I wanted to go. I mean, I just...

I took it from a completely open view. I knew I wanted to apply to Washington State and University of Washington. And I had found out about University of Portland because they always have a good cross-country team. So I was going to try to run there. Spoiler alert, didn't work out. But yeah, basically what I did was I was just like, okay, well, here's my interests. I'm

You know, I was really good at math and, you know, my, my family is pretty blue collar, so I didn't have the best guidance in terms of how to navigate that. So, and that was another good thing for me actually was because it forced me to really, you know, take the reins, um, and kind of control my destiny, so to speak. Um,

But yeah, along those lines, when I was applying, I was just looking up, sorry, going back to what I said earlier about being in a blue collar family. They were just like, oh, you're smart. Be a math teacher, be a doctor. And I was like, okay. And so, you know, at first I thought what I really wanted to do was go, you know, study biology and chemistry, go be a doctor, you know?

And so that was like my main plan. And so I was, I was looking up schools and I was like, okay, how do I, you know, how do I navigate and get to med school? And like, okay, I'm going to look at all the schools and see who has the best programs in biology and chemistry and, you know, pick the intersection of that. And then, um, you know, even at that age, I was still aware enough to be like, well, that might not work out though. So I need to like, I know math is my bread and butter. So, um,

If I, if I don't do that, a lot of my friends are talking about engineering. So I should look at engineering schools too. Yeah. Um, and university of Portland, it's a small school, but it has a really strong engineering program. Um, and pretty much, I think in all, all disciplines that they offer. Um, and so that was kind of what I did was I just, I looked up all these schools, like literally over a hundred and I was like, okay, what, like,

Who like, what's going to get me into med school. If that doesn't work, like what's a good engineering school, what, what schools have good cross country programs. Cause I'm going to try to run. Um, and so, you know, I just kind of took the intersection of all those and, um, you know, I came down to, you know, a list of probably like five or 10 schools that, um,

You know, I also whittled away ones that where it was like, you know, that might be too far. Like, I don't want to be that far away from home, that kind of thing. So I just took that intersection, narrowed it down and then applied to those schools. And that's how I went about it. Yeah. And like in terms of finances and stuff, were you, did you get any sort of support from the school? Were you living with your grandparents? Like how, how did you manage that period? Yeah. So that was, uh,

On my 18th birthday, it was very much like, all right, you're on your own. I mean, I was still living at home for that last year of high school, but my grandparents didn't have a lot of money. So once I was out of the house, like,

I was completely on my own, um, which was fine. Like I, you know, growing up, like that's what I aspired to. That's what I wanted to do anyways. Um, and be independent. Like I've, I've always just been hyper independent, um, probably cause of my upbringing. Um, but yeah,

Yeah. So, um, sorry, I forgot part of the question. Yeah. Like in terms of like paying for school and everything. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was just, you know, applying for financial aid and all that stuff. Um, and university of Portland, it's, it's a little bit more costly than like, you know, WSU or UW. Um,

But they do offer a lot of aid both from the school directly and then, yeah, just because of my financial status with my grandparents and everything, I got a bunch of financial aid from the government as well. Okay, cool. So you're going to school and how do you... I mean, you said you were interested in becoming a doctor, but it sounds like you specialize much more in engineering. Yeah, so my first year...

I think I was majoring in biology. I switched my major a bunch of times because I just I had no real idea what I what I wanted to do. That was kind of a really lost period for me, especially because I there was a way bigger turnout than usual for the cross country team that year.

And so, you know, previously they, they used to carry a really big team, much bigger than any other school, but that year there was just way too many people. And so I got cut from that. And so, you know, now I'm, I'm away from home. I'm in Portland. It's not that far away from Spokane. It's only six hours, but you know, I'm away from home. Um,

And, uh, yeah, then, you know, I'm not running and I don't really know what to do with school. Um, but yeah, so I was studying biology at the time I go through that and I'm like, I just really don't like this. Um, you know, it's, it's all memorization. Like there's no like doing work. Um, that's like, that's how my brain works is that, you know, I want to be able to solve problems and learn that way instead of just doing rope memorization. Um,

So, yeah, I got through that. And then I was like, well, I think it was my sophomore year that I was like, still not sure what I wanted to do. But I was like, well, I'll keep trying to do the doctor thing. So I'll stay in like chemistry or biochemistry or something. But at that point, I had started already forking the path towards engineering. Most of my friends in the dorm were mechanical engineers and engineers.

you know, that, that was something that had always like Newtonian mechanics had always been very intuitive for me. And so I was like, yeah, I'll go do that. So then I started taking like physics, um, which I hadn't done cause that wasn't required for biology or chemistry. Um, but yeah, starting doing those like intro engineering classes that were just kind of generalized. And I also took a couple of like actual sophomore level, um, mechanical engineering classes as well. Um,

And I did really like it, but it was after that, after those two years, still not entirely sure what I wanted to do, was looking for an internship and just lucked into that one at Tektronix. It wasn't, so those oscilloscope videos that you saw, that was not even part of the plan when I got there. Like I got there, it was in a business unit and like I was just helping them

um, you know, basically like crunch numbers on like their sales reports and stuff. And I was there for a couple of weeks and it was like, you know, the internship was supposed to be, you know, like a 40 hour per week position, but they really only had like 10 hours of work. Yeah. So you found work for yourself. Yeah. So they were like, of course you're talking about is like, it's a detailed, like incredibly detailed, like,

how to with one of their oscilloscopes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that like, that wasn't even my idea. They were just trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my time. And yeah, the, the tech support group, they were like, well, we could really use an intern. Like we, you know, we want to, one of the guys on the team had this idea of, Oh, instead of, cause you know, their support center, they're like, we don't want to be answering phone calls all day.

So they're like, so, you know, we'll come up with the most common, you know, the 10 most common subjects and we'll make YouTube videos for how to do those. And, uh, so yeah, they just kind of threw me to the wolves on that. Um, and so when I was doing that, like I had to learn all this stuff on the fly. Like I had, I had never done anything with programming. I had never done, I had done a little bit of like theoretical circuits and physics, um,

But all that stuff was just entirely new to me. And so, but I had a really good mentor that was working with me and coaching me through all that stuff. And,

Um, yeah, he did a really great job of just, you know, letting me go do it on my own and just come back to him if I needed support on stuff. Um, but yeah, I just end to end, like I, I did those videos a hundred percent. Um, the, you know, I wrote the scripts for like, you know, how we should walk through the whole thing. Like I learned the oscilloscope top to bottom to figure out, you know, how to, uh,

convey those ideas and help people. Just real quick. What is an oscilloscope for people who don't know what it is and what, why is it useful?

It's well, I'm probably going to butcher this because it's been so long. I mean, that was like 12 or 13 years ago. But basically an oscilloscope is a tool that's used to basically measure like electrical signals. And so when you're working like, you know, really low level and like actually trying to measure like, you know, data crossing a wire or, you know, voltages on that wire, that's what you use an oscilloscope for.

Yeah. Okay, cool. So it's a tool that you, it's got like this kind of like pen thing and you just stick it against the circuit board. Yeah. Okay, cool. And it's like this pretty big rack. Like if anybody's seen, like, I'm trying to think of like an old CD player or something like that. It's like a big, yeah. It's, it's really even more like a, it's almost like more like a boom box, old boom box. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's a big piece of gear. And the company you're working at is one of the main manufacturers of these. And then every electrical engineering department is going to have a lab where they've got tons of these. You go to a robotics lab or something. Okay, so you created these.

video courses on that. And, and along the way you got to kind of just in time learn so that you could turn around and then teach what you just learned. Right. Yep. And then, um, yeah. So when I, you know, when I dove into that, like I, I didn't have to do much programming, but I had to do a little bit of it. Um, and most of it was just, um, learning like circuitry hardware stuff. Um, but, um, yeah, once I started doing that, I was like, this is it.

Like, this is the way to go. And like, I had already, if I'm remembering correctly, I think I was still trying to do like pre-med, but mechanical engineering is my major. It was like the day before class started. I was like, scrap all that. I'm going to double major in computer science and electrical engineering. Like, I know this is what I want to do. Wow. And even...

Even before that, like I was always kind of jealous of my electrical engineering, computer science classmates, just like, I'd see what they're working on. And like, I have no idea what it is, but I'm just like, that looks cool. Like, I think like, that's what I want to do. But yeah,

you know, it wasn't until that internship that I really got into the, you know, the mud on that and figured all that stuff out. Well, so how do you go from that to working as an engineer at Intel, which, you know, is one of the more prestigious shops, like they do the hardcore engineering. Uh, can you talk about that process? Yeah.

Yeah. So then, yeah. So I went through school, finished, I did a double bachelor's degree in computer science and electrical engineering. And, you know, I knew that I wanted to stay in the area because I really liked the Portland area. And so, you know, Intel is one of the big players in this area. And, you know, at that time, I also wasn't sure whether I wanted to do electrical engineering or computer science because my, my

My skills were definitely more on the electrical engineering side. And I had also taken a VLSI course. What is VLSI? Very large scale integration. So it's like the fabrication process of how chips are made.

And so, you know, we're just doing like toy examples in the class making like, you know, zero to 16 counters, but like, you're actually doing like the photo lithography, like, you know, in theory, we're like, Photolithography is where you essentially use like a bright light or a laser or something to etch the actual boards. Yeah. And so, and there's also like this layout tool that we do to like design the layers and the interconnections. And there's, there's a lot of fun math that goes into all that stuff.

But yeah, at the time I was definitely, my skills were more on that side. And I always thought I was going to be like a, you know, like a circuit designer, hardware designer. Because my, like, I was pretty mediocre at programming until my last year of school. And then the way that my schedule was, it was just backloaded. Like I had done all my electrical engineering classes and it was backloaded with computer science. So then once I went through that gauntlet, it was like, okay, well now everything's flipped and I'm better at that. Yeah.

But so then that's why I went to Intel is because I was like, you know, I don't know if I want to go hardware side or software side. You know, they have both like, so I'm going to go there. And, you know, actually even that job search was a little bit rough. I'd been, and you know, I'd had other internships like the success of the summers after that first one. And, you know, I knew to apply early and I was applying early and I was, you know, not getting anything. And I was a little bit panicked because it was like,

I think it was a week or two before graduation and I still didn't have anything. And, um, you know, I just kept applying and then finally I lucked out at Intel position, uh, came up, I interviewed for it, um, got it. And then, yeah, I was there for six years after that. Yeah. Well, let's talk about, uh, tips that like for people that want to do kind of like, uh,

Not necessarily just like building software as a service app, but like lower level programming. And, you know, can you talk about what you did at Intel? And then like maybe based off of that experience, what you learned, what information you would send back to a college student who was in your state, like doing electrical engineering, computer science course, who would want to work like in kind of like a hardware adjacent software engineering role? Yeah.

Yeah, so my first year there, I started out in firmware validation. And so we were working with the firmware on the server chipsets, but we were just doing the validation for them and writing the test suites for those. And then after about a year, I switched over to... And what is that? That's just making sure that the chip functions as designed? Yeah. Yeah, so...

we would have like these really large spec documents and then yeah we're just writing uh tests to make sure that you know the the functionality of the chipset you know matches the spec um and you know that gets that gets down to low level stuff of like making sure that you know you expect like you you run it you issue a firmware command um on the chipset and then you're making sure that like you know the byte stream is what you expect on the other end um

And so anyways, after about a year of being in the validation side, then I switched over to development. And with there, I worked a little bit on the firmware, but mostly I was working on the ROM. And so the ROM is the code that is permanently on the silicon. The read only memory to like the ROMs that like get flash and then like a board might have tons of these little ROMs in them. And that's just like the preloaded operations. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. And so with that, like that was really interesting, like kind of development environment because we had, we, you know, there's real hardware that you can kind of test on, but it's the previous generation. And so like what's built into the ROM is this like ROM bypass. And so then you can, you can bypass the actual ROM that's written on there. It's kind of a hack to bypass that. And then you can load in,

your own ROM. And so we would use that like as initial testing to be able to like, you know, proof of concept, some code on a real hardware. But then we were also working with these simulation and emulation environments. And so kind of the, how the spectrum works is that the closer you get to actual reality, the exponentially slower it is to be able to like run and test on those. So like,

You can work on the real hardware, but it's going to be very... It's not trustworthy at all just because it's previous generation hardware. And you're just kind of trying to test a little bit of logic on there.

And then we have the simulation environment, which, you know, as far as a human is concerned, it's pretty much like real time, even though it's, it's definitely way slower. Um, but you know, when a boot flows like 10 milliseconds or a hundred milliseconds, and then, you know, in the simulation you're waiting for, you know, five or 10 seconds, like that's not a big deal to you. Um, but yeah,

So we have the simulation environment, which was very fast but also unreliable because it's just a pure logical representation of what the hardware is supposed to be. And then, oh, and I was actually missing one. There's like an FPGA hybrid one that's like a hybrid between the simulation and the emulation.

So that's also both more accurate and a little bit slower. And then at the extreme end, you have the emulation environment where it's supposedly trying to represent everything like down to a atomic level, like speed of light and everything.

And so with that, so like extreme, you know, simulation of physics. Yeah. It's like, it's like if, if your code passes the tests on an emulation, like it should be reality. And so with that, the, the trade-off is like I was mentioning before, you know, there's only like 10 or a hundred millisecond boot flow and,

like the shortest test run is somewhere between like six and 12 hours on the simulation. Um, and so that was kind of the flow of working on that was like, you'd start with a real hardware just to like get basic, um, sort of proof of concept on some stuff. Um, and then even after just a little bit of that, you'd kind of ditch that. And then just then the simulation would become kind of your baseline. And then you're kind of just like going through this, uh,

kind of iterative process of like, okay, I'm going to test things out in simulation and then, okay, now I can go and test those in emulation. But you know, I, I'm pretty much going to be waiting a day to get results back on that. Um,

And then, you know, you just go back and, okay, test more things out in simulation. And then you just keep going back and forth. So that was like basically your job for like six years? Is that the main thing you were doing? Oh, no. That one was – well, so for the ROM, I was doing both development and validation for that one. Okay. So you're like writing the code and then you're just like any other –

code you write, you should have tests to verify the code does what you want it to do and not a whole lot of stuff you don't want it to do. Right. So you were essentially doing both, both of those roles. Yep. Yeah. And also I don't know if it's that way anymore, but like when I, when I first started Intel, it was very much like there was a development team and there was a validation team and those were split and

Everything that I've done at Microsoft, it's like you own everything end-to-end. It's like you have to be responsible for everything. And my understanding is that's where it's going in general with software development. You write your own tests because otherwise it's like you're throwing stuff over the cubicle wall and other people are having to deal with your sloppy coding. It's not really fair.

And also, you probably become a lot better when you're in that iterative loop is my thinking. Like if I'm writing my own tests and I screw up, then I learned immediately from it. I don't have to hear secondhand information from some QA engineer a few days later. Oh, by the way, the code didn't work. Like you're finding that out instantaneously or near instantaneously, I guess, if it takes 12 hours to run a full physical simulation. Maybe 12 hours later. But still. Okay, cool. So...

By the way, FPGA is Field Programmable Gate Array. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just I like to define any acronym so people don't feel like we're throwing off a bit of soup at them to sound smart. We're not concerned with sounding smart. We're concerned with sharing as much insight as possible with people tuning in. So time at Intel, what point did you want to jump over to Microsoft? Like what was that transition like? So –

Going back to the Ron stuff. So I'd done that for a couple of years. And then after that point, like I had kind of started to feel like, well, maybe there's, you know, some better opportunity for me. And also like, you know, at that point I decided, you know, and I'd been doing

even though that was still like close to the hardware, like everything that I was doing with software. So I was like, at that point I know that, okay, software is where I want to be. And Intel is not a software company. And so like, if I really, you know, want to go where the best people are to learn from for software, I want to go to, you know, preferably one of the big tech giants or, you know, something similar. Um,

So that's what kind of spurred me on to go look. And obviously being from Washington, Microsoft is a big deal to me. It's the biggest corporation on earth, right? Yeah. So I just have to observe. You went from being very interested in math to being very interested in physics to being very interested in electrical engineering to being very interested in computer hardware to being interested in software. It's like you're just climbing up the abstraction ladder essentially throughout your entire career.

Kind of like adult early adult life. Yep. And, uh, yeah, that's a great way to put it. And yeah, that's one of the things that I love about just computers in general is that, yeah, there's so many different, uh, kind of rungs to the ladder of abstraction and there's, there's so many different, like interesting layers to work at. Um, and one of the really cool things about when I started at Microsoft was that, you know, they kind of took a big chance on me because, you

Here I am working on this very low level, close to the hardware stuff, which Microsoft also has jobs for that. But my role that I was most recently at Microsoft was very high up the abstraction ladder. And that was doing cloud development and things at internet scale and things of that nature. But everything that I learned in the past set me up well to be able to jump in and learn that stuff on the fly. Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome. So, uh, by the way, when I mentioned Microsoft's the largest corporation in the world, I just had to check, but it is currently by market cap, the largest corporation on earth. That is not hyperbole. Um, okay. So walk me through your first few years at Microsoft. You managed to make senior engineer. Like I know there's like the whole level system and engineering and stuff like that. Like maybe you can talk about like your time there. Uh, I don't know if it'd be cool to like reflect on your time there, but, uh, like,

how you progress through that just very quickly to give people some context into what they could expect if they were to go work at a big tech company. I think you were there for like five years or so. Well, yeah, a little over four. Okay. Yep. So anyways, yeah. One thing I like to say is that the, the like Intel's a really big company, but the jump, like just in terms of like the,

like the corporate ecosystem, like the jump from going, uh, Intel to Microsoft is, uh,

I think even bigger than going from college to Intel. And it's just like, you know, there's like, it's just so big, like it's truly like its own country almost just in terms of the scale. Yeah. And just, yeah. Both in terms of how many employees there are, how many, you know, how big their, you know, product portfolio is all the like built in infrastructure that we have.

all the resources that are available, like it's just massive and mind blowing. Yeah. And what did you learn during the, like, if you could take us through those, those four plus years there, like how things started out, like what your first few months were like, and then, you know, at what point you started to feel like you were gaining some degree of,

an agency within the organization if that happened? - Yeah, I mean, I felt like that pretty immediately, even though it was all very new. I mean, just like any job, you know, it's the, you get kind of the drinking from the fire hydrant of knowledge, so to speak.

Um, and so like that can be a little bit overwhelming and, um, it definitely was challenging at the beginning because here I am jumping in, you know, new people, like totally new area of work. Um, but you know, everyone was so supportive in helping me when I had questions or when I didn't know what I was doing. Um,

but also like just kind of the company culture and everything. Like there was so much documentation and, you know, so many learning resources where I could just go, you know, definitely the first couple of weeks to a month, like I was just purely learning all these new technologies. Um,

And I don't think I did any like actual meaningful work for like the first month or so. Um, and they were, you know, they were also really supportive of that as well. Like when I started my skip, my skip level manager at the time was like, you know, we don't expect you to be up to speed until a year. Um, just because, you know, it's, it's so big and there's so much to learn. Um, but I definitely felt like I was, uh, up to speed and a lot shorter than that. Um, and,

But yeah, it was a lot of fun being able to just jump in with the support of the team and having the confidence to be able to learn these new things and just kind of hit the ground running. Yeah. What were some of the most profound things that you took away from your time at Microsoft in terms of best practices that you're going to apply elsewhere? I know Amazon...

famously has like their 12 principles and everybody jokes about, you know, like how it's like cultish or something like that. But like, there are probably some actual like usable conventions that have been adopted by these giant corporations. If they're getting things done, if they're able to succeed and grow like they have, uh, are there things that you observed there that was like, Oh, this is actually something like counterintuitive, but it's definitely true. And this is going to be a useful thing to apply in my life.

I don't know about counterintuitive, but it's really just as simple as the company's mission statement and just their main, not leadership principle, but

kind of their main ethos of like, you know, don't be a know it all, be a learn it all. Don't be a know it all, be a learn it all. Yep. And then the company mission, I can't remember exactly word for word, but something about like empower every person and every organization on the planet to do better or something like that. And so, you know, despite what happened a week ago, you know, it very much is that like supportive culture. And, you know, I, I,

I really didn't run into many, if any, jerks at Microsoft. Like, everyone was really about learning and being better. And that really coincides with kind of like my, you know, training methodology and running is that

or i guess kind of my mindset is that like you know yeah i go out and compete and race and stuff but i'm never trying to you know beat my opponents i'm trying to be better than i was before i'm trying to get my best um and you know it is you know when you have other people to compare against like it is can be you know somewhat validating but like and i am very competitive but it's not like

You know, I'm not, I'm not trying to do it at the expense of other people, but so how that relates back to Microsoft is that, yeah, it was a very, like, it was a very academic feel, um, which is kind of ironic because it, it's like the most corporate of all the big tech companies. Um, but yeah, it was just very, um,

Very growth-oriented. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I want to transition from talking about kind of like your career and your background to some other topics that I think people tuning in may find helpful. We're lucky in that you have a lot of expertise in areas that most of our guests do not. And I'm just going to point out that you win competitions.

Cross-country races. That's like a big deal. Like all these people are training. They're working really hard and you go and you're like first place. That's a big deal. And the other thing is that you and your wife over the past few years have built out like a portfolio of – I believe real estate is the main asset that you hold and that you have –

more than a million dollars worth of real estate. Essentially like that. I don't know if that includes your primary residence, but like, like you're building out like this kind of like portfolio of stuff that like you're taking the funds you're making from your corporate job and you're essentially investing them. Yeah.

Is that an accurate statement? And this is not financial advice. We are not a financial advice podcast. And most financial advice that I would give is just like, save money, keep your costs low, buy index funds, stuff like that. Anybody will tell you that and people might sell you some fancy book or anything like that. I just want to be clear. We're not trying to sell you anything. We don't really care, but this is one person's lived experience and how they're handling

you know, preparing for risks and things like that. And, and preparing to like have something to, you know, potentially their kids. I don't even know if you, if you have kids or plan to have kids, but yeah. Oh, okay, cool. So, so, so yeah, I'm just going to step back and maybe you can talk a little bit about that. And we can definitely talk about trail running. And like, you've said that like a huge part of how you're successful is managing your physical health and your mental health. Yep.

Yeah. So which part did you want me to start with? Yeah, let's start with the physical and mental. Physical and mental. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, running is just something that I've been doing for so long, dating back to my freshman year of high school. And there was a gap there in college. I can't remember if I mentioned that that didn't work out running on the cross-country team there. So I took a little bit of a break there, but I actually...

you know, I'd kind of go on and off working out, running and lifting weights and stuff in college. And I actually had this weird thing where like, if I, if I didn't work out for like two weeks, I had like, I'd have these episodes where like, I'd start like breaking out in a rash. And like, I, I joke, but it was like, it was like, I was allergic to not working out. Um, but so yeah, like the main thing is just that,

I've lost a lot of people to health issues, physical health issues. And so that's always been one thing in the back of my mind is that my body is the most important thing, both my brain as well as my heart. And that's where kind of most...

I mean, I don't know this for sure, but like kind of most leading causes of death are in something that I'm anxious about. Yeah, so like cardiovascular, like heart issues, high blood pressure. Again, we're not doctors. This is not medical advice. But like every time I go to Walmart to like buy some baby carrots or whatever, I put my arm into that little cuff and I just go ahead and get my blood pressure taken real quick. It takes like two seconds. It's free. It's free.

Like they have these little blood pressure kiosks and I encourage people to use those just to monitor the blood pressure, for example, because it's a silent killer. People don't know until it's too late. Everything's fine and all of a sudden you're having a stroke because you didn't necessarily – and there are other causes of strokes too. But like managing your blood pressure is one of the simplest things you can do to like increase longevity. Yeah, so like –

I'm definitely on the more extreme end. When I'm telling other people advice on how to train, I'm definitely like, "Don't think you have to be like me." When I'm at my peak, I'm running at least 10 miles a day. It's nothing. As long as you're getting 30 minutes in, that's great.

Um, but yeah, so basically like, you know, I know that if I do this and if I do it religiously, that it's going to have profound effects definitely on my physical health. Uh, but also really helps out a lot mentally because, you know, it's something you can do, move your body. Like for me, it really helps that like,

you know, I, I lose anxiety and I lose anger and stuff like that by going out and, you know, using my body and going out to run, whether that's running or lifting weights or rock climbing or whatever. Um, but yeah, like, um,

Sorry, I lost my train of thought. Yeah, no worries. So physical health is a big deal. And so you maintain that. And it sounds like it is not – it's like a net positive in the sense that not only are you getting exercise, but it has this halo effect affecting your thought process and your mood and all these other things that are important to getting things done, having like a happy day-to-day life.

Yeah. And it also trains you. I mean, the mental aspect also just in terms of mental toughness, um, because running is very hard on your body. Um, in fact, I have a little injury right now with a mild calf strain, but, um, it's very hard on your body. It's,

It's not fun. It's really boring. I mean, it's fun. Like I've been doing it so long and like, I'm usually running solo and like, I've just been in that cycle for so long that like now it is, now it is fun. Like I go, I love going out and like just exploring a nearby park and forest. Yeah. Um, you know, you got lots of natural beauty up there. Like here in Texas, I'm literally just running around a field with like lawn mode and stuff, like going to a local track or something, running through the

the burbs, but, um, but you've got like lots of varied elevation. I mean, like, like Portland area and I haven't been to Vancouver, Washington, but, but it's like, I did go up there and I did visit some of the parks and, and did some light trail running. Yeah. So there's a lot of great features to run around here. And yeah, like I was saying, it really helps with the mental toughness, um, which is really required, especially in a job like this, because you know, you're, uh, people think that like, uh,

Uh, you know, being physically active burns a lot of calories, but again, not medical advice. I'm pretty sure your brain draws a lot more energy than anything that you can do physically. And so when you're working on, you know, really hard problems all day, like that requires a lot of mental toughness, even if you're taking breaks regularly and making sure that, you know, you're not getting burnt out. Um, but yeah, it's like when you're going through that every day and you're just, you know, just one step at a time, which is a great metaphor for life and everything.

you're just getting through it one step at a time. And then, uh, before you know it an hour's up or an hour and a half, however long you're going out running. Um, and then, you know, you're done. And so like that really helps prepare, um, for the mental toughness side and, you know, being able to push through work when like, like, you know, with work, like there's always drudgery, like it's not always going to be fun, even if it's in a field that you're super passionate about. So, um,

You need to have a reason to, in a way, to be able to stick with things and see them through to the end. And so I think that the running really helps out with that.

Yeah, 100%. I love going swimming. I've switched to swimming just because it's lower impact. And so I just swim medleys and just think. I'm alone in my thoughts while I'm swimming and there's no music or anything. It's kind of meditative. Do you meditate on top of doing this? I mean, you mentioned that you do therapy, which is something that I –

I'm impressed that you're so open about that because a lot of people, especially men, there's this stigma associated with talking about your feelings and stuff like that. But you don't seem to. No, and part of that is I've been in it for so long. I started probably a year before my oldest son was born, and he is almost six.

So like I've been in it for that long and seeing the same therapist for that amount of time. And we have, you know, a great relationship and rapport and everything. And yeah, that's what like, like, as you said, um, you know, there's a Sigma around it, but like when my wife was helping me find a therapist, like this guy was advertising, like, you know, quote man therapy. And like, you know, that, that just kind of helped me like lower my guard, I guess. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So what would you say to somebody who's considering, uh,

Getting therapy and I don't personally believe that therapy is necessary for everybody. I don't personally have a therapist. I have been in therapy sessions in the past, but like I don't – I'm not actively getting therapy. But like what would you say to somebody who's asking the question, okay, would therapy be a good option for me? Obviously, there's monetary costs and things like that. But if you set those aside and you just think, okay, would I be a good candidate for benefiting from therapy?

yeah i mean i would just like in terms of figuring out like if you should do it um i mean of course my opinion is unequivocally yes just because i you know the common theme with everything is like i live for self-improvement and like getting better at things and that's just another avenue for me to get better at things um and so from that perspective like

Yeah, theoretically, I think everyone should do it. Everyone would benefit from it. But, you know, if you are asking whether you really need it, I mean, you should kind of reflect on your life and things and see, like, are there areas of your life that are impacting, like, your happiness or your health or stuff like that? Like, if there are certain aspects of your life that are getting...

In the way of you thriving like that's definitely a reason to go to therapy Yeah, like like addiction or something like that or just yeah, I could do that or I've got I've met lots of people that seem to struggle with anger and and you know Maybe I struggle with it a little bit maybe that's part of the reason why I left home and lived in my car for a year and Dropped out of high school and stuff because I was angry like that every young man motif You know trope

Quick, quick note. I actually, that just reminded me while I was back running Bloomsday in Spokane, I ran into an old friend that I hadn't seen since high school graduation, uh, 15 years, um, had a long conversation with him. He, he fit that archetype and yeah, we actually, we somehow started talking about therapy and he was going to maybe go check it out, but yeah, there's a fun thing to add to that. Yeah.

Well, one of the things that you and your wife done that is perhaps different from a lot of your peers. And again, I don't want to sound judgmental or anything, but like,

You have been blessed with this very high compensating job. You work very hard to earn through studying and everything. But like Microsoft engineer, I imagine that pays pretty well. You're living in a relatively high cost part of the country and everything like that. How have you perlaid that financial kind of windfall of working as an engineer for many years into building out kind of like a more robust, maybe like recurring revenue and stuff like that?

diversifying, so to speak. Yeah. So the start was, I mean, just like anything else that we've been talking about, like I was, it was just kind of a lucky chance encounter when I was at Intel. Um, I made good friends with one of my coworkers and he was super interested, like he wasn't super knowledgeable yet, but he was very interested in the whole, like kind of the fire, you know, financial independence retire early. It's financial independence, retire early fire. There's like a subreddit. Um,

Yeah. So he was super into that. Um, I, he, he, he, uh, got me into it. Um, I'm not a super big advocate of fire explicitly just because it, sometimes it kind of comes across as like, Oh, live poor right now, save up a bunch of money so that you can retire and kind of live poor for the rest of your life, but not need anything extra. Um,

You probably can describe my lifestyle as like just – I'm obsessed with saving money, and this is one of the things I learned from spending a lot of time in China. China is a land of incredible uncertainty with what are the capricious whims of the leadership. Are we going to have another great famine and all this stuff? So people were like saving half of their earnings.

And also because the country's finance were completely locked down, there's no place to put the money. So people were plowing it into real estate. It was seen as the safest place. And actually if you followed the Evergrande and a lot of these other financial or these property development, they had all this money because everybody was so desperately saving money because of the ambiguity. And then...

Yeah, it's crazy. But I don't need to go into that. But what I want to say is I learned a lot from my time in China about how people would just kind of quietly take half their earnings and put them away just in case. And that had a profound impact on me. So I've been really, I guess, thrifty would be a generous way of saying it. But basically just refusing to spend money on stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

But that's more like fire what people would be advocating on, which I'm not that familiar with the sober. I've just heard about it. But you're more interested in like having some like baseline level of relative prosperity and not like, are you interested in retiring early?

Yeah, but also, I mean, when I say retire early, I mean, basically just like switch into mission driven work and doing things purely because I want to do them and not because I need them to be able to, you know, sustain my existence basically.

But yeah, so I was lucky to, you know, run into this guy that, you know, we became really good friends. He was a coworker at Intel. Um, and he got me into this group that was starting learning about, you know, investing and, you know, just financial literacy. Um, and it started out as just like a couple of us in a conference room and just talking about these ideas, the guy that was leading it, um,

He was very knowledgeable, but he hadn't quite ascended yet. What does that mean, ascend? So a couple of years later, by the time I left Intel, those meetings, they were like 500-person teleconference calls. And we would have celebrity investors come talk.

And, you know, these people, like a lot of the guests that we had that were teaching us in those meetings, like they were people that had to like all of their purchases, like they had to file through the SEC in terms of like buying stocks and stuff, because that's the amount of money that they're working with. And so, yeah, through that, we just learned like different techniques. I can't remember them all off the top of my head, but like,

When you're an employee, you're reliant on that income. And if you lose your job, you lose your income. And also, even if you have savings, if you're not investing that properly, if you just have all your cash under your mattress or even in the bank, in the bank, you're not going to get as high of an interest return on that money.

So, yeah, basically just knowing where to put your money to get passive income, whether that could be stock market and stock growth. I don't want to be beholden to the expansion and contraction of the stock market, which is why we've diversified and also have real estate so that we can actually generate real passive income. Okay, so passive income, can you describe that?

Yeah, so that's where basically you're making money while you sleep is the shortest way to say that. So one form of passive income might be having like a software as a service tool that people are using for like, I don't know, automating some task. Like you've got like essentially a cron job

running on some server somewhere and you've got like a nice front end for it like every time some you know football game is about to come on send me a text message with a link to it on on like some pirate website or something so i can watch it without spending money i don't know i'm not advocating piracy uh but but like like just some simple task like that right um

uh, piracy is a recurring theme. I was just talking with somebody else about like how those, uh, you wouldn't steal a car ads. They actually use like a font that may not have, they may not have paid the license to use that weird like ransom letter font. Uh, anyway, so like you, there are lots of ways of creating recurring income that is passive. Uh, but real estate is like the classic one. Cause you like buy an apartment, uh,

building with like a bunch of apartments and then you rent that out and every month somebody's sending you money to pay the rent and then you're using some of that money to pay off the mortgage or whatever that the financial instrument that you use to purchase the building if you didn't buy it with cash and then you're using this mother for like maintenance and tax and all the other stuff but you still have some extra money left over at the end of that. The entire reason for buying an apartment building is it is like an expected value positive

Right. Investment, right? Yeah. And like, so part of that investment group, um, that was like, uh, something that was really drilled into me is that like, after, after going through, you know, all those kinds of like mini lectures and just like going through all those ideas, uh, was just that like, now I have this view where it's like, and sometimes it's, it's not great, but like, uh, like I really just view everything in terms of assets and liabilities. And so like,

you know, where some people might get into trouble because they're not being frugal enough or overspending. It's like, you know, I look at anything that I purchased and I'm like, okay, is this an asset or liability? And if it's liability, like I really need to justify it. Like I have to internally justify that purchase because I don't want to just be losing money for no reason. You know, basically kind of always having that mindset of which, you know,

It also feels a little bit scummy, but I'm always seeking a return on an investment. Yeah, and I've got this scarcity mindset. Again, I may be a hell of a living in my car for a year and just sweeping floors and stuff, but I always convert things into my hourly rate. Like, okay, how much is this boba tea that I just got? It cost $5. Wow, this boba is...

You know, the equivalent of like 20 minutes worth of work or something like that. And I used to make $5.25 an hour. That was the federal minimum wage. And I worked at Taco Bell and I made that much money. And so if somebody invites me, hey, let's go to the bar and get a beer or whatever, I'm like, damn, this beer is like the equivalent of 30 minutes of hard work sitting there taking people's orders through the drive-thru. And by taking that, it just forced –

I can't undo the frugality mindset. Like it's just going to be with me. Like, and you hear these stories of people that are extremely wealthy and they refuse to use like the, the hotel, like washing clothes, washing service. Cause it's a ripoff. It is a ripoff, but you've got tons of money, but they still can't bring themselves to use it because it seems like an EV negative expected value, negative proposition. And I'll just wash my shirt in the sink with some shampoo. It's all good. You know?

Yeah. Well to, to touch on that a little bit, um, sorry, lost my train of thought. Well, it's just about being frugal. And then you were talking about like, you know, looking for return and everything. Yeah. You also got to like in that situation, like the extreme frugality is you also got to kind of balance it because like, there's also the, you know, the opportunity cost. It's like,

I always like to tell people, the example I give is someone who has Jeff Bezos money. Jeff Bezos doesn't do his own grocery shopping. It's a waste of time. Even if it only takes an hour, I don't know how much he's making an hour, but it's on the order of millions. The classic example is if Bill Gates is walking down the street and there's a $100 bill on the ground, it's not worth his time to bend down and pick it up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So that's another thing that I also try to keep in mind to kind of balance that. Yeah. So...

How has your engineering mindset informed your thinking around – I guess you said that ultimately you're not interested in retiring so much. It's just like retiring from having to be beholden to something you don't necessarily care as much about the mission so that you can do stuff that you do care about the mission, which could be running a charity or it could be creating some sort of money-making venture that you think is a net positive for the world instead of just purely extractive like a lot of businesses are. Yeah.

Yeah. So kind of tying that back to what we were talking about earlier was that another thing that I learned in that class, or I say class, but in those discussions was that like,

your dollar is basically a vote for a company. One of the reasons why wanting to have the financial independence is not just I'm trying to get rich so that I can have all these toys and everything and all these fun, exciting things. It's about being in a position where I have actual freedom. And then if I can make even more than what I need to live off of, I want to use that to help other people.

Um, because my dollar, you know, is a vote for those things. So like, you know, whether it's, you know, contributing to like OPB or to like your foundation or wherever, like, you know, I want to be able to be in a position where I can actually help out and use my dollars to help people out. Yeah. What is OPB? Um, that's the, uh, Oregon public broadcasting part of, I think it's part of NPR. So it's kind of like, like, so you support the kind of like private public partnership type, uh,

you know, radio and stuff like that. And like, and for anybody who knows a lot about like local broadcasting, it's been hollowed out and corporatized. And like, there are just a few giant, you know, conglomerates that own basically all the local news and stuff like that. So hats off to you for supporting like your local, you know, journalists essentially. So let's talk about the layoff and what you have done with your family and how this like,

What I want to do is kind of like the parable of the grasshopper and the ant. You may have heard that. The ant's like...

working very hard in the grasshopper. It's like, why are you working so hard? Everything's fine. And then comes the winter and the grasshopper is not prepared and the ants are prepared and they've got everything they need underground and they're fine. Right? So, like, for people out there, and I don't know that anybody actually listening is this naive, babe in the woods, but for those people that think, like, oh, it's all good. Like, I'll just go out and get another job immediately if I lose this one. Like, I've got all these in-demand skills and stuff. It may actually be that...

way in some fields but uh i think for a lot of people it it's not a bad thing to be prepared so maybe you could talk about how you prepared um over the past few years when you did have all this income coming in and uh now how your situation might be different from somebody who hadn't prepared and was in a less um you know favorable position after getting suddenly laid off out of nowhere

Yeah. So kind of like what we were talking about earlier is just that, yeah, I wasn't necessarily, you know, expecting or planning for this to happen, but you know, you always got to be prepared for worst case scenarios. And I mean, that was also a big, you know, kind of tenant of that, you know, that investment learning series. And yeah, I mean, like, like I said, I wasn't planning on it. I was mostly, you know, concerned about like, you know, just trying to grow this as much as possible so that in the event that,

if I need it, then I have it. And so like, that's basically what we did. But, um,

Yeah, you know, we just tried to save as much as we could while we could. You know, before we had kids, it was a lot easier to save money. It's been not as easy just because, you know, child care costs are really high and everything. But that's another reason to even prepare for that, because that's, you know, that's a huge hit to your income when you have kids and they need to be, you know, cared after because both parents are working. Yeah.

But yeah, so just using that knowledge that I had gained to both keep my stocks that I get through work, also invest in stocks, invest in retirement, like max out all that stuff. And then, yeah, learning about kind of the real estate side and then just using that to just kind of hedge against the market because, like I said,

the market, there is some passive income there in forms of like dividends and stuff. But at the same time, I don't believe that dividends are truly passive income because you know, the math is that they, you know, that's a disbursement from company profits. And so like the, the stock price necessarily has to come down by that much. Um, and you know, it's, it's kind of artificial because it's just a dollar amount and not like a, you know, some, something bad in earnings happened. And so like the actual value is down. It's just,

the literal value is down. There's no free lunch. It's not like the money just got dropped from helicopters when they released the dividend. It is going to be reflected in changes in the stock price. And essentially, if you believe in efficient market theory and all this stuff, there are different levels of that. But at the end of the day, a lot of the complicated aspects of finance and stuff just kind of melt away into, okay, this is the value of the asset. The price reflects everything. Yeah.

Right? And again, this is not finance and anybody who's listening who does have a better understanding of this, feel free to like jump in on the comments on YouTube and correct us. I don't want to be a, you know,

I don't want to be introducing misinformation or mischaracterizations and these sort of things, but like you're going to hear a lot of stuff about finance where like, Oh, be sure to look for X, Y, Z or value companies or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, I definitely see what you're saying about like, okay, real estate is something you have physical control over. You don't have like really any control over what's happening in the market, but you can go and improve your property and you can take a high degree of

selectivity and like figuring out what you're going to buy and how you're going to pay for it. And like there, there's a lot of decision making around that. And the market is just essentially putting your money in there and hoping it gradually goes up because it's a complicated or it's really a complex thing and you just don't have any real control. Yeah. And I mean, there's also, there's no silver bullet, like real estate's not guaranteed to work out either. But, um,

Like I said, I was just kind of using that to hedge against because, you know, I don't want to be in a situation where I get laid off and then the market also tanks 50%. And then it's like, okay, well now I'm actually losing money because I have to use that to live off of. And I'm, you know, I'm not, obviously I'm not going to drain it all, but like, you know, every time you take out something at a loss, then, you know, you're losing money. And so that was part of the,

the calculus of like, uh, so we have three rental units and, um, yeah, I, I made sure that when we were getting those, that we were getting something that would just have a,

instant cashflow. And so, you know, there's going to be vacancies. We haven't had any issues with vacancies with ours, but like vacancies will happen. And so you're not always guaranteed that income, but like when you do have it, like basically the mortgage is pretty much guaranteed and you know, you're making money off that. And so it's like really helpful. So you spent a lot of time and energy in like researching this and making sure that you weren't like to minimize the risk.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, awesome. Well, the last thing I want to talk about is I do want to dive into what the next few months of your life looks like. I know you just got laid off like literally last week and you're still feeling your way through this. But like how much pressure do you have to go out and get a new job so that you have that income coming in? Like are you in a position where you could coast for a while or like how serious – and then what are your next few steps if you do want to go ahead and get a new job?

Hmm. So the main thing is, or like the, the first deadline is that I actually, uh, wrapping up my last class at UW. Um, so I've been,

Like while I've been working, I've been driving up the past couple of years back and forth to university of Washington, university of Washington. So I'm doing my master's in computer science there. Very cool. And yeah, so I was doing evening classes there and my cousin works for Amazon and he lives up there. So I just go stay the night with him. Like I had to go to my class, stay the night at his house and then I'd go work at Microsoft the next day and then I'd drive home. Yeah.

But yeah, so I got that wrapping up. I'll probably start job searching soon. I still got to, like, fix my resume and everything. But yeah, I'm probably going to take it a little bit easy just because I can. And, like, I've been, you know, I've been working so hard both with work and school. Like, I'm going to take...

as much time to just kind of unplug and be with my family and everything. Um, because, you know, as important as a job is like, there's no bigger job than, you know, being a good husband and partner for my wife and being a father to my two boys. So, you know, that, that's something that I can't go back and redo. Um, so I'm going to spend a lot of time doing that. Um, try to run a lot as well. Um, even though I'm a little bit hobbled right now, uh,

Well, I hope that heals. Yeah, go ahead. What advice would you have, like, based on your limited experience being laid off? Was this the first time you've been laid off? Yeah. Yeah, so, like, in terms of, like, things you've already kind of thought through and, like, planned and stuff, like, what would be your advice to somebody who is just getting laid off today and has, like, to make that next week a little less painful, a little less ambiguous? Um...

Are you asking in terms of like what to do or, I mean, I guess, okay, well, I'll talk about, I'll talk a little bit about what to do and also like kind of how to feel. But, um, in terms of what to do, like, I don't think it's really any different from any other job search. And I think it's, you know, it parallels pretty well to like coming straight out of college because, you know, you come out of college and you're also desperate for work. You don't have a job, um, you know, and you're probably have student loans that need to be repaid ASAP, things like that. Um,

So like my advice really doesn't change no matter what the circumstances are. And that is that it's really a numbers game. And, you know, a lot of people will filter themselves out and won't apply to something because they don't match all the minimum requirements. And like the big thing that I always tell everyone, primarily students, is that like, don't filter yourself out. Like if you meet at least 51% of the requirements, apply to it, apply to everything that you can find, right?

especially if you're in a position where, um, you know, you are kind of desperate or you really need something, um, consider things that you wouldn't necessarily consider before. Like maybe, maybe don't go straight into a job, maybe go back to school. Um, and, uh, you know, when you're applying to jobs, like maybe you consider different parts of the country or maybe even consider different countries. Um, but the main thing is just that like,

I've had a lot of people in the past be like, "Oh, it's been six months. I've applied to 50 jobs and I haven't had any luck." And I'm just like, when I'm looking, I apply to more than 50 jobs a day. 50 over six months is nothing. And so it's really just about, in my opinion, just numbers game, just no stone left unturned kind of approach.

And then also, because you don't know, you don't know, like what kind of good things that's going to lead you to when you, you know, take up kind of paths or opportunities that you otherwise wouldn't have. And then also going into like the kind of how to feel is that, you know, just everything in my life has helped prepare me for that. But specifically, like,

you know, the running stuff with the, you know, the mental toughness, um, the therapy so that, you know, I'm just in better control of myself and my emotions and, you know, how I feel about myself and stuff like that. Um, but the biggest thing is just like,

you know, no matter what job you have, even if it's the best, you know, you know, I really loved my team and everything and the work that I was doing, um, the last four years at Microsoft were incredible. Um, and you know, they, they pay very well. Like that was also great. Um, but at the end of the day, a job's a job and you know, you are not your job. And, um, I think one, one of the things that kind of grounds me is that, um,

Uh, like I just view everything like whether it's literally my existence in my body, whether it's a job, whether it's something else I'm doing, it's like, I am just like kind of a steward of this moment and you know, all things have to end at some point. And you know, it sucks that I didn't get to end things on my terms, but that's just the way it goes. Um, and yeah, like I said, at the end of the day, like it sucks cause that's a huge loss of income. Like that's,

uh, you know, a pretty big impact in the short term. But at the same time, it's like, um, you know, I've already got so much else that I need to be thankful and grateful for. Um, and you know, as long as I kind of, you know, practice that gratitude, um, that's always going to make me feel good about things. Yeah. So you are not your job. It sucks that you lost the income, but you're a steward of this moment. That's everything. Yeah.

comes to an end, right? That's just the nature of reality, right? Like, I love that steward of the moment observation. And yeah, I know I'm like, I feel bad being a little bit kind of glib about it all because, you know, it is serious. Like, I know, like, I wasn't the only one impacted. Like, there's a lot of people that, you know, like you said, weren't prepared. And, you

you know, they might be really freaking out. And like, I, you know, I haven't been like this the whole past week. Like there's been moments where I've been freaking out a little bit, um, less, less about the, like the immediate impact and more just like the, uh,

you know, knowing how hard it is to get a job, even when you are skilled and have lots of credentials, um, you know, the market's tough, especially right now. And then, you know, the interview processes are, are really, really difficult. They have high standards. So from that aspect, like I'm a little bit, you know, concerned, but, um,

you know, in the long run, like everything was going to be fine. Yeah. Right on. I love your outlook. Um, I love the way that you've spent all this time and energy investing in yourself in terms of, you know, your mental toughness, your physical toughness, understanding yourself, uh, that you've spent a lot of time exercising, thinking about these things. You've spent a lot of time in therapy. It really sounds like you've set yourself up to be resilient to these kinds of shocks. And,

And yeah, I just want to compliment you. I think you're in an incredible position here. And I'm optimistic that even though the job market is tough and I want to acknowledge like a lot, like when a senior Microsoft dev of your caliber is just getting laid off, that's a bummer. That's extremely valuable. It's 20 for Microsoft. I mean,

I'm sure they have their reasons, but like, yeah, it sucks that, uh, they no longer have somebody like you in the fold. So, uh, yeah, I mean, there, there was also like, I mean, I don't know if I knew any of them personally, but I mean, there's plenty of people even way beyond me that were also impacted. Yeah. So,

So, yeah, well, I'm optimistic that you're going to hit the ground running, uh, that you're going to, um, get another opportunity when you, when you need to, like, you don't need to hit the ground running. That's a great thing because you set your entire life up. You've, you've basically built yourself up to this moment to where you have

Tons of optionality. And that's what I guess financial independence is all about. And that's what having a whole lot of relevant skills is all about is just having options. So it sounds like you're in a really good place and you're doing some –

Like you built your wife's speech pathology program. You've helped out some other organizations and things like that. And it sounds like you're putting your time to very good use. And yeah. So I just want to thank you for sharing everything so openly and commend you on being so stoic about the entire process. And yeah, like...

Good luck with the job search. We'll be, we'll be pulling for you, man. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And, uh, until next time, everybody out there, keep at it. Happy coding.