Funemployment 2024
On February 1, I woke up to an unexpected email from my employer.
"Today, Okta made the decision to eliminate a number of positions across multiple organizations. Unfortunately, your position has been eliminated as part of this reduction."
— Matt Raible (@mraible) February 1, 2024
Not exactly the kind of email you want to read when you first wake up. But, I'm excited for the future!
I laughed out loud at first, then smiled and felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. I went through a wide range of emotions that morning, but despair was never one of them. As a high performer on my team, I did not expect to be laid off. However, looking back over the last several months, there were a few indicators that it might happen.
I quickly realized the bright side of my situation:
- It was the middle of ski season, and
- I had nothing to do.
I was laid off on a Thursday morning and was scheduled to leave for Jfokus that Saturday. I was supposed to do a workshop, a talk, and help at the Okta booth. Since my talks used Okta products and it'd be weird to represent a company that just laid you off, I had to back out of the conference. It just didn't feel right.
The reason I had nothing to do is all of the activities I did on my computer were Okta-related. I didn't even have a personal computer. I did all my work on the company laptop and all of my open source contributions had a relationship to my work.
I received many inquiries from my tweet above and my LinkedIn post with the same message. I told everyone I was going to take a couple weeks to process things and skiing was my top priority. I've been unemployed in the past, but I never received any sort of severance, let alone one that lasted for months. I knew that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Funemployment is the condition of a person who takes advantage of being out of a job to have the time of their life. This is my funemployment story.
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