Well, it’s only been about a week and a half but here’s an update.

First a piece of advice. You might be asked to sign something when you are let go or leave a company. Read it carefully and if you have the option get an expert or lawyer read it for you before you sign it. Mine was written in lawyer double speak and something like 30-40 pages long. I initially misread a piece of it and had to get a second opinion to make sure I didn’t make any expensive mistakes.

From what I can tell my company is being incredibly generous. Not only am I getting ~4.5 months of notice (Nov 1st is my last day), but if I stay till the end I’ll get a pretty nice severance. Hence the 9 months that I mentioned in my previous post. This of course has to change how I look for a job. If I was being let go tomorrow, or two weeks from now, or heck, even a month from now, I’d go into high gear. Get my resume out as many places as possible, talk to as many people as possible, etc.

Having a lot of time puts me in a bit of a quandary. Obviously the best thing for me would be either a much higher paying job, or a job that starts Nov 2nd. I get paid reasonably well and Nov 2nd is a long way off. That means that while I’m certainly willing to discuss open positions with people I’m making sure to preface it with “I’m not available until Nov 2nd. I understand completely if you aren’t able to wait that long.” For those that are willing to wait I’d love to talk to you! Otherwise here is my current plan (which of course is always subject to change).

• Work on my resume. I’m not in a huge rush to get it done (although maybe I should be) but I think I can give it a couple of weeks to be sure I’m happy with it.
• Get back to writing on a regular basis. For those that don’t know I was pretty sick in 2020 and after that I fell out of regular posting. I’ve been working on getting back to it but now’s the time to really make that big push.
• I have some educational materials available to me through work. I’m going to take advantage of that while I have the opportunity.
• And of course there are all of the free resources available. For example I’m starting Azure for the Data Engineer learning path.
• I haven’t decided for sure, but I may go ahead and see about getting some certifications. Not so much because I feel like certifications are important for finding a job, but because they provide a great format for making sure my skills are where I want them to be.
• I’ll be finding out if I’m still an MVP tomorrow. If I am, great. If I’m not then I need to take advantage of the post MVP program that Microsoft offers. This isn’t something I did specifically to help with finding a job, but I’ll take advantage of it how I can.

In short the next month or two is going to be studying and getting ready. As one friend put it, I’m pre-gaming. After that I’m guessing I’ll start phasing more and more into job search mode but we will see how it all goes.