435 Days

On Unemployment, Imposter Syndrome, and Neighbors Who Cut Trees

It's been 435 days since I last had a job.

I know that because I’ve been counting. I counted at 303, once again at 356 days, and then counted some more at 422. I wasn’t sure I’d get to stop.

But today, I do.

Two days ago, I accepted an offer from an AI company in the e-commerce space—some pre-seed startup with a mission statement about “advanced attribute technology” or whatever buzzword salad they're serving these days. The irony isn't lost on me that after hundreds of applications, what finally landed me this gig wasn't even my own doing—it was Niru, my old colleague from Yahoo! circa 2005, reaching out to me out of the blue. Twenty years later, our shared trauma of surviving the early aughts tech bubble is still paying dividends.

They didn't waste any time either. The very next morning, I found myself in their sprawling house in the Fremont…