Layoff Bounce Back: Resilience through Personal and Professional Networks with Dave Stevens

Nick Korte: Foreign.

John White: Welcome to the Nerd Journey Podcast. Our goal is to help you, the technology professional, accelerate your career progression, increase your job satisfaction, and be more effective in your existing role.

Nick Korte: We want to bring listeners like you the career advice we wish we'd been given earlier in our careers.

John White: I'm John White, journeyman on Twitter, sharing co host duties with nick Cordy at NetworkNerd.

Nick Korte: We're two former IT operations guys who have moved on to pre sales roles with technology vendors. We have our opinions, but we also like to highlight the journeys of others and see what we can learn from them.

John White: We'd also like to ask for your feedback to make this a conversation, not a one way broadcast. Email us@nerdjourneypodcastmail.com or DM US erdjourney on Twitter. So come join us on our Nerd journey.

Nick Korte: Let's take a trip. Episode 354 Imagine the work day starts off like any other. It's just a normal day and then at some point you receive the news that you've been laid off. What would you do next? Many of us might not know what to do. Dave Stevens, our, uh, guest this week, is currently a field solutions architect at Pure Storage. But this role is one that he accepted only after facing the unexpected loss of a job. Based on the trends we're seeing in the tech industry right now, my hope is this discussion will bring you, dear listener, some encouragement as Dave talks through his experience this week. I want you to listen closely for a few things. You'll hear how Dave processed the news and the amount of time he needed between receiving that news and taking action to search for a new job. He also talks about the type of work he wanted to do. We talk about and highlight some of those potential warning signs that might have been missed leading up to this event. Dave will also talk about how to utilize both our, uh, personal and professional networks to help us move forward if something like this happens to us. Let's get you the full story as we share our interview with Dave Stevens. I want to welcome Dave Stevens to the show.

John White: Yeah, my name is Dave Stevens. Um, I'm a field solutions architect currently for Pure Storage. This is the job that I took after I was laid off and that's a topic we're talking about today. So I'm excited to try and offer some guidance and help for people and I'm an overlay for our entire SE organization in all of North America and it gives me the opportunity to talk to lots of people. And um, I really enjoy what I do Today. So thanks for having me on again.

Nick Korte: Sure, sure. Well, let's roll it back to the difficult time that you went through. What kind of role were you doing before you were impacted and lost your job?

John White: I was classified as a systems engineer, basically tied to one or more account reps, helping them sell the solution. At, uh, my prior company, I also had kind of a solutions architect kind of role because I came into the organization as or from an acquisition. And that gave me an uh, advantage up on the employees that I was coming in to work with as new employees or new colleagues. So I, I, I kind of straddled back and forth between talking about solutions architecture and how the solution, uh, fit in, additionally, how to talk about the solution to convince somebody that it's a valid solution for them and they should, they should buy it.

Nick Korte: And was there also an element of like, technical marketing to your role? Cause I remember you had to go to trade shows, for example, some of the time.

John White: Yeah, there was, there was that aspect of the job, uh, because I had a, uh, a virtualization or a VMware background, uh, like yourself, I went to a lot of, uh, a lot of VMware or virtualization events and talked about how our product integrated within not only VMware, but within virtualization technologies and elsewhere and the, uh, different companies out there.

Nick Korte: Yeah, that's a lot of hats to put on. Without sharing any specifics that might make it uncomfortable. Take us through the day that the layoff happened. How'd you find out and what was that immediate visceral reaction?

John White: So the day that happened, I had, uh, started my day as usual. I had a meeting with my boss who was over in Europe. And typically it was my discussions with him were late in the day, his time, which would be early afternoon for me here on the East Coast. And a meeting popped up and it was fairly early. And I'm like, oh, okay, maybe have some time and want to catch up. Because I've always told him, you know, his schedule was always busier than mine. Let me know, just pop something on my calendar and I'll, I'll make time to come in and talk to you. So I didn't really think anything of it. Like I said, uh, my morning had kind of, uh, was almost over. I jumped into the call. It was a zoom session, so I can see everyone else on the other end. Right after I joined the session, someone from HR gets on the line, and then my boss immediately comes in afterwards. This honestly is the first time I've really been laid off from a company. I had an inkling that that might be what's happening, but I wasn't real sure, wasn't sure if there was something else that was going on in the company. Really had no idea what was happening. I was up in my home office like I am now. And it was right around lunchtime when this all happened and had the meeting, got the inevitable news that, hey, I was laid off. Uh, and it wasn't for performance reasons. So I found that quite interesting that it wasn't for performance reasons, but they didn't really want to say exactly why it was that I was being laid off. Occasionally my wife will come up and say, hey, what do you want for lunch? Because she, she, uh, was working from home as well. And so I got off the call. She walks into the office, she's like, well, what do you want? And I'm like, right now I'm not really hungry. Uh, I just got laid off. So at that point it was just like, what do I do? They told me that my laptop they could control remotely. So they basically started cutting things off. I immediately got cut off from email. I noticed that happened. There are lots of things that just started to turn off. And I just was like, okay, I guess, um, guess I have the rest of the afternoon off. And so I just, like I said, I copied off the data that I wanted and I needed that was personal, closed the laptop and disconnected it from the, from the network and let, uh, it go from there. I, that was the end of my day and just went downstairs and relaxed and hung out with my wife. She was done for the day and we just kind of chilled out and I didn't, didn't want to talk about it. It was just over with. And I wanted to, wanted to deal with it the next day.

Nick Korte: Some people find it challenging to separate their identity from their work and from the specific job they had. Was that a struggle for you at all when this happened?

John White: Yeah, sort of, kind of. Because just like a lot of us, I worked my way up, uh, to get to the position I was in through multiple roles. I don't know. Some people have a very defined path that they want to take to get to where they want to be at a certain age. I didn't really have that, but I knew I wanted to be successful in some way, shape or form. And as long as I was successful, that's really all I cared about. I also wanted to make sure that always the people that I work with that I enjoyed working with, if I didn't enjoy working with them, there Was no reason to continue staying there. So that's part of my identity. On how I interact with work. Early on, in the days when Twitter or X now it is called, I kind of defined an identity there. I had a blog, a personal blog. But, yeah, I had kind of built my identity, and it was kind of tied to wherever I went. Once this all happened, I just kind of cut that off, uh, and I needed some time to really digest what I just went through that day.

Nick Korte: Was there something that you wish people had done for you in those early stages of trying to figure this out that didn't happen or that you wish would have happened?

John White: Well, the one thing I wish I would have done, not that it necessarily happened, well, I guess it happened also, one thing I wish I would have done was actually listen to my wife. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure not everybody says that, but in this case it was 100% true. You know, prior to this, some of the folks and colleagues that had come over during the acquisition of the company I moved from to get to this other company were slowly either leaving or being laid off. Like, my boss, probably about three months beforehand had been laid off. And I didn't think anything of it. I. I had been moved around in the organization and was reporting into an area where I felt pretty comfortable that I didn't have to worry about being laid off. I knew a technology, uh, and felt that I could help others learn about that technology. And so I wasn't too worried about it. But my wife was. Kept reminding me that you might want to think about going and looking at something. And so that's the one thing I should have done back then, was listen to my wife and start actively looking for something. Because it's much easier finding a job. When you have a job, there's not as much pressure on you. You can take your time and really find the job that you want. That's the one thing that kind of took me by surprise and something I should have done. And I should just listen to my wife, frankly.

Nick Korte: Did she point you in a direction as well? Because I've heard people say that when they needed to look for a new job, they got up. Uh, at least dudes like us, right? Got a perspective from their wife about what made them happy, what made them excited. Did she expound on that? Or was it more of a, hey, you should just start looking in general.

John White: That's a good point. And some aspects of that have crept in throughout my entire career since we've been married. You know, I originally grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I now live up in the Boston area, in New Hampshire, Southern New Hampshire. When that job came up to get us up to New Hampshire, the one thing she kept reminding me of is, it's great that you're going to make more than you're making at the job you are currently. But I don't want you to take a job just because of money. I want you to take a job because it's something you're interested in doing and you're going to be happy at. So I've always kept that in the back of my mind every time I go and look for a job. And I even considered that when I, when I came to Pure, you know, I, when I did my interviews, I genuinely liked everyone and enjoyed speaking to everyone during my interview process. And so that helped also to make the decision. I actually, I made lists when I, when I moved to this job at Pure. But frankly, that wasn't as important as being, uh, as liking and enjoying working with the folks I work with.

Nick Korte: And how long did you need to take in terms of time to process before you decided to start taking some actions? Whether that's reaching out to people or looking for something on the Internet? I've heard people say that they jumped the gun. They didn't give themselves enough time to think it through and process what had happened. What was it like for you?

John White: I'd say the first three weeks or so, I just would wake up, relax, knowing that I didn't have to go to work. And there were projects, you know, I think everybody has a honeydew list. And so there were projects I also wanted to do. I just started working on some of those to take my mind off of what was happening. Um, I wasn't quite ready to start looking for another job. I had a severance, and the severance was about three months for me to look. And I wanted to try and find something within that three months. I mean, it wasn't going to be the end of the world for me if I didn't find something at three months. It was better for me back then, uh, than it is today with all the layoffs that are happening across many large companies out there. I mean, aws just announced 30,000 people are going to lay it off, um, in the near future. There are people being laid off in, in droves now compared to when I was laid, uh, off at the time. So I didn't see as big of an urgency as for someone who's being laid off in today's October 2025 timeframe because there's been a lot of people laid off, uh, a lot of our friends that we all know, many of them are struggling. Some of have been pretty lucky to find a job pretty quickly. During that three weeks period of time. I literally just relaxed. And then it was right after that, right after that period where I was like, okay, I'm not going to do everything that I want to do for an entire day. I'll now start doing some searching and reaching out to people in the morning and then maybe I'll go do what I want to do in the afternoon and continue that and until uh, I got the job here up here.

Nick Korte: And how did you know who to reach out to first? Because I don't think that we consciously put a list of people that we would contact if something like this happened somewhere for reference, just as a natural thing that we keep up to date, you know what I mean?

John White: So I don't actually remember who I reached out to first, but I know there were a group of folks that I work with because when I came up here to New England, I went to work for work for Dell because they had an office here in New, uh, in, in, in southern New Hampshire. They're now have closed that office. It's down in Hopkinton where EMT was. But anyhow, I built a really tight bond with a bunch of those folks, uh, in tech marketing, which is how I got up here. So some of those folks are still around. And so I just kind of sent out a blast text message. Honestly, it was the easiest way. I said, hey guys, by the way, if you know anything going on wherever you're working, because none of us are at Dell anymore. And so wherever they were working, I'm like, just let me know what you have. I'd love to just sit down and chat with you and understand what's the culture like at the company. What are you doing now? I kind of knew what they did, but I wanted to know a little bit more. Just trying to suss out, are any of those companies where folks that I really like working with, is that a good place for me to go work and go back and work with them? Really what I did to start off with, to kind uh, of start reaching

Nick Korte: out to people in that search, were you open to different types of roles? Did you want the same kind of role or did it really not matter because you wanted it to be about interesting work and great people?

John White: First off, it had to be interesting work and people that I wanted to work with or enjoyed working with Part of It was, I didn't really care what the job was but had to be some, something in the technical field. I've done a lot of stuff in the storage industry. Done a lot of stuff uh, with backups and active directory and administration and uh, system administration. That's basically how I started my career with system administration and some tech support. If you haven't done tech support it's a great way to start your, your career in the tech world. I guess I'm now going back on what I said originally. Yeah, I wanted it to be a technical job to some extent. Technical marketing. What's really is kind of in that wishy washy space but there's a technical aspect of it. I was interested in going back to tech marketing if I, if I had to. I looked at systems engineers or se jobs solutions architect jobs like the one I have today. That's kind of where I had focused my, my efforts on.

Nick Korte: So no wanting to be a product manager or anything like that deeper into the business unit side?

John White: No, no, none of that. I mean it's interesting work but depending on the company. Product management work doesn't always have that technical aspect to it. Some jobs do have that. I will say there uh, are, there are several product managers here, pure where I work that do have a technical background and they still continue to be able to do some technical work. Not playing in a lab like I get to play in today. But I didn't see that at any of the other companies I worked at actually had product managers. It was more of a uh, uh, it's going to sound derogatory but more of like a paper pusher or a project manager. I don't mean it in a derogatory way. It just didn't interest me. It wasn't technical enough in nature for me.

Nick Korte: Gotcha now. You talked about reaching out via text to people that you had worked with before. It sounds like even before this you had done a pretty good job of keeping in touch with those people over time.

John White: That is true. Yeah. I have always made sure to have a small group of folks that I can just reach out to at any time and just chat about anything. And I've just, I've always made sure to have that. I'll uh, break some news early that I was lucky enough to find a job before the end of the three months of my severance. The one thing my wife commented on is that she wasn't too worried because she knew I already had this network of people to reach out to. I know uh, I didn't talk to them all the time. But we all interacted in some way, shape or form. Whether it was an email or text messaging or even some stuff on LinkedIn, we all kind of kept in touch to some. Some aspect. And so, yeah, I had, I had people I could fall back on and reach out to and get advice from if I needed to. And this is the time where I really, really needed some advice on where to go to next.

Nick Korte: I mean, you asked those folks, hey, what's open at your company? Let me know, I'm interested. Did any of them ask you, hey, Dave, what is it that you specifically want to do? Or did they just start throwing stuff your way that they thought would be good for you based on what they knew about you?

John White: It was a little bit of both. I had people that pointed me to some open recs that maybe were in the group they were in because they continue to do technical type work today. And others were like, uh, I'm not sure of anything that's open. Take a peek at the job site and if you find anything, let me know. Uh, I'll, I'll gladly give you a referral. I do that even today. For folks who are out on the street and they're looking for a job, I'm always willing to give someone a referral and help them because being in, in that position once is not fun. So I want to make sure that people that I know and I like to work with come to work with me. That's kind of where I started. Oh, uh, I also, I also put in the open to work badge on LinkedIn too. Uh, and that was, that was an interesting experience once you turn that thing on.

Nick Korte: Oh, really? How'd that go?

John White: Yeah, so I immediately got all kinds of recruiters who reached out and that was great. But I could figure out where they were kind of looking for. Some of them were just sending job, job descriptions over and I'm like, yeah, uh, not interesting, not interesting. I've started hearing more and more frequently from folks who are on the street that there's a lot of bots out there now on LinkedIn and they're just firing stuff out randomly that has nothing to do with what you were doing before. And some of them are trying to take advantage of people. I just recently was heard from a friend of mine, a bot reached out and she was interacting with it through, through LinkedIn messaging and then found out based on just reading the messages that this is not a real person on the other end. Like, I, um, am. I'm not going down this path. I don't know if it's going to lead down something I don't want to go down. So the LinkedIn open to work is great, but I think nowadays you kind of need to be a little bit, I don't know, guarded on how all those interactions are going to start coming towards you.

Nick Korte: That's a great point. When you were looking at these new opportunities, what kinds of skills gaps did you identify based on what you had done before? And was there anything specific that you did to start filling those in the time between jobs?

John White: You know, honestly I didn't, I mean, AI back then and this is, this is going on two and a half years now, it's crazy to see that AI wasn't really that big of a thing back then. You know, ChatGPT was out and you could go interact with it, but mhm, that just wasn't an area I was interested in. It's way different than it is than it is today. I have started playing with more AI things today just because it's coming into our lives everywhere. But I felt confident in the information and my skill set of what I'd been doing over the last, let's say, 25 plus years. Been doing this a long time. I think a lot of us have, um, like yourself. And so I didn't really start looking at anything or building up new skills. Uh, I was hoping to find something in the areas that I had worked already and if I had to quickly come up to speed, I would. I did start looking at cloud things, different certifications around Azure or aws. Although it was interesting, it wasn't really what I wanted to do, so I was using it kind of as a last resort if I had it, to go down that route, uh, and work for a company doing cloud things.

Nick Korte: And I know a lot of people can focus on the negative here, but what were some of those unexpected positives that happened as a result of a difficult experience in the beginning?

John White: You know, the positives that came out with uh, from it were just the people in my network that I had started reaching out to. And you see a lot of this on uh, LinkedIn, everyone, a lot of people reach out and say, hey, sorry to hear about it, but let me know how I can help. And everyone's open to helping. And so it's really, really nice to hear that. Overall negatives, I didn't really have many. I probably just took too long to come up to speed and start looking actively for a job. But the positives were great. You know, it's really about building your, not only your personal network, but your professional network. And my professional network really came, came to my rescue and helped me understand that, you know, it's not the end of the world. You're going to make it, you're going to do fine. But let me know if there's any, any way I can help you in that journey that you're on right now.

Nick Korte: Now, had you and your family done any kind of preemptive planning to kind of make it less difficult if job loss happened? Like, was there anything you did before? Just as a, uh. Okay. I'm seeing these signs of things in the market happening and I need to prepare.

John White: Not for this time, but my wife is really good at managing our house budget, our home budget, whatever you want to refer to it. We felt pretty confident that if I couldn't find something within that three month period that we'd be able to ride it out. I don't remember what the time is that we could easily ride out before I had to start actively finding other means of making money. But that's something that we had done, we'd been doing since basically shortly after we got married, is making sure that we had, uh, a nest egg, a financial nest egg that we could fall back on in the event that I was out of a job.

Nick Korte: Such good advice to try and get that emergency fund built in terms of the professional network. If we go back to that for just a second, what are some of the things that you're even more intentional about related to your professional network now than you were before? I remember you sharing a story with me from someone you work with. Gave you some really good advice here.

John White: Yeah, unfortunately, I don't follow that advice to the T like I should. But the advice was once a week, if you can do it typically on a Friday is, is when I have, when I have done it, I've done it as on, as on a Friday afternoon. Just find someone in your professional network. I primarily do this on LinkedIn and sometimes I do it on, on text messaging. If I have their number, just send them a message and ask them, you know, hey, how are things going? What are you doing now? We haven't, we haven't talked in a while. I love to see what you're up to and, and just keep that personal connection going. As much as AI is taking over, as much as we do a lot of things on Zoom, I've learned over my years of working in the industry that there's nothing better than the, the face to face interaction. I mean Even today, I mean, there's multiple colleagues of mine that live within an hour of where I live right now in southern New Hampshire. And there's only a handful of us that make the time to get together and maybe just go to lunch. You know, we could have had the same exact conversation by eating lunch at uh, our, our home office and being on Zoom. But it's so much more fun and relaxing to just get out of the office or home, uh, office, wherever it is, and just sit down with people and keep that personal connection going.

Nick Korte: And I know we were talking about younger folks who might be listening, struggling to just get into that first entry level job. How can they work and build that professional network if they are starting from a much smaller set of people they have in terms of context than maybe people like us would be?

John White: It is challenging. I know this from experience from my nephews and my niece who's soon going to be in the job market. They don't have the professional network that we all have. And the job market is very different today than it was 25 plus years ago when I started in this. You could easily send in resumes and you get responses or, you know, nowadays resumes just go into a black hole and you don't necessarily know if you're still in the mix for a current job. And so what I have, I, uh, have tried to convince my, my, my younger nieces and nephews is take advantage of not only myself who has a fairly decent network. I might not be in the exact industry that you're looking to work in, but I'm sure that I know someone who knows someone in the industry that you want to go work in. So there's no shame or harm in utilizing all your resources, whether that's family, your parents. Um, my parents didn't grow up in the tech industry. They have nothing to do with it. I got here just by luck, to be honest with you. And playing with a lot of tech back in the days when I first started in college, but using all the means you have possible. Um, now I'm not saying you should ask your parents to find you a job or to talk to someone about getting you an interview or setting the interview up for you is really what I'm getting at because I have strangely heard that happen. But utilize all your personal network because you don't have the professional network built up yet to help you get that foot in the door. You know, sometimes just by talking to someone or, or going to a concert and you run into somebody and maybe my. I'm um, just using example, my nephew's with me. I'll uh, introduce the person like hey, this is, this is so and so, uh, from, you know, Company X. Want to introduce you to my, my nephew. He's looking to do something in this industry. You know, anybody there? I mean just that chance of interacting or bumping into somebody that, that I know can easily help my uh, my nephew or anyone else that I know in my network.

Nick Korte: I really like that. And I would encourage younger people listening to try and get out to meetup groups on anything. Anything that interests you, like you said in person is the way to go. Go talk to people, ask them what they are learning, why they work, where they work, why they do what they do, how they got there, see if they have advice for you.

John White: Yeah, meetup groups are not a bad idea. Yeah, I, I really like that too. There are some local professional groups too that are not meetup groups, but I have used meetups in my area in southern New Hampshire. It's not this booming tech industry, but there are a few of them that are in the tech area. And uh, I used to go to several of them. One to expand my local professional network. You know, I had my, my global, my, my, my national network to, to fall back on. But it's always good that when you move somewhere you don't have that. And so I use meetups as well to uh, to get my build up my local professional network as quick, quicker than if it just happened organically.

Nick Korte: Right. And you might find out about some job opening that's not posted yet or will be posted soon. Maybe you can get an inside track on that one.

John White: Oh yeah. Yep, that's 100% accurate.

Nick Korte: If we go back for a second to your interview process as you applied at different places, how did you address the previous job loss? Did anybody even ask about it?

John White: Uh, some people did ask about it. For some of those, I actually brought it up because I wanted to be transparent of like, look, I was just let go. Um, this is a situation, uh, and letting them know that I wasn't, wasn't let go for doing something malicious or wrong.

Nick Korte: Mhm.

John White: Just to make that very clear, that's kind of how I approached it. I'd give them the information up front if they looked at my resume and realized, uh, because I think I put on my resume saying, I didn't say that I was let go, but I said it was, uh, seeking new opportunities. And so just to let people know that, you know, I'm not working now, which is why I'M um, really talking to you.

Nick Korte: You described as you started, you know, you took the rest of that day and a few weeks to let it sit, Worked on some home projects. So you didn't just sit, you, you worked on some stuff. Working with your hands makes your mind work a little bit. Reached out to some people, got some interviews, ended up landing that job. So how does one know Dave, in your opinion, once they've reached closure on this situation? That's just gut wrenching, you know, that's

John White: a really good question. I've never actually thought about that. So how did I kind of know that I needed to, needed to start doing something? I think it was fear of boredom, to be honest with you, is I was, I was doing these, these projects, but I knew I was going to run out of stuff to do at some point. Uh, I had had enough time to adjust to not having a job that I was like, okay, I, I, I think I'm ready to start doing something again. And I didn't want to get bored. I hate being bored, hate being bored at work, hate being bored in general. That's really what the impetus was for me to go out and start looking is that fear of relaxing for too long and being bored, to be, to be frank. And that's when I did reach out further in my network, uh, outside of friends that I'd reached out to initially.

Nick Korte: Once you start taking action, is that enough to say, okay, I'm, um, I'm kind of over what happened and ready to move on? Or is it after you've had to talk about it in a job interview? How do you measure that part? Like, okay, this is behind me. There's no residue that's still haunting me at this moment.

John White: For me, it was really, once I hit that point of really starting to actively look for, uh, a new position, I had basically put the old job and the situation behind me as much as I could. You know, you still kind of think about it every now and then. It completely went away once I accepted a job, to be honest with you. But it was really around that timeframe that, that I just didn't think about that job anymore and got on, realized I need to get on with the rest of my life. Um, no one's going to come and help me. I've got to, got to put on my big boy pants and started looking for a job and actively went out looking there. I mean, I got pretty lucky. I tossed out a bunch of resumes. I was really lucky. I don't hear this happening anymore. I Had five interviews lined up over the next two weeks which was mind boggling to me. I didn't expect anything like that to happen. So that also helped me like, okay, I feel that people understand that I have the skills for these jobs otherwise I wouldn't have gotten five job interviews as quickly after I really started taking action to look for a job. So I got lucky. I don't know if that happens anymore. Um, I hope it still does but I haven't been hearing positive things about that going on.

Nick Korte: I've not heard positive things either. So if you had to do it all again and face that challenge, what are some of the things you do differently after what you've learned to this point?

John White: Well, you know, at this point in my career I got probably about 10 more years that I'm probably going to continue to work in the tech industry. Maybe after I retire I might do something on a consulting basis where it's not as, not uh, an everyday job that I need to get up and sit at my desk all day long. For me I think I'm going to just continue doing. What I'm doing now is just continue to kick butt at my job. I really enjoy my job. Uh, I want to make sure that I continue to grow in my job. I will say being a pure, uh, I probably have one of the, I have the best boss manager, however you want to refer to him that I've had. Ever in my career I've had some really good ones. But this one, uh, he really, he not only pushes me but he pushes our entire team to just get better and make sure we don't. Not just calling it in for a day, uh, or for the, for the year. But yeah, I think uh, I'm just going to continue to grow in my job. I've always said this ever since I got in the tech world. I don't want to be a manager. I don't want to be a project manager, um, I'll do small projects but I don't want to be a product manager which is big projects. I want to continue to excel and expand my depth of knowledge across the virtualization industry and the storage industry. I mean I'll be frank and say that what we do up here is uh, really exciting. That also motivates me to continue to do things that I didn't do before, uh, when I first came to New England and was working in the storage industry.

Nick Korte: Because it's not like those things are going to go away because of AI. You're just going to need more of

John White: It, Yeah, you're going to need more storage. You're going to need to know how to run it. I mean, we're doing a good job of making things as simple as possible, but you always need someone to continue to run it. It's, we're not at that stage yet. I don't see AI replacing all of us in the tech world. Those tools are definitely going to help us in our jobs. And that is one thing I continue to do is to make sure that I, uh, know how to, to utilize those tools to help me in my job and to continue to excel in my job as well.

Nick Korte: Where do you see the role of leveraging AI tools for people who are searching for jobs right now? Like how, how would you see someone using that for their job search?

John White: I didn't do this, but I know there are many AI tools out there for analyzing your resume. I don't see that that would be a bad thing. I think you may need to keep track of where you, which tool you use for putting your resume in because it could become training material for that AI tool. So definitely look into that. Use AI to research companies. I can tell you that probably everyone in a sales role within Pure uses some sort of AI tool to help learn more about their customers, understand some of their pain points they've had in the past. Google search is still really good, but using some of the AI tools, something as simple as ChatGPT or OpenAI, several others out there, are not bad tools to use to, to help research not only future jobs and what the culture's like at those, at those companies that you're interested in going to work for, but definitely use it to hone your skills while you're, while you're kind of on the street. Make sure you understand you have the latest and greatest information.

Nick Korte: Definitely good advice. And I think you actually highlighted something very early on in our discussion that we should probably just re highlight here towards the end is that idea of companies acquiring other companies. And what you pointed out was there was a pattern and maybe you didn't immediately see it, but someone close to you saw this pattern of folks who were part of this acquisition were getting thinner and thinner and thinner. So maybe that's a uh, a sign in the tea leaves preparation needs to happen if nothing else.

John White: 100%. Yeah. I have no fear of being laid off right now. Hope that I never have to worry about that in the near future either. But yeah, always, always making sure that you are listening to the signs or uh, looking at the signs that are coming towards you. I trust my life nowadays when it comes to like, hey, maybe you should think about this and look at it in a different light than you've been doing that. And then, you know, I still reach out to friends, uh, and in my professional network and ask them, you know, how things are going on their side and want to know how comfortable they are in their roles and you know, offer advice if they ask for it a hundred percent.

Nick Korte: Well listen, Dave Stevens, really appreciate you joining us to have this difficult discussion on a difficult topic. Any parting thoughts before we call it?

John White: I'll uh, say it again and I've said it um, several times on here. Use your professional network and your personal network. If you're in the situation that I was that we're talking about today, not everybody is going to be able to help you or is willing to reach out and help you. But when someone does willing to reach out, don't just brush it aside is they want something out of this, they're probably genuinely want to help you. So take advantage of those folks who reach out to you and your personal professional network.

Nick Korte: Well, thanks again for taking the time and if anybody wants to follow up on this conversation, where can they find you? Dave?

John White: Uh, the easiest way to find me is to go to LinkedIn. That's the easiest way. I've had several folks reach out to me recently who are looking for jobs at Pure and uh, yeah, it's the easiest way to do that. I also have a blog, you can find me at blog psustevens.com that's kind of my, my online identity that I've, I've built up over the years. I don't blog a lot there nowadays but um, LinkedIn's probably the easiest way to find me.

Nick Korte: Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining us Dave.

John White: Hey, thanks Nick. I really appreciate,

Nick Korte: I really feel like that three week period where Dave just tried to relax and work, work on projects around the house, projects he needed to do and projects he wanted to do. I feel like maybe that gave him some of this clarity he spoke about when he told us the type of work he did and did not want to do. He wanted to do work that was interesting and he wanted to work with people that he liked. And Dave even described the area of the tech sector where he wanted to focus. It was based on a specific skill set and depth of knowledge that he had developed over time. He was willing to change outside of that, but it was really his preference to continue deepening that body of knowledge he had built up already. We also heard something that others have brought up, and that's advice from a family member. In Dave's case, he shares that his wife encouraged him to look for jobs earlier than he did, and she also told him early on in their relationship that she wanted him to take on roles that were interesting to him and it wasn't just about making as much money as possible. This reminds me of our discussion with Brad Christian in episode 264, where Brad talked about trying to figure out what to do next and his wife reminding him that he was the happiest when he worked for a value added reseller or a var. That kind of gave him some ideas on what direction he might need to follow for what was next in his career. I love this idea of leveraging our personal network to build a, uh, professional network. We might know someone who knows someone that's in the field or the area that we want to be in. You can do this for younger folks, of course, and make connections for them, but I think we can also leverage this regardless of the size of our network today. Maybe we don't often think to ask the people closest to us if they know someone who's in a specific field or understands a specific technology. You might just surprise yourself. And I hope overall that this discussion brought you some hope and encouragement. If you like this format and you appreciated the fact that someone was vulnerable enough to share their layoff story, go back and listen to episodes 342 and 343 where Jason Gast joins us and talked about the lost ark of supporting others in their job search when they fall on hard times. I think that goes along really nicely with the themes of personal and professional network that, uh, Dave highlighted for us in this discussion. We'll see you in a couple weeks.

John White: Farewell, listeners. Tune in next time as the journey continues. I'm John White at B Journeyman for Nick Korty. Ah networknerd signing off.

Nick Korte: Adios.