Hi, I'm Cesar, a Senior Software Engineer with 10+ years of experience.
In 2023, I got sick and burned out.
In 2024, I was laid off and even rejec...
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Not a question — just recognition. I sit on the opposite side of your table: I'm a physical therapist by trade, and burnout recovery is literally the work I do with patients. Reading "in 2023 I got sick and burned out, in 2024 I was laid off" from inside a career, instead of across a clinic desk, landed differently.
One thing I tell people in recovery that your post already lives out: the goal isn't to get back to who you were before it broke — it's to rebuild into someone the same thing can't break the same way twice. You didn't sprint back into a job, you turned the wreckage into a book, and then a trilogy. That's not just healing; that's redesigning the load so it stops landing on the same joint.
The dev.to part is real, too. I found this place late and used it the same way — writing here became somewhere to think out loud and get told the thinking wasn't crazy. If a question helps: what's the one habit from before the burnout that you've deliberately refused to carry into the rebuild? Rooting for all three books.
I only code for work..and I've learned to diversify my sources of joy. Before, my career was probably one of the most important parts of my life. And when I lost that with a layoff, it took away my sense of joy and accomplishment with it.
That lands, and it quietly finishes the metaphor from my first comment. Putting all your joy into one joint means that when the joint goes, everything it was carrying goes with it — you didn't just lose a job, you lost the only thing the weight was resting on. Diversifying the sources of joy is the same move as spreading a load: not because any one source is weak, but because a single point of failure shouldn't be able to take the whole system down with it.
In my work I see it constantly — the people who recover best aren't the strongest, they're the ones whose life doesn't route entirely through one thing. You rebuilt the load-bearing structure, not just the muscle. "I only code for work" might read as smaller to someone else; from here it reads as someone who found out where the weight actually belongs. Genuinely glad you came out the other side pointing at it. The trilogy's lucky to have that behind it.
Cesar, 7 years and a trilogy out of a layoff and a FAANG rejection is a hell of a return on a bad year.
"Writing became part of my therapy" is a line I could've written myself, just with different specifics . mine's a contract and an OS instead of a diagnosis.
Did the first post you wrote through it feel like therapy while you were writing it, or only in hindsight once the Top7 hit and people responded?
It was a tough year, but I prefer to remember it as the year I chose myself and started my reinvention.
It was more going back to the habit and reflecting on every stage of my career. The first posts I wrote around that time were about the lessons I had learned in every milestone of my career. Hitting the Top7 and the engagement was confirmation to keep doing it.
Hi Cesar, congrats on seven years on DEV!
Going through illness, burnout, and a layoff all at once sounds incredibly rough. I’m glad writing gave you a way to process it, and it’s pretty amazing that it eventually grew into books and a whole new direction.
Did writing change the way you think about your engineering career, or did it mainly help you find your way back to it? Can you introduce your book?
The whole experience changed the way I see coding. I joke saying I'm not a passionate coder anymore. These days, I have stronger boundaries around work and leisure. For example, I only code during working hours at work.
Sure! Street-Smart Coding is a roadmap with 30 lessons to sharpen your coding skills. I wrote it because my real coding journey started after college with one Google search: "how to get better at coding."
That's actually incredible. I got here rather recently, but I've been loving Dev.to! I cant even imagine how it's grown over the past 7 years...
I actually have a few questions for you:
Did you see the layoff coming? I've been feeling lately like I can smell blood in the water and I'm thinking it's me. I'm a very competent developer, but they've been wanting me to start working from the office, instead of from home and I reinjured my back around the same time, so I've been on work from home doctor's mandate, but I'm not recovering and I have a feeling my neck's on the chopping block...
How did you deal with the layoff? I'm in Namibia, so there's virtually no job market here. I'm kinda stressed about it, cuz foreign companies dont really hire from Namibia, because we're not even listed on Forex.
What would your suggestion be to someone like me, looking for a new job? You can have a look at my Dev.to profile for some of my work, mostly centered on infrastructure, AI and low-level systems, though my current job is writing blazor code.
What lead you to choose the path of trainer/writer over finding a new developer job?
In your experience, did you find it nicer working for a large company, or a small company?
Where do you see the developer industry going? My bet's on orchestration and infrastructure over writing apps manually.
While after the time you got laid off, do you feel like AI is a boon, or a threat to developers?
Have you read Rich Dad Poor Dad? I find that the concepts in it might be inspirational for your writing. The relation between low-level and high-level programming, reusing assets vs custom, etc. Those books are simple to understand due to the framing, might lend well to writing about software?
What books would you recommend (beyond your own), for the modern day developer? With AI becoming a core tool lately, alot of the classics are a bit dated, still good theory, but they focus more on teaching the patterns than understanding the purpose.
If you could go back to the time you were laid off? Would you still choose the same path? Or would you have tried to work a little longer in the industry, before the switch?
Hope you enjoy answering these, feel free to skip any you dont want to answer, or dont have time to answer thoroughly.
Yes! It felt like the Hunger Games: making people fight until only a few stood up. These days, there's a lot of uncertainty and the easiest lever for companies to pull is letting people go. Prepare for the worst case scenario.
First I felt relieved, then I felt desperate so I went crazy applying to almost any job listing I could find. Then I decided to took some time off, I had some savings to cover my basic living expenses for a couple of months.
Your mileage may vary. But I've always preferred referrals and introductions from friends and acquaintances. Try to shake hands and get to know people in your network.
That's just something I do on the side. I still code for a living.
Smaller companies. Definitely, easier to make an impact and get yourself noticed...and ask for raises.
It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. I see smaller and smaller teams of full-stackish developers doing the work that used to take a whole team. And I also see the role of "AI fixers," people cleaning the mess of assistants/bots.
It's not a direct threat. But it's the perfect excuse to make it look like one. Often it seems CEOs of AI startups are insurance sellers predicting a major catastrophe to make us buy their insurance policies.
Yes! My #1 lesson is the difference between assets and liabilities.
Apart from my own...Definitely good time to revisit the classics: Clean Code, Clean Coder, Art of Unit Testing, Domain Modeling Made Functional...I tend not to buy the hype right away, and wait for the dust settle down for a bit.
Yes, but not in the same way. Probably I would have taken a look at entrepreneurship earlier. The other day, I read (probably from Erik Dietrich's blog) that five years of coding experience are enough to then move to consulting/start your own thing.
Well said, I was actually heading the same route you suggested this year, in May I started up my company once I got the foundry in a solid state, but then I realized if I open it to the public, it's a 1 way ticket to malware mass production, with auto-patching no less... So instead, I opted to keep it internal and just use it to pump out apps. Though not really a market in Namibia... But hey, I made some fun games, solid frameworks, a MCP for browsing that's honestly much better than playwright (quite proud of that 1, despite only 2 stars), though now I've been on the heels of rather ambitious projects, eg. V.E.L.O.C.I.T.Y. IDE and V.E.L.O.C.I.T.Y. OS, main focus is on IDE at the moment though, just added 25k LOC to it over the past 2 days, integrating a native browser built from ground up for it, a custom VC system that's hopefully better than git for agentic coding, a custom MCP server native to the Rust-based IDE, which executes in nanoseconds, not milliseconds, similar agentic orchestrator layer as I used in the foundry, except with a much wider range of models and providers, a file-sync/share system that operates faster than enterprise standards, all while using no JSON unless absolutely necessary, instead opting for my NDA standard.
So quite a big project, but it's taking shape beautifully, all of that is integrated and fully functional, except the native browser is still in development, but I'd very much like to finish it before release, as that would be a killer feature, it's built off of MCP-Heavy (the full version of MCP-Lite), which is a pretty killer feature on it's own, I just hope I get it to a solid state before... The call... Cuz I can smell it coming. I dont know when, but I know the second I finish up all the difficult stuff for them, I'm gunna get laid off... Not because I'm slow, or too expensive, or anything, purely because I work from home, not the office, so they cant brain drain me to boost their own systems...
Congrats on your projects...hope you can sort out everything on your side soon.
Your timeline hits closer to home than you'd think — I'm writing a fiction series about engineers who get replaced by AI and have to rebuild from scratch. The line from the top comment, "the goal isn't to get back to who you were before it broke — it's to rebuild into someone the same thing can't break the same way twice," is basically the thesis of the whole thing. Glad writing pulled you through. Rooting for that trilogy before 60 💪
Thanks for your comment. Definitely, going back isn't an option. Just thinking about how I felt made me anxious.
I'd love to ask for your advice on publishing. What are some good publishing channels? I'm planning to publish my 36 Stratagems series and the prequel/old series, but this is my first time dealing with anything like this — I have zero experience and no clue where to start. Would really appreciate any help you can offer.
Congrats on your seven years on dev.to!!
Since I know your story, I just stopped by to say "hi!".
Hola Baltsar! Thanks for all your support and congrats on the world cup!
Hi Cesar, congratulations on your 7 year anniversary on DEV!
I love that writing goal of yours. Good luck!
I have a question regarding burnout, what helped you overcome that period?
I was a long process on the way down...and a longer one on the way up. If I could summarize into one line: taking care of my health (by doing something for my mind, body, and spirit every day) and bringing a sense of joy/fulfillment to my life every day (I went back to some of my hobbies just for fun)
Hey Cesar! Hope you are well and congrats on the 7 year anniversary on dev.to!
Mostly stopping by and saying Hi :D
Though, I am wondering about the last 7 years at DEV. What changed in your perspective and what makes a Senior Software Engineer...Senior? Thanks :D