Three weeks ago a friend forwarded me a message: her whole team had been cut in a Friday-afternoon restructuring, effective immediately. Slack access gone within the hour. She had a severance number, a COBRA quote she hadn't opened yet, and a job market everyone keeps describing as "tough right now" — and no idea, actually, how many days she had before the math stopped working.
That's the part nobody tells you about a layoff: it's not one problem, it's two running at the same time. There's the job search — applications, interviews, networking — and there's the money question underneath it, quietly ticking. Most people end up tracking neither one properly, because giving either your full attention means the other one drifts.
So I built the thing she actually needed. Not another generic job tracker — there are dozens of those — but a workbook that puts the runway math and the job pipeline in the same place. One tab is a severance, COBRA, and unemployment runway calculator: enter your numbers once and it tells you, in days and months, exactly how long you have — accounting for the fact that COBRA runs well above what you paid as an employee, and that unemployment benefits cap out regardless of your old salary. The other tabs are a straightforward job search system — applications, interview pipeline, networking outreach, a five-minute weekly planning ritual — all rolled up into a dashboard you can check once a day instead of holding the whole thing in your head.
It's built for the specific reality of the 2026 tech layoff wave — this year alone has seen hundreds of companies, from platform giants to well-funded startups, cut headcount as AI reshapes hiring plans. If you're one of the people affected, a generic "job search tracker" doesn't actually solve your problem. You're not just looking for a job. You're managing a financial runway while you do it, and the two things compound on each other in ways a plain application spreadsheet ignores entirely.
Who it's for: laid-off software engineers, product managers, designers, data and ops folks who want their runway and their pipeline tracked in the same system, instead of a mental tally that resets every time a bill or a rejection email shows up.
If that's you, or someone you know, the workbook (Excel and Google Sheets compatible, plus an 11-page companion guide) is here: https://logi2.gumroad.com/l/riypw — and on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4552685120/tech-layoff-job-search-tracker-severance
The thing I keep coming back to after building this: a layoff is a company's headcount decision, not a verdict on your work. The search usually takes longer than feels comfortable, and the money math usually feels tighter than you'd like along the way. Neither of those is a reason to avoid looking at the numbers — it's the reason to build a system that carries some of that weight for you, so it's not all sitting in your head at 2am.
Originally published on Medium.
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