Earlier this month, June 3rd to be exact, I was laid off from Treehouse. I saw it coming, had time to prepare myself mentally and get a jump start on job hunting but it still felt extremely strange to actually hear the news.

The people I worked with at Treehouse are the longest running group of friends I’ve had. I’m still very close to both my high school and college friends but I knew people from each of those groups for 4 years at most before we all moved on to different stages of life. I was at Treehouse for 7.5 years. The first thing that came to mind when I was laid off was how abruptly I would be parting ways with these people. Given that we were all remote the chances of us running into each other any time soon are really slim. Losing those relationships hurts more than losing a paycheck.

I feel lucky, if I can use that word, that my hunch was right and that I could prepare for a layoff in some way. Most of my friends did not have that luxury. In some weird way I feel guilty, too. Guilty that I was able to talk to my wife in the weeks prior, figure out a game plan and shift our finances around. Guilty, that I had started job hunting earlier and had on-sites lined up before the layoff announcement. I get the business reasons for layoffs but the pain is unevenly distributed amongst the group being laid off and it just upends lives in ways that suck so much.

Personally, I’m thankful that unemployment didn’t last long. I’ll be joining the iOS team at Credit Karma tomorrow and I’m looking forward to a new chapter, a new team and solving entirely different problems than I’ve had to over the past 7 years.

I’m going to miss my Treehouse family though.