Falling Off the Corporate Ladder Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me
How I turned a layoff into an opportunity, built new income streams, and discovered an unexpected calling
Hello friends, it’s me again. I want to tell you about a dream I had after I got knocked off the corporate ladder last year.
In my dream, I was climbing higher and higher until, out of nowhere, a giant hand shoved me off. I remember desperately grasping for the rungs as gravity took hold of me.
I woke up right before I hit the ground—every single time.
That nightmare haunted my sleep for four months after being laid off in 2024. I dragged myself through the days, weighed down by uncertainty, until one night three weeks ago.
I fell like always that night—but this time, I landed on my feet. And I started running.
Something changed.
The Backstory
At H2O, I had a sweet six-figure salary with commission as a Sales Engineer/Data Scientist. I loved what I did. My life, up until that point, felt like a dream come true.
Jumping into the AI startup world was the riskiest move I had ever made—and it paid off in spades. Before that, I was a Civil Department Manager for a transportation firm, designing train station parking lots and fixing drainage issues. It was a solid, well-paying job, and I worked with incredible engineers. But deep down, I kept wondering: Is this it? Is this all that’s out there for me?
In parallel to my engineering career, I started a blog in 2007 called Neural Market Trends. I wanted to use AI to beat the stock market and began writing tutorials on an open-source tool called YALE.
I never did beat the stock market. But I did learn something even more valuable—I taught myself machine learning and data mining (what would later evolve into data science). My blog took off. My tutorials became an internet sensation within a niche community.
That eventually led to a job offer at an open-source AI company in Boston in 2014. I leaped into a sales engineering role, and that decision shaped my AI career for the next decade.
Then, in 2024, I fell off the corporate ladder.
And, in hindsight, it might have been the best thing that ever happened to me.
Losing Your First Job After 30 Years
For three decades, I had somehow sidestepped layoffs. I knew my luck would run out eventually.
And it did.
But you know what? That’s life. Sometimes, you get dealt a bad hand. You can fold and walk away—or you can ante up and play the next round.
I chose to play.
I took a four-month break, something I never would have allowed myself to do before. It gave me a rare opportunity to reassess what truly mattered. My kids are in college. I have an incredible partner. And she has been the rock, carrying us through this transition.
I won’t lie—there’s guilt. I can’t provide the full salary and benefits I once did. But I’m still contributing.
Years ago, I read a simple strategy for rebuilding after loss: Dust yourself off and get back out there. Start hunting, call old colleagues, and try new things.
I followed that advice. And I started finding new ways to make money.
Back in January, I wrote about three potential paths I was exploring. Two of them—trading and consulting—are already paying off.
My options trading strategy is working. January and March had the highest investment income since I started last April. Even with the market’s chaos, I’m making money. I expect to keep doing this until the day I die.
Meanwhile, my engineering consultancy is taking off. I put the word out after my layoff, knowing that November and December are typically slow in this industry. But in February, my phone started ringing. By March, I had three weeks of billable work—my first ever.
Granted, I haven’t seen that income yet (billing cycles take time), but it’s coming. Confident in the business’s potential, I even bought a year’s worth of professional liability insurance to show how serious I am.
But what about the third opportunity? What happened to my plan to build a product?
That one took a backseat—until now.
Building in a Blue Ocean
Watching the AI industry cannibalize itself has made me question whether I want to build another AI product. Instead of diving into a crowded Red Ocean, I asked myself:
What can I create that will thrive in a Blue Ocean?
Maybe it’s not a product at all. Maybe it’s something so unique that no one can copy it or compete with me.
For months, that question churned in my mind. Then, during my recent trip to China, I was sipping wine with my niece, talking about life, when she casually asked:
"Have you ever thought of being a career or life coach? Maybe for engineers?"
I took a sip and felt like a ton of bricks had just dropped on me.
Me? A career coach? A life coach?
Who would listen to me? What could I offer young engineers or AI professionals? Could I find a way to bridge those two worlds?
Then, another load of bricks hit me—this time, it was my inner voice. And it spoke loud and clear:
"Tom, you dumbass. Your entire success has come from what you’ve put into the world, not what you’ve taken out of it."
That voice was right. It always is (even when it calls me names).
Everything I’ve ever given—curiosity, creativity, generosity—has come back to me tenfold.
My kindness and respect for my engineering colleagues have reopened doors.
My old RapidMiner tutorials changed the trajectory of my life.
My writing on the internet has created opportunities I never could have imagined.
Every act of service, every contribution, has led to new opportunities and ideas. There are so many that I get emotional just thinking about them.
But now isn’t the time to get weepy.
Now is the time to execute.
Now is the time to run—without looking back at the corporate ladder that has already crumbled to the ground.
So happy to hear about your successes since 2024. Here's to all of them yet to come!