Very similar experience; after unemployment I took a job with a sociopath for six months, then went back to school for C.S. (I had a humanities B.A.). Lessons:

Very similar experience; after unemployment I took a job with a sociopath for six months, then went back to school for C.S. (I had a humanities B.A.). Lessons: 1. Human toll of layoffs can be extremely high (up to and including death) and hard to see. 2. Many coders are much more re-hirable than most non-coders, but many aren't. 3. In resilient labor markets such as modern SaaS and app coding, there is an experience<->hirability S-curve. Going from 0 to 1 year of saleable experience depends on the employer, from 1 to 3 years power shifts slowly towards labor, and after that you are in control. (These statements obviously don't apply to all software labor markets.) 4. Many coders get stuck in bad labor niches, many are really lousy at the sub-skill of getting a job, many don't realize how salable their skills are, and many can't tell which of those possibilities applies to them.