Here's the short list: Round 1: Dot.com era - 4 years out of college, out of work for 6 months along with a lot of the industry on the West coast of the US. D

Here's the short list: Round 1: Dot.com era - 4 years out of college, out of work for 6 months along with a lot of the industry on the West coast of the US. Depressed as hell, never thought I'd work as a programmer again. In desperation, I take a sub-contracting 1099 job and get my 1st taste of consulting rates. I bank over 1/2 of my income planning for the job to end. Round 2: Consulting job ends, but I've learned to PLAN for layoffs to happen in this line of work. Only searching for about 3-4 weeks as job marked has significantly picked up. Landed 1st start-up job at what became "psychotic start-up from hell". Round 3: Fast forward a few years - best job I ever had, but the small company decided to use US employment law to shaft me & 4 others who had made millions in profit for them to lay of off with hardly any severance & zero warning after tricking us into TRAINING our replacements from an outsourcing firm in Ukraine (spoiler alert - everything is great at company financially: they just wanted to look BETTER on the books to get acquired). Bastards then had the nerve to call us back 6 months and ask if we'd come back (gee.. I wonder why...). The good news? I'm only unemployed for 72 hours - yes. 72 clock hours on the wall. Former colleague recommends me to a bigger, more professional consulting org that has a job my personal and professional experience is tailored for. Lunch WAS the interview w/ the director of development & development consulting. I sign the offer letter on the new job 45 min after signing the severance paperwork on the old job. Round 4: I was asked to join a fantastic later stage startup with a bunch of very energetic & inspiring people. Then, there was a political coup where the CEO was thrown out of power and so, who got to go with him? Why the 3 newest technical staff hires + one bystander all in the name of cutting start-up burn rate. This one has ended up happy though, since the new CEO in power felt a little guilt for axing us he put 3 of us in touch with another start-up. 6 business days later for me, I've got a job again (same pay, better benefits, more "stability") and 1 of my other 2 friends also pursued & accepted an offer. All of this was over the course of 20+ years as a developer. Not as a "team lead", not with any "management" or "architect" experience. Just a work-a-day mid to senior developer who likes to build & ship software. What I've learned from this: Lesson 1: Never EVER let your skills slack. Keep learning new things, or hang up your keyboard and go sit in meetings (e.g. management, product, whatever). Note: If you're going to do this, it's fucking hard as hell to try and go back. It's also a completely different skill set to do it well as say, a development manager or a technical product owner. Lesson 2: Keep networking & going to meet-ups and conferences. This helps keep your skills sharp and you inspired to keep learning. Lesson 3: Lesson 1 + 2 does equal 3 - That is: "You will reach a point where not so much 'what' you know as 'who' you know will lead to your next big jobs and/or big opportunities". Don't burn bridges, as tempting as it may be.