Day: October 18, 2025

• Oscar Cecena Fujigaki was laid off by LinkedIn in May.
• Rather than diving into the job hunt, he decided to finish the science fiction novel he’d spent years on.
• He’s now struggling to land a tech job, but he doesn’t regret taking time off to finish his book.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Oscar Cecena Fujigaki, a 47-year-old job seeker in Toronto who previously worked as a customer success manager at LinkedIn. Business Insider has verified Fujigaki’s income and employment with documentation. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Earlier this year, rumors started circulating among my LinkedIn colleagues that layoffs were coming.

One reason for the speculation was that in 2023, before the announcement of a major round of layoffs, the company canceled the in-person sales kickoff event — usually held in Las Vegas each July — and switched to a virtual format. So when we found out around March that this year’s kickoff was also being canceled, everybody was like, “Okay, it’s happening again.”

On May 13, around 10:30 a.m., I received an email stating that I had been laid off.

I was shocked to be affected. Based on our performance metrics, my understanding was that I was doing well. It was the first time I had ever been laid off, and I didn’t know how to process it. I felt angry, sad, and confused all at once.

After getting laid off, I decided to finish my science fiction novel

On May 22, I flew to Mexico — where I’m originally from — to attend my cousin’s wedding, which gave me time to reflect. After returning home a week later, I made a decision.

About five years ago, I came up with an idea for a science-fiction novel. I’d been writing it on and off for years, but progress had been very slow.

It had been nearly impossible to write consistently while working full-time. By the end of the day, I was usually too drained to think clearly. I’d typically write for 30 minutes once or twice on weekdays and get in a couple of hours on the weekend. At that pace, I knew I was never going to finish.

I thought, What if I took a couple of months off and focused entirely on finishing the book?

And I did. Starting around June 1, I began treating writing like a 9-to-5 job. I woke up early, made breakfast, and instead of logging into work, I opened my manuscript. My goal was to write 2,000 words a day.

When I started in June, I already had about 30,000 words written — but I rewrote a fair amount of it. My final manuscript, which I finished on August 11, came out to about 112,000 words.

My novel is in the cyberpunk subgenre, and the story is about an assassin who hits the wrong target, and everything spirals out of control from there. There’s still a long road ahead if I want to get it published, but finishing the manuscript was a huge personal achievement.

Landing a tech job in the current market has been very challenging

Financially, taking time off to write instead of job hunting wouldn’t have been possible without a few key things: my severance, unemployment insurance, an emergency savings fund, and the fact that my wife works. But I knew I’d eventually need to find a job.

While I was writing, I tried not to think too much about job hunting, but it was always at the back of my mind. If I hit my writing goal early in the day, I’d sometimes browse opportunities on LinkedIn. I applied for some roles and landed a few interviews.

At the time, I was applying for customer success jobs that were more senior than the role I’d just lost. Looking back, I think I was still feeling a bit bitter toward LinkedIn, and subconsciously I wanted to prove something — to land a better job than the one I’d just been laid off from, which had paid almost $160,000 CAD, or about $114,000 (USD).

In hindsight, that mindset wasn’t helpful. I was applying for roles that didn’t quite match my experience, which made it harder to land a job.

Now, I’m done with long shot roles. Over the past couple of months, I’ve cast a wider net. At this stage in my life, I’m focused on finding a job that I don’t hate, pays enough to live comfortably, and provides the flexibility to continue writing.

The tech job market has been really tough, though — both in the US and Canada. I recently heard the phrase, “When the US sneezes, Canada catches a cold,” and I think that’s happening right now. I’m one of the fortunate ones who can take a few months off to write and live out of my emergency fund, but I know most people can’t. For them, it may be the worst financial situation of their lives.

I’m hopeful about my future prospects

When it comes to my novel, it’s still early in the process, but my goal is to go the traditional publishing route rather than self-publishing. I sent the manuscript to the writing group I’ve been part of for years and am working on incorporating their feedback. I plan to complete the revised draft by mid-November and then begin searching for a literary agent.

And as I look for work, I’ve been trying to lean heavily on my network, reconnecting with former colleagues and reaching out to new contacts.

If I find a company I’m interested in, I send a LinkedIn message to people who work there, and sometimes it leads to a referral. Those referrals have been my best shot at landing interviews, and I’m hopeful that one will help me land a role in the months to come.

I have three pieces of advice for people who’ve been recently laid off

First, remember: It’s not about you or your performance. Your confidence will take a hit. You’ll ask yourself, “Why me?” — probably more than once. But layoffs are business decisions made by people who don’t even know your name or situation. Don’t take it personally.

Second, if you can afford to, take some time for yourself. Start a personal project, go on a trip, spend time with family — whatever matters to you. For me, it was finishing a novel I’d been working on sporadically for years.

Third, focus on the present. The past is gone. The future you’re stressing about will likely unfold differently than you imagine. Focus on what you can control today, whether that’s your project, applying for jobs, or networking. The present is all that really matters.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hannah Neeleman, 35, the cofounder of Ballerina Farm, a 328-acre Utah farm, lifestyle brand, and farm goods store.

Neeleman has 21 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, where she documents life with her husband and co-founder, Daniel Neeleman, and their eight kids, aged between 21 months and 13 years old. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My husband Daniel and I started Ballerina Farm about eight years ago. We wanted a business where we could work together as a couple and involve our eight children. I didn’t want to have to put them in day care or leave them with a nanny.

Growing up, my life was intertwined with my parents’ flower shop, and I always wanted that for my own children. We were homeschooled, so us kids would do our school in the morning and then head to the shop to help with chores.

After college, Daniel and I moved to São Paulo for four years for his work. We would go on farm hotel getaways and just fell in love with agriculture. I did a lot of research into how we could make something ourselves that could support a family.

We landed on free-range pigs, and started with four on a little farm in the middle of nowhere in Spanish Fork, Utah, in 2017. We started posting to social media to share our offering with the local community. I only had 53 followers on Instagram, but Daniel and I really believed in what we were building, and so we just started. The first few years were really intense and a lot of work.

Now that the business is bigger, we have around 100 employees. Daniel and I have a lot of direct reports, but we tag-team. If he has a meeting, then I’m on kid duty. We just balance it. I don’t know if it’s well-balanced, but it’s always a work in progress.

Here’s what a day in my life is like.

My toddlers wake me up around 7 a.m.

I’m not an early riser. I’m usually woken up by my wiggly two and three-year-olds climbing into my bed at around 7 a.m. That’s my alarm clock, and it’s the best.

Mornings consist of getting the kids ready for their school classes, putting breakfast on the table, and praying before we eat. I have yogurt from our creamery with a scoop of our maple cinnamon protein powder every morning.

We have a schoolhouse on the farm, and an amazing school teacher who lives down the road. Just before 9 a.m., the older kids are out the door, and I have time to do my own thing for a couple of hours. I usually respond to any pressing text messages or emails, and then I try to get down to our barn gym. If I can get a good workout in, then my whole day is better.

I did my undergraduate in ballet at Juilliard, and in the last few months, I’ve started taking a private ballet class once a week from one of my old instructors. It’s like this fun hour and a half where I get to relive the glory days.

On Tuesdays, I usually cook from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Every workday looks a little bit different. On Tuesdays, I try to film a reel of me cooking a recipe from start to finish. I’m usually cooking an elaborate meal from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It takes me a few days to a week to get an entire video written out, edited, and posted.

On Wednesdays, we meet with all of our various team directors (marketing, creative, retail, events). On Thursdays, I have my meeting with the marketing team. But pretty much every day, I share snippets of what I’m doing on Instagram and TikTok.

Recipe testing is just such a fun day because I love being creative. In some seasons of my life, I feel more creative and the ideas flow. Then there are other times where I’m like, “How do I refuel that? And how do I gather inspiration?”

The seasons inspire me. The farm and the garden really guide what my content looks like, because using fresh ingredients is the most exciting thing to me. When I see a beautiful tomato that’s just off the vine, that’s when I want to cook with it. In the springtime, when it’s lambing season, you have all this beautiful sheep’s milk available.

Lunch is my main meal, which I eat with my family

Lunch is the meal that we try to have together as a family. That was one thing that we loved in Brazil: everyone would gather at lunchtime for a big meal.

Our lunches are pretty much always the same. We eat around 1 p.m. after the kids finish school. They’re either some sort of carb or starch, like potatoes or pasta, sometimes rice or quinoa. I make bread a few times a week, so if it’s a bread day, we have that, too. Then it’s a protein, usually steak or a roast that I put in the oven earlier, and a vegetable. It’s super simple. Usually, we also have kefir.

Dinner is less of an ordeal for us. Everyone’s kind of coming and going from lessons and practices, and the dairy. So, it’s just: come and eat something simple. We usually all eat together, but with the kids all in different sports, it can vary.

We live in a small, rural town, so in terms of takeout, there’s not a ton of options.

We have an online store and two brick-and-mortar Ballerina Farm stores selling baked goods, produce, frozen meat, dairy products, Ballerina Farm protein powder, and homeware. The Ballerina Farm farmstand is pretty near us, and last night, the kids had sourdough frozen pizza from there for dinner.

Ballerina Farm is our legacy, and we want to build something with meaning and depth

We launched the Ballerina Farm store Instagram account about a year ago, and I really wanted it to have a different voice from my page and its own authority. I want people to come to the brand for the products, for the experience, and not because of my content.

It’s been very fun and exciting to see the team that we’re building really run with it and see people want to be a part of the simple life movement.

Daniel and I are not trying to build something huge and sell out. It’s very much a legacy for us, and we’re trying to build something that people want to learn from and want to be a part of because it has meaning and depth.

It’s hard to not see some Instagram or TikTok comments, but I typically don’t focus on them. People can say a million nice things about you, and then one negative thing, and it hurts in a way that is just human. But I know who I am, and I know what we’re doing, and I believe in that.

After the kids go to bed, I fill my cup by editing

Before the kids go to bed, we usually do scripture study, pray, and check in about how their days went at around 9 p.m. It’s very grounding.

Daniel and I are both people of faith and really value our relationship with God. I feel like we definitely wouldn’t be where we are today without that faith, because we use it as a compass to make all our decisions — as business owners, parents, and husband and wife.

After the kids go to bed, it’s kind of like my work time. I edit, which I find very satisfying. I consider it “me time” because it fills up my cup.

In terms of my bedtime routine, I don’t do anything too crazy. I’ve been really into taking care of my skin lately as I’m getting older. I’m like, “this is serious, we got to step up our game.” I use a lot of tallow-based products from Five Mary’s Ranch, and I’ve also been loving Primally Pure’s Soothing Mist. Ogee is also great!

I do my nightly skin routine and that’s it. I go to bed around midnight or later. At the end of the day, I am pretty tired. Daniel and I like to joke that we haven’t slept in about 10 years.

On Sundays, we try to shut off. It’s a day that we try to keep sacred and special. We go to church and stay off social media. We do try not to talk about the business, but it often does come up because that’s when we have more time to think.

It’s a constant journey thinking about how we can put the cleanest, best products in people’s hands. How can we create an agritourism experience where people see produce being grown, learn about it, and then, in their own way, become more self-reliant in their own spaces? That’s what fuels me, and it’s really the most exciting part of our business.

• AI job seekers should build real projects using public data sets, said Stanford professor Jure Leskovec.
• Also a startup cofounder, he said adaptability and curiosity are crucial as AI evolves rapidly.
• Communication and empathy matter as much as knowing how to code, Leskovec added.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation and written commentary from Jure Leskovec, a computer-science professor at Stanford University and cofounder of Kumo, a maker of AI tools for predicting business outcomes from company data. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

If you want to work in AI, you need to show that you can actually do the work. Launch real projects using public datasets, deploy a demo, post your work on GitHub, or write about it on a blog.

Participate in hackathons — they’re a fantastic way to demonstrate initiative and teamwork in a short time. We organize hackathons ourselves and are often impressed by what participants produce. It’s concrete proof of what you can do.

Even if you fail, you’re showing that you’re curious and proactive. By your second or third project or hackathon, you’ll have gained valuable experience.

We recently hired someone who stood out because he built a generative AI tool for analyzing customer purchase data. It showed ambition, curiosity, and problem-solving, which are qualities we really value.

Curiosity and flexibility matter

My second recommendation is to show adaptability — that you’re the kind of person who is always experimenting with new tools, and that you can learn quickly. This is essential because AI is evolving at a pace that surprises even those of us who work in the field every day.

The best job candidates have taught themselves frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, or LLM tooling, and they stay current on areas like GenAI, multimodal models, diffusion, and reinforcement learning. Curiosity and flexibility matter more than having a fixed set of skills, because the skills in demand today may look very different tomorrow.

A top school or credential might get your application looked at, but it won’t get you hired. We look for people who build things, who are adaptable and curious. In job interviews, we can tell if someone is just trying to map new ideas to what they learned in school versus truly engaging with what’s new.

There’s no playbook for AI. We’re writing it right now. I always value it when my students bring me solutions that haven’t been tried before, even if they’re wrong. We’re still at the experimental stage of AI in many ways, and there isn’t always a clear textbook answer.

Sharpen your thinking

At Kumo, we conduct several interviews to see an applicant’s full thought process. We pay close attention to how they approach problems and often value their reasoning as much as their final answer — if not more.

It may sound simple to say, “think outside the box,” but it is more critical now than ever. Who knows? Your idea today could become the standard tomorrow.

I encourage people to sharpen their thinking by questioning assumptions, trying to solve problems without relying on familiar tools, and deliberately exposing themselves to new domains. Practice brainstorming multiple answers to the same problem, even the ones that seem impractical at first. Over time, these habits train you to see possibilities others overlook.

One last piece of advice: Don’t forget to be human. Technical skills aren’t everything. I look for people who can communicate clearly, work well in teams, and think carefully about the ethical and social implications of what they’re building. Collaboration, empathy, and awareness of bias matter just as much as knowing how to code.