A Walk through Foggy Midsummer Nights - Written at the End of a Job Hunt

Jun 21st, 2025

In early 2025, as layoffs swept the tech industry and gen-AI loomed over everything, I left the role I had held for five years and took a leap into the unknown. I packed my life (and dog) into two suitcases and flew from downtown Toronto to the quiet countryside near London, where, with my new neighbors - swans, geese, and ducks (hint, hint), I went through a season of interviews, self-doubt, small triumphs, and quiet resilience. There were tears—many—and at times it felt like walking through a foggy forest at night, where the moon was hidden, but somehow, the moonlight remained.

On June 18th. 2025, I signed the offer that marked the end of this chapter. This is the story of the season of the job hunt.

(Friendly Geese)

The Departure

On January 7th. 2025, I sent out my two-week notice.

This departure has been in the works for years. My life has always been a wheel in motion. As an overachiever, it’s always been go-go-go: high school → university → grad school → work. I had long dreamed of a pause—a moment where I’d be forced to stop, regroup, and rediscover myself.

During interviews, I was often asked, “Why did you leave Yelp? Was something wrong?” I always laughed and said no. Not out of formality, but because it was the truth: There was nothing wrong with Yelp. In fact, my five years there were among the best of my life. People often say your first full-time job after graduation is like your career’s first family. In that sense, I had a wonderful one. Yelp taught me how to be an engineer—with kindness, encouragement, and high standards. I found shelter there during the turbulence of 2020, when many of my friends were laid off and sent home with $100K flight tickets and two-week quarantines. Yelp gave me stability. When I wanted to move from full-stack into the mobile world, they supported me. When I wanted to relocate to Canada, they made it happen—visa, funds, everything. I grew as an engineer and a person within that space.

But every good party must end. I knew I couldn’t stay in one place forever. To grow, I had to leave. Like a hermit crab looking for its next shell, I had to seek my next home—somewhere a little bigger, a little less familiar. That moment came in January 2025.

I started my first job on January 6th, 2020.
I submitted my resignation on January 7th, 2025.
Exactly five years, almost to the day. Like fate.

The Freedom

After my final week, I mailed back my work laptop but kept my badge. I thought I would cry, but I didn’t. Instead, my friend and I went to Niagara Falls in the cruel Canadian winter. I watched the water rush beneath layers of ice, felt tiny frozen particles hit my cheeks, and suddenly remembered my love for water— it flows. And I, too, began to flow.

(Icy water in Niagara River)

I thought I would enjoy my hard-earned freedom, and I did, for the first month. It was Lunar New Year, and I got to celebrate my first work-free one since 2019. I indulged in endless gaming, gym classes, and snacks. I started taking Lyra seriously, attending 2+ classes a week and graduating from beginner to intermediate. It was also a time when I began thinking about my next steps. With my newfound freedom, I wanted to travel, so I set my next destination to Europe.

Along the way, with friend’s introduction, I met a few tech founders who were looking to bring on their first engineers. Talking to passionate people about magical ideas was exhilarating. I also started my own app, Dearie Diary—a pet health tracker rooted in my dog’s health scare in 2024. For the first time in a long time, it felt like I could do anything. I was free to try, to explore, to live fully. I was no longer bound by a visa, a job, or a title. It’s just me.

The Drift

Unfortunately, the happiness lasted barely a month. By mid-February, as the Lunar New Year celebrations came to an end, self-doubt began creeping in. My brain suddenly faced with silence, started to panic. I assigned tasks to myself—rebuilding my blog and personal website, trying to finish my app Dearie Diary. For a while, the work helped ease the anxiety. But soon, it wasn’t enough.

I felt like a ragdoll caught between two forces. On one hand, I desperately wanted to enjoy my break—my overdue gap year, as I had framed it in my head. On the other hand, I was quietly spiraling, wondering what I was doing with my life. I started replying to recruiters on LinkedIn, not necessarily out of interest, but to feel occupied. I used interviews as a way to structure my time. I also began Leetcoding again—at first casually, then in full “serious mode” by mid-March.

It was around that time that I interviewed with TikTok in San Jose and received my first post-Yelp offer for a senior position. But with the way the world—and especially the U.S.—looked at that moment, I turned it down. I wasn’t sure if returning to the Bay Area and joining another big tech company was the right path for me. On the surface, I looked like someone who had it all figured out—Leetcode contests, interview invites, offers. But inside, I was completely lost.

The Fear, Anxiety, Pain and Fatigue

By April, I decided I’d had enough of this so-called freedom. I bought LinkedIn Premium, turned on the “Open to Work” badge, marking the official beginning of my job hunt. I primarily applied through LinkedIn job boards, with occasional replies to recruiter messages if the opportunity sounded right. I focused on senior iOS roles, but I was open to mid-level positions if the company felt like a good fit.

I’ve always had a fear of job hunting. Five years ago, during my first search as a new grad, it was the most stressful time of my life. I cried almost every night. I stopped laughing, stopped talking. That period left deep marks. I thought things would be different this time. And yes—they were, but only slightly. I didn’t have a visa deadline hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles. I wasn’t asking my parents for support—I was living on my own savings. It was different, but it was still hard. And maybe that’s why, despite thinking about leaving my job a year earlier, I waited. I was afraid.

But being me, I’ve made it a habit to do exactly what I fear. So I jumped—into the void.

At the beginning, things looked promising. I received an offer from TikTok for a Senior Software Engineer role in their San Jose office. But that was the only offer I received that month. As rejections started to roll in, my anxiety grew. I lost interest in the gym. I stopped crocheting—two of the things that had once grounded me. I started pacing around my flat, refreshing my email inbox every five minutes. I panicked if I can’t get a solution out for a Leetcode Medium within 10 minutes. There were days when I wanted to rot in bed and give up completely. And honestly? My family would’ve supported me if I had. They’ve always supported whatever silly dream I’m chasing. How lucky I am for that.

Eventually, I kept walking. I reached out to friends asking for referrals—and every single one of them replied, gladly. I spoke with childhood friends on the other side of the world, and they shared the things that helped them when they too felt lost. And my family—always quietly behind me—never wavered. Neither of my parents come from a tech background, and both only attended local colleges. But that never stopped them from offering me every kind of support, from career advice to financial help. Even now, just thinking about them fills my heart with warmth. And let’s not forget the dogs—Gourdy, my lovely little pup, was always there. He’d lick my tears away when they fell and offer kisses and snuggles whenever I was down. In his way, he reminded me that I was loved and I was never alone.

(Silly Gourd)

The Epilogue

Despite the pain, was it worth it? I would say yes. Not only did this journey bring me to a new place, it gave me much more than just a destination. In my opinion, in this industry, everyone should try interviewing at least once every 1–2 years.

You learn about yourself.
People discover the most about themselves under pressure. In interviews, you feel exposed—like a child standing naked under a spotlight. But many behavioral questions are in fact exercises in self-reflection. I learned that while I always dreamed of taking a gap year and doing nothing, deep down, I’m still someone who craves structure, order, and purposeful work.
You learn about the industry.
Tech evolves rapidly—new tools, frameworks, and paradigms pop up like mushrooms after the rain. Reading job descriptions, talking with engineers, and connecting with hiring managers gave me a wider lens. I stepped out of my familiar Slack bubble and saw how the rest of the world was building.
You review—and improve.
These past few months of interview prep and reflection helped me grow dramatically. I revisited old projects and extracted new insights. I re-read Swift best practices and compared them to my own work. I built pet projects to practice areas I didn’t get to touch much in previous roles: concurrency, networking, Core Data, lower-level APIs. And of course, I dove into a whirlwind review of data structures and algorithms with Leetcode. (I’ll probably write a whole separate post on Leetcode—people love to dismiss it, especially post-gen-AI, but I think it offers far more than just “reverse a linked list.”)

On June 19th, I signed an offer to join DuckDuckGo (and here it is, ducks, quack quack) as a Senior Software Engineer on their Apple team. I thought I would be overcome with emotion—happy tears, ugly crying, catharsis. But strangely, I felt calm. Not because it didn’t mean something, but because it felt… right. Compared to five years ago, when I signed my offer at Yelp and burst into tears, this time it felt like the next step in a story I was already writing.