Laid-off Oracle techie lands job in 45 days; shares blueprint to beat market slump — ‘Soak knowledge like sponge’

A techie who lost his job in the recent Oracle layoff, which claimed 30,000 jobs, transitioned from a pink slip to multiple new job offers in just 45 days.

Sharing his viral success blueprint on social media, the former Oracle software engineer revealed how they upskilled into AI engineering from scratch, balanced 15 daily applications, and “soaked in knowledge like a sponge” to successfully beat the job market slump.

Here's what the techie did:

In a viral Reddit post, the techie said he was laid off by Oracle on March 31, along with 30,000 others, but“didn't think much about it.” — “I was like, ‘ Cool, I have to lock in now.’”

After landing three jobs within 45 days of being laid off, the techie shared a step-by-step blueprint of what others affected by layoffs should do to “get out of this ‘between jobs’ phase”:

The techie suggested, “3-4 hours of DSA every day — Neetcode mostly.”

He said he learned the basics of AI engineering from scratch, including transformers and attention, using Claude — “Asked (it) to make a 30-day plan and completed the plan accordingly.”

“1-2 hours every day for around a month, and I had 2 projects to showcase after this,” the viral post read.

He also noted that “System design from Hello interview” helped his learning. “Spent like 2 hours on it every day. And articles from ByteByteGo and Substack as well.”

Another important trick, the techie said, was to “update Naukri daily — Put as an immediate joiner.”

“Apply to at least 10 - 15 positions daily. Doesn't matter where: careers pages, Workday, LinkedIn, Wellfound, Naukri, Indeed, etc. I found career pages the best to apply to, and Naukri to get in touch,” he said.

The techie said he was reached out to by around 20 recruiters only through LinkedIn. “LinkedIn Premium will help here. Some called and scheduled interviews as well.”

“I was curious to learn every day. I was soaking in knowledge like a sponge,” the former Oracle software engineer said.

The techie said he started giving interviews from early May to mid-May. “Interviews with 7 companies. Some I failed and ended up with 3 offers. I will be joining as an AI Engineer soon,” he said.

How did netizens react?

Social media users congratulated the techie for his tenacity and sought advice to ace interviews.

"The reason you got the job so easily was 30 per cent your hard work in the past months and 70 per cent your Oracle background," said a user.

“Congo!” said another user. “Please share how you did prep for AI engineering, it will be helpful for us. If possible, share the overall prep strategy too, like what else you did beyond Neetcode, like system design, any domain-specific stuff.”

However, a netizen noted that the techie is “from a top NIT and has Oracle in his resume,” and said, “the market is still bad for normal tier 3 folks.”

“No hate and congratulations btw, it's just that a lot of people like me who are laid off a lot longer, like more than 6 months, get demotivated and question themselves. The main problem is that, due to a shortage of jobs, companies these days are giving preference to tier 1 candidates. Our resumes don't even get shortlisted,” the netizen added.