AsianDadEnergy's Podcast
This is a very public journal of anxiety, existential dread, and way too much tech knowledge. Basically therapy, but with Wi-Fi. asiandadenergy.substack.com
Nobody Wants You to Own a Home?
A few weeks ago my family took a road trip to Maine.
Over the course of several days I drove nearly 500 miles through half a dozen states before finally arriving at Acadia National Park. The scenery was spectacular. Rocky coastlines, endless forests, lobster shacks every few miles, it was exactly the kind of trip that reminds you just how beautiful America can be.
But it wasn’t Acadia that stuck with me.
It was everything I saw along the drive.
Nearly every picturesque town had the same pattern. There would be a...
No Money? Here’s How You Escape the Permanent Underclass
What if the future is increasingly divided between people who own capital and people who sell their labor? And what if you have no savings, no assets, and maybe even a negative net worth? Is it already too late?
Hello world.
I’m an unemployed former Big Tech software engineer with 25 years of experience in the technology industry.
Involuntary early retirement has given me something I didn’t have much of during my working years: time to think.
And one idea I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is this:
W...
AI Is About to Crash. Here’s Why.
Hello world.
I’m an unemployed ex Big Tech software engineer with 25 years of experience in the technology industry.
And lately, I’ve been looking at the AI industry and thinking:
Is it just me, or is this bubble looking extra bubbly?
Because something feels different.
The AI industry is still burning through enormous amounts of money. The companies at the center of the AI boom continue to require staggering amounts of capital to build data centers, buy GPUs, train models, and keep everything running.
But suddenly, the...
Time Is Going By Too Fast... Here's Why
One of the strangest things about getting laid off from Big Tech is realizing that, for the first time in decades, I actually have time.
And as strange as this new chapter has been, I’ve noticed something surprisingly wonderful.
Time has slowed down.
Not literally, of course. The Earth is still spinning at roughly the same speed. My clocks haven’t suddenly become defective. Monday still becomes Tuesday whether I like it or not.
But my perception of time has changed dramatically.
And honestly?
It feels a li...
Your Job Won’t Remember You. Your Family Will.
Hello World!
Last week, my family and I spent several wonderful days exploring New York’s Finger Lakes.
There wasn’t anything particularly extraordinary about the trip. We went sightseeing. We ate good food. We laughed. We wandered around. We took far too many pictures that will probably never leave our phones.
But somewhere in the middle of it all, while watching my kids run around and seeing everyone genuinely happy, I was reminded of something that I think many of us spend years forgetting.
Time is our most valuable resource.
The College System Is About to Collapse?
Over the Fourth of July weekend, my dad, my son, and I went on one of our annual boys club fishing trips.
Between catching countless panfish, my dad brought up a topic that instantly transported me back to my teenage years.
He told me that I needed to do everything possible to get my son into a prestigious Ivy League university.
To him, this was obvious.
To me, it was deeply unsettling.
I spent most of the conversation trying to explain that artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the economics...
I Got Laid Off... Now I Make $11,000 a Month Doing Whatever I Want
When I got laid off from my Big Tech job late last year, I thought I knew what came next.
Shock.
Anger.
Shame.
Sadness.
If you’ve ever been laid off, you probably know the feeling. It is as if someone has ripped away not just your paycheck, but your identity. After spending twenty five years in the technology industry, I suddenly found myself unemployed.
Meanwhile, every week seemed to bring another announcement of mass layoffs across the tech industry. Friends were losing jobs. LinkedIn became an en...
Why Everyone SEEMS to Have More Money Than Me?
Every once in a while, I experience a feeling that I’m not particularly proud of.
It’s the feeling that everybody else is rich.
They all seem to have more money than I do. Bigger houses. Newer cars. Better vacations. Better lives.
And somehow, despite everything I’ve accomplished, I feel like I’m falling behind.
These days it doesn’t happen very often, but every now and then it sneaks up on me.
Maybe I’m watching YouTube and someone is giving a tour of their enormous house. Maybe...
The AI Coding Revolution Has a Huge Problem?
A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a debate that has been making the rounds in software engineering circles.
The spark came from Boris Cherny, an engineer at Anthropic and the creator of Claude Code, arguably the most influential AI Agentic Coding harness in the world today.
During a podcast appearance, Boris made a statement that immediately grabbed my attention:
Coding is largely a solved problem.
He went on to explain that he hadn’t written a line of code by hand since November, and that essentially all of his code is...
Something Is Seriously Wrong With People?
A few days ago, my wife received a credit card in the mail from a company we had never used.
Apparently, someone had opened an account in her name.
Naturally, I assumed identity theft and immediately called the credit card company to shut the account down and find out what information had been used to create it.
After spending twenty minutes navigating an infuriating AI phone system, I finally reached a human being.
Or at least, I think I did.
The conversation felt strange.
Every question I...
I Think We're Losing Control Of AI
A recent experience with Claude 5 Fable left me both impressed and deeply unsettled.
Hello world.
I am an unemployed former Big Tech software engineer with twenty five years of experience building software systems. Over the past week, I found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole that I did not expect to be quite so deep.
That rabbit hole was Claude 5 Fable.
Fable is widely described as a consumer-facing version of Anthropic’s next generation frontier model, Claude Mythos. While details surrounding Mythos remain scarce, public reporting suggests that access is heavily re...
The Hidden Cost Of Working Nobody Warns You About
Six months ago, I lost my job.
At the time, it felt like a catastrophe.
After spending twenty-five years working in technology, employment had become such a constant in my life that I could barely imagine an existence without it. Work was the backdrop against which everything else happened. It structured my days, determined where I lived, influenced my relationships, and shaped my identity.
When the layoff happened, I went through the emotions that many people experience: disorientation, sadness, shame, and uncertainty.
But something unexpected happened.
Six months later...
Everyone Says AI Is Too Expensive. They're Wrong.
Every few weeks, a new headline appears claiming that AI is becoming unsustainably expensive.
Companies are reportedly burning through millions of dollars a month on AI subscriptions. Some organizations are discovering that employees can consume astonishing quantities of tokens when every workflow becomes an AI workflow. There are even stories circulating of teams whose AI bills now exceed the cost of the employees using the tools.
For many people, these stories confirm a suspicion they have been quietly nurturing all along.
Maybe AI isn’t economically viable.
Maybe the entire thing is...
AI Is Destroying India's Outsourcing Industry?
Every once in a while, I make the mistake of opening LinkedIn.
I know I should not.
For an unemployed former Big Tech engineer, LinkedIn often feels like an abusive relationship. I log in knowing there is a good chance I will encounter some combination of layoffs, humblebrags, AI hype, and carefully curated success stories that leave me questioning every major life decision I have ever made.
And yet, like drivers slowing down to stare at a highway accident, I sometimes cannot resist the morbid curiosity.
Recently, that curiosity led to...
How I’m Preparing My Family for a Changing World Order (WW3?)
Hello world,
One strange side effect of unemployment is that it gives you something modern life rarely provides anymore.
Time.
For twenty five years I worked in tech. Like many engineers, I spent most of my adult life sprinting from deadline to deadline, project to project, quarter to quarter. There was always another problem to solve and another fire to put out.
Then one day the treadmill stopped.
Now that I am no longer spending every waking hour inside the machine, I suddenly have the ability to do something...
The Real Reason They're Racing To Build AI?
The Future That Quietly Keeps Me Up at Night
Hello world,
For the first time in more than two decades, I suddenly found myself with something I hadn’t had in years:
Time.
After spending 25 years as a software engineer in big tech, I entered what I jokingly call my “involuntary early retirement.” And when your daily rhythms disappear, your mind starts wandering into strange places.
Mine wandered into the future.
Not my future specifically, but humanity’s future.
Like many engineers, I have always believed...
The Tech Layoff Crisis No One Wants to Talk About
Another week passes and another wave of layoffs crashes through the technology industry like a tidal wave. At this point, the disappearance of thousands of highly experienced engineers has become so common that it barely shocks anyone anymore. Entire departments vanish overnight. Decades of institutional knowledge disappear behind a carefully worded email and a severance package.
But there is another group of people affected by these layoffs that nobody really talks about.
The survivors.
The people who remain employed are often viewed as the lucky ones. They still have a paycheck. Their stock...
I Never Understood This Kind Of Love… Until I Had A Daughter
Mother’s Day weekend took us to Pennsylvania to visit my parents.
At some point during dinner at a fancy Chinese restaurant, an amusing but strangely revealing family intervention unfolded across the table.
Two of the three most important women in my life joined forces against the third.
My mother and my wife began criticizing the way I raise my eight-year-old daughter.
According to my mother, I’m far too soft on her. She said I give in too easily, indulge her too much, and risk turning her into a spoiled, diss...
Quantum Computing Is a Lie (Here’s What I Discovered)
Hello world.
I’m an unemployed ex–Big Tech software engineer, watching from the outside as the industry I helped build pours billions into its next obsession: quantum computing.
Some say it’s the next trillion-dollar industry.Others say it will dwarf the current AI boom.
And having briefly stepped into that world myself… I understand the excitement.
I also understand the madness.
The Promise: A Computer That Tries Everything at Once
A couple of years ago, I attended an internal conference at my company, a kind of innov...
The Career Advice You Grew Up With Is Dead in the Age of AI
Reflections from an unemployed ex–Big Tech engineer navigating a changing world
Hello world.
For the first time in more than two decades, I find myself standing outside the system I once helped build.
After 25 years in the tech industry, I am now an unemployed former software engineer. A title I never imagined I would carry.
And yet, every week, that story becomes less unusual.
The headlines keep arriving in waves: another tech company, another restructuring, another round of layoffs measured not in dozens, but in thousands. Increasingly, the ex...
Why Are So Many People Secretly Losing Interest in Everything?
There was a moment at a small, crowded Chinese restaurant in Queens that I haven’t been able to shake.
I’ve been on an unexpected pause in life lately, an ex–big tech software engineer with 25 years behind the keyboard, now suddenly finding himself with more time than he ever asked for. Time, as it turns out, is a strange thing when it stops being rationed by meetings and deadlines. It starts revealing things.
That afternoon, I met up with an old friend Derrick, his son, his Cousin Aaron, and my own teenage son. The ki...
STOP Paying for Subscriptions — Build This Homelab Instead
Hello world,
There’s something oddly clarifying about involuntary stillness.
After 25 years in big tech, I didn’t expect “early retirement” to be the thing that finally gave me perspective but here we are. When the noise of deadlines, stand-ups, and quarterly targets fades, you start to notice the infrastructure of your own life. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
We’ve outsourced more than convenience, we’ve outsourced control.
A handful of companies now mediate how we work, how we relax, how we store memories, even how we unlock...
AI Doomerism Is Getting Out of Control — Let’s Break the Myths Apart One by One
Hello world,
I’m an unemployed ex–big tech software engineer with 25 years in the industry. That sentence tends to land somewhere between confession and credibility, depending on how charitable you’re feeling.
Lately, I’ve been watching the rise of something… strange.
Not AI itself, that part makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the explosion of AI Doomerism. Everywhere you look, there are headlines warning that AI is lying, stealing, scheming, or quietly plotting humanity’s demise.
And to be clear, AI does pose real challenges. Serious ones...
This Is All You Need to Retire Early (Shocking Math)
After 25 years in the tech industry, I never expected to be here—unemployed, months removed from Big Tech, and living what can only be described as an involuntary early retirement.
And yet, something surprising happened.
Despite losing a high income, my family of four is living comfortably on under $5,000 a month, in a high-cost area near New York City.
Let that sink in.
The Anatomy of a “Modest” but High-Quality Life
Our lifestyle isn’t extravagant, but it’s far from deprived. In fact, it’s quietly abundant.
Here’s wha...
100 Days After My Layoff as an Engineer… The Truth
It’s been over 100 days since I was laid off from Big Tech after a 25+ year career in the tech industry. What followed wasn’t panic or fear, but something far more complex: a complete rewiring of how I think about work, identity, and purpose.
The Shock of Losing More Than a Job
At first, the layoff felt surreal. There was a brief period of disorientation like a system crash without an error message. I applied to jobs almost reflexively, not out of desire, but habit. Work had become part of my identity, and without it...
Tech Layoffs EXPOSE the Dark Truth About H1B Workers
It’s another week, another wave of layoffs, and once again the same question bubbles to the surface: who or what is really responsible?
For many American software engineers, the H-1B visa program has become an easy target. A symbol of job insecurity. A quiet, persistent threat.
But after 25 years in the industry, I’ve come to believe something more uncomfortable:
The problem isn’t the people. It’s the system.
A Lottery That Doesn’t Measure Talent
On paper, the H-1B program is elegant. It exists to fill ge...
AI Is Making Software Worthless Faster Than Anyone Realizes
I didn’t expect to find it in my home office, finishing up a quick side project. But there it was, a realization that hit harder than any production outage I’ve ever debugged:
What used to take a startup, millions in funding, and months of work… now takes one person a few days.
And that changes everything.
The Assumption That Built an Empire
For the past 30 years, our economy has quietly revolved around a single idea:
Software is expensive.
That assumption shaped everything:
* Companies hired...
At 5AM I Passed Out at Work… Then Everything Changed
These days, in my unexpected post–Big Tech era, I spend a fair amount of time cooking for my family.
There are worse fates.
On this particular day, I was making stir-fried pork and turnips, which felt appropriate somehow: humble ingredients, a little heat, a little patience, and the faint possibility that if you look away for too long, everything burns. Which, now that I think about it, is also a decent summary of a lot of software projects.
And as I cooked, I found myself remembering one of my favorite old tech wa...
This Conflict Could End the AI Bubble Overnight
The other day, I was standing at a gas pump, watching the numbers climb beside my aging Honda CR-V, when something felt… off.
Gas prices had jumped nearly 40% in a single week.
That kind of movement doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not random. It’s not seasonal. It’s a signal.
And right now, that signal is pointing straight at a rapidly escalating conflict in the Persian Gulf.
War as a Terrible Investment
War is often discussed in terms of strategy, power, or necessity. But strip all that a...
Day in the Life of a Laid Off Big Tech Engineer
Hello world.
Not long ago, I was a senior software engineer in Big Tech, part of an industry that once felt like the unstoppable engine of the modern economy. For more than 25 years, my days were structured around product launches, sprint cycles, code reviews, and the comforting illusion that there would always be another project waiting on Monday morning.
Then came an unexpected change in employment status.
These days I describe myself, with only mild irony, as an involuntary early retiree.
And like many people who suddenly find themselves outside the...
“Why Even Try?” — What My Son Told Me About Gen Z’s Future Shocked Me
Hello world.
I’m an unemployed former Big Tech software engineer with 25 years in the technology industry. These days I joke that I’m in “involuntary early retirement.”
One unexpected side effect of that situation is time, a lot more time with my kids.
Recently, that time turned into a long and surprisingly heavy conversation with my teenage son.
It started casually.It ended with a question that kept me awake most of the night.
My son and his friends believe the future is going to be bad no matter w...
Mid-Level Engineers Are in Trouble (Here’s the Escape Plan)
Many years ago, I was a mid-level developer at a consulting company. I remember staring up at the org chart and wondering how people became architects, then senior architects, then technical directors. It felt mysterious. Political. Reserved for the chosen few.
And yet, over roughly six years, I climbed that ladder:Developer → Architect → Senior Architect → Tech Director.
At the time, it felt brutal.
In hindsight, it was almost straightforward.
The uncomfortable truth? The path that worked for me may no longer be enough today.
Let me explain.
The Ol...
AI Will Replace White Collar Jobs in 12 Months? The Truth No One Explains
Hello world.
I’m an unemployed ex–Big Tech software engineer with 25+ years in the trenches of the software industry. I’ve ridden the dot-com bubble, offshoring waves, mobile revolutions, cloud migrations, and whatever we’re calling the post-pandemic tech reckoning.
And now? I’m watching the AI gold rush from the outside.
Depending on which headline you read this morning, artificial intelligence is either:
* An economically unsustainable hype machine
* A glorified autocomplete that can’t boost productivity
* Or the final exponential surge before Artificial General Intelligence automates ev...
I Let AI Start a Side Hustle for Me… and It Actually Made Money
Hello world.
After more than 25 years in the software industry, and an unexpected exit from Big Tech, I found myself in an unfamiliar situation: time. Lots of it. The kind of time engineers rarely have, the kind that invites curiosity, experimentation, and occasionally, questionable ideas.
This is the story of one such idea.
A Simple (and Slightly Dangerous) Thought Experiment
What if you could build a system that:
* Discovered profitable market niches automatically
* Generated digital wall art tailored to those niches
* Published the results directly...
AI Isn’t Creating the Future… It’s Rebuilding the Middle Ages
Hello world.
After more than twenty-five years in the software industry, I now find myself in an unfamiliar position: an ex–Big Tech engineer with time to think. And when you suddenly have time, real, unstructured time, you start asking questions that never quite fit into sprint planning or quarterly OKRs. Questions about where all of this is going. About what kind of civilization we may be constructing, almost accidentally, through code, platforms, and incentives.
One possible answer is something historians would recognize immediately, even if we insist on calling it innovation: techno-feudalism.
A...
Tech Is Collapsing. My Investments Paid My Bills Anyway.
Hello, World.
I’m an unemployed, ex–Big Tech software engineer with 25 years in the industry.
That sentence would have terrified me a decade ago. Today, it feels strangely calm.
We’re living through another brutal cycle of tech layoffs. Thousands of engineers: smart, capable people are refreshing LinkedIn feeds and grinding through interviews that feel increasingly like Squid Game with better lighting. Many are hurting. Some are in real financial distress.
By a combination of discipline, luck, and a few painful lessons, I’m not.
I’m financially independen...
The Truth About Offshoring: Why Tech Jobs Are Disappearing for Good
Hello world.
I’m an unemployed, ex–Big Tech engineer with twenty-five years in the software and technology industry. That sentence alone would have felt impossible not long ago. And yet here we are, living through another wave of mass layoffs across American tech an era where résumés pile up, inboxes stay silent, and explanations are reduced to slogans.
One of the most common refrains I hear is simple: it’s offshoring.
Now that I have time, an abundance of it, I’ve been sitting with that claim, turning it over carefully...
Mass Layoffs in Tech: I Survived Them for 25 Years—Until I Didn’t
Hello world.
I’m an unemployed, ex–Big Tech software engineer with 25 years in the technology industry. And like many of you, over the past week I’ve been watching yet another wave of mass layoffs sweep across tech, tens of thousands of engineers, designers, and product leaders suddenly finding themselves on the outside.
Every layoff cycle brings back a memory I can’t quite shake: my first.
My First Layoff, 2008
In 2008, during the Great Recession, I was a mid-level developer at a digital consulting agency. I’d been there just under two...
Surviving the 2009 Tech Layoffs: All-Nighters, Broken Open Source & Impostor Syndrome
Lamb Saag, Layoffs, and the Bug That Broke Me
Hello, world.
I’m an unemployed ex–Big Tech software engineer with 25 years of experience, which in today’s economy apparently qualifies me for involuntary early retirement. One unexpected perk of this phase of life is that I now do a lot more cooking for my family. Today’s menu: Indian lamb saag. Slow, deliberate, and unforgiving if you miss a step, much like enterprise software.
As the lamb simmers, let me tell you a story from a darker, stranger time.
2009: The Corporat...
Laid Off After 25 Years in Tech: How a 50% Savings Rate Made It Stress-Free
Hello, world.
A few months ago, I became what feels like a new tech archetype: an unemployed ex–Big Tech engineer with over 25 years in the industry. In today’s climate, that sentence alone is enough to spike blood pressure. Yet, strangely, my recent layoff hasn’t felt like a crisis. It’s felt more like a quiet pause, a semi–early retirement, or at least a transition into the next chapter of life.
That perspective didn’t come from optimism or denial. It came from math.
For more than a decade, my family has m...
