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general 2026-01-29 · Updated 2026-01-29

Repent The End Is Nigh

end

repent (verb): to change one’s way of thinking after recognizing a flawed assumption.

Tech as labor is not “ending tomorrow.” It’s declining. Possibly halving in 10 years.

Layoffs keep coming. Amazon is cutting roughly 14,000 corporate roles. Autodesk is laying off about 1,000 people, roughly 7% of its workforce. Meta continues to shrink Reality Labs. These are established engineering cultures, laying people off again.

This has been going on since 2023. We are now in year three. If you are waiting to refactor your life, the rule of three is being fulfilled before you.

LinkedIn is full of award winners on their sixth month or more without a job. If you’ve already been laid off, you probably noticed the door isn’t just closed — it’s nailed shut.

You crossed the Rubicon.

The market is also not lacking:

  • FAANG engineers
  • prestige school graduates
  • award winners
  • people who “did everything right”

At some point, waiting stops being neutral and becomes a decision.

The actual decision tree

Realistically, your decision tree looks like this:

1. Wait

Keep knocking and hope some door opens.

This is rational for a short window. It stops being rational when month six looks like month one.

If you don’t actively manage your cash burn, waiting quietly collapses into a forced move. Option (4) disappears. Marina liveaboard availability is limited. Boats rot. Capital gets spent. You default into (2) — whatever trade pays next.

2. Trades

Real demand. Honest work.

Jensen Huang is clamoring for electricians for his data centers. The flip side is low pay unless you own the business, a steep ramp, and physical toll.

3. Entrepreneurship

Potentially high upside.

Also a ~10–15% success rate, delayed income, and high burn while you experiment.

4. Exit

Cut fixed costs. Reduce dependency. Buy time.

Most people treat (4) as “giving up.” That’s backwards.

Ironically, (4) is what makes 1–3 survivable.

When your burn rate is low and optionality is high:

  • Waiting isn’t desperate.
  • Trades can ramp without breaking you.
  • Entrepreneurship becomes iterative instead of existential.

What does exit actually require?

At least one of these, or the option to:

  • Geographic arbitrage
  • Homesteading
  • Mobile living / seasteading
  • Aggressively crushing fixed costs
  • Moving back “home”

I chose to live in Ballard, to enjoy multi-million-dollar sunsets, paying very little in monthly costs, because I figured out shelter and energy.

I do have to chase water leaks and condensation. But otherwise, the cash burn is freezing.

ss ss2

To illustrate, this is a typical snapshot from BoatTrader.

Admissions often start under $10k. However, boats are money pits if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s the failure mode.

I’ve lived on one, rebuilt systems, evaluated dozens, and learned the hard lessons. So I wrote a buying guide specifically for knowledge workers who need a quick introduction that speaks their language.

https://arpeggio.one/shop/

If you think this reverses quickly

I’ve written more on why it likely won’t:

Your to be or not to be is this:

Be a passenger on a sinking ship OR a captain on a raft you built.