Max Weiner
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This is not a pity post nor the beginning of my influencer/blogging career… Instead, I thought the universe had a particular sense of humor as I found myself "reduced in force" for the 2nd time in my career with Vegas being the throughline.

At 25, I was living my startup dreams with all the typical accoutrements — happy hours, unlimited snacks, ping pong, colleagues I enjoyed — and my identity and livelihood were strongly tied to the work. It took a while to learn that being laid off didn't necessarily translate to your work quality, the shareholder value you create, or most importantly, who you are as a person. Within a few weeks and after some failed interviews, I did what all millennials do in this situation — set off for the peaceful tranquility of the Las Vegas desert in August to share a 1-bedroom hotel room with 2 other guys. After a week of melting, meandering the sad Palms food court one too many times and seeing the matinee of Sausage Party in theaters, I called it off and returned home where I eventually found gainful employment.

Fast forward 10 years. This time I started my trip gainfully employed, avoided The Palms (although I hear the remodel turned out nice), treated myself to my own king room at the Wynn, day at the spa, and plenty of drinks by the pool. Not my first Vegas since 2016, but my first as a "PaPa" to 2under2 — and I was perfectly happy calling it at John Summit around 2:30am. Progress? Maybe.

Four days after returning home, on the first day I actually felt human again, the email came around 4pm. Seven months of severance to figure out what comes next.

When I coach job seekers, I often remind them of the powerful phrase "for now." For now, I plan to use this site as a creative outlet — to be part build log, part opinions, part experiment in public. I plan to use AI tools heavily along the way: building agents, automating things that shouldn't take as long as they do, and generally seeing what's possible when you have seven months and no meetings. You'll find projects in various states of done, writing about Customer Success and AI, a resume with a chatbot trained on me, and an archived version of a 2019 site I built for a grad school marketing class that somehow included a lasagna recipe. That last one is worth a click.