I left Amazon, came back, and was laid off. My old job-search strategies no longer worked — here's what did.

Jack Nguyen spent more than seven years working at Amazon across two stints before being laid off in January. Jack Nguyen Jack Nguyen left his role at Amazon in 2021, rejoined the company a year later, and was laid off in January. He started looking for work right away and found the search much more difficult than it had been in the past. He shared how he landed a new role within months — and his advice for other tech workers. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jack Nguyen, a Deloitte employee in his 40s, living in Virginia. He previously worked for Amazon before being laid off in January. The following has been edited for length and clarity. In January, I learned that I'd been laid off from my engineering role at Amazon.