Not to start an argument, but do you really think you could easily find non-tech work that also provides health insurance? I get a little triggered at this line of thinking. People often day dream about working as a Costco receipt checker without realizing you literally have to work your way up from seasonal to part-time to full-time over years. And that's assuming you can even get hired as a seasonal worker with a 5+ year unemployment gap on your Resume (your SWE career).

I'm realizing I'm a little bit too passionate about this lol but I would love to hear if you have a specific plan or goal in mind so I can copy it. For me BaristaFIRE would be ideal, but with so many friends going through the layoff/unemployment cycle and hearing their experiences I've concluded it's much more pragmatic to stay in tech.

> with so many friends going through the layoff/unemployment cycle and hearing their experiences I've concluded it's much more pragmatic to stay in tech.

If so many of your friends are becoming unemployed, isn't this a sign of things to come? If people keep getting laid off in tech, what is the motivation to stay there if you might be next?

Like you, I'm confused by the dreams people post about working low-paid jobs if they're laid off. If the job market is flooded with tech workers, all these jobs will become even more competitive than before, and wages will fall. If you think your own career in tech is actually in danger (as in, you don't think you have any skills that couldn't be fully automated in the near future), I think the best option is getting some different education to put some barrier of certification between yourself and the rest of the desperate job market. But it should be something that's highly employable and difficult to automate, which is a scope that keeps narrowing.

87% of full-time private sector workers have access to employer-subsidized healthcare. On average employers pay 82% of the cost for an individual and 73% of the cost of a family. To use BestBuy as an example: Reddit threads suggest costs range from $100/month (as of 2021) to $250/month (as of 2025).