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How Losing My Job Helped Me Find My Way Back

My Transition from Public Relations Manager to Software Engineer at Artsy

Anna Carey
The Startup
5 min readDec 2, 2020

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Photo by Simon John-McHaffie on Unsplash

Staying agile and adaptable has never been more critical to surviving — and especially thriving — in the chaos that has been 2020.

I spent the last year in a career pivot: transforming from a public relations manager to an entry-level software engineer. The journey was a roller coaster of challenges, failures, fatigue, and successes. Before we had even heard the word “coronavirus” and shaking hands with strangers was a normal thing we did, I was laid off from my dream job at Artsy — my first job out of college, the place where I built my community and my career. Starting 2020 unemployed felt like a giant boulder had been tossed into the river I had been cruising down, waves splintering my neatly assembled raft into a thousand pieces. Everything was in disarray.

We all have our COVID stories, and I know I am immensely privileged to be safe and secure when so many people have lost everything. My 2020 started with flying on an empty airplane from New York City to California to say final words to my grandfather in March, to the love of my life staging an epic surprise marriage proposal in May, to spontaneously moving across the country in August, to accepting my first full-time job as a software…

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The Startup
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Anna Carey
Anna Carey

Written by Anna Carey

Software engineer @Artsy. At the intersection of storytelling, art, and technology.

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