This story starts the way a few of my stories lately seem to start: I got laid off again.
The good news and I want to be fair about this is that everything was handled well. My company was straight with me about every obligation and settlement. No games, no runaround. And honestly, there was even a strange sense of relief in it.
Not relief from the company itself, but from the drama. For a long time my team had been managed by someone who seemed to manufacture conflict out of thin air, and when the layoff came, the whole team quietly exhaled. We were finally free of that weight.
The Real Weight: Job Hunting in a Broken Economy
Of course, the next weight showed up right on schedule: finding a new job.
And this isn't an easy time to be looking. Indonesia's economy is a mess right now. Layoffs are happening everywhere, the government feels directionless, and every single day you get hit with another wave of bad news. A few years ago a layoff would have wrecked me. This time, I was calmer. I could actually manage myself and stay positive.
Two things made that possible.
The first is my wife. She has been unbelievably supportive, and because we live together, I never had to panic about where I'd sleep or how I'd get by. That matters more than people realize when you're a transplant in Jakarta with no family nearby no relatives to fall back on, no safety net besides the one you build yourself.
The second is my friends. The people around me are genuinely supportive. They don't just send me job referrals (though they do that too) they're also the kind of friends you can talk to about life and hobbies, especially coffee. Being able to geek out about a good pour-over in the middle of a stressful job hunt did more for my mental health than I expected.
Landing a New Job Fast
Long story short: after a few weeks of searching, I got a call for an interview. A few rounds later, I passed. From the official layoff date to signing a new offer, the whole thing took only a matter of weeks.
And I'll be honest on paper, the new company is great. It's a solid multinational with strong clients both in its home country and here in Indonesia. On the surface, this looked like a win.
But fast, as it turns out, had a catch.
The Catch: A Project From Hell
I onboarded at the new company, spent a day in the office, and the very next day I was already sent to the client site, because my role is embedded directly with the client let's just call them "the project owner."
Day one started normally enough. Then, in the late afternoon, barely onboarded, I was suddenly handed a pretty big task. I stayed positive. Maybe it was genuinely urgent, I told myself. Fine, I'll do it. And then it turned into overtime straight through Saturday and Sunday.
What made it stranger was that my teammates were doing the same thing. Working weekends. But when I actually paid attention, a lot of that overtime had no clear purpose. The conversations wandered in circles, going nowhere. That's when I started to feel like something was off.
I was right.
By Monday, the real madness began. Just two weeks in, my overtime had already crossed 20 hours. The work was draining in a way that's hard to describe a project with an enormous scope, and on top of that, having to deal with some genuinely exhausting people on the project owner's side. There were too many stakeholders to manage, and the requirements kept shifting from one person to the next with no consistency. Draining and exhausting. And it wasn't just me my entire team felt it. At one point I caught myself thinking, "I didn't take this job to end up buying medicine or sitting in a doctor's office. This is insane. What is wrong with these people?"
Stakeholders, Politics, and the Urge to Get Laid Off Again
It only got crazier from there. It got so bad that part of me started hoping I'd just get laid off again, just to be free of the project owner.
Because here's the pattern: I'd complete something, Stakeholder A would confirm it was correct, and then the moment it reached Stakeholder B, it was suddenly wrong. Round and round. Layered with intrigue and office politics that are still going on as I write this.
This is honestly the worst stakeholder experience of my career the most unclear, most bizarre dynamic I've ever had to work inside.
Gratitude, and What Comes Next
The one thing keeping me grounded is that my actual employer still treats its people with care and fairness. The dysfunction isn't coming from them it's coming from the project owner.
So for now, I'm watching how this unfolds. I'll keep updating this blog as the story develops. Until the next chapter stay tuned.