November 9th, 2022, a date that would forever be etched into my memory. As I sat at my desk, fingers nervously refreshing my outlook, I hoped and prayed that the news reports about Meta’s massive layoffs were nothing but a hoax.

My heart was racing, and every passing moment seemed like an eternity until it finally happened.

At precisely 11 am (GMT), Mark Zuckerberg’s post confirming the layoffs brought my worst nightmare to reality. My dream job at Meta had been snatched away from me, and I was one of the 11K employees who were being let go.

The shock, the pain, the anger, the sadness, and the self-doubt were overwhelming. What had I done wrong? Could I have done anything differently to avoid the layoff? As the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, I struggled to come to terms with what had happened. I had never experienced a layoff before, and the uncertainty and insecurity of it all were eating me up.

But I refused to let the layoff consume me. With the love of my family and friends, I picked myself up and started looking for a new opportunity. The job search was exhausting, and I had to go through 68 interviews with multiple companies spanning from December’22 to March’23. Endless Leetcoding and re-iterating my experience at my previous companies like a script was frustrating. I wish there was some solution to reduce this redundancy.

At times, it felt like an tunnel with no end to it, and I was uncertain if there was any light at the end of it. But I kept pushing forward, hoping that everything would fall into place soon enough. I reflected on the first layoff I had ever seen, which happened while I was working at Expedia. Back then, I thought I understood what my friends were going through, but I didn’t realize the depth of it until it happened to me.

However, this time around, I was determined to approach things differently. I refused to let the layoff define me, and instead, I embraced it as an opportunity to grow. I am grateful for the support of my family and friends, who had my back throughout the process. Their unwavering support gave me the courage to keep moving forward.

Eventually, things started looking up. After months of interviewing, I received job offers from some of the top companies in the industry, including TikTok, JP Morgan, Booking.com, and Expedia group. It was overwhelming, and I couldn’t believe my luck.

I will share more insights into my interview preparations and how I applied for Jobs via various free tools available.

In the end, the layoff was not the end of my career but a turning point that propelled me to explore new opportunities and grow both professionally and personally. I’m proud of what I have accomplished, and I’ve learned a lot about myself and my resilience during this difficult time. I also learned that setbacks can often lead to even greater success, and I’m excited to see where this new chapter of my life takes me.

Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the maximum sum of a non-empty subsequence of that array such that for every two consecutive integers in the subsequence, nums[i] and nums[j], where i < j, the condition j - i <= k is satisfied.

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