tech career – A former tech leader turned career coach says layoffs reshaped her ambition and pushed her to build opportunities outside big firms.
A stalled promotion can feel like personal failure, but for one tech executive-turned-coach, layoffs became the turning point that forced a different kind of career growth.
Brian Pulliam spent years working toward advancement after joining major employers. including long stretches focused on building and improving systems for teams.. Her path began with a senior program manager role at Microsoft and later moved to a project manager position at Zillow. where she managed CI/CD processes and helped coordinate roadmaps. planning cycles. and day-to-day execution.. In that environment, she believed her long-term vision would lead to the next promotion step she had been aiming for.
The takeaway for workers watching the market is that corporate ladders can change without warning. When roles are redesigned or removed, the most reliable momentum often comes from the opportunities you can shape yourself.
At Zillow, Pulliam also leaned into something less visible than dashboards and deployment pipelines: leadership development.. She experimented with the idea that coaching could be applied to management, especially for engineers learning how to lead people.. She launched a community for managers, including recurring gatherings intended to share practices and improve people leadership.
Then the plan broke. The specific management role she expected to move toward was retired while she was still building toward it, and after years of progression and learning, her tenure ended with a layoff.
This is where the story turns from a promotion narrative into a career-management lesson: when one path closes, the skill is not just resilience, but rapid recalibration.
After the layoff. Pulliam secured a leadership role at Coinbase and faced a new dilemma: whether to stay in a traditional corporate track long enough to earn the payoff she wanted. or use the time and income to pivot toward something more independent.. She ultimately chose to keep coaching alongside her job. describing coaching as deeply rewarding and eventually shifting her focus away from long-term tech employment.
As she continued. she said her interest in working for large corporations faded. especially as technological tools evolved quickly and the value of short-term wins became harder to sustain.. With that shift. Pulliam became a full-time tech-sector career coach in 2022. positioning her work around helping leaders and engineers land roles that match their strengths.
In this context, her message is less about chasing prestige and more about finding fit. For job seekers, that matters because confidence and clarity often come from preparation that connects personal strengths to real hiring signals.
Now. Pulliam says she draws on the mindset and practical experience she built in corporate management while applying it to interview preparation and career strategy.. Her coaching includes helping clients articulate strengths, preparing them for difficult conversations, and testing new approaches with each engagement.. While she acknowledges the financial tradeoff compared with tech roles. she frames the long-term payoff as more durable. spanning careers rather than short project cycles.
For readers of Misryoum. the broader economic point is straightforward: in an environment where layoffs and role changes can arrive abruptly. career strategy becomes an asset class of its own.. Pulliam’s path suggests that building opportunity outside the “next promotion” plan may be the most future-proof move for many workers.