14 years at one company then laid off. The senior dev career trap nobody talks about.

Fourteen years at one company. One layoff email. And suddenly you're mass-applying to jobs with a résumé that reads like a time capsule. A post recently went viral in a developer forum describing exactly this nightmare. The author spent over a decade at a single company, got laid off, and realized their skills had quietly fossilized while they weren't looking. The thread exploded because every senior dev reading it felt that same cold shiver. The Comfort Trap Is Real Staying at one company feels