[sgwizdak]

One note from personal experience -- it'll likely take about 12 weeks or so for a laid off dev to come back up to speed with interview prep to feel confident to start the interview grind again. One thing that can likely help is being upfront with the evaluation process.

[FollowingTheDao]

If they can afford to wait three months (!) to start looking for work because of "feelings" they they deserved to be laid off.

[sangnoir]

Not everyone lives from hand to mouth and need a job ASAP. Additionally, most people I know in (US) big tech do not take adequate time off from work - it appears the unspoken rule is to take substantive breaks between jobs, rather than annually like they do in Europe.

[sgwizdak]

It's an estimate based on both the average severances coupled with how long it takes to work through the Blind 100 LC grind with a bit of reset time thrown in. If you're in a position where you can handle 2 LC-hard questions in about an hour with near perfect execution, good for you! But most folks need to prepare for that.