God Had Me "Transitioned"
There was a strike at Riyadh’s King Khalid airport this week. The same airport I used to land in and depart from.
In the video I see people sitting on the same chairs I used to sit on while waiting for my flight, queuing at the same immigration counters I used to queue at. Around 13 people were killed, including a pilot, and hundreds were injured according to The National. My ex-colleagues are still flying that route. And I can’t help but think I could have been one of them.
Last year, in 2025, I was a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer at one of the biggest consulting firms. The schedule was crazy and the work was demanding. Clients wanted everything for yesterday, while taking their time to give anyone access to their systems so the project could start. I spent more time flying, waiting in airports, and sitting in hotels than at home and started to feel like flight attendants knew me better than my wife and kids.
I learned a lot, but I was tired. I was burnt out, so I started looking for another job. The compensation at the firm was superb and the health insurance top of the line, so I was in no hurry. Even though I was exhausted, I didn’t want to compromise my family’s lifestyle.
Around December I landed an offer. There was one problem: I needed to renew my passport before I could get a new visa. The new company said they’d wait; the position was mine. Almost by miracle, I got an appointment for the first week of January 2026, and they told me the passport would take about two months. Without a passport, I couldn’t get a Saudi visa either, so I worked remotely from home in Dubai on projects for a client in Riyadh.
A few weeks into January, I started feeling hesitant about leaving. The new offer was good, but the compensation, name, and status of the firm were great too. I prayed to God to give me the wisdom to know what to do.
Towards the end of January, the decision was made for me. I had my mid-cycle performance review and it didn’t go well. I got great feedback from most of my projects, but very harsh feedback from two of them, and those were the ones that mattered. I wrote about it here. I was put in “career transition,” which is the firm’s term for being let go.
I was so pissed. Most of my work was “productionizing” tools built by other people, which basically means cleaning up someone else’s mess: huge refactors, damage control when a client had lost trust in the team after a project failed under real production load, managing expectations after partners sold performance and features that were never realistic. Sometimes it felt like technical debt was the actual deliverable. And the people who sold smoke and shipped toy projects as production-grade got promoted. Deep inside I knew this can always happen, no matter how well you think you did. But I was pretty fucking angry. But at least I already had a signed offer, a company willing to wait, and a passport on the way.
At the end of February, the Iran conflict started And I thought it would be over in weeks. I thanked God for being home with my family and not in Riyadh. My passport arrived on time in March, and by April I had started my new job.
Fast forward to today, it’s been months of attacks between Iran, Iran-backed militias, and the GCC countries, especially Saudi Arabia. A couple of weeks ago, an ex-colleague texted me with a question about a project I built the infrastructure layer for. I asked if she was still flying. She said the firm told her, “It is perfectly safe to fly.” So she still goes back and forth between Dubai and Riyadh.
Then this week’s strike.
My is with the families of those who were killed or injured, and everyone still making that trip because their job requires it. I’m praying for my former colleagues.
God’s plan is always better than my plans. I was planning to stay; God had me “transitioned.” I was pissed, I was mad, I didn’t understand, and I thought it wasn’t fair. Today I understand God was watching out for me.
Looking back, God has always taken care of me. Even when I was an atheist, He never let me down. I thought it was luck. Now I see it’s always been God being faithful.
Sometimes we worry, or we’re sad because something didn’t go our way. We even get angry. I got angry, I spent days in a very bad mood, being mean to everyone around me. But now I understand it was for the best.
