Tell HN: Getting Ready for Unemployment

> You're desperate. That's good.

> Desperation built this world. It's the number one motivator of life.

I am fairly skeptical of the claim that "desperation built this world" as a rationalization for why desperation is good. Human actions built this world. Desperation may or may not be a motivator for actions, but if it is, it does not even seem to be the main motivator. Humans also build things because they want to solve their problems, help others, or even just because they want to build things for the sake of building things.

Desperation also leads to crime, violence, suicide and many other bad things that destroy this world.

Do not forget that being a programmer, you already have the ability to create electronic products people will pay for. Consider learning Swift/Kotlin and making a paid, subscription-based mobile app. Consider learning Go/Rust/TypeScript and making a paid, subscription-based SaaS. (Those are tough markets right now, so you will need good "find-a-customer-pain-point" product design knowledge, first.)

Consider learning a niche programming language such as Scala or Haskell or consider a career as a programming educator or a technical writer; those lower-paid niches are way less competitive than the higher-paid programming mainstream.

You are a programmer. You do have and will continue to have options, until you're over 70 years old.

Hey, he gets around to taking the trash out eventually. If he can remember where it is

> If your hobbies are math and C++ im pretty sure there is an entire world of code out there that most of us are not interested in or capable of and therefore that is your niche.

That is true to a degree. There are jobs which need a combination of C++ and math. A lot of those jobs require pre-existing domain knowledge though. Graphics engines, geophysics software, physical simulation software, computer vision, math software (e.g. working at Wolfram) mostly requires some preexisting knowledge of that field. You could pick one of those field and try to learn it on your own, but it will be a many-month investment and will limit you to just a handful companies in the world - each of those niches is small or very small. On top of that, you'll likely be making less than a kid slinging React.

> Those rejections hit hard and the fact that I am not qualified enough (as they told me), just makes me question my existence even more.

Don't listen to feedback from employers when you are looking for a job. They can't tell you the truth without putting them selves in possible legal hot water so they just say the first excuse they can think off to fob you off.

At the end of the day the feed back from company A is completely irrelevant for company B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J... You just have to accept that it's a numbers game and you need numbers in the hundreds to find a decent employer.

> Yeah, so I tried (looking for jobs), I failed (getting a new job), and now

and now nothing? or keep trying until you get the results you want? Thats you'r only options, you decide which one you choose. You can see I tried as an excuse to not keep trying or you can just see it as the grind necessary to get what you want. You got a job in the past by trying but it wont work this time because? what? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, let's say you only got that job as a fluke it was a 1 in 1000 chance? Theres more than a thousand jobs on linked in but you'r telling us its not possible?

Im not saying its easy Im saying it's really hard, you have done it in the past and now you are making excuses for why you can't do it again.