Tell HN: Getting Ready for Unemployment

Here's my 'worse off than me' story though.

I've been unemployed since about 6 months before covid, the company I was at folded. Actually covid was in some sense a blessing because at least everyone else was also stuck at home.

But here's the thing. I haven't applied for a single job since.

My last job was at a very small startup-cum-dev-shop at which I began to feel quite resentful getting a mere salary, as one of the first employees, building out the initial product/service, when the founder was banking significant profits. And simply programming, started to become a real chore, and gradually a challenge, very especially when we introduced scrum and all that 'observable, transparent working' crap which of course only works in one direction, workers are observed, bosses observe. Eventually our only customer cancelled, and everyone was 'let go'.

My tech 'currency' has stagnated in that time, while I've observed the rise of multiple-round algorithm-centered interviews (since when I joined that company ~10 years ago by word of mouth), etc, etc, and the whole scene has put me off even applying for actual jobs, on top of which, even if I were to land a programming job (seriously, when did a mere developer job become something so aspirational?), I'm not sure I can, or even want to do it as a job again, especially the whole scrum, standup, retrospective thing. Though I still love programming itself, and keep doing little projects for myself.

And here's the other thing. I have a bunch of kids, and only about 2 month's savings left. And I'm an oldie, approaching mid 50s.

So, not only are there people worse off than you, some of them have almost entirely self-inflicted their predicament. Imagine how that feels, and cheer up!

So I volunteered at an after-school program where I was essentially babysitting, just to be forced to leave the house for something other than grocery shopping.

Then I took a part-time job as an English teacher at a big chain of language schools. That forced me to a) dress professionally, b) be places on a schedule and c) talk to the public. One fantastic skill I gained from those three months is a heightened ability to parse meaning out of any speakers who have gone to the trouble of learning some of my language. On the surface, this job was “beneath” me (CS degree from competitive American university, paid a princely 13 EUR/hr), but I really think it re-launched my career.

Finally, I had a great interview with an IT temp agency, which soon placed me in the ok-paid role that was converted into the job I’ve now had for 11 years.

Point of this anecdote? Along with getting the professional help you deserve, a “menial” job that makes you deal with people and follow a schedule will help keep you/get you back into shape for a job more suited to your skills and likes.

Again, there is an actual shooting war going on in Europe, which OP alluded to in their submission. I have worked with people from Ukraine in previous tech jobs. I expect some or all those people are currently doing something very different.

Here in the UK and over a single weekend my company went from holding active discussions with a few prospective clients to almost every proposal being suspended for review because of the infamous "mini-budget" a few weeks ago. If we'd been a little further along and maybe setting up new hires for any of the other projects then those jobs would instantly have disappeared too. There must be many other companies here that have been dealing with the same uncertainty and its chilling effects.

Of course people still need to go out and earn a living unless there really are more urgent things they need to do. My point is that there are plenty of reasons other than OP's qualifications or resume why the job market where they are might be much tougher than one where you can expect a 10-20% response rate just from spamming out CVs.