I just decided to pivot into consulting. Had saved so I have a bit of a runway, but the moment the thought occurred to me that I can forget about letcode shenanigans, and interviews and performance reviews, and terrible codebases and focus on jobs that I want to take, I couldn’t go back
Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
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Re: Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
#12UK based with 10 years of experience in web dev, been unemployed from December to May 2nd.
December - February I searched as I would years ago - respond to a recruiter here and there and apply to a couple of great roles every week. Usually this would result in several offers.
I never got so few responses, so in March and April I went all in, and applied for 50+ jobs (not sure how many exactly, but a lot). Got a couple of offers well below my day rate.
I got tired of it and just emailed some of my ex-colleagues. Got the job at a place where I already worked within a week.
Re: Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
#13I just decided to pivot into consulting. Had saved so I have a bit of a runway, but the moment the thought occurred to me that I can forget about letcode shenanigans, and interviews and performance reviews, and terrible codebases and focus on jobs that I want to take, I couldn’t go back
How you initially got in consulting? How ro find first clients?
Re: Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
#14A little over 6 months unemployed with around 6 years of experience. Recruiters dried up except for a couple spouts last year and couple last month. Most of the interviews were shockingly hostile. Job applications are a void and frankly I’m seeing less and less jobs relevant to my skill self and less generalist jobs in general.
If things don’t shape up this month, I’m preparing for the worst and possibly giving up. It probably hurts a lot, but I’m still preferring remote. I had a lot of bad luck at the beginning of the year and had to hemorrhage a ton of money on emergencies and am steadily bleeding mostly through rent and bills. I really do not want to pay for moving expenses right now.
Re: Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
#15I'm 5 years into my software development career, for now I am fine. But I am also making sure that my next possible job is already lined up. I'm not taking any chances with a single client, company or even a technology holding a decision over whether I can earn a livelihood; now or in the future.
Might be going a bit overboard here, calm down - life is good, there is no danger. You will be fine.
Re: Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
#1612 yoe, been off 4 months, it is hard. I have some runway so I can afford to be detached but this is not good.
Re: Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
#17What is your stack?
Re: Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
#18I just said fuck it and am turning to my life long back up plan: military. I have consistently held a part time job in the military for moments like these. My military job pays much less than my long experience as a software developer allows but enough to cover all the bills. I was able to find an open slot for my next required professional military education course in the very near future which will allow me several…
“expert beginner” is a term I never knew I needed but it explains so well a present daily frustration.
Re: Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
#19I just decided to pivot into consulting. Had saved so I have a bit of a runway, but the moment the thought occurred to me that I can forget about letcode shenanigans, and interviews and performance reviews, and terrible codebases and focus on jobs that I want to take, I couldn’t go back
I hear you. On top of it all I had to move to change countries for personal reasons, so now I'm away from my network.
The job market is filled with scammers and really low offers.
One way to go is to bite the bullet, as others mentioned, and go through the 18 interviews, pointless ridiculously difficult tests and whiteboards, 3-days long code projects, all that to be accepted into a codebase full of legacy tech, bad team practices and 36 meetings per week. Then you spend a year working your * off trying to convince them to improve, until their funds run dry, they fire you, and the whole thing starts anew. Only this time everything is aggravated because of the recession.
Quite frankly, the whole thing is quite tiring. A career should sum up to something more than that. This can't be it. This whole process is flawed. It's a self serving loop, sub product of greedy business practices.
The world is full of problems, there has to be a better way to contribute, to be productive to society without wasting oneself to all that. I don't know which better way that is. It's all just exasperating.
Re: Unemployed for 8 months with 10 years experience. How is your job search going?
#20I'm wondering how much runaway you have? I used to think 6 month is pretty good, but maybe 2 years is a lot better.