Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

I've spent most of my career contracting and consulting for institutions and the reason I was able to do it was because those institutions had social/diversity hiring mandates that created a huge market for people like me to actually deliver the work while not being a part of the permanent organization. they could all sit in meetings being weird and passive aggressive with each other while I just solved and built stuff. it's been a good run, but the broader economic effects of that trend are becoming unavoidable.

What's changed since the 90's is there is no longer a path from tech practitioner to executive class in any org larger than a startup. the real value of H1-B's is they make up for the conflict-avoidant agreeableness of managers as companies grow larger and become more like institutions, where the effective indenture arrangement means H-1B's have to be supple enough for uncharismatic people to manage them. it's abuse, but it's an ancient dynamic. it would be great if markets de-globalized to where my cultural capital was currency again, but what to hope for and what to do are different things.

Don't look for employment, look for work. the culture and economy don't confer meaningful status from jobs anymore. it's gone, just get work for its own sake. Getting hung up on the racial issue or anything that makes you think in an inferior way or excuses a lack of agency is going to guarantee failure. Who cares what may be true, the only thing that matters is what you can effect.

The CEOs are scared that if AI ends up working, then they will be left behind by competitors who invested in AI. So every CEO must invest in AI according to game theory.

And while I'm at the IC5/6 level in Product, I still worry about it, and think if I had to find a new job, sorry, fiancée who loves my beard, it has to go, or I think I'm going to have a hard time.