Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

I'll add my sob story to the pile for the sake of a data point. Warning this story contains racial identity.

White male, 10 yoe, worked at FAANG and many more. I was laid off and remained unemployed for over a year. I only have my new job thanks to nepotism - or referral, if you prefer to be politically correct.

2021 - I land a new job as a senior dev at a startup with a huge salary (200k) thanks to the hiring surge. Things are good, we're all getting along, but my Indian male tech lead confides in me that he's upset that I'm paid as much as he is - he's been with the company longer, and he implies that he works harder. I encourage him to pursue a raise with management, but we maintain a good relationship, I would say friends even.

Fast forward 2 years - My skills are generally recognized by everyone, from peers, to the engineering director, even the VP - everyone has seen what I can do, and they trust and respect me to do good work. Then one day, things aren't so good - I have some home life drama and I drop the ball at work. Meanwhile, my tech lead is stressed out for his own reasons, but its a perfect storm and things boil over. He writes a lengthy (angry) email complaining to management about me, tearing me to shreds. I'm stunned and try to defend myself, some people go to bat for me, but its Dec 2022 and that email puts me on the short list when the layoff wave strikes - I'm out of work.

Its months of grinding and interviewing - I finally get an offer but my mental health is in a bad place so I turn it down. I'm still feeling raw and betrayed and I'm just wondering what the fuck is the point of it all. I take some more time, then start interviewing again, but things go from bad to worse in the job market. I succeed in a couple of on-sites but still lose out to other candidates. By a stroke of luck, I connect with an old acquaintance who was willing to advocate for me and get my resume to the top of the pile. I do the whole song and dance and land the job - that brings me to today.

The whole experience has left me with a bitter and jaded opinion of this industry, and work in general. I now consider this industry a joke. I don't enjoy programming anymore, I don't think there are any tech products that make the world a better place - any that were decent continue to enshitify - and to be honest I'm wary of non-americans going out of there way to undermine me - likely fueled by their own fears and anxiety of winding up in the same position, but with more to lose. Nonetheless, I wasn't aware that they harbored such resentment against americans, and I won't be forgetting it anytime soon.

And congrats to CEOs who once again have us fighting amongst ourselves - you've made the world a worse place and got rich doing it. Great job.

But these are not remote positions

I fear end of ZIRP has even worst implications. I’ve got a feeling it’s not just the tech job market that is bad, but the tech industry as a whole was too circular, doing B2B with other tech companies (maybe there is a better word?) all fueled by free money and the house of cards crumbled.

Two things can be true at once. We have a workforce that is mostly white males in a majority-white country and we also have credible reports of anti-white bias in hiring, which is illegal and racist. If people feel that employers who explicitly say they want to hire non-whites ONLY in violation of the law are in fact doing that, why do you feel the need to chime in with attacks on the victims?

I’m approaching a year of unemployment, although I took a deliberate four month break. Don’t have a CS degree but am a CPA. Have been primarily targeting accounting and fintech companies, but I’m getting passed up for software engineers with zero accounting knowledge but much more dev experience. It’s been tough, but I’m hoping it will get better in January. I have to at least hope because I really need to get a job ASAP.