Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life

I can, I have an EU nationality so working for an EU client is seamless to me.

> Unless the company is a FAANG company or hedge fund, the UK tech scene is dead.

That is VERY, VERY true

> I don’t see any good UK startups worth joining in the UK. All the good ones are in SF / NY, etc.

There's a few popping up all over the EU too but from my search a single hub in the US(Say Austin, TX) has a bigger and better ecosystem than the entirety of UK+EU.

Funding is better over there too

> Unless the company is a FAANG company or hedge fund, the UK tech scene is dead.

Try to look beyond startups and pure software companies. There are many businesses in eg manufacturing or in less fashionable locations that struggle to hire decent devs and will often pay pretty good† money.

† obviously not London/SV/NY/FAANG money

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I've been going through the same thing for over a year now. I dropped out of the job search and started focusing on building my own product instead (though I can't say that's going particularly well either). Since I don't have physical access to EU/US markets, I'm only looking for remote positions.

After the post-COVID boom, companies started laying off people in large numbers. Couple that with tightening restrictions on remote work, most US companies now require work authorization, EU companies have tax compliance requirements, etc.and remote options without a formal employment relationship have become nearly impossible to find.

I don't think learning new programming languages will make much difference at this point. There isn't a new shiny technology that everyone's chasing, and AI companies are hiring very few people. Your best bet is probably finding an in-person job and relocating.

> Domain-specific knowledge, having no relation to software engineering per se, is a necessary skill set.

In other words, you wasted time and energy becoming a programmer/software developer/whatever.

Should have done something else.