111–120 of 469 posts
For most people in the real world, psychological burn out is NOT the problem with unemployment. The problem is becoming homeless.
Oh how I would love to just stop looking for jobs for a bit and leave it on rest. Unfortunately I am selling things off right now to not go homeless and refusing to apply to jobs is an admission of defeat to me. Said as a (former?) tech worker.
I wish you all the best and hope you find a job too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No form is going to extend a job offer autonomously. At some point in the chain, there will be a boss, a person, who talks to you and thinks, "I want to work with this person", and decides to make the offer. So the goal is to figure out how to get in touch with that hiring manager as the first step. Even if the form or HR "rejects" you, this person can step in say, "that's silly, I want to work with them. Send them t…
> No form is going to extend a job offer autonomously. Just wait... some time-pressed startup is going to find a killer LLM prompt that filters in exactly the people they want, and then post something on the benefits of "vibe hiring". Complete with large, well-spaced text, colored with one accent color, and several graphs of hiring spending vs. income or something. You heard it here first!
Incompetent hiring will kill you, and hiring people that you and your team don't personally gel with is incompetent hiring.
So I see that as a self-solving problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I have can think of about a dozen things I'd love to do if I didn't have a full-time job. Unfortunately, most cost at least some amount of money (not to mention food, a roof over my head, etc.).
As a friend of mine put it, "I don't know if UBI would take people out of the workforce, but it would probably take me out of the workforce."
The thing that bothers me so much about this post is that it reeks of privilege by treating unemployment as if it were mainly just a bad trigger that you talk to your expensive therapist about once a week. For most people in the real world, psychological burn out is NOT the problem with unemployment. The problem is becoming homeless.
I have a couple friends who haven't had steady work in years, and they still eke out a pretty reasonable existence living with friends and family because they are kind and considerate and people don't mind having them around. A lot of street homeless have mental or substance issues that make it hard for them to coexist with other people.
Oh how I would love to just stop looking for jobs for a bit and leave it on rest. Unfortunately I am selling things off right now to not go homeless and refusing to apply to jobs is an admission of defeat to me. Said as a (former?) tech worker.
Hope you find something soon !!
I've been thinking about job searching lately, maybe a bit too much. I'm employed, so it is not any immediate concern for me, but one has to think ahead. Between age discrimination that starts after 50, and how difficult the job search seemingly is...some people will have to work at least until they're 70. That's a solid 15-20 years more, after the job hunting is an uphill battle. If the work search is hard while you…
It's been such an obvious self-own for tech workers not to capitalize on any of the multiple booms they've seen, and unionize.
I've been thinking about job searching lately, maybe a bit too much. I'm employed, so it is not any immediate concern for me, but one has to think ahead. Between age discrimination that starts after 50, and how difficult the job search seemingly is...some people will have to work at least until they're 70. That's a solid 15-20 years more, after the job hunting is an uphill battle. If the work search is hard while you…
It was always my understanding that software careers are shorter than other technical careers, and the higher wages compensate for this. More than compensate, if you invest early. If by FIRE you mean retire in your 50s, I don't think that's an aspiration. That should be an expectation. You might be able to work a full career in this industry, but I wouldn't plan on it.
And you have to do it for decades. You need to be able to tough it out through the worst of times (like the dot-com bubble, financial crisis, covid, and random political chaos like tariffs.)
You have to tune out the noise and always remember that on a long enough timeline, the market only goes up. And if you think it's "different" this time, it won't be for long.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As other posters have said, this only really works if you have a network. Zeroth-order referrals (i.e. they call you) work best, first-order referrals (i.e. you know someone at the company) work decently well, and second-order referrals (you know someone who knows someone to refer you) are a guided shot in the dark. People who have networks all know this. The issue is that a shocking number of people don't have any n…
Unless you are a hermit, everyone has a network, even if it's small. Everyone has a few friends, a brother/sister/dad/mom/cousin, a few people in their town they know. All of those people know someone else, and that's your initial pool of job opportunities to look at. This might not get you into your dream company. But it can get you a next job to grow from. For one of my jobs I had no contacts in the industry so I e…
I moved here (the Valley) because I met my wife online. Reached out to anyone I was vaguely connected to at the time. Got a few "send me your resume", none of them were a good fit.
All the interviews I got (some good, some bad) were either from headhunters, or through LinkedIn applications. In the end, a random, "don't know this company, but they want software people" ad on LinkedIn resulted in the GREAT job I've had for 1.5 years now (about a year after getting laid off) - way better pay, better work-life balance, etc.
So applying online CAN work.