27 ms·
The great displacement is already well underway?
- adamc 1y agoWe need a solution to stuff like this. Unfortunately, right now we seem to be cutting everything in sight to help the rich, so... I don't see that help or hope on the horizon. Stuff of nightmares.
- hdaz0017 1y agoSome of the solution(s) have already been played out a few times, we humans use our imagination(s). Everything that has been built with computers was just an idea a few decades ago. In the 80's there were a few slices of thoughts, why are you interested in computers? They won't go very far... or we don't know how to make money from them... IT, Computing, the Internet has for the last 25-30 years been stuck thinking about shopping and billing. The brute force statistical copy and paste we see today, it may or may not replace a large part of the internet systems, but there were always many other aspects of computing or the world that computers could be used for that have hardly been touched. To any social media platform's (if any of them can really be called this) that are saying they can not or will not police their own platform's of dangerous content, really you will be held responsible! Just because the big IT corp's might become blinded they will live in fear of being on the brink of extinction, if they replace the creative people or their customer's. To the CEO's and management sucking billion's/trillion's of dollars out of the market(s) this can't continue. There has to be change(s) because we have boxed ourselves into weird position(s), i.e always chasing the cash cows. We are not even at the start of what's possible, what "people" will/could create in the next 50 years, with the right levels of education and inspiration the computing world will most likely not be stopping or slowing down any time soon.
- Analemma_ 1y agoThe guy owns three properties. No, we don’t need “a solution” for landlords who overextended on credit during ZIRP and are now underwater; they need to sell the fucking properties.
- quesera 1y agoYou might be overestimating the profitability of selling underwater real estate.
- Arnt 1y agoPHP is his only language, right? He's in the same situation as Perl-only developers a couple of decades ago.
- mnky9800n 1y agoYeah i feel like this guy posts a lot of doomer stuff and it isn't as introspective as it could be. i also feel like posting doomer stuff is popular and so he is trying to monetize the doomer mentality. That leads me to kind of think what he says has less value because i just see any kind of monetization scheme like that as a somewhat implicit bias to whatever is being said. you can't be anti-doomer if you make money on your substack talking about doomer ideas. but also, i feel bad for the guy he lost his job that had a nice salary and didn't find a new one. that must suck. But then I wonder, is that exactly what he is trying to capitalize on? And then you must think, is this what the world has become now that everything is commoditized and we are all part of the Attention economy? Is everyone trying to make money on everything and thus no one is really to be believed about anything? That's one reason why i deleted most social media. It all became a grift and none of it had anything to do with being social.
- bizzyskillet 1y agoDamn, the last part of this comment was such an epiphany, thank you!
- ramity 1y agoI've been off socials and on forums for 8+ years now for the same reason. I share similar sentiment as Bizzy's sibling reply. I say these things because lately I've been thinking about lot about dead internet theory and how strongly some believe it. One of the most profound realizations I've had lately is that the perception of the medium of communication itself is a well that can be poisoned with artificial interactions. Major empahsis on perception. The meer presence of artifical can immediately taint real interactions; you don't need a majority to poison the well. How many spam calls does it take for you to presume spam? How many linkedin autoreply ai comments does it take to presume all comments are ai? How many emails before you immediately presume phishing? How many rage baiting social posts do you need to see before you believe the entire site is composed of synthetic engagement? How many tinder bots do you need to interact with before you feel the entire app is dead? How many autodeny job application responses until you assume the next one is a ghost job posting? How many interactions with greedy people does it take to presume that it's human nature?
- uberman 1y agoI feel terrible for this guy, but he really has stacked the deck against himself by moving to a rural area and refusing (or being unable) to work "on-site". He is up against every new grad and every laid off FAANG programmer clinging to the notion that they should be able to work remotely. To be clear, I'm a huge proponent of remote work but I recognize that many power dynamics have shifted in the last few years. I could offer a number of critiques about things but instead, I'll encourage him to go back and un-delete his AI vlog content as even if he feels the ground has moved, I would likely find his interest in this topic as a positive thing. I would also recommend he move his tech vlogs to someplace where the topic was the focus rather than blending it into other important parts of his life.
- autumnstwilight 1y agoAm I a bad person for laughing when I realized he ranked "Wordpress theme developer" above the "rock-bottom" of applying for a non-remote job? (Typing this from an office.)
- Spivak 1y agoIt feels like we're living two separate lives when it comes to remote work. If my office was a 5-10 minute walk then in-office could be fine. I used to longboard to the office and I didn't have too many complaints. But after getting 2+ hours of my day back every day, an extra hour of sleep, gas money, not having to meal prep or get take-out, and work among my at-home comforts not under wight fluorescent light and an oppressive HVAC it's really hard to imagine an in-office job getting preference over basically any remote job. I did the hour commute thing, I hated it even when it was the norm.
- uberman 1y agoI hear you for sure. I personally have the luxury of working remotely on a semi-regular basis when I'm not on site at a client's location and I love it. I have worked remotely on and off for 20 years and it is not all gravy though. It does get kind of lonely sometimes. On the flip side, in my early career, I worked with a one way daily commute of 90 minutes or 3 hours a day! That was sure a kick in the crotch.
- tetris11 1y agowhat exactly are we transitioning to, economy wise? If it's techno-feudalism, what do the peasant's actually do when they're not needed?
- rightbyte 1y agoIt’s a little weird living in a small trailer when I’m a homeowner, in fact I own three houses He owns properties [edit: Missread the place]. I think he is fine.
- fvrghl 1y agoNot NY, NY: "in fact I own three houses: A fixer-upper starter home in a rust belt upstate New York university city, and a patch of beautiful remote rural land with 2 pretty humble and simple cabins on it an hour from the city house"
- rightbyte 1y agoOh ye read the piece a bit too fast.
- reverius42 1y agoMaybe the solution is AirBnB.
- xboxnolifes 1y agoHe's already doing AirBnB. It's in the article.
- BoredPositron 1y agoUsing hands for other things than typing...
- YeGoblynQueenne 1y agoI don't think the author's troubles have anything to do with AI, other than making it harder to get an interview. He seems to get a few of those. I think the real problem he has is... well, the meaning of life, i.e. 42. He's a 42 year old dude. Looking for a job in software? You gotta be joking. He says he can't clear the 25-year old Steve-Jobs complex SV bro mini-boss. Well, duh. That's the industry. It sucks you up and it spits you out. It vampires the best years of your life and then you're on your own. Sorry that the author had to find out, but I think I've seen that coming from the day I was first employed as a junior engineer. I just averaged up the ages of my colleagues and it was blindingly obvious how things turn out in the long run. Nor "AI" as in "Artificial Intelligence", but "AI" as in "Ageist Industry". P.S. Look on the bright side: at least you're not a 42 year old woman looking for software jobs. Hah.
- tjohns 1y ago> He's a 42 year old dude. Looking for a job in software? You gotta be joking. This is such an odd take. I see lots of older folks around me - and 42 isn't that old. That said, it's undeniably true that expectations are raised the further along in your career you are. Interviewers will accept mistakes from a fresh college grad that they won't accept from an engineer with 20 years of industry experience who should know better (and is paid more). Not to mention there's just statistically fewer openings for TL positions. All of that definitely makes interviews harder as you're further along in your career.
- reverius42 1y agoSomeone who's 42 needs to be a "TL" (tech lead?). Not everyone can be a leader (like you say, not that many openings available) -- and leading is often a totally different job and skill set from developing software. So what do you call it when everyone above a certain age is automatically shunted into a smaller pool of openings for a different role? I would call that ageism.
- popularonion 1y agoEh, back when I got my first software engineer job at $BIGCORP 20 years ago, I was almost always the only one in the room younger than 40. Not being a web dev was the key, of course.
- fullstackchris 1y agoSomehow it's ironic that this post is about AI replacing jobs and yet when I click the "accept all" option for cookies, the page reloads and shows the banner again :) Where are the all knowing AI bots who are going to fix this?
- hobbitstan 1y ago[dead]
- Havoc 1y agoTough reading this sort of thing. :( I don’t quite see the link to AI though? The CV bot hellhole yes, but not how it replaced him? Is he saying nobody is hiring php devs anymore because of cursor & co? Presumably with 20 years experience he isn’t coding simple stuff so that doesn’t seem super likely > something has shifted in society in the last 2.5 years. End of ZIRP. For a lot of companies, especially in the early stage world the math stopped mathing without free money Regardless overall the message does seem directionally correct - society is going to need a solution pretty soon for people struggling to compete, AI or otherwise
- perrygeo 1y agoOpinion: the end of ZIRP has a much greater influence on the job market than AI. No more free money means an entirely different incentive structure. There's a fair bit of "oops we overbuilt in the past assuming we'd have free money to hire more engineers". The interest rate thus mediates how and what we build (Conway's Law strikes again!). Generative AI is a novelty that makes us crazy productive at certain tasks. But it doesn't yet seem to fundamentally change what we build or why. We just do it faster and sloppier with AI. It's a tactical tool to help you win, whereas interest rates define the rules of the game.
- alabastervlog 1y ago> Generative AI is a novelty that makes us crazy productive at certain tasks. But it doesn't yet seem to fundamentally change what we build or why. We just do it faster and sloppier with AI. It's a tactical tool to help you win, whereas interest rates define the rules of the game. We're building some stuff that actively uses it—not (just) using it to write code, but integrating it into business processes. This is both: 1) A far, far more valuable use of it than as a replacement for e.g. macros in your editor, assuming it worked as one might hope it would. 2) In practice so incredibly brittle, tightly-coupled, expensive, and slow to develop (not to mention some of the most boring work I've ever done in my 25 year career) relative to other options that the business could have embraced at any time in the last 15 years (but didn't because it took the hype of "AI" to gain activation energy for the project) all with no evident path toward any of that meaningfully improving, that I'm looking for an exit to another project that's ideally non-AI-related for when this one turns into a nightmare before eventually imploding and staining everyone involved's reputation, if not getting them fired. I reckon the nightmare phase is about six months out, for this one, and the implosion 12-18 out. I expect similar stories are playing out all over the place.
- ecshafer 1y agoI live in syracuse, I found a job this year after being laid off in 2 months. It was a stressful time. Instead or 5-6 hours a week hed be better off studying C,C++ and Java and applying to places locally. Syracuse does not have a ton of web work, but there is a big defense industry here (Saab, SRC, Lockheed, AFRL) so there are things. Cornell, SU, UofR, I imagine are hiring fewer software engineers now though with the potus changes.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago> but there is a big defense industry here (Saab, SRC, Lockheed, AFRL) i hope things don't get so bad that my options are destitution or the defense industry, but i'm used to eating ramen.
- ourguile 1y agoThere are also quite a number of medical device and pharmaceutical companies on the east coast (based in upstate NY here), along with defense industry contractors. So, there are some more options.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agomedical devices i am slightly more sympathetic to, as a user of a DMD. pharmaceutical companies, only slightly higher than "defense" companies. they exist in practice so that few may benefit from the misery of many.
- ahartmetz 1y agoIME, medical device work is nice: they need high quality and they are willing and able to pay for it.
- cebert 1y agoLockheed can be an excellent place to work. While I’m not particularly fond of building war machines either, I had the opportunity to work on Space Situational Awareness. My role involved developing software to track the movements of space debris and alert operators to potential collisions. This project has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of my entire career.
- RainyDayTmrw 1y agoWe've somehow built extremely fragile systems. Technological, yes, but not only technological. Also social, economical, and structural. Somehow, our systems can no longer absorb even slight shocks. Then, when the job market contracts by what would otherwise be 5 or 10 percent, all hell breaks loose, and there's an enormous chain reaction.
- Bolwin 1y ago[dead]
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y agoI like this answer. Any theories on what caused the shift?
- agos 1y agois "late stage capitalism" too broad of an answer?
- toonalfrink 1y agoToo vague yes
- RainyDayTmrw 1y agoMisguided efficiency, perhaps. Good systems have slack to absorb variance. Squeeze out too much slack, and the next big shock takes down the whole system. Add to that incentive misalignment rewarding the wrong type of efficiency, perhaps.
- 1attice 1y agoThis was a good, albeit sobering, read. Advice to other commenters here on HN. Before clicking 'add comment', ask yourself: - If I post from a non-empathetic stance, to what extent is my lack of empathy a strategy to avoid experiencing discomfort? - If I post from a contradicting or fact-checking stance, to what extent is my skepticism motivated by a desire to feel safer in the world? - If I post from a relativising or contextualizing stance, to what extent is my reframing driven by the fear that it could happen to me? You don't have to ask yourself any of these things; but they are hard-won tools I've gained through a lot of work on myself, and they have been of benefit to me. May they be of benefit to you as well.
- Barbing 1y agoVery obvious, but--you're good people. Thank you for these great questions.
- shawnfrompdx 1y agothanks
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Shorel 1y agoIt's not AI's fault that this website can't save cookie preferences. I believe other factors are also involved, such as having the necessary skills for software development.
- gambiting 1y agoOk so it isn't just my browser then. I thought it was weird that no matter how many times I click "only necessary" the popup keeps coming back.
- OfficeChad 1y ago[dead]
- Padriac 1y agoI don't know what the situation is in the United States but down here in Australia trained members of the military are very well paid with excellent conditions and they are recruiting cyber and technical roles.
- speedbird 1y agoOP, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Stop being so different and try to match what companies are looking for. Remote only. Single letter surname. This constraint, that constraint, you’re getting the answer you are telling the market to give you. Yes there are now significant barriers you face: x months not in a relevant role, laid off, 20 years in the industry without a management role. If you’re pitching yourself against people who have 3-5 years experience, will work 50-60 hour weeks coz early in career and lifestyle unencumbered, it’s not going to go your way. That means you have to go the extra mile to fit what is wanted. And yes, that likely means significant drop in salary / attractiveness of role / commute etc. Maybe there just isn’t the work where you are and you will need to move, maybe your mother too. Talk to people in the industry you know and trust about this, not HN. I’ve been in similar situations, currently in a very tech role at 62, but that’s not usual. Wish you the best
- pclmulqdq 1y ago20+ years in the industry without significant leadership of one kind or another (either being a tech lead/staff engineer or manager) makes someone very hard to hire.
- lokar 1y agoI’ve seen this described as “2 years of experience, 10 times”
- octo888 1y agoStaff engineer is incredibly hard to attain in a lot of companies outside of FAANG as there are so few positions - sometimes even 10 year old companies only recently create the position. They want you to become a manager instead. IME you stay Senior for a very very long time but basically do the job of Staff
- nickd2001 1y agoThis is an interesting , and often heard, take. I wonder if its mainly a US thing? I fit this description but not had problems getting jobs, and know others in the same situation. None of us expect top dollar though, and we probably (hopefully ; ) ) give a vibe of "they might be older than me but more likely to be a help than a hindrance in my team" to managers.... Personally I think its short-sighted to dismiss those who shun / ignore leadership opportunities. There are many great experienced engineers who appear to be coasting but actually do keep up with skills, and are very productive with no drama. 20+ years experience makes you avoid blind alleys and over-complexity, deal well with messy legacy codebases, and learn some social skills along the way ;)
- Shaddox 1y agoIt's brutal out there. I'm currently 36 years years old. I got laid off in March last year from an outsourcing shop because no work was coming, mostly working with PHP, with some Javascript and python sprinkled in there. I thank the Lord for not having a wife and children, because it would have been so painful watching them suffer because of me, and I thank my parents for helping me float through the tough times. I got a small leyline around September with a part-time job doing Wordpress stuff for a former client. No days off, zero security, just barely surviving month after the other. Fortunately, things are turning around for me! I'm starting a new full-time job next month. It's pretty well paid too, hybrid role, so I will be able to rebuild my savings, contribute to my pension fund, keep up with my balooning mortgage, etc. The Lord is indeed merciful! I really hope I can make it work, because I get maybe an interview every few months or so. I think the most brutal part that no one talks about is just how many scams are out there that target unemployed people. I tried doing freelancing for a while, but I never got paid even once. Contracts don't even matter because I don't have the muscle to enforce them. I almost fell for a bunch of scam job interviews/offers as well. I think I broke into tears after an interview that seemingly went well, then I got forwarded some forms to fill, one of them asking for my credit card information for payment. It's beyond my powers to help him, but I hope things turn around for the OP as well.
- joquarky 1y agoI've been looking for 18 months and the scams are starting to infest everything, especially in the past 3-4 months. It's getting to where I just bail out of any application that asks for something unusual like the name of my high school or what kind of people I'm attracted to (and I've seen the latter multiple times now).
- Raymond122 1y ago[dead]
- dexterlagan 1y agoI feel for all who feel obsolete and unneeded. The only solution I found for myself was to switch from implementing other people’s ideas to implementing mine. It’s a luxury some cannot afford, but I honestly think it’ll be necessary for many to think long and hard about an idea they can monetize. I wrote about it here: https://www.cleverthinkingsoftware.com/programmers-will-be-replaced-by-people-with-ideas/ https://www.cleverthinkingsoftware.com/programmers-will-be-r...
- jihadjihad 1y agoTBH I much prefer your linked post to the OP for its positive tone and outlook. Thanks for sharing.
- dang 1y agoRecent and related: The Great Displacement Is Already Well Underway - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43944911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43944911 - May 2025 (5 comments)
- hackingonempty 1y agoI think your name is unduly handicapping you. Since it is only a single letter people reading your resume think you are being coy and trashing it. On you resume, change your name to "Shawn Kay." Wait until you're doing HR paperwork to use your legal name.
- trenchgun 1y agoYep. Some context from the blog post: > I turned to service apps this winter: doordash, instacart, uber eats. Their signup systems were incompatible with my full, legal, one-letter last name, and it took about 50 hours on the phone with doordash support in Malaysia and the background check provider in India to eventually get cleared to drive them. I was not able to get through on the other apps. For sure the impact is not just limited to service apps.
- coffeebeqn 1y agoIf some piece of crap HR software won’t accept it, no one is going to chase you down to debug it. You’ll just end up in the no pile
- WalterBright 1y agoLong ago I knew a person named Gregg. He constantly had to correct peoples' spelling of his name. Why would parents burden their kid like this?
- collinvandyck76 1y agoI'm a Collin with two l's. Not as uncommon as Gregg but it's never been a burden. I also don't bother correcting people unless it's happening a lot with the same person and someone I expect to interact with a lot.
- mserdarsanli 1y agoWhy would any parent name their child water with an extra L?
- andrewstuart 1y agoIt’s got a lot more to do with interest rates than AI.
- JohnMakin 1y agoI’m not trying to be unsympathetic in this comment so please do not read it that way, and I’m aware having spent most of my career in cloud infrastructure that I am usually in high demand regardless of market forces - but this just does not make sense to me. If I ever got to the point where i was even in high dozens of applications without any hits, I’d take a serious look at my approach. Trying the same thing hundreds of times without any movement feels insane to me. I believe accounts like this, because why make it up? as other commenters have noted there may be other factors at play. I just wholly disagree with the conclusion that this is a common situation brought by AI. AI coding simply isnt there to start replacing people with 20 years of experience unless your experience is obsolete or irrelevant in today’s market. I’m about 10 years into my career and I constantly have to learn new technology to stay relevant. I’d be really curious what this person has spent the majority of their career working on, because something tells me it’d provide insight to whatever is going on here. again not trying to be dismissive, but even with my fairly unimpressive resume I can get at least 1st round calls fairly easily, and my colleagues that write actual software all report similar. companies definitely are being more picky, but if your issue is that you’re not even being contacted, I’d seriously question your approach. They kind of get at the problem a little by stating they “wont use a ton of AI buzzwords.” Like, ok? But you can also be smart about knowing how these screeners work and play the game a little. Or you can do doordash. personally I’d prefer the former to the latter. Also find it odd that 20 years of experience hasnt led to a bunch of connections that would assist in a job search - my meager network has been where I’ve found most of my work so far.
- rahimnathwani 1y agoAI coding simply isnt there to start replacing people with 20 years of experience unless your experience is obsolete or irrelevant in today’s market. Perhaps in years 3-20 they relied solely on skills and knowledge they acquired in years 1 and 2. So even if the work still needs to be done, it can be done at 10x productivity using AI, requiring fewer people.
- apwell23 1y ago> it can be done at 10x productivity using AI, doubt. maybe if you are cranking out crud widgets, which you should've been using an abstraction in first place.
- more_corn 1y agoFull remote PHP Single letter name I assure you the problem here is not “AI” The problem is that the world has changed and some of your prior assumptions are no longer valid (full remote is very challenging right now, property is the path to generational wealth with notable exceptions which you are experiencing, weird names are cool and hip among cool and hip people but that might not be who you find yourself among). You’ve painted yourself into a corner, change some self-imposed boundaries and the corner goes away. I can’t help but wonder if there’s a word for doing something repeatedly and being baffled at a negative response when the problem is so blindingly obvious to an outsider. Maybe the word is just stuck. Many of the self-imposed problems seem intractable, but are not. Maybe a step back is in order. What has been tried is obviously not working. There are ~10 items in play and solving for all ~10 is impossible. Stack rank the items desired and start checking them off? I suppose I’d start by getting a job come hell or high water. go by a reasonable sounding name (reserve legal name for paperwork) 50% of initial screening is rejecting the name (your hell with onboarding proved that nobody’s name parsing gets it without help, in job interviews you get dropped silently). There is zero overlap between hip companies who appreciate a cool name and php. Focus resume detail on current languages and frameworks (see above re php) Start applying for in-person in palatable places. Land and negotiate enough remote to stay sane. Sell cabin (need cash, and it’s not cashflow positive) You didn’t mention where your mom is living but you have equity somewhere. Cash it out to move forward with the free capital. Finish remodel or sell (needs cash to be cash flow positive) You haven’t been displaced you’ve experienced a change of the state of the world and you’ve failed to adapt… I’m going to leave the next line as an exercise for the reader. A hint though: adaptation is necessary for survival.
- windowshopping 1y agoI saw the same things you did and thought the same things you did. I made it to more than his salary in 1/3rd the time - from 2013 til 2019 is what it took me to get to $225k on almost purely frontend work despite being fired twice - and I've been vacation for three years now. I anticipate when I look for a job again I'll have no trouble. But I don't insist on remote, I didn't change my name to something edgy and impractical (if he was born to that name I apologize but that seems very unlikely, I've never seen or heard of an inherited single-letter last name in any culture), I have updated my skills as time has passed, and I'm not just building projects to look like I'm keeping up - I'm building real things I'm passionate about and which people use. Moreover, after 3 years of work from 2019 I had saved enough to quit and go on vacation indefinitely. I haven't looked for work since and am on my second multi-month trip to Europe. It's not that hard. People are just absolutely trash with money. I didn't inherit anything and nobody is helping me pay for anything, not a penny. People are just bad with money, and in my opinion the situation this guy has described in the post gives off every conceivable red flag of someone who's terrible at both financial planning and career planning.
- pupppet 1y agoEveryone nitpicking OP's personal choices, is this because the job market is not in fact being gutted by AI?
- threatofrain 1y agoIt's being gutted by a focus on AI investments which translates to more AI jobs, but that's not the same thing as AI itself automating your job away. I'm using Claude everyday for my work. Am I just missing out on how awesome the things have gotten in this space?
- missedthecue 1y agoI'm building a business and if it were, say, 2018 I would have already made several dev hires already this year. But using LLMs I simply do not have the demand for labor that I would have had. This is a $900k ARR business already. Android and iOS apps published, as well as a webapp. We do not have a dev team.
- threatofrain 1y agoI don't know how to process this because people are saying Claude is among the best and I'm using it everyday. It just provides great code help but there's no way it can reduce a decision to hire.
- AlexeyBelov 1y agoCan you share the apps?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Amezarak 1y agoIt’s being glutted by an oversupply of labor. We have too many new grads and then H1bs on top of that. There was a huge hiring spike circa 2022 that apparently misled a lot of people. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE
- nottorp 1y agoHey nice - the substack cookie dialog went into an infinite loop when i clicked 'only necessary' cookies.
- protipz 1y agoHow does your experience jive with the massive shortage of SWEs we have in the US. We've been inviting an additional ~150k foreign workers each year because there are no Americans applying for the long list of tech positions.
- Macha 1y agoThere is a mismatch between employer expectations and employee expectations. Employees expect things like WFH and pay comparable with previous years. Employers expect to do more with less. Inviting the additional foreign workers reduces pressure on employers to engage.
- franktankbank 1y agoThere is no shortage. Offshore consulting firms and HR collude to create impossible reqs that can only be filled by liars. HR gets a kickback, offshore consulting firm gets a cut, and some useless loser gets a shitty pointless job.
- nyarlathotep_ 1y ago> because there are no Americans applying for the long list of tech positions. This seems completely incorrect and repudiates much of what you've said and countless others have experienced.
- culebron21 1y agoIt's no wonder that applications don't work. I can confirm this, but I just quit wasting time on them, went via contacts network. What surprised me is that the OP had no reaction for personal messages.
- masterj 1y agoI have seen people in similar circumstances that have enormous personal blind spots for issues that show up in interviews and with past colleagues. It's much easier to blame AI rather than admit or address those. If you have 20 years of experience and no one wants to work with you again, that is telling.
- franktankbank 1y agoI've worked primarily with offshore devs. I can't say that's been great for a network and if I'd known how bad of an impact it would have on my professional development due to effectively zero network, I'd have avoided it entirely. Healthcare IT is dominated by offshore so beware.
- shawnfrompdx 1y agoi got words of encouragement but no one had leads
- masterj 1y agoConsider that that is what most people tell past co-workers who they don't want to refer You likely need blunt feedback from someone you can trust in the industry
- shawnfrompdx 1y ago4 or 5 of them told me they were in the same situation, highly regarded people i never thought that could happen to
- brandall10 1y ago
- pclmulqdq 1y agoI have heard from doctors and lawyers that there comes a time in your career when people are no longer interested in people who are older and unremarkable. In many ways it is worse to be a mediocre senior engineer at 45 than a naive junior at 20. You are expensive and you have shown that you have a ceiling. It sucks that this perception attaches to people at this point in their career. Many become managers at this point because that's an easy way to have broader impact and show career growth when you don't _really_ care about engineering. If you have spent 20 years as a software engineer amassing wealth (3 houses) and not making significant contributions to your peers or the field, everyone knows where your priorities are. It's okay that you aren't that interested in engineering. It does mean that it's harder to get a job than someone who really is, especially in tight markets. You're also not going to find employment below your level because they know you're going to jump ship when the market shifts. It does mean lowering your standards on certain things, like the "100% remote" requirement. For the last 20 years, there has been tremendous demand for software engineers that has allowed people to coast. That demand is cooling down for a variety of reasons, AI being one of them (but IMO not anywhere near the most significant). That cool-down really started in ~2021-2022 and really hasn't picked back up. When the market cools down, the unremarkable old-timers are sadly the first ones to be shown the door.
- shawnfrompdx 1y agojust for reference about my amassed 'wealth', the combined cost of my mortgages is less than a studio apartment's rent in the bay area. i left the west coast for precisely this reason
- s1artibartfast 1y agoproperty values are wealth. mortgage payments are costs. one doesn't imply anything about the other. Are the properties underwater on the mortgage? Can you rent out the vacant units?
- shawnfrompdx 1y agoif you read the original article i talked about how i got into this position. I originally had renters at both properties covering almost all the costs. they left shortly before losing my job.
- flerchin 1y ago> I even hit rock bottom: opening myself up to the thought of on-site dev work This to me is likely the issue. I suspect if he was willing to move and work on-site, he'd have been back in the saddle quite quickly. My forced career moves also all involved a nationwide job search, and corresponding move. Still, I believe the struggle, and worry that we'll all be there in the next few years.
- aorloff 1y agoI stumbled upon this line as well. And then I realized that he started with just getting home after driving 6 hours of uber to make $200, which didn't really square with on-site work being rock bottom. On site work is exhilarating at the right place
- awkward 1y agoExhilarating on site work often doesn't line up with needing to be a full time caretaker for family, unfortunately.
- parliament32 1y agoEmployment, in general, doesn't line up with needing to be a full time caretaker for whoever. SWE is a curious exception, sometimes, in some companies, but the vast, vast majority of the workforce goes to a place to work, then hires a nurse/nanny/caretaker to fit their other obligations.
- shawnfrompdx 1y agoI said what I said. it still beats going into in an office
- squigz 1y agoYou think doing gig work for pennies and slowly losing your dignity is better than just going into an office? I'm sorry but the absolute privilege of the author here, goodness...
- camcil 1y agoArticles like this terrify me, and recently they are plenty. I have had a lifelong interest and participant in development, doing freelance at times, always utilizing it in my career when approved, and contributing to opensource. I finished out my BS:CS while working full-time and although my general-IT career has been pretty successful, I have always planned on trying to pivot into a proper development team full-time from the public sector. Now that the structure of my organization, benefits, and even my job existing is on thin-ice (again, public sector), I have been dropping my name in the hat to open positions. My numbers are much better OP’s (landing at least a 1st round with ~10% of apps), but the closer I get to potential offers with some [great] companies, I can’t seem but to get even more worried about the stability or if this is the right choice for me and my family. My physiological and safety needs are met (i.e. Maslows), for now, but I have a longing for the rest of the hierarchy. Is the industry forecast as bad as these outlooks paint it?
- leksak 1y agoI took a look at your resume to see if I would have relevant work for you but doesn't seem like it. Maybe having vibecoding listed as a skill on your resume is a problem? Alarm bells also go off when I see "Github (advanced)" While you are powerless to change it I would also be concerned reviewing this resume as with the sole exception of your consultancy your longest tenure anywhere is just two years.
- shawnfrompdx 1y agothanks. this is the fifth iteration of my resume in this last year's search. im clearly trying to push for ai-coding, as i think i was often overlooked for being too 'trad'. in reality im all-in on ai.
- why-el 1y agoI am not sure if this will help you, but have an extended, deep conversation with ChatGPT about your resume. Tell it who you are, what you excel at, and list projects and technologies. Then, paste a couple of the job postings that did not work for you. This might sound silly to you, but it absolutely works, because it will distill your experience better, ask you to re-arrange and generalize, and more importantly, it is far superior to us in finding unique key word combinations that work.
- shawnfrompdx 1y agoive done this with chatgpt and claude
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hortonhearsafoo 1y agoLook I don't want to pile on, but I sent the latest version of your resume through ChatGPT with o3 and it pointed out several things to fix or improve about the current version of your resume, which as a human who has interviewed 100s of candidates I mostly agree with. Hopefully this is helpful. https://chatgpt.com/share/68240746-14ec-8006-bc64-44c7a04d71c0 https://chatgpt.com/share/68240746-14ec-8006-bc64-44c7a04d71...
- kypro 1y agoI don't want to argue the validity of AI taking jobs, but I really miss the tech job market in mid 00s to early 10s so much. It was genuinely such an exciting time back then. People were still optimistic about the web and new platform like mobile. There was so much to build, yet relativity few people working in tech. And those of us who were weird enough to work in tech loved it. It felt like almost every week there was some new startup asking around for tech talent and they'd take almost anyone they could get. And when you joined you built cool things that had never been built before. Today tech feel so stale. People who work in tech are not techies, but just see it as a career. There's so few novel things to build that SWE has basically become a profession of plumbing already built libraries and SaaS tools together. Even startups feel so much more mature from the get go. Back then startups were often bootstrapped projects by a dude in his bedroom. Today before a single line of code is written startups already have CEOs, CTOs, CFOs and several million dollars of investment. Perhaps this guy should have kept up with trends, but 20 years ago the dude would have had a job at a company where he was respected greatly for being the dude who could throw together an e-commerce store in a few days or something. He probably would have been building genuinely new stuff with a team of other people who loved tech.
- steve_adams_86 1y agoThis is an interesting perspective. I've sort of intentionally pushed towards working where AI isn't so useful (physical workflows that are heavily dependent on inputs from humans—scientists in particular) but my experience nonetheless has been discovering how useless AI is in so many ways I envisioned it replacing people by now. It's extremely useful in very narrow bands of application, and outside of that, it's often more of a distraction than an advantage. I have a hard time believing it's making people that much more productive. It certainly helps me here and there with very specific low-level implementations, but the really important, higher-level work I do? The way I decide which low-level work to do in the first place? Not really, no. I have to interface with very non-technical people who need bespoke solutions to their problems. I need to tie implementations for them together with existing systems that are not standardized, not well-known, and often poorly documented. I need to consider how the life cycle of these solutions can integrate with that of others, how it fits into the workflow and capacity of myself and people I work with, etc. AI can't do any of that properly right now, and I don't expect that it will any time soon. If I tried to get it to work, I'd likely spend as much time fighting Claude as I'd save. I don't know... What are people doing that they can actually be replaced? Or that companies could decide they actually need fewer people? My suspicion is that with money being more expensive to borrow, teams are staying lean because we were absurdly inefficient as an industry for the better part of a decade. That's not an AI thing, but a staying closer to actual means thing.
- didibus 1y agoI think it's interesting to ask ourselves if there are still jobs for everyone that pay well, and where people can get the training to do. Like the article mentions, the cornerstone of US based society is that everyone needs to do something that provides value to others. Yet we constantly seek to scale and automate, to lower our dependence on others. There must come a day where, you don't need others, but they need you. Then what?
- kubb 1y agoYou'll become a servant for the people who have some wealth, and they'll feel thrilled to be able to order you around.
- stego-tech 1y agoI think a lot of folks are missing the forest for the trees, here. OP is (presumably) a competent professional who has fallen on hard times despite record growth of the private enterprise and their immense profits. Their story is not unique, and Microsoft is adding another seven thousand bodies to the pile alone this week. The fundamental problem is, as the OP gets at towards the end, what happens when a society built upon the trade of time and labor for income to provide for one’s needs, meets innovations that threaten to wholesale eliminate vast swaths of labor, permanently. A society that demands labor for survival, against corporations that demand growth at all costs, inevitably creates a zero-sum conflict between the working class and the Capitalist classes. Workers, desperate to survive in a society hostile to the under or unemployed (and increasingly hostile to the presently employed), will continue to resort to more desperate means over time and as their numbers grow. This is an inevitability bore out through history time and time again, OP is just joining the chorus of voices warning that we are rapidly approaching such an inflection point if we continue soldiering onward “as-is”.
- shawnfrompdx 1y agothank you.
- warkdarrior 1y ago> Workers [...] will continue to resort to more desperate means over time [...] This is an inevitability [...] that we are rapidly approaching And how does one prepare for this inevitable inflection point? Buy a plot of land and hide from civilization? Prepper stuff? Buy lots of guns? Learn to barter?
- stego-tech 1y agoI obviously can’t win over someone as receptive to the idea of change as yourself, but on the off chance a passerby sees this and actually is interested in different perspectives or growing their knowledge, here’s what you can do to not be as blindingly trolling as this commenter here: * Read more books about systems and history. Understand that the times we’re in now aren’t as novel or unique as we’re lead to believe, and that we’ve solved worse problems before. * Join local community-based organizations. Donate your time and expertise to those who need but cannot afford it. * Learn different perspectives and backgrounds from others outside your immediate social circles or class. Spend more time with people who work more than you do, for less than you earn. This will teach you that many of your plights are shared, and that you have lots of allies already. * Study systems. No single solution will fix all problems, no innovation will lift all boats. Changes reverberate, having unintended consequences. Failure to understand systems is failing to remedy or maintain them. * Accept you cannot fix these issues alone. It will take time, it will take collaborative effort, and it will take compromise.
- mattlondon 1y ago> I even hit rock bottom: opening myself up to the thought of on-site dev work, which is an absolute red line for me. With respect, that is a red flag for me and would indicate a bit of an "attitude problem" if I was interviewing or reviewing applications and this was mentioned. If going to the office - something absolutely normal and expected of any desk worker - is a "red line" for you and you let potential employers know that, then frankly I am not surprised people are not biting. Yes we all had a good ride over COVID but the trend (whether people like it or not) is for the bosses to want everyone back in the office. I would respectfully suggest you suck it up, don't make a deal of it in your resume/CV or interview, and accept that you'll be badging through the turn-style 5 days a week along with everyone else and don't expect special treatment. Good luck.
- theshackleford 1y agoWould you feel the same way about a disabled employee? Is it special treatment to be asked to still be able to feed myself and put a roof over my head despite having a spinal cord injury? In my country, I must be allowed to work from home, but only if already gainfully employed, it will not assist in getting said employment. I worry this will be me if I lose my current remote job. Pending more surgeries which may change the situation, commuting and being in a physical office is just is just not a reality and so I’ve been forced into remote work to have any kind of work. I am not optimistic for my future. Then again we didn’t think I’d work at all again so take the good with the bad I suppose.
- mattlondon 1y ago> Would you feel the same way about a disabled employee? No because that is totally different. In the UK (all I have experience of) employers would be expected to make "reasonable adjustments" to avoid "significant disadvantage". But note that is not just bend over backwards, totally capitulate, and do whatever the hell the employee chooses. E.g. if the office is already totally wheelchair-friendly and there is viable transport etc (which is basically the case for any office building built in the last 20+ years) then they might say that no further adjustments are needed as the employee would not be "significantly disadvantaged", so come on in to the office. It is a balancing act though and every request would be treated independently. Might suck I agree, but there you go. Good luck.
- kazinator 1y ago> I even hit rock bottom: opening myself up to the thought of on-site dev work, which is an absolute red line for me. Yeah; no more chillin' out in your camper upstate in the middle of nowhere. Bummer! (Writing from on-site office chair here.)
- dyauspitr 1y agoI looked at your resume and here are my thoughts as a hiring manager for what it’s worth. Get rid of the generative AI, VR, LLM augmented stuff from the top of the resume. Make your typescript experience more prominent. Talk more about your experience with popular stacks and technologies in general. Come up with a last name, the resume doesn’t have to be your legal name.
- dracodoc 1y agoAgree. I think all the AI stuff need to be removed. Are you seeing lots of open positions asking for people use AI to code? And if you are applying for VR, make resume VR oriented. If applying for web development, make resume focus on for web development. No need trying to show everything you know and every experience which could be overwhelming and the HR probably will not feel you are a good match to their narrow definition.
- phatfish 1y agoMy 2 cents. It was light on detail. Not a big enough word count to hit all the recruiter keywords and nothing to back up the claims made. Obviously a resume can be too long, but i think you need some (well chosen) technical specifics on paper. Intro and current role should be most of the first page, everything else on page two. Two pages is fine.
- yc-alt-17483 1y agoHave made an alt to comment in case my dev reads this ---- Wanted to chime in as someone very minorly on the hiring side. Run a business, used a remote contract developer for a decade. They were reasonably productive, but with a communications lag due to timezones and back and forth communication. Their rate also rose in the past couple of years. We have completely eliminated their role and I took over the dev work using ai. I learned some programming a decade ago which helps oversee the ai. In doing so I was able to see their code wasn't up to spec. Outdated php with deprecated functions, some very inefficient functions which added multiple seconds to pageload. Refactored everything and our site is up to date and substantially faster. I doubt this is a common case, most clients likely aren't personally replacing their developers. But at the low end of codework it's certainly possible to replace a dev with ai. Compared to our developer ai provided: * instant feedback * Technically up to date code * More efficient methods when prompted how to approach a problem Crucially our developer didn't want to use ai and preferred handcrafting code. Also didn't use it if they found something I wrote unclear, which could add 12-24 hours to a communications cycle. I presume they're still doing work for their other clients. But from my perspective the opportunity cost of using them rose tremendously when they refused to try new tools. Thinking through code architecture has tremendous value. Physically crafting the actually expression of those thoughts in lines of boilerplate code has definitely declined in utility. Don't know how many programming jobs this describes but ai is definitely nibbling at the lower end of the market.
- selfhoster 1y agoI think what you describe is an anecdote. > Don't know how many programming jobs this describes but ai is definitely nibbling at the lower end of the market. Now it's starting to sound like it was written by someone working in marketing at an AI company.
- crtified 1y agoIf the people who used to hire you would sell your work to clients for $2000 per day, then instead start freelancing your own work and selling it for $1000 per day. It saddens me that tech people have become so intrinsically beholden to a lifetime association with some rich paying Company.
- shawnfrompdx 1y agoI am the author of this piece, and i didn't share it to HN, I don't hang out here. I just gotta say wow, tough crowd. i wrote this piece from an emotionally low point after another fruitless day of applying to jobs. I didn't have a particular agenda in mind. I was voicing what i've been through and some of what I was experiencing with no expectations. you'll notice in the comments section that the population of substackistan is much less FUCKING CYNICAL AND NEGATIVE than you guys, with many commenters saying they are in the same position. I heard from writers, designers, engineers, going through similar times. my portfolio site is https://shawnfromportland.com https://shawnfromportland.com, you can find my resume there. if you have leads that you think I might match with you can definitely send them my way, I will even put a false last name on an updated resume for you guys. for those who are wondering, I legally changed my name to K long ago because my dad's last name starts with K, but I didn't like identifying with his family name everywhere i went because he was not in my life and didnt contribute to shaping me. I thought hard about what other name I could choose but nothing resonated with me. I had already been using Shawn K for years before legally changing it and it was the only thing that felt right.
- nobodywillobsrv 1y agoNot sure if it was mentioned, but times like it is good to have relationships with real human recruiters. The best play long game and give you feedback and just do networking.
- doodlebugging 1y agoI read the post knowing it would likely remind me about all the times I read the handwriting on the wall and decided it was a message for someone else. I hope you find a good place to land. I know it has been a while for you but you are still motivated and focused on the right outcomes. You will find a niche, maybe not the one you expected but you will drop into a groove and realize that things are looking up for you and your Mom. I understand the whole home ownership angle where you could liquidate an asset but would have to absorb a loss in the process since the place needs some work and you can't afford to do it yet. Hang on to the houses, all of them. They can be your landing zone or safe spot. We have a home that we have leased out for around 30 years. It has always been the best in the neighborhood because I did the work of maintaining and upgrading it myself, along with my wife and part of my family. I would sell it now but it needs siding and the bids for that are way out of my price range so that is one of the next DIY projects for me. I just need to get a tenant into it ASAP and that will allow me to make it happen. The materials to do it cost under $10k but like your property, we have had years where we made money on the house and years where we barely covered or lost money due to maintenance items or other ownership costs. Leverage any opportunity to work with local contractors swinging a hammer bending nails or using a saw to shorten boards. That can be a path to obtaining scrap materials or unusable items that would go to a dumpster. Contractors have to pay disposal fees so anything that allows them to reduce the size of the load saves them money when the job is done. Warped or curled dimensional lumber can be straightened at home. Half sheets of plywood or siding nail up as tightly as full sheets. There is a place for all that if you examine your needs and keep an eye out for things that can be made to work. My grandfather built a business as a home-builder by first building a home for himself and my grandmother to move into as soon as they married. He got the materials by asking around with locals who were working on their own places and inquiring about whether he could have the scraps and cutoffs. He ended up needing to buy nails and a few other small items but he built a house with materials that cost him the labor to clean up building sites. Once he finished the house a local man who had been watching the process offered to buy it from him. He sold that house and took the money and built a new house with new materials and moved in with my grandmother to a much larger, much nicer place than they would've had. Others who knew him and watched the process approached him about building things for them and in no time he was building houses, church buildings, sheds, etc all over the region. He built custom homes until he passed away about 60-65 years later. Since it appears you may be up around Syracuse, Ft. Drum is right down the road. One of my brothers got the money to start his own business by driving for Pizza Hut. If you can get established as the pizza guy on a base like that you're on your way up. Soldiers tip well. Pizza is a huge seller. You do need a base pass but I think the pizza outfit sets you up. He would always bake the order and then bake several extra pizzas and carry it all onto base. By the time he had dropped off the pizza that had actually been ordered he had a line of soldiers hoping to get one of the extras. Pizza is great food option. Many of those guys became regular customers. He made great tips and sold lots of pizzas that otherwise wouldn't have been ordered. After a couple years of pie-hawking during which he was also mowing yards and trimming trees with a friend who had a local tree service, he took money he had earned and bought himself a new mower and chainsaw. That was 10 years ago now and he grossed $300k last year with one employee doing nothing but tree service. He has a bro-dozer truck with large dump trailer to handle the wood and debris and he rents other equipment as he needs it. Pressure washing can be a real winner too. That's one thing my brother has mentioned branching into. Staining fences and decks. Cleaning gutters. Washing windows. Caulking siding and painting. There are lots of services that people need that don't take much investment. Door hang flyers with contact info and let people know you are available. Visit a t-shirt printer or embroidery place and have them make a few shirts with a reasonably memorable logo or slogan and your name and contact info. Wear them to the grocery store and home improvement store and let people call you. I have several gardens I built to help manage food costs. It is unbelievably easy and satisfying to be able to open my door and select a few herbs from my pizza garden while my pizza stone warms up. We have a wide selection of all the things we enjoy eating and some we want to try. Fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, berries. So many things are easy to grow. That can help you manage your food costs and improve the quality of your food at the same time. Good luck to you. I don't think you need it though. Your heart is in the right place. All the other things will fall in line behind it.
- nemo44x 1y agoIt’s really important to build and maintain your network, especially as you get older. It’s nearly mandatory to know someone to get your foot in the door today. Especially today where we have a saturated market and dim prospects for future demand picking up like it was in the 2012-2022 era. Seriously, go through your contacts and just say hi every now and then. A career has to be groomed and managed today. Try sending your CV directly to recruiters. If you find a job you’re a great fit try and find a recruiter on LinkedIn for the company and send them a note. Easier when company isn’t huge. This works on hiring managers too. Be aggressive in how you send your CV out - direct to the stand holders. Show initiative. Likewise if you see a job check your network to see if anyone works there. Send them a note. Even if you’re not that close they will recommend you in holes of getting the recruiting bonus.
- cynicalsecurity 1y agoIt's not the AI, the dude wants $150k for a simple engineering job in this economy.
- iLemming 1y agoIt's so fucking heartbreaking, relatable and scary. I'm an immigrant, but before you readers start unsheathing your pitchforks, let me tell y'all - I've lived in the States for almost two decades, paying taxes and being a law abiding resident and later citizen — perhaps, contributing to the well-being of this nation more than I got back in return. Also, I've been here legally from day one. I don't have a portfolio of projects (all of the interesting work I've done is for private companies), I have not written any books or even noteworthy articles, I have never presented any talks at conferences. Last year I lost my job, then I joined a startup where only after three months (most of which were in holiday season) the company decided to decommission the only project they'd hired me for and once again I had to start looking for something new. I just couldn't figure out the bureaucracy of unemployment bullcrap. When we were in California, that shit was relatively simple, despite it all happening during COVID. Yep, my company tried to get those PPP loans and for that they had to lay off the entire team, and of course, ostracizing the most expensive workers of the San Francisco team made more sense — remote workers in other states kept their jobs. For California unemployment, I just had to update my status every two weeks (or every week, I don't remember anymore). In Texas, the bureaucracy felt debilitating. I just never figured out how to get that meager money. Between having stress, depression and dealing with interviews that was too much. It took me seven months to find a job. I've been working since I was fourteen. I traveled and worked in different countries, for various industries, etc. Never in my life had I stayed without a job for that long. My typical job search back in 2015-2018 would take me no more than three days. This time was very different. I eventually found a new gig, but I had to settle for much less money than I made before. I am getting paid less today than when I was a junior developer - 10-12 years ago. Despite all my experience, knowledge and skills. I don't know what happens next, and I have no prospects for retirement — I don't have enough savings to retire. I just want to keep doing what I love to do. I do love to code, solve problems and build solutions. I love to follow the data and build pipelines and visualize it and analyze it — slice it, dice it, group it, etc., and I'm good at that. I'm just hoping there will be something for me to do after all. Yet I don't think I ever again will get compensated adequately for the work I do. And it's not just the stark reality of capitalism, it's not because money no longer is what it used to be. The world has changed, and whenever that happens some social tiers do usually suffer. Let's try to remain kinder to one another in this rapidly changing world, as all indications suggest it will only become more challenging.
- SirMaster 1y agoThis has to be a location based problem, or maybe the types of companies they are applying to? I can easily get another job doing something in software in the greater Milwaukee area. I typically look at companies that are not software companies, but who still need some software work in their IT dept to make their company work and keep them relevant.
- yencabulator 1y agoNot the greatest word choice, those words have a lot of racist history.
- cynicalsecurity 1y agoOkay, I've read the whole article. His dad was a drug addict who is now dead. It sucks to have a bad parent. And his mother is disabled and can't really help him. I see now where all the disgruntlement and negativity comes from. And why it is so hard for him to live a life. It's always is hard when one (or in an even worse case both) of your parents are bad. Not only such parents do not pass over their knowledge of life and wealth to their children, they actually take from them. This really sucks, I'm sorry. The man is living this life on a higher difficulty. I feel for him.
- doright 1y agoI'm feeling similar. Shitty people who are supposed to be your caretakers permanently reduce the brain cycles needed for other things. The damage is a lifelong condition, like diabetes or cancer. Everything that's their fault in an unrelated timeframe becomes your fault when the causal link isn't obvious enough to outsiders. They just assume you should know better because you passed an arbitrary age. Interpersonal relationships suffer (I empathize with the lack of a professional network). It drives desperation and cynicism. Responders are going to address the lack of job success. The advice is good and actionable. But sometimes no one "normal" (non-therapeutic/paid for) is there to listen to you and the urge to get things off one's chest becomes unbearable. Like the urge becomes so strong you just have to scream it to the world to get relief from anxiety. The negativity is the inevitable result, and it's understandable. It's catharsis and a need being fulfilled. I hope things turn out alright for him.
- giantg2 1y agoI'm not sure this is really AI driven. I think it's more interest rate and age driven. I'm probably going to lose my job in a couple months and I'm afraid I'll be in a similar position of endless posting. I'll probably end up working at Walmart or something for about $20/hr.
- xtracto 1y agoIt's not AI. I can hire QA automation Sr level for $10 usd in Argentina... you wouldn't want to work at Walmart for that. The US government has to do something, or its Knowledge Worker market will keep suffering. (And I say this as someone outside the US that had benefitted from this)
- starik36 1y agoThat's exactly it. Workers in countries with high cost of living are competing with those in the global south. We are going to lose every time. Something should be done (but probably won't) or the knowledge worker will have the same fate as the American industrial worker.
- giantg2 1y agoI wonder what could be done about it. I suppose regulations like in the defense industry could be applied more broadly. We didn't do anything about manufacturing being off-shored and it was even seen as a benefit by many, allowing the freed up labor to focus on higher skilled work (mostly). However, there doesn't seem to be a replacement this time for the labor to move into. I wonder if we've reached a point where automation and other technological improvements have created a global negative trend in required labor.
- Sparkyte 1y ago7 more years and I moving to another country.
- suraci 1y ago[flagged]
- casey2 1y agoI feel like "AI is replacing tech workers" is a far more negative opinion and unjustifiable opinion than tech companies "overhired" and governments pushed supply of tech related jobs too much (particularly CS degrees) I'd like to see even a shred of evidence that your previous field of expertise was automated away. IF I was cynical and negative I would say spending 2 to 5 hours a day consuming AI media has caused brainrot and skill degradation which is preventing you from being hired. My father is in his 70s and still makes enough money driving to people's houses and companies to fix miscellaneous network and computer most of which probably could be solved by Google for the last 30 years, let alone ChatGPT. Sure the company work is more involved then I'm letting on and he handles procurement (ordering stuff from amazon), setup, referal etc. His degree? EE. You clearly aren't interested in SE so why pigeon hole yourself to it? Talk to some people and your neighbors about your houses. Open a LAN cafe or something be creative. If AI really is replacing skilled labor then it should be a piece of cake LOL
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- Aziell 1y agoIt feels like you're describing my own experience. I've worked in the tech industry for years, putting in so much effort, and suddenly, everything I worked for seems to have lost its value. The changes brought by AI have been so fast, it's like a complete upheaval. What seemed like a stable career path has suddenly become fragile. The hardest part isn’t losing the job, but feeling like I’ve been left behind by a system that’s rapidly changing.
- gadders 1y agoI hope that as people talk about onshoring manufacturing jobs, they also look at onshoring technology jobs as well. I doubt it is AI that has taken your job - it could just as easily by cheap labour, either via H1B or working from their home nation.
- sublimefire 1y agoI am cutting my experience in the CV to show only last 10 years. In my mind there is some unreasonable expectation that in 20 years you should be able to show research papers or patents, have a network of friends who will refer you, then show leadership skills, i.e. manage people (successfully), and to be a genius who can solve leetcode hards in 20 mins. I do have a substantial number of OSS work but that rarely was of interest to anyone.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago> I do have a substantial number of OSS work but that rarely was of interest to anyone. This was a sad reality for me. I spent thousands of hours putting my heart and soul into OSS projects that people loved and used.. and for what? When I graduated university, recruiters never clicked the links. The companies I joined treated me like a baby who never worked on anything. I switched gears and grinded Leetcode to land a FAANG job instead, but I can't help but feel my engineering craft regressed in all this time.
- toonalfrink 1y agoThere's you who insisted on a FAANG job to make 6x more than you probably need and then there's me living on 1.5k a month because I refuse to do anything that feels more than 1% useless (i.e. most things in the enterprise). I'm not saying my attitude is better than yours, but I do think you didn't really need to grind leetcode if you really didn't want to do useless things
- gregwebs 1y agoHave you tried working with recruiters? I don’t have recommendations for how to find them, but they find me on LinkedIn and it has lead to my last 2 job opportunities and most of my interviews.
- ball_of_lint 1y ago> I own three houses > I could just about manage covering all the expenses You put literally all your income into non-liquid assets, taking on significant debt to do so. As you said, you had <5% of your income leftover at the end of the years. This is a lot of why you're in such a bind now. Even just held as cash, that money would be available to help you through this difficult time. Investing in an index fund would also have been fine, and would again be available to you now. Landlording is a tough game. Don't you think?
- rsynnott 1y agoThere seems to be a perception, actually particularly on here, that being a landlord is a gateway to magic free money, and maybe a lack of consideration that it is basically a _job_, working with risky rather illiquid assets. I kind of thought this belief was a young-person thing, though; I'm a little surprised to see someone my age going all-out on it, because they were presumably around for the great financial crisis, when, ah, bad things happened to a lot of overleveraged amateur landlords.
- rsynnott 1y ago> When i make it past all of them and land an interview, I face a series of final bosses: Generally, it’s the fresh-faced bay area 25 year old with a Steve Jobs complex dismissing me when they find out my dinosaur age of 42, or the moment they hear the words “php” uttered when they learn I was developing advanced php web apps when they were in diapers. I'm about your age. I'd wonder how much of this is perception vs reality, tbh; while there _is_ ageism in the industry, people tend to overstress it a bit. Are you, in these situations, possibly reacting to something that's all in your head? Being interviewed by younger people is, at our age, fairly inevitable and shouldn't be seen as a problem; for that matter, your manager may well be younger than you too, and that's fine! There _is_ some ageism out there, no question, but you'll do yourself no favours if you see it everywhere. > Before AI was on the scene 3 years ago, I was already beginning a transition from individual contributor to engineering manager. I tried to greet my layoff at first with great positivity and enthusiasm for the opportunity it provided to step up to EM role. Bit late now, but this _probably_ wasn't a great idea; it's very difficult for someone with no experience as an EM to be hired as an EM (and for good reason, honestly; an EM is a high-risk hire and a bad EM can destroy a whole team). If you do want to go this route, it's probably better to do it by going from IC to EM within the same job.
- librasteve 1y agoerrr your gonna have to change your name to shawn kay … that’s it, right therr
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- nico 1y agoTangential, for people looking for engineering/technical roles, I created this terminal app to help scrape and automatically filter jobs to match your resume using AI: https://github.com/nicobrenner/commandjobs?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/nicobrenner/commandjobs?tab=readme-ov-fil... I recently updated it with application tracking as well, so you can keep everything in the same place Any feedback and issues on GitHub are welcome
- 10hr 1y agoReading this site is not a fun experience with astigmatism. my gawd! Will try to continue reading now
- petsormeat 1y agoThe travails described in this post could just as well be my own, except that my career disintegration began in 2017 or so, soon after I turned 50. I've pursued every job search strategy this author lists, and encountered the same lack of progress. I've just submitted an application to work at the local grocery store for $17/hour. We can blame ageism, offshoring, AI, what have you. The basic problem is that the technology industry has never prioritized hiring or retaining experienced people as developers. Our roles are persistently misunderstood by management, and "AI could do that!" is just the latest misapprehension. Meanwhile, be kind to your DoorDashers and store clerks.
- danielovichdk 1y agoAll I wanted to say is, this is not because of AI. Or at least, I have not seen data that shows that. The loss of jobs is happening in all sectors, all over the world. Some say its because of higher interest rates, not sure though ?
- dsign 1y agoMy thoughts go to this guy; many are always one bad-move away from falling through the cracks, and I know first-hand how hard everything becomes with aging relatives who are not financially independent. I don't think AI is impacting much of it currently (but I may be wrong), but I believe it's a matter of time before it does and then things are going to get worse. While I don't usually advocate for such things, I feel that in the coming years many of us will be better off moving to places with small-village dynamics. It doesn't need to be an actual small village. It can even be the sort of workplace where people know each other and implicitly treat their colleagues with kindness and dignity; such places still exist.
- cweld510 1y agoI don’t think this is because of AI. Rather, it seems a continuation of a shift which has already been occurring for my entire career, which is that the tech industry continually sheds people whose skills are entirely practical and are tied to a specific era or regime of technology. For instance, at one point, there were webmasters, but now those jobs don’t exist anymore. Sysadmins have gone through a similar struggle with the advent of the cloud. Once there were sysadmin jobs, and now there are no more. Today it is happening to a certain kind of full-stack engineers specializing in technology of the last 15 years. In the future it will probably happen to YAML engineers who specialize in Kubernetes and GitHub Actions. Consistently the most durable roles seem to be those which require theoretical understanding of the fundamentals —- UI/UX, systems, algorithms, etc. It’s unfortunate that not everyone gets a chance to learn these things.
- its_viko 1y agoHey, I am heading your way, as it seems now. Not because of AI, but because of me, and I think you are in this position because of you, even if it looks like its AI. So I wanted to suggest something to you, and maybe it could help, and then maybe it would help me eventually too, if I was to reflect on you. Have you tried smiling recently? Try it. When you talk to people, write on the keyboard or talk over the phone - try smiling for a bit. Not the obligatory smile, but one that shows the better part of you. Your CV is probably perfect but does it smile? You need to re-learn how to smile, because out there is a team that probably wants you but also wants no angry newcomers. It's tough for you right now but presenting it the way you've done gives off just the very wrong vibe, as if you'd be a burden.
- rvz 1y agoThis is the true definition of "AGI".
- HeyRuxy 1y agoThis discussion saved my growth path from being sabotaged by cynicism.
- kommjesu 1y agobtw i can barely scroll your website through my android firefox phone. it's got these weird animations that's making everything very slow.