8 ms·

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

• xnorswap 10mo ago
  I'm fortunate to still be in a role, but I've always kept an eye out for other opportunities, and it looks very rough out there in the UK job market. I don't know if companies are just in a "wait and see" stance to see the effect of AI coding agents, or if it's the sign of a wider slowdown. 100% remote is also a tough ask. I've noticed increasingly job roles are listed as 2-3 days in the office as companies awkwardly transition back to the office.
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    The UK market is doing poorly but I changed to a commute where 3 days a week is unrealistic. I can be onsite once a month :)
    • throw-the-towel 10mo ago
      I'm sorry if I'm being too blunt, but it looks like you just cannot afford that location any more. It could really be wise to consider moving.
      • mariogintili 10mo ago
        your comment honors your handle, That being said, this is about unemployment not affordability. I can afford where I am, if I had a job
        • 9rx 10mo ago
          If you can afford it, carry on! But your other comments suggest otherwise. Hypothetically being able to afford something if things were hypothetically different is not an indicator of what is affordable in reality.
          • mariogintili 10mo ago
            > Hypothetically being able to afford something if things were hypothetically different is not an indicator of what is affordable in reality. unemployment is an extraordinary circumstance for me. Extraordinary circumstances affect affordability in an extraordinary way. even with employment far below my usual pay I can afford where I am.
            • 9rx 10mo ago
              I admittedly missed that you found a job. Congratulations!
  • condensedcrab 10mo ago
    I’d try applying to in office roles too - I suspect that most places have a soft hiring freeze regardless of work status. At least, that way you know it’s not the remote work portion that’s keeping you from a job. I’m in the US and everyone I’ve talked to who wants to move have been discussing the challenges of getting a foot in the door anywhere.
    • mariogintili 10mo ago
      My commute is not in a realistic location for commutes. > I’m in the US and everyone I’ve talked to who wants to move have been discussing the challenges of getting a foot in the door anywhere. Really? I thought the US was doing extremely well
      • apothegm 10mo ago
        The massive rounds of layoffs in the US over the past 3 years mean there are a ridiculous number of software engineers looking for jobs. AI has compounded this by automating applications such that a single opening might get multiple thousands of submissions. Your best bet to find a job in this market is to have some connection to the hiring manager. It might be a friend of a friend of a former colleague. Or both having membership in the same semi-open community. But you need a way to say “hey, I’m a real human being and especially interested in this job; please at least take a look at my resume!”
        • mariogintili 10mo ago
          yes, so when I see an opening I try to message the key people around the role first, not just fill out a form. Any other approaches are well welcomed
          • apothegm 10mo ago
            The other thing I had to realize before I could get an offer in this market is that there are so many overqualified candidates it’s almost impossible to get a stretch role and very difficult to get one at the same level you were last working at. If you just need an income for now, consider looking for something you’re significantly overqualified for but that gives you exposure to something new in a different dimension (new industry, for instance). Then once you’ve got that job and have restored your savings, you can look for something with more growth while still employed. Maybe some day the market will even bounce back, tho I wouldn’t count on it.
  • jcpst 10mo ago
    > 100% remote is also a tough ask. I've noticed increasingly job roles are listed as 2-3 days in the office as companies awkwardly transition back to the office. Keep in mind that at some places this is general policy, and that tech is given an exception. For example, my company has 2-3 days in-office, but everyone in tech is allowed to be 100% remote, even though that’s not written anywhere.
  • sarlalian 10mo ago
    This will be a U.S. centered response, because that’s where I live and work. We’ve tried hiring for local and remote roles. It’s a terrible experience all around, both on the hiring and being hired side of the equation. The company I work for is a medium sized business, in residential and commercial construction. For example, a recent react native mobile dev position my company posted had about 300 applications in the first hour, with about 500 total in the first week on indeed. Of those applications, 90% didn’t have most of any of the requirements for the position. The job description says that we don’t sponsor H1B visa’s (because it’s stupidly expensive now). Of the 10% that somewhat met the minimum qualifications, all but 1 required sponsorship. This was listed as a hybrid role, only 20 people applied from the region where the office is. We already know from previous roles that a huge percentage of people with resume’s that say they have the required skills, actually won’t come close to making it through the interview process. While as a company we like AI/ML tools, and encourage our staff to learn them, and use them where appropriate, we want to invest in everyone’s skills with new tools. We try not to use AI where a human connection is important (hiring, sales, etc). We’ve had to resort to AI for dealing with the massive influx of low quality job applications and it sucks. Basically anyone who goes above and beyond at this point automatically get’s at least an interview. I do understand why so many people are just applying to every job that shows up, it makes sense. But it really does make the prospect of finding those few great people very difficult. We aren’t a ruby/rails shop otherwise I’d reach out to OP.
    • ggenova79 10mo ago
      I'm curious where your company is located. I am a native mobile developer, but have experience with Flutter and React Native applications. I don't require any sponsorship and am willing to relocate for the right role. If your company is still looking please reply here or my email ggenova79@gmail.com. Thank you
• colesantiago 10mo ago
  Are you able to move / relocate away from the UK? Unless the company is a FAANG company or hedge fund, the UK tech scene is dead. I don’t see any good UK startups worth joining in the UK. All the good ones are in SF / NY, etc.
  • okokwhatever 10mo ago
    Extend the statement to mostly all Europe. Tech ecosystem is dead in EU.
    • hoppp 10mo ago
      So Uk dead, Eu dead.. How is Asia doin?
    • c0balt 10mo ago
      That seems pretty overzealous, companies like SAP or Heinlein are doing well-ish and the recent push for digital sovereignty has induced some money. There also is a bunch of mixed shops (doing he and software or integration work). The primary difference is that many expect on-site and they pay is generally not US-startup scale. Many companies also expect you to at least have some knowledge of their local language (e. G., German, Spanish or Polnish) and not just English. One has to adapt to be competitive here.
      • KellyCriterion 10mo ago
        OK - test: Send an applicatio to SAP, on next Monday, and lets see - their CEO announced nearly regularly large lay offs
    • chvid 10mo ago
      Rubbish - you guys are spending too much time on twitter x.
    • lm28469 10mo ago
      Meanwhile there are 5m+ devs in Europe, more than in the US apparently.
• daviddever23box 10mo ago
  Domain-specific knowledge, having no relation to software engineering per se, is a necessary skill set. The best analogy I can find, if not a tired one, is the equivalence of software engineering to tool-and-die making. In prior generations where manufacturing was king, it was a necessary operational skill set in order to produce things at scale, yet is much less (if no longer) relevant in the age of additive or subtractive manufacturing, where quantities can be varied according to immediate requirements. Along the same lines, a skill set in traditional software engineering is less enamored in the age of AI agents that can better regurgitate boilerplate code. The corresponding next-level-up analogy is the tool-and-die maker that learns 3D modeling + additive manufacturing, with FE analysis and CNC skills as a fallback. For software engineers, it's AI agent prompt engineering and data modeling, according to use cases defined by business needs. You need to put on your entrepreneurial hat and figure out how to do things faster, with greater accuracy, relevant to business needs - not navel-gazing at package management and build automation exclusively. This is, of course, an extremely naïve view of the state of things, though I cannot imagine, as a generalist, how one could survive with increasingly niche skills that, a decade ago, would have commanded six-figure salaries. Good luck!
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    I have successfully explored AI & prompt engineering. I already feel I'm "augmented" vs when I didn't had access to these tools. I do 100% agree with you, thanks for the good wishes
  • pepperball 10mo ago
    > 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.
    • QuiDortDine 10mo ago
      This is only true if you weren't paid for your work all those years (which, then, it was just a hobby). But more importantly, this is only relevant for vomiting boilerplate code. I don't know about you but I always did a lot more than that.
• tobbob 10mo ago
  Very similar situation. I have been cancelled, and I can't face going back to employment, but finding a way to earn a crust as a solo engineer is proving somewhat hopeless. At least I'm not paying tax any more. Checkmate Rachel Reeves.
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    How did you get cancelled? I think the same happened to a friend
  • csomar 10mo ago
    You still pay taxes through VAT, property, and other schemes.
    • merth 10mo ago
      Not necessarily. Basic food is zero-rated for VAT, and if you qualify you can get council tax reduction. For example, I get a 25% council tax discount. If you're unemployed with no income, you may genuinely pay very little direct tax, it depends on circumstances.
• misiti3780 10mo ago
  Can you provide a link to a resume ?
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    Here it is :) https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/ And my Github https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
• gjsman-1000 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • piva00 10mo ago
    > I think you should entertain the idea that if there is a God who cares about us, praying earnestly is a good idea If there was such then no one would go through job loss, it can't be that such God can give you a job but not be the one who took it away if it's that powerful. So if there's a God it doesn't care about us.
    • gjsman-1000 10mo ago
      This is poorly thought through, as it requires a fundamental tenant: “If there is a God, he automatically has a duty to ensure there is no suffering, of any kind, for any reason, from any cause, or he is not good.” No religion believes that. Every religion also has an explanation for suffering. Enough of the stupid cheap shots that were worn out centuries ago.
      • piva00 10mo ago
        Every religion has a cop out for the fact the same God who is so gracious to save your life is also the God responsible for giving kids cancer. It's a cheap shot because those explanations are absurdly cheap in their logic on how a ultimately-powerful being is there to save us while also being the master of all suffering. > “If there is a God, he automatically has a duty to ensure there is no suffering, of any kind, for any reason, from any cause, or he is not good.” Yes? If there's an all-loving God then it also being the source of all suffering does say it's not good. Why would a morally good being with this power decide to give horrible diseases to innocent kids? Or take your job away, and force you to pray for it so you can get another? It's a bit sadistic. So again, if there's a God it doesn't care at all about us.
        • gjsman-1000 10mo ago
          > It's a cheap shot because those explanations are absurdly cheap in their logic on how a ultimately-powerful being is there to save us while also being the master of all suffering. "It's a cheap shot because it's cheap" is not an argument, the logic is circular. > Why would a morally good being with this power decide to give horrible diseases to innocent kids? Or take your job away, and force you to pray for it so you can get another? It's a bit sadistic. If a parent tells you don't date somebody, they're a bad fit; and you do so anyway, and they were a bad fit; do you blame your parents for not locking you in their basement to prevent it? Permissive will versus active will is Philosophy 101.
• blargthorwars 10mo ago
  Remote role? Why would anybody pay UK wages instead of $developing_country wages?
  • throw-the-towel 10mo ago
    Everyone in the thread is saying that, but in my experience, not many companies are even hiring remote employees abroad.
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    Honestly, like the international landscape for salaries has kind off like normalised itself. Wages for SWEs are more or less the same across the globe when you look at remote work. Intelligent people are cutting costs instead of trying to earn more money
    • ecshafer 10mo ago
      In the US I have noticed that the tier 2/3 tech cities SWE salaries seemed to raise a bit with covid and level off. The Tier 1 tech cities they seem to (outside of AI) have dropped a bit after the covid boom amid massive layoffs. Remote seems to be kind of independent of location but I see some remote places paying more Tier 2/3 level salaries
      • mariogintili 10mo ago
        How do people find jobs in the US? In the UK you're usually "discovered" by a company's talent team or independent recruiters. I've had very little to no success with direct applications
        • ecshafer 10mo ago
          In the US you direct apply typically, or you can work with a recruiter who will connect you with jobs. I don't know about being discovered by a talent team, that's never happened to me, maybe for some people.
• csomar 10mo ago
  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.
• jbs789 10mo ago
  I understand that the market in the UK is particularly tough now, across many sectors. Is there a particular specialisation you have, and then how does someone who needs that specialisation find you? Particularly if the job is 100pct remote, you’re participating in a global market. Or if there’s a local company that needs you… even if the work isn’t the most challenging… Can at least leverage the real-world relationships? Anyone at prior jobs who can help with connections? (Never hurts to ask). I hope you are able to find something that provides at least an emotional boost while the broader search continues!
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    > Is there a particular specialisation you have, and then how does someone who needs that specialisation find you? Being a generalist and having experience delivering products all the way its what makes me stand out. That being said, I've done some cool pieces with backoffices and dev tooling and developer experience > Or if there’s a local company that needs you… even if the work isn’t the most challenging… Can at least leverage the real-world relationships? Anyone at prior jobs who can help with connections? (Never hurts to ask). I've done my best and decided to take any job even if it doesn't pay as much. I have exhausted all of my prior connections Thanks for the good wishes
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
• paxys 10mo ago
  Remember that for remote roles you are competing against the best talent in the world, and most of them can afford to work for a tiny fraction of what you are asking for. There are still plenty of jobs at local software shops, banks, consulting firms, hospitals, government agencies and more, and you are at the front of the line for all of those. A lot of them enforce as little as 2-3 days in the office. Apply there instead.
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    I applied for those(hybrid), still the same reach :(
    • rep_movsd 10mo ago
      Just out of curiosity, what is the reasonable range of pay for an engineer of your caliber in the UK?
      • mariogintili 10mo ago
        hmm it depends really, I go below and above my "market rate" I've come to learn that your salary as an engineer is more directly tied to your company's success rather than your personal outcomes as an engineer. I've seen people padding buttons for £700/day working for large brands I've seen people train open weight models for £350/day trying to ship an MVP. The last permanent role I negotiated had a TC of £160,000/year. I'm open to go down to £90,000/year or even less for the right opportunity As for contract work, my last 3 projects were £600/day, £700/day and £550/day. Again, I can go down for something stable.
        • rvz 10mo ago
          > The last permanent role I negotiated had a TC of £160,000/year. If you want that £160k+/year, you might as well either go to a quant firm like Citadel or Jane Street (But there is a 0% chance it will be remote) or build your own startup. > I'm open to go down to £90,000/year or even less for the right opportunity £90k is not bad, but not the best either, but anything higher than 120k in the UK means you lose 45% of that. But the risk is that someone else will go even lower than your offer until the role can be done internally by another person using an AI agent. The point is, most businesses that are non-quant and non-big tech, non-big AI do not want to pay the extortionate level of taxes in the UK and it makes SWEs in the UK look very expensive and the jobs + office move off-shore.
• AREO_Marius 10mo ago
  @Mario - I looked for contact details in your profile but did not find any. We are currently hiring senior Rails engineers, fully remote in Europe (see an older job ad here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923191 EDIT and a current one here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466732). Please feel free to reach out, and then we can see if there is a good match.
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    Thanks Marius! Here's my contact details https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/ https://github.com/shellandbull https://github.com/shellandbull I'll send an application over. my contact email is code.mario.gintili [at] gmail [dot] com
    • AREO_Marius 10mo ago
      Perfect, I just sent you an email. Looking forward!
• chvid 10mo ago
  Stop chasing remote roles - show up at the office and then maybe go remote after a while.
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    I'm open to be partially onsite
    • ecshafer 10mo ago
      Beggars can't be choosers. If you are having the worst career winter of your life shouldn't you be taking whatever you can get? Whether its 5 days a week in office or full remote or anything in between?
      • mariogintili 10mo ago
        I'm no longer in a location where is easy to commute to a major city. I can't choose to get a job in a big city anymore that's 5 days a week
        • bgar 10mo ago
          I empathize with this cause circumstances often force us to move to a less than ideal location, but with everyone doing RTO again since 2 or 3 years ago, you slashed a huge percentage of the job opportunities out there.
    • chvid 10mo ago
      Just stop asking to work remote - you will get the opportunity when it becomes in vogue again.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• TekMol 10mo ago
  Why is Hacker News so interested in regular software jobs? Isn't the idea of the site to "hack" as in thinking outside the box, building your own projects and companies, doing things in interesting new ways?
  • pluc 10mo ago
    Because having a golden cushion on which to rest and create isn't something most people have.
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    That was back then when we were in our infancy as an industry and everything was about spitting out some cool graphics in less than 100 lines of JavaScript Right now(specially looking at the world economy) It's all about getting yourself a nice, stable placement. I haven't stopped hacking away, but I need an income
  • OutOfHere 10mo ago
    Agreed, although the issue is that it's damn difficult to find something real that is at the intersection of: (1) pleasing users, (2) making them pay, (3) actually being useful, (4) being possible to get off the ground without a multi-year investment in time or money, and (5) remaining profitable or even revenue-generating for at least say three years before competition or evolution gets to it. It's a lot easier to hack something nice when you don't have to sell it.
    • mariogintili 10mo ago
      true! I do believe in the 1 man SaaS legends. Any of us could build a little app overnight and watch it succeed. I just don't have the sales/marketing muscle to my efforts
  • throw-the-towel 10mo ago
    There are different kinds of folks on HN. I, for one, just don't have any business ideas worth quitting a job for.
  • 10mo ago
• sam_corgi 10mo ago
  email sam@corgi.insure hiring full stack engineers in london disclaimer: we are 7 days a week in person
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    thanks, email sent
    • sam_corgi 10mo ago
      got it, thanks!
  • polotics 10mo ago
    Hi Sam. As you wrote you are 7 days a week, how many hours is it per week?
    • sam_corgi 10mo ago
      We don't make people punch in and punch out. We give people the flexibility they need to do what they need to do. If we are not taking care of personal errands etc, we're working on something fun. We do get out and do things as a team etc & take breaks when needed lol. Edit: To answer your question I work at least probably 14 hours, but there are times when it's less and times when it's more, depends how hard I can push given the constraints. It varies.
      • polotics 10mo ago
        You work 14 hours per day every single day? What's your fitness regimen?
      • bschmidt197979 10mo ago
        [dead]
  • mancerayder 10mo ago
    >7 days a week in person Is this sarcasm?
• andyjohnson0 10mo ago
  If the op is looking only for remote roles then I'd emphasise that competition for these is extremely high. My advice would be to broaden your search to include hybrid and-in person roles. I wish that rto was being handled with more flexibility and empathy, and I appreciate that travelling to work can be very difficult to reconcile with location and parental/caring responsibilities, but this is unfortunately where we are. I'd also recommend looking beyond startups and pure software/tech companies. There are many businesses in eg manufacturing, or in less mainstream locations, that struggle to hire decent devs. For context: I'm a UK-based developer and have recent experience of a fairly substantial period of unemployment. I now have a job with a great business, but also with a substantial commute.
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    > I'd also recommend looking beyond startups and pure software/tech companies. There are many businesses in eg manufacturing, or in less mainstream locations, that struggle to hire decent devs. That's where I'm aiming for. I know there's a million companies that would benefit from my work and can pay well, but they're just not the ones that find you on Linkedin, or post on Hacker News
    • andyjohnson0 10mo ago
      Maybe look for specialist tech-adjacent recruiters on Linkedin: rail, engineering, electronics, etc. Sometimes they get given dev roles to fill because the business is used to dealing with them. Good luck, really. Its a whole new year.
• tayo42 10mo ago
  Still have a job but I'm stuck in a role with no growth and no challenging or even valuable work. Idk how I'm supposed to talk about the last 2 years in interviews and every move up and out. I would have left earlier but it's challenging
  • mariogintili 10mo ago
    I strongly advice you not to leave, this is a hard market
    • tayo42 10mo ago
      Yeah not planning on but idk how to manage future interviews where it looks like I've done nothing significant, not lead projects or did anything notable erc. It looks like I'm coasting. Hopefully future employers are sympathetic to the situation some of us (alot of us?) are in
  • KellyCriterion 10mo ago
    DO NOT quit currently / right now: The job market is more or less crashed. Rather try to reduce hours to 75% if possible, or in the worst case: Smoke a joint in the morning :-D But do not quit right now1
  • sarlalian 10mo ago
    The current job market will probably suck for the next 2-4 years honestly. Over time, people will leave the industry and find other career’s and the market won’t be as heavily impacted as it is now.
• deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
• chvid 10mo ago
  It is happening as a reaction to covid and ai. What covid did to office work lasted many years and now there is finally a reverse reaction where people (not just office managers) are rediscovering that hey we actually get things going if we sit in the same room, at the same time, working on the same problem. AI is a bit like outsourcing / off-shoring. Best results are on tasks that are well-defined, of a fair size, and well-documented. Incidentally the tasks that used to go to someone sitting remote.
• RomanPushkin 10mo ago
  Funny story: in 2025 I interviewed with multiple Ruby/Rails companies in San Francisco. I performed really well in the interviews. For one company, I went through a full on-site interview at their office. And still — no offer. The interview went great. I have ~20 years of experience. I wrote a book about Ruby. I have GitHub repositories with thousands of stars. I have my own successful projects written in Ruby/Rails. I’ve spoken at conferences and contributed a lot to the Ruby/Rails community. I was a perfect match — and I still wasn’t hired. This wasn’t a one-off. The same thing happened with several Ruby/Rails startups. You know what I did next? I switched to Gen/Applied AI. And the difference was huge. The feedback became much better, and salaries were 25–50% higher. The tech itself wasn’t that different — mostly dynamic languages. I had to learn new things, but it took months, not years. I also pushed myself deeper toward understanding AI properly. I genuinely enjoy this space. I started learning the fundamentals and even built my own learning materials (for example, howllmworks.com). You don’t need to go that deep to get hired, but I wanted to. The field is fascinating. What’s funny is that many companies hiring “AI engineers” don’t really know what they’re doing. I’ve had interviews where they openly said: “We don’t really have AI expertise, but we know we need AI.” That’s how things are right now. It’s both good and bad. They can’t really judge your skills properly — but that also means your chances of passing are higher. As for the Ruby/Rails world — I’m honestly very disappointed. The market feels completely saturated. There are too many experienced engineers competing for too few roles. Being good is no longer enough. One company literally told me my interview performance was too good. They suspected I was using AI. That was the feedback. Twenty years of experience, open-source work, a published book — none of that mattered. “You’re too good, and there are too many candidates like you.” That’s how I understood it. I’ve seen this happen repeatedly. It’s not just one bad experience. At this point, I genuinely believe the Ruby/Rails ecosystem is shrinking. The whole “one-person framework” idea that DHH has been promoting made sense years ago, but not anymore. The problems it was solving simply don’t exist in the same way today. With LLMs, the world changed. You take the best tools available. Next.js with standardized React components instead of Stimulus and Turbo. Hosted auth instead of rolling your own. When I needed to integrate something like Clerk, I just dropped in a component and moved on. There are tons of ready-made solutions in the React ecosystem. Now compare that to Ruby. Are there modern AI libraries? Yes, technically. Are they well-maintained? Not really. You’re often dealing with abandonware. LangChain officially supports Python and TypeScript — not Ruby. And like it or not, AI today is happening in Python. The more time you spend clinging to Ruby/Rails, the further behind you get. That’s just reality. My advice is simple: if you can, move on. The opportunity window in AI is wide open right now, but it won’t stay that way forever. 2026 is probably the last really good entry point.
• tennisflyi 10mo ago
  This is the new default lay of the land. Get an internship in college and job right out of it or get fucked
• vonrosen 10mo ago
  [dead]
• igor47 10mo ago
  I'm curious where in the funnel you fall off. Do you get a phone screen? Coding interviews? Or just crickets?
  • gitaarik 10mo ago
    Did you read?
  • mariogintili 9mo ago
    I'm fairly successful at the interview just crickets, I get nothing!
• michaelteter 10mo ago
  I certainly am also. 32 years of professional work. Capable and willing to wear many hats, communicate with people of all walks of life (and neuro-divergencies), and even travel frequently. Over the last two years I have applied to at least 150 jobs. For each application which would accept a cover letter, I wrote one. And I only applied to roles which I really believed I would fit into - I didn't just spray and pray. I think I've had 4-5 companies that I got to interview with. The closest one to hiring ended up choosing another guy who had a little more frontend experience (this was for a backend role). But they said they really liked me. That's great, but it doesn't help :) The rest were usually silent rejections. I'm actually grateful when I receive a rejection email (vs indefinite silence). Along the way, I've built maybe 8 demo projects as part of the application process. I got to show off a few to the companies, and despite delivering what I honestly believe were clean, quality solutions, I didn't get the jobs. Eventually I gave up applying for some months. It's just to demoralizing to keep trying and getting nowhere. Now I build things that make me happy (for no money), like my new web game, Vector Defense -> https://michaelteter.com/vector.html https://michaelteter.com/vector.html I've started applying to companies again. If nothing happens in the next six months, I'll most likely walk away from my tech career and just get a "regular job". Maybe I'll open a gym in Bangkok; they don't have many, and the few decent ones have surprisingly high monthly fees. I could compete; and I love hospitality and providing nice experiences for people. So if anyone wants to partner with me, hit me up!
  • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 10mo ago
    > my new web game, Vector Defense That's kind of a throwback. (I know these are different games.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_TD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_TD
    • michaelteter 9mo ago
      Yeah, the concept popped into my head a few months ago, so I went looking for a game to play. I found and played a lot of Vector TD. No offense to them, but while I liked some things about it, it didn't really match up to my memory of games like that from the past. So this is what spurred me to make my own. Since this was intended to be a weekend project, I stopped myself after several days of effort so I can return to doing "productive" things. But I have two more improvements on the agenda: personal and global high score list, in the old style of just three initials (and maybe let you choose your country flag); and more ambitiously, a map editor and public maps with vote/ranking.
• journal 10mo ago
  You'll find a job eventually, you just have to survive long enough to find one.
• KellyCriterion 10mo ago
  same here on mainland Europe: job market is tanking currently. All big 4 economies here are in trouble, unfortunatel.y
• BergAndCo 10mo ago
  [dead]
• mariogintili 10mo ago
  I'd like to thank everyone for the comments and upvotes, as it stands, I have now been unemployed(while searching) for 3 months. I have decided to make some serious changes to my search and what I do with my spare time. I'll post a follow-up to this.
  • Lapsa 10mo ago
    reminder - there's tech out there capable of reading your mind. capitalism is dead
• valdair3d 10mo ago
  I feel you on this. The market is rough right now, especially for remote roles in the UK/Europe. A few things that helped me and others I know: 1. The "hidden job market" is real - most roles never get posted publicly. LinkedIn connections and warm intros close more doors than cold applications. 2. Consider targeting specific niches where your Rails/Node/Go stack is highly valued. Fintech and healthtech companies often prefer experienced engineers who can ship reliable code over "move fast and break things" types. 3. Don't underestimate smaller companies (50-200 employees). They often pay competitively but get far fewer applications than FAANG-adjacent companies. 4. Your GitHub looks solid. One thing that sometimes helps is having a few short-form technical posts on your own site or blog - it helps establish expertise when hiring managers Google your name. The market will turn. 10+ years of shipping real products is valuable, and companies that recognize execution skills will find you. Keep pushing.
• bschmidt197979 10mo ago
  [dead]
• francis08moses 10mo ago
  [dead]
• eth0up 10mo ago
  "Is anyone else going through the same?" Not even remotely close, but I'm certainly not thriving in any identifiable way. I'm just leaving a comment in hope that things improve. I ain't there (UK) no more, but if I werzle, I'd say: Best wishes from Pill. Good luck and keep pushing! There's something out there, for sure.