Comment by ebiester
16 hours ago
It's interesting that the first thing you see in the comments is "don't contact anyone."
Right now we're in a weird place - if you have a network, you're pretty well off. If your network isn't hiring, or you are early in your career, it's brutal trying to get through the noise.
The truth is that proof of work matters. But the big problem is that proof of work is easy to fake right now. It takes being creative. I get a few emails a month right now. Honestly, I think this isn't going to work at this point - some go to my personal and some go to my professional emails. But what might work?
Look at people who are writing blogs. Is there something interesting on their blog? Is that worth engaging them on first? (I mean, don't waste their time if you aren't interested or if you're going to submarine it the second or third email - someone will feel used - but showing a dual purpose of the email might not be the worst thing and even if they don't have a position or influence on the position, you might have a good conversation.
Are you involved on bluesky/twitter/threads? Are you getting positive engagement? Are you finding ways to make community? It may not get the formal referral but it might make the social referral and give you 30 extra seconds with the resume and a reason to say yes.
>The truth is that proof of work matters. But the big problem is that proof of work is easy to fake right now.
The big shame is that the hardest PoW to fake right now tends to be under NDA's and proprietary codebases. So if you aren't in the position to make major contributions to FOSS in your free time or "code for fun", it feels like a soft reset all over again. As if those yeras in industry mean nothing.
I especially dread the idea of needing to jump on the very doomscrolling places I left at the start of the pandemic just to get a potential lead. My mental health over 2025 was already pretty bottom of the barrel without that.
If you're interested at all in Eastern philosophy, it has helped me survive mentally the past few years of unemployment and unstable work after burning out from a 22 year career.
Highly recommend Alan Watts. If you like audiobooks, I started out on the one titled You're It. I think it was a good starting point.
I struggle with this a bit because while my network isn’t bad - I really can’t stand social network like threads/X etc - I’m not on any social media bar here and LinkedIn.
Do you think investing in bluesky is worth it? I’m in industry but have a PhD ongoing in TTI models so I should probably get on it :/