> On one level I recognise that I have male privilege, but men do face their own problems, especially around midlife.
Male priviledge for 90% of males in Europe is non zero probability of being drafted and losing limbs or having face melted. In some regions the probability is approaching 100%. While underprivileged females will be free to leave the country and receive refugee benefits. Please stop mentioning it because it's spiralling quickly into support for extremist parties.
> Long-term unemployment is all-consuming; it prevents you from moving on and doing what you want to do with your life. You see all your friends on social media who are still employed and going out and doing amazing things.
Actually only then you finally have time to do what you want. The really cool stuff, not takeaway coffee, going to cinema, or one week vacation. Assuming you were saving and investing while employed. Social media posts of what employed people are doing while on annual leave is particular form of cynical tragedy.
I'm a former lead software engineer, currently looking for a job for more than two years. What I have learned is that resumes don't work anymore. It only matters who you know personally and who knows you. That's the thing recruiters will never tell you.
I don't believe this. My latest job hunt was about 6 months ago, I had to stop applying for jobs I got so many callbacks. My CV is decent but hardly outstanding, good experience but no name-brand companies.
I saw another comment where you said you are in Russia, my guess is that is the reason. Not like there's much consumer tech investment flowing there at the moment.
There are only several hundred tech companies in SoCal, plus another several hundred entertainment, aerospace, biotech, and defense companies...
Right now, entertainment in SoCal is hurting pretty bad but the other 4 industries have hundreds of open job positions for engineering positions. The caveat is that you have to be an "engineer" and not just a "coder."
In California and haven’t worked either. Interviews are not enough, as they’ll look for any reason to not hire, even with referral. They’re easy to find as no one is perfect.
You're delusional and/or lying. I graduated from the top university for CS in my country and perhaps Europe, haven't checked in a while. My grades were not great but decent. Still I was struggling to get interviews. I thought I was doing something wrong so I consulted the career department of my uni but it still took me a year to find a well paying but kinda shitty legacy software job
So, that was basically the lesson that my mom taught me in 1984. Right after I graduated high school and entered university. At the time, she had already been employed by the university HR department for a number of years, and she was now the official job placement expert on campus. She ran their entire Job Location Program. I even designed a JLP logo for her, while I was in high school.
The rule then was, 90% of all placements come from personal networks — people you know, or people that they can put you in touch with. Of the remainder, 90% came from headhunters that were sent out to do a specific job of finding a specific person for a specific role. That left just 1% of the total to be covered by things like listings in newspapers, job placement programs, etc…. Yes, she understood intensely how small her role was in this process. Which is what made her the expert she was.
She taught me that you always have to have your résumé ready and polished, which is hard for people who are in college and don’t have any real job experience. But you’re going to have to knock on a lot of doors, and meet a lot of people, before you’re likely to be hired.
So far as I have been able to determine, those rules haven’t really changed since. If anything, they’ve gotten worse. Especially with spam, junk listings, and AI slop.
Yes, I have a LinkedIn Profile which I have tried to polish up as best I can, but I know it needs more work. And I’m going to have to go knock on a lot of doors and meet a lot of people, before I can reasonably hope to be hired for my next job. And in the meanwhile, I’m going to be getting some official career counseling and advice.
But personal networking is key. Get yourself out there at local meetups. Get yourself out there in online groups that are doing interesting things. Get your name out there as THE expert in the things you care about. Make them knock down your door, headhunting you for their job they desperately need to fill.
This makes me appreciate being in a stable relationship.
My wife and I have completely different careers, over the years it happened again and again that one of us would be better positioned than the other but the status quo remained stable.
I think in a world of machines, human relationships will be much more important.
"In my last role in communications and public relations, I was earning £48,000 a year ... I have about 25 years’ experience as a journalist and in communications and PR"
The UK has been in a white collar recession for much of this decade.
Brexit and the rise of GCCs in the CEE and Asia means a number of professional jobs that would have been in the UK are now shifting to Warsaw, Prague, Bangalore, Manila, etc.
"I think what shook things up in my 40s was the fact that I took a career break at 43 to study for a Master of Science in Paleobiology for a year..."
Good part of it is because the salaries are too high because everything is crazy expensive.
The second thing is that people do put many restrictions.
We had a position that we had a bare minimum bar but we said that we needed the candidates to understand well few topics and they simply said they wouldn't.
I am not saying like "become specialist in Fortran in 3 weeks"
But more like, learn SQL and database well enough to not make a 1 Million USD query and we heard, more than once, that they did not want to learn SQL and if they needed they would just quit the process.
It sucks for everyone folks. This AI bubble will soon burst. People are already seeing diminished returns with each new model and AI is not returning value as everyone promised.
Now it is the hard part which is a bunch of suit guys trying to excuse that no one could foresee it was going to happen like everyone said it would
Except it doesn't work that way. You can't meaningfully learn a skill to get a job because you will have no experience in the skill and potential employers are looking for people with experience in whatever skills they are asking for.
Employers have become very good at finding means of screening out older workers without exposing them to charges of discrimination.
I'm so tired. From the 2008 recession, into a short break in mid 2010s, into a pandemic, into an AI revolution, my career is a series of managing catastrophic changes. I was a sold a lie by society and universities that studying some field, i.e. CS, meant some kind of meaningful progression. In reality it is all about profit, and selling products. I guess I was too naive to be that cynical, but I'm realizing now, it's literally all about selling product and making money and nobody gives a shit about expertise, craft, or specializations.
> In reality it is all about profit, and selling products.
All business endeavours are about profit and sales.
I don’t know why people in tech keep thinking they are special in this sense.
There is the widespread meme about getting out of IT and going farming or sone variation of that. Do you think farmers actually live free of the thoughts of profits and sales?
It isn't about being special. It's about what exactly I'm supposed to optimize and maximize as a skill in order to be successful. It turns out the only right answer is business and marketing skills. So then what's the point of learning anything beyond surface level? Especially now with AI, but this was true before as well going back probably many decades.
> All business endeavors are about profit and sales.
This is the kind of simplistic thinking that has destroyed the modern world. Businesses are just groups of people, and most people don't care about the endless optimization of profit and sales -- they care about having purpose and they want their work to contribute back to society in a way that benefits their community.
The problem is we've empowered "entrepreneurs" (mostly narcissists) who espouse this form of one-dimensional thinking because they're the best at consolidating money for their own benefit (and the benefit of others who directly help them).
> All business endeavors are about profit and sales.
You say this because to you business is a game about winners and losers, and in your interpretation you believe all players should simply work to maximize their "points" at the expense of everyone and everything around them. This form of thinking only comes from "entrepreneur" types who are actively destroying the world and the very fabric of our society for their own personal gain.
> It’s not even about cynicism… it’s just reality.
It's only reality because we've allowed a small group of selfish cynics to take control of our society.
> Do you think farmers actually live free of the thoughts of profits and sales?
You can escape the market by becoming a subsistence farmer or trying to join the hunter-gatherers living on Sentinel Island. Might involve a reduction in standard of living though.
He said 'all about profit', not 'about profit'. There's a difference between building a great, innovative, useful product and making a profit from that vs literally enshittifying/worsening an existing product (or just building total crap that came out of some illiterate MBA's ass in general) and aggressively leaning into marketing, dark patterns narrative control, etc.
These days it seems like most of SV and US tech industry in general is mostly the latter. This is a big reason why US tech companies can't compete with China anymore - VCs and big tech have captured the US market 10 years ago, and have been just squeezing it for profit ever since.
I worked a general public facing job that I will not describe in detail lest I doxx myself, but you can imagine it as basically tourist facing retail. I did this for 10+ years. I was already deeply cynical by the time I went to school for CS, and yes, it was for money, and I still prefer it to the alternatives.
The world of menial jobs is absolutely miserable, depressing, and will grind you to a pulp - it's nearly impossible to get out of, by design.
It's perfectly ok to study CS for money. My point is that the job market in general doesn't really care about all this technical specialization, despite them signaling this over and over with CS degrees and technical interviews. At the end of the day all careers have to do with making more profit for the business, not specializing in some skill.
Your knowledge and experience is super valuable. Your bosses and the typical parasites running the typical SV tech company do not have the knowledge and experience you do .
You shouldn't be discouraged just because they don't understand or value your skills and expertise - you can build a product and/or company from the ground up by leveraging your skills and using AI to fill in the rest. They cannot do the same thing.
Time to stop worrying about the fact that you can't serve these clowns and time to start building.
> you can build a product and/or company from the ground up
The MBAs can. Engineers can write a program, spend 5 years polishing it and convert maybe 2 paying users. The "just start a business" is the "learn to code" advice of the 21st century. It's not a panacea, or a viable path for most engineers to return to the career they had before.
Live below your means and max your savings and investment to FIRE out of the workforce as soon as possible, because you have no control over when you will be made permanently redundant by your age or employers unwilling to hire. The fix is a permanent jobs program to offer jobs to those who want one who cannot find one in the private market, will that fix come? Unlikely. If you cannot find a job, you're simply SOL in the current socioeconomic and political system configuration.
Assuming the above, best case, you work as long as you want to work (until retirement and/or death). Worst case, you're not in poverty when you're no longer able to find work. "It is what it is."
The advice you gave, while not wrong, is retroactive. I think the OP is asking for advice while already in this predicament, not preemptively.
Also, huge swaths of the younger populations can't do this at all because lots of them are not even given the opportunity to work a job (either any job, or a job that will allow them to have any noticeable amount of savings while remaining housed). This will only get worse, the door is already shut for some people.
This was among the best advice the man who raised me ever offered.
Decades later, I still live (alone, thankfully!) in a shithole rental without health insurance in a mid-sized USA metro, for less than $2000/month (all expenses). No contracts, cash only; I own my car; no cell phone/email/subscriptions.
My savings grow silently and (immensely &) although my current living arrangement isn't ideal, it is easy. Money unfortunately is among few door-openers for strangers in new cities, you just have to know how to live lesserly.
Previously, my IBEW data center experience allowed me to save/invest enough that I don't have to work any more than extremely part-time, which is how I continue choosing to live. Needing benefits will eventually bring me back into full-time employment, which I dread, existentially...
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This isn't a lifestyle that anybody with dependants nor romantic interests could easily manage – I've dated two women in the past decade, and they were both eccentrics (as well). But I live well (to my own enjoyments): haven't set an alarm clock in many many many many years...
I think that the author's doom was probably taking a career break to get a hobby degree.
There's nothing wrong with self-cultivation and education, but such breaks are risky even if you're doing them as part of an approved sabbatical. You need to go into them with a backup plan just in case the job market collapses while you're out (switch careers, lean on a strong social network, FIRE, etc.)
Fir most fire gurus the FI part of FIRE mean a bunch of stocks and bonds and etfs in their portfolio. But how would that work if/when the market collapses?
Very, very few people are going to have a social network that does more than get a foot in the door.
Typically, referrals have positive impact like making sure your application gets looked at by a human and possibly tips a "maybe" into the candidate's favor for scheduling a phone screen or moving to the next round of interviews.
There are plenty of very talented people with large networks of former coworkers who will attest to their capabilities and give them referrals, who nonetheless are still struggling to find work.
But obviously this only works when your network has jobs to offer in the first place.
I am a well networked person and I cannot offer any help to the numerous people (who are all great, many former colleagues or even alumni who could slot right in and help us) who are reaching out to me for even just a referral.
My employer has seen record breaking quarters and years and we have nothing open in engineering or even IT or support. In fact, I can already smell the blood in the water from the layoffs that are surely coming, probably shortly into 2027.
The kind of nepotism that gets you a job via your friend is mostly gone. I’m sure some high up executives or the ceo or board can still do that for their network but the most people can do nowadays is give you a referral and that barely even counts for anything nowadays.
I had two friends refer me for bog standard senior engineer positions with a stack I had experience with and they ghosted me with no explanation to my friends.
My other friends in faangs say if they refer someone they’re not allowed to be involved in the hiring process at all.
Ive lately experienced that asking for 100% office onsite time is rising eye brows with many people:
I hate remote work since Covid, I want an office, leave my appartment, meet colleagues.
But it looks like Im by far the minority, if I remember recent discussions?
The covid experience for corporate is that they can save money by downsizing the office, reducing leases and maintenance costs. In my experience this was followed by increased in-office requirements, such that you are then competing for space.
There is always an internal tension between what works and what they can cut. They will tend to err on the side of cutting too much, in order to meet cost reduction goals, and then correct in order to meet production goals. In control theory we recognize this as not optimal.
Most remote workers will also tell you they do not hate on-site. Being at the office, meeting co-workers is great for mental health.
What's not great is schools end in the afternoon, young children can't be left alone at home. What about a sick kid at home? These are real problems that our society has washed it's hands off expecting people to 'figure it out'.
Also spending an hour in commute is no fun, more so if you are a family person.
My issue with RTO is a lot of folks are working for international companies with teams spread all over the world. Sure, I can go back to the office... but I work with literally no one there on a day to day basis. I'll be going to a hot swap desk spot to take meetings on Teams all day anyway. Makes zero sense.
Most of my Gen-Z colleagues feel the same way. They hated the isolation of the lockdowns and want to be able to go into the office and meet people every day. Some of them are terrified of working alone because of phobias developed during the lockdowns.
Amongst the older crowd, those with families prefer remote schedules but otherwise the preference is for hybrid for the balance between social interaction and freedom.
The vast, vast majority of RTO doesn't include any sort of office. You're lucky to get a permanent desk these days. The new hotness are hot swap desks. Just grab the first available work surface in a completely open office environment so you can take your Teams calls and still not interact with anyone in the office.
Around me everything is at least hybrid, with nobody complaining if you want full time on-site. More and more companies are moving back to on-site full time.
From my POV (jaded early-40s tech dropout, electrician); the joke on jobsites back when Andrew Yang campaigned (Presidentially with UBI as a platform policy) was:
>We're either going to have to have Universal Basic Income, or send a bunch of young men off to die in foreign wars – and leadership won't ever voluntarily implement UBI, so I guess it's time for a bunch of dudes to die.
[here we are, six year later]
Maybe the datacenter jobsites are a bit too morbid, but I was really hoping that UBI would've been possible (by now), one pandemic later. We even got (surprise MFers!) LLMs to help with re-distributions... and all we got was a trillionaire!
Will AI create abundance for everyone though? I can certainly see how it would benefit both business owners (no more annoying office employees!) and blue collar workers (cheap professional services for everyone!), but it's hard to see how it would benefit most white collar middle class folks, who spend most of their time moving information around.
My guess based on previous transitions is that the "net new jobs" will benefit the next generation, not the current one.
The owners of these companies would be the ones taking hammers to the machines if UBI was ever more than a wild pipe dream being suggested by unpopular political aspirants.
They are addicted to wealth and aren’t willing to share.
>owners of these companies would be the ones taking hammers to the machines if UBI was ever more than a wild pipe dream
I was a union sparkie (IBEW) early in my electrician career, and it always surprised me just how much money companies will spend to break any attempts at unionization – I live near USA's only VW facility, and they recently got their Union (3rd attempt in decades) – millions and millions of dollars – leading one to ponder the great question:
"Why would companies spend so much money on union-busting (often more than membership would cost!) if it weren't to their advantage to do so?
Healthcare is still considered a "communist" opinion for a significant percentage of Americans. There are politicians in the current administration that think children shouldn't have free lunch at school.
> On one level I recognise that I have male privilege, but men do face their own problems, especially around midlife.
Male priviledge for 90% of males in Europe is non zero probability of being drafted and losing limbs or having face melted. In some regions the probability is approaching 100%. While underprivileged females will be free to leave the country and receive refugee benefits. Please stop mentioning it because it's spiralling quickly into support for extremist parties.
> Long-term unemployment is all-consuming; it prevents you from moving on and doing what you want to do with your life. You see all your friends on social media who are still employed and going out and doing amazing things.
Actually only then you finally have time to do what you want. The really cool stuff, not takeaway coffee, going to cinema, or one week vacation. Assuming you were saving and investing while employed. Social media posts of what employed people are doing while on annual leave is particular form of cynical tragedy.
[delayed]
I'm a former lead software engineer, currently looking for a job for more than two years. What I have learned is that resumes don't work anymore. It only matters who you know personally and who knows you. That's the thing recruiters will never tell you.
I don't believe this. My latest job hunt was about 6 months ago, I had to stop applying for jobs I got so many callbacks. My CV is decent but hardly outstanding, good experience but no name-brand companies.
I saw another comment where you said you are in Russia, my guess is that is the reason. Not like there's much consumer tech investment flowing there at the moment.
This is the first I have heard of an experience like this. To what to you attribute your success?
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My dad is in his 60s and is still landing interviews (even in big tech) with his resume and no networking.
Are you actually up to date on your skills and in a tech hub?
Are you expecting remote first? If so you have to change your expectations - remote first is only for known entities now.
Edit: You live in Russia. No one will hire you out of risks of sanctions. Your only option is to leave like other Russians in your shoes.
Edit 2: The risk of secondary sanctions for Western and Dollar/Euro transacting businesses only began in 2024-25.
This is why I don't buy many of the "woe is I" stories on HN. Dig a little and massive red flags come up.
Edit 3: "mixmastamyk"
You're in SoCal. Not a tech hub.
Tech is now back to being clustered in the Bay, Seattle, NYC, and Austin with 2-3 days in the office being expected.
You're in SoCal. Not a tech hub.
There are only several hundred tech companies in SoCal, plus another several hundred entertainment, aerospace, biotech, and defense companies...
Right now, entertainment in SoCal is hurting pretty bad but the other 4 industries have hundreds of open job positions for engineering positions. The caveat is that you have to be an "engineer" and not just a "coder."
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Well, I can share my resume if you'd like to take a look at it.
Also, I'm not in a tech hub. I'm based in Russia and looking for a remote job worldwide.
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In California and haven’t worked either. Interviews are not enough, as they’ll look for any reason to not hire, even with referral. They’re easy to find as no one is perfect.
You're delusional and/or lying. I graduated from the top university for CS in my country and perhaps Europe, haven't checked in a while. My grades were not great but decent. Still I was struggling to get interviews. I thought I was doing something wrong so I consulted the career department of my uni but it still took me a year to find a well paying but kinda shitty legacy software job
So, that was basically the lesson that my mom taught me in 1984. Right after I graduated high school and entered university. At the time, she had already been employed by the university HR department for a number of years, and she was now the official job placement expert on campus. She ran their entire Job Location Program. I even designed a JLP logo for her, while I was in high school.
The rule then was, 90% of all placements come from personal networks — people you know, or people that they can put you in touch with. Of the remainder, 90% came from headhunters that were sent out to do a specific job of finding a specific person for a specific role. That left just 1% of the total to be covered by things like listings in newspapers, job placement programs, etc…. Yes, she understood intensely how small her role was in this process. Which is what made her the expert she was.
She taught me that you always have to have your résumé ready and polished, which is hard for people who are in college and don’t have any real job experience. But you’re going to have to knock on a lot of doors, and meet a lot of people, before you’re likely to be hired.
So far as I have been able to determine, those rules haven’t really changed since. If anything, they’ve gotten worse. Especially with spam, junk listings, and AI slop.
Yes, I have a LinkedIn Profile which I have tried to polish up as best I can, but I know it needs more work. And I’m going to have to go knock on a lot of doors and meet a lot of people, before I can reasonably hope to be hired for my next job. And in the meanwhile, I’m going to be getting some official career counseling and advice.
But personal networking is key. Get yourself out there at local meetups. Get yourself out there in online groups that are doing interesting things. Get your name out there as THE expert in the things you care about. Make them knock down your door, headhunting you for their job they desperately need to fill.
This makes me appreciate being in a stable relationship.
My wife and I have completely different careers, over the years it happened again and again that one of us would be better positioned than the other but the status quo remained stable.
I think in a world of machines, human relationships will be much more important.
"In my last role in communications and public relations, I was earning £48,000 a year ... I have about 25 years’ experience as a journalist and in communications and PR"
The UK has been in a white collar recession for much of this decade.
Brexit and the rise of GCCs in the CEE and Asia means a number of professional jobs that would have been in the UK are now shifting to Warsaw, Prague, Bangalore, Manila, etc.
"I think what shook things up in my 40s was the fact that I took a career break at 43 to study for a Master of Science in Paleobiology for a year..."
Yep, that likely played a role.
It is very hard to hire in the UK.
Good part of it is because the salaries are too high because everything is crazy expensive. The second thing is that people do put many restrictions. We had a position that we had a bare minimum bar but we said that we needed the candidates to understand well few topics and they simply said they wouldn't. I am not saying like "become specialist in Fortran in 3 weeks" But more like, learn SQL and database well enough to not make a 1 Million USD query and we heard, more than once, that they did not want to learn SQL and if they needed they would just quit the process.
It sucks for everyone folks. This AI bubble will soon burst. People are already seeing diminished returns with each new model and AI is not returning value as everyone promised.
Now it is the hard part which is a bunch of suit guys trying to excuse that no one could foresee it was going to happen like everyone said it would
Haha if someone paid me and assured I would use it in daily tasks, I would finally have the motivation to learn SQL thoroughly.
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Except it doesn't work that way. You can't meaningfully learn a skill to get a job because you will have no experience in the skill and potential employers are looking for people with experience in whatever skills they are asking for.
Employers have become very good at finding means of screening out older workers without exposing them to charges of discrimination.
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https://archive.is/20261021112112/https://www.telegraph.co.u...
I'm so tired. From the 2008 recession, into a short break in mid 2010s, into a pandemic, into an AI revolution, my career is a series of managing catastrophic changes. I was a sold a lie by society and universities that studying some field, i.e. CS, meant some kind of meaningful progression. In reality it is all about profit, and selling products. I guess I was too naive to be that cynical, but I'm realizing now, it's literally all about selling product and making money and nobody gives a shit about expertise, craft, or specializations.
> In reality it is all about profit, and selling products.
All business endeavours are about profit and sales.
I don’t know why people in tech keep thinking they are special in this sense.
There is the widespread meme about getting out of IT and going farming or sone variation of that. Do you think farmers actually live free of the thoughts of profits and sales?
It’s not even about cynicism… it’s just reality.
It isn't about being special. It's about what exactly I'm supposed to optimize and maximize as a skill in order to be successful. It turns out the only right answer is business and marketing skills. So then what's the point of learning anything beyond surface level? Especially now with AI, but this was true before as well going back probably many decades.
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> All business endeavors are about profit and sales.
This is the kind of simplistic thinking that has destroyed the modern world. Businesses are just groups of people, and most people don't care about the endless optimization of profit and sales -- they care about having purpose and they want their work to contribute back to society in a way that benefits their community.
The problem is we've empowered "entrepreneurs" (mostly narcissists) who espouse this form of one-dimensional thinking because they're the best at consolidating money for their own benefit (and the benefit of others who directly help them).
> All business endeavors are about profit and sales.
You say this because to you business is a game about winners and losers, and in your interpretation you believe all players should simply work to maximize their "points" at the expense of everyone and everything around them. This form of thinking only comes from "entrepreneur" types who are actively destroying the world and the very fabric of our society for their own personal gain.
> It’s not even about cynicism… it’s just reality.
It's only reality because we've allowed a small group of selfish cynics to take control of our society.
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> Do you think farmers actually live free of the thoughts of profits and sales?
You can escape the market by becoming a subsistence farmer or trying to join the hunter-gatherers living on Sentinel Island. Might involve a reduction in standard of living though.
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He said 'all about profit', not 'about profit'. There's a difference between building a great, innovative, useful product and making a profit from that vs literally enshittifying/worsening an existing product (or just building total crap that came out of some illiterate MBA's ass in general) and aggressively leaning into marketing, dark patterns narrative control, etc.
These days it seems like most of SV and US tech industry in general is mostly the latter. This is a big reason why US tech companies can't compete with China anymore - VCs and big tech have captured the US market 10 years ago, and have been just squeezing it for profit ever since.
I worked a general public facing job that I will not describe in detail lest I doxx myself, but you can imagine it as basically tourist facing retail. I did this for 10+ years. I was already deeply cynical by the time I went to school for CS, and yes, it was for money, and I still prefer it to the alternatives.
The world of menial jobs is absolutely miserable, depressing, and will grind you to a pulp - it's nearly impossible to get out of, by design.
It's perfectly ok to study CS for money. My point is that the job market in general doesn't really care about all this technical specialization, despite them signaling this over and over with CS degrees and technical interviews. At the end of the day all careers have to do with making more profit for the business, not specializing in some skill.
Your knowledge and experience is super valuable. Your bosses and the typical parasites running the typical SV tech company do not have the knowledge and experience you do .
You shouldn't be discouraged just because they don't understand or value your skills and expertise - you can build a product and/or company from the ground up by leveraging your skills and using AI to fill in the rest. They cannot do the same thing.
Time to stop worrying about the fact that you can't serve these clowns and time to start building.
> you can build a product and/or company from the ground up
The MBAs can. Engineers can write a program, spend 5 years polishing it and convert maybe 2 paying users. The "just start a business" is the "learn to code" advice of the 21st century. It's not a panacea, or a viable path for most engineers to return to the career they had before.
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Many of us will face this issue. What's the fix? What should we do now to prepare?
Live below your means and max your savings and investment to FIRE out of the workforce as soon as possible, because you have no control over when you will be made permanently redundant by your age or employers unwilling to hire. The fix is a permanent jobs program to offer jobs to those who want one who cannot find one in the private market, will that fix come? Unlikely. If you cannot find a job, you're simply SOL in the current socioeconomic and political system configuration.
Assuming the above, best case, you work as long as you want to work (until retirement and/or death). Worst case, you're not in poverty when you're no longer able to find work. "It is what it is."
The advice you gave, while not wrong, is retroactive. I think the OP is asking for advice while already in this predicament, not preemptively.
Also, huge swaths of the younger populations can't do this at all because lots of them are not even given the opportunity to work a job (either any job, or a job that will allow them to have any noticeable amount of savings while remaining housed). This will only get worse, the door is already shut for some people.
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>Live below your means
This was among the best advice the man who raised me ever offered.
Decades later, I still live (alone, thankfully!) in a shithole rental without health insurance in a mid-sized USA metro, for less than $2000/month (all expenses). No contracts, cash only; I own my car; no cell phone/email/subscriptions.
My savings grow silently and (immensely &) although my current living arrangement isn't ideal, it is easy. Money unfortunately is among few door-openers for strangers in new cities, you just have to know how to live lesserly.
Previously, my IBEW data center experience allowed me to save/invest enough that I don't have to work any more than extremely part-time, which is how I continue choosing to live. Needing benefits will eventually bring me back into full-time employment, which I dread, existentially...
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This isn't a lifestyle that anybody with dependants nor romantic interests could easily manage – I've dated two women in the past decade, and they were both eccentrics (as well). But I live well (to my own enjoyments): haven't set an alarm clock in many many many many years...
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I think that the author's doom was probably taking a career break to get a hobby degree.
There's nothing wrong with self-cultivation and education, but such breaks are risky even if you're doing them as part of an approved sabbatical. You need to go into them with a backup plan just in case the job market collapses while you're out (switch careers, lean on a strong social network, FIRE, etc.)
To be honest I’m skeptical about fire.
Fir most fire gurus the FI part of FIRE mean a bunch of stocks and bonds and etfs in their portfolio. But how would that work if/when the market collapses?
Don't live in the UK nor take extended career breaks without an explicit and formal sabbatical.
The reality is the author worked in PR and Comms in the UK.
25 years in the industry and not building a social network that is able to find you a job somewhere is beyond a generational fumble
Very, very few people are going to have a social network that does more than get a foot in the door.
Typically, referrals have positive impact like making sure your application gets looked at by a human and possibly tips a "maybe" into the candidate's favor for scheduling a phone screen or moving to the next round of interviews.
There are plenty of very talented people with large networks of former coworkers who will attest to their capabilities and give them referrals, who nonetheless are still struggling to find work.
The referral/interview is the point here, if you fumble the interviews its your own fault.
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But obviously this only works when your network has jobs to offer in the first place.
I am a well networked person and I cannot offer any help to the numerous people (who are all great, many former colleagues or even alumni who could slot right in and help us) who are reaching out to me for even just a referral.
My employer has seen record breaking quarters and years and we have nothing open in engineering or even IT or support. In fact, I can already smell the blood in the water from the layoffs that are surely coming, probably shortly into 2027.
The kind of nepotism that gets you a job via your friend is mostly gone. I’m sure some high up executives or the ceo or board can still do that for their network but the most people can do nowadays is give you a referral and that barely even counts for anything nowadays.
I had two friends refer me for bog standard senior engineer positions with a stack I had experience with and they ghosted me with no explanation to my friends.
My other friends in faangs say if they refer someone they’re not allowed to be involved in the hiring process at all.
In other words, autistics should simply go away.
They seemed to have managed pre-internet somehow, so they will probably have to go back to something like that
Ive lately experienced that asking for 100% office onsite time is rising eye brows with many people: I hate remote work since Covid, I want an office, leave my appartment, meet colleagues.
But it looks like Im by far the minority, if I remember recent discussions?
The covid experience for corporate is that they can save money by downsizing the office, reducing leases and maintenance costs. In my experience this was followed by increased in-office requirements, such that you are then competing for space.
There is always an internal tension between what works and what they can cut. They will tend to err on the side of cutting too much, in order to meet cost reduction goals, and then correct in order to meet production goals. In control theory we recognize this as not optimal.
Most remote workers will also tell you they do not hate on-site. Being at the office, meeting co-workers is great for mental health.
What's not great is schools end in the afternoon, young children can't be left alone at home. What about a sick kid at home? These are real problems that our society has washed it's hands off expecting people to 'figure it out'.
Also spending an hour in commute is no fun, more so if you are a family person.
My issue with RTO is a lot of folks are working for international companies with teams spread all over the world. Sure, I can go back to the office... but I work with literally no one there on a day to day basis. I'll be going to a hot swap desk spot to take meetings on Teams all day anyway. Makes zero sense.
That's not weird.
Most of my Gen-Z colleagues feel the same way. They hated the isolation of the lockdowns and want to be able to go into the office and meet people every day. Some of them are terrified of working alone because of phobias developed during the lockdowns.
Amongst the older crowd, those with families prefer remote schedules but otherwise the preference is for hybrid for the balance between social interaction and freedom.
The vast, vast majority of RTO doesn't include any sort of office. You're lucky to get a permanent desk these days. The new hotness are hot swap desks. Just grab the first available work surface in a completely open office environment so you can take your Teams calls and still not interact with anyone in the office.
Around me everything is at least hybrid, with nobody complaining if you want full time on-site. More and more companies are moving back to on-site full time.
Here on HN we're definitely a minority, but in the real world, saying you want to be in the office isn't that weird.
Yeah, according to the downvote-count, I guess you are right :-D
The point is making sausages. Making an extra building and adding an extra car to rush hour has to be worth it.
Is it because companies have scaled down their office space do you think?
Paywall.
Not if you disable JavaScript.
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There will be more net new jobs out there thanks AI creating abundance.
Universal Basic (and High) Income will most likely ease this transition.
There will not be any universal income. That's a discourse so people don't act early on it despite the hundreds of problems already found.
Unfortunately I agree with your assessment.
From my POV (jaded early-40s tech dropout, electrician); the joke on jobsites back when Andrew Yang campaigned (Presidentially with UBI as a platform policy) was:
>We're either going to have to have Universal Basic Income, or send a bunch of young men off to die in foreign wars – and leadership won't ever voluntarily implement UBI, so I guess it's time for a bunch of dudes to die.
[here we are, six year later]
Maybe the datacenter jobsites are a bit too morbid, but I was really hoping that UBI would've been possible (by now), one pandemic later. We even got (surprise MFers!) LLMs to help with re-distributions... and all we got was a trillionaire!
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Will AI create abundance for everyone though? I can certainly see how it would benefit both business owners (no more annoying office employees!) and blue collar workers (cheap professional services for everyone!), but it's hard to see how it would benefit most white collar middle class folks, who spend most of their time moving information around.
My guess based on previous transitions is that the "net new jobs" will benefit the next generation, not the current one.
OP's issue isn't an AI issue though - it's a "working in PR&Comms in a relatively stagnant economy" issue.
The owners of these companies would be the ones taking hammers to the machines if UBI was ever more than a wild pipe dream being suggested by unpopular political aspirants.
They are addicted to wealth and aren’t willing to share.
>owners of these companies would be the ones taking hammers to the machines if UBI was ever more than a wild pipe dream
I was a union sparkie (IBEW) early in my electrician career, and it always surprised me just how much money companies will spend to break any attempts at unionization – I live near USA's only VW facility, and they recently got their Union (3rd attempt in decades) – millions and millions of dollars – leading one to ponder the great question:
"Why would companies spend so much money on union-busting (often more than membership would cost!) if it weren't to their advantage to do so?
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That's delusional.
2 days ago I wrote a piece about how we think about jobs: starting with translators, then programmers then mathematicians, see https://rudolf.observer/en/posts/i-was-not-a-programmer-afte...
Not to mention how naive it is to think UBI would work.
Healthcare is still considered a "communist" opinion for a significant percentage of Americans. There are politicians in the current administration that think children shouldn't have free lunch at school.
But, somehow, they will implement UBI.