"In my last role in communications and public relations, I was earning £48,000 a year ..."
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.
We were hiring for a very well paid position and naturally we were expecting certain skills. But even though we were quiet lenient on the skills we required some skills to be there.
I would say that we probably would want someone around 40s or older for that position applied (or I guess so because we never get to ask those things)
I was in the step before the interview with the CEO of the company, and we approved 10-20% of the candidates. First steps were approved at maybe the same ratio, and the CEO decided not to hire anyone in the UK after trying for a long time.
We had only maybe 6 candidates for the last phase, and out of those, there were only 2 candidates we really thought could be approved.
I will say thought, we were committing a sin that now many companies are doing. We were expecting too much from the same person.
I am sure that one person would be able to hold what that position required but I don't think the professional with that particular set of skills is easily available in the market.
I guess money wise the company did not want to hire more than one person, but if it was me, I would have hired a senior instead of an specialist and a junior.
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."
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.
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'll bet when you read On the Road [0] you were also left wondering "that's it?! that's the entire journey?! how is this boring text so popular?!"
Us crazies ("I'm on the fun side of crazy," I like to profess) rarely stumble across one-another. Write me a postcard: I'll let you squat in the flat next door for a week; if you get chased out, I also have a shed (air conditioned, but 100sqft).
I've been dying to visit Slovenia (or other poorer EU countries). I'll write back – used to couchsurf before endless eternal septembers.
I learned the lesson the hard way through loss of a job for over a year and a foreclosure during the 2008 global financial crisis. For others to learn from my costly experience via my advice is free, I hope the advice lands.
Best wishes. I never thought I'd be worth more than $0.00, again (dropped out of medical school even poorer than when started), but somehow it happened (it's not much, but I live much simplerly: tied to nothing with [almost] zero responsibilities).
Yeah, I am off-grid in rural Colorado. Although I have a couple of side hustles, it would be really thin pickings without some "passive" income and without having set myself up so the big expenses are mostly taken care of.
The last several folks I've dated have been very odd people, mostly living in vehicles.
I don't have health insurance, either. Or indoor plumbing.
But I do play a lot of music, have time to volunteer, and only take work that requires an alarm clock when I feel like it.
>The last several folks I've dated have been very odd people, mostly living in vehicles
It was the simplest of women whom I enjoyed partnering with, most (a mail carrier, a SF bartender that lived in her van and my grow shed). My last two attempts were with an attorney and then a stripper (both women lied professionally for a living... so not much difference IMHO; I met them both as neighbors).
As I enter my seventh year of celibacy, I am strengthened by finally having gotten my earlylife sexuality under control – maybe it's just aging, but I suspect that Tinder-like dating is what ruined courtship (for me, and many others). After a single 2014 "netflix & chill" hookup, I have never utilized such a meat-market app again (happy for the majority that now do; I just think it's devalued both genders, the "fairer sex" more).
/ramble
I have no plans, and hope I can keep this charade ongoing (for at least another decade). After leaving medical school (almost) two decades ago, I have no plans to die within the mercy of our $American $Healthcare $System™. Wishing you continued simplicity in your mountainous adventures (OR and CO are my top US destinations).
> 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.
I unwillingly ended up doing the same: M34, fully paid flat in a fairly large city, no car, no ex wifes, no kids, no debt of any kind. My monthly fixed expenses are just bills (electric power, natural gas, internet), public transportation and groceries. Everything else (very little) is a monthly subscription i can stop paying if something goes wrong.
I save most of my paycheque (around 60-70%).
Can confirm that after splitting up with my last girlfriend my monthly expenses went down dramatically.
I am not F.I.R.E. myself ("financially independent, retire early"), but their general rule is that if you save 2/3rds of your paycheck (and don't change your expenditures), you can retire after about a decade of working.
Congrats on your achievement!
>I unwillingly ended up doing the same
I consider myself among the luckiest people I've ever met, however strange life has been (and simple mine seems, to outsiders). Are you happy or sad about your current simplicity (I cannot tell from your wordchoice "unwillingly")?
> their general rule is that if you save 2/3rds of your paycheque (…), you can retire after about a decade of working.
Yeah I’m around that saving rate but it’s a fairly new thing for me, to which i’m still getting used to. I guess if all goes well i might be able to retire in ten years.
I’ll be honest, i don’t really count on that. I don’t have hard evidence but i have a strong feeling/intuition that advice was valid in the old world but might not be valid in the future world.
> Are you happy or sad about your current simplicity (I cannot tell from your wordchoice "unwillingly")?
I wrote “unwillingly” because my initial plans on how to use the flat i live in and how to employ my current earn rate was radically different than what I’m doing right now. Life took a different turn. Such is life, I guess.
I am not unhappy. I am acutely aware I am moderately successful (i don’t call myself “privileged” or “lucky” - i built my current situation) and that there are a lot of people in much worse situations than i currently am (heck, that was me ten years ago).
I am old enough to understand things come and go. This is a somewhat flat (but stable) part of my life. Happier times will come, sadder time will come, more tumultuous time will come, more exciting times will come: such is life.
Yours is a most-desirable outlook, thank you for sharing.
>advice [that] was valid in the old world but might not be valid in the future world
Nor even now.
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>"When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game." –Toni Morrison (Nobel Author, for Beloved (a novel) [1987])
...quoted with no shade to you...
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>"Just remember Neo, all I'm offering is the Truth" –Matrix
>"They hated him because he told the Truth" –Galatians 4:?
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.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Exactly what I was thinking. Most competent people should just need a way past the ATS filtering bullshit. You have zero ideas what you're being excluded on when you apply through a public application portal. For all you know, the automated system didn't like the font you chose for your resume. There is zero visibility into it and why you're not moving to next rounds. With a foot in the door introduction, you're at least past the thing filtering out 95%+ applicants and can have a better opportunity to actually demonstrate strengths and skills. Most people don't get that much.
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.
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 of 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 already from the layoffs that are surely coming, probably shortly into 2027.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
> 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.
I don't think business should be about just profit and sales, but your point is that it isn't about it right now, which I disagree with. It's not about us choosing to socially support or allow the narcissists to exist. The whole system that's set up here is self-reinforcing. The most greedy, selfish and cruel are empowered to rule over everyone else, because the only things that are rewarded with power and influence are gaining more money. Some people who run businesses with purpose and integrity still exist, but year after year they're getting slowly pushed out, until they will eventually occupy only the most fringe margins of economics and all the air is taken up by the narcissistic giants. In that sense, in 2026 business ventures are all about making as much money as possible and nothing else. Game theory-wise, anyone caving to their morals is playing business wrong and will lose, because that's how the game was constructed. As far as I can see, there is nothing you and I can do.
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.
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.
> 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 or being drafted and losing limbs of have 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 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 really have time to do what you want. Assuming you were saving and investing while employed.
> 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
I agree, but it's an opportunity tempered by how long your runway is compared to the ambiguity of what's next. Sure, if you saved $100k and your ongoing expenses are low, you should generally feel comfortable spending $3k to $10k going on a long-term adventure or something. But if there's no prospect of income when you come back, or 6 months after you come back, or 2 years after, the more money and time you spend enjoying yourself is an opportunity cost as much as it is a financial one. Having spent a shit-ton of my "career" (like half) unemployed, I'm definitely on the side of using your free will the way you wouldn't get to otherwise, but there's this anxiety of not having any answer to "how the fuck am I going to pay to live in the near future? how fast is my clock ticking?"
There's only so many times you can mentally ride out the space in between paid work where there's the real possibility your entire net worth drops to literally zero or negative.
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.
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[ 98.4 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadThe 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.
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
Employers have become very good at finding means of screening out older workers without exposing them to charges of discrimination.
I would say that we probably would want someone around 40s or older for that position applied (or I guess so because we never get to ask those things)
I was in the step before the interview with the CEO of the company, and we approved 10-20% of the candidates. First steps were approved at maybe the same ratio, and the CEO decided not to hire anyone in the UK after trying for a long time.
We had only maybe 6 candidates for the last phase, and out of those, there were only 2 candidates we really thought could be approved.
I will say thought, we were committing a sin that now many companies are doing. We were expecting too much from the same person. I am sure that one person would be able to hold what that position required but I don't think the professional with that particular set of skills is easily available in the market. I guess money wise the company did not want to hire more than one person, but if it was me, I would have hired a senior instead of an specialist and a junior.
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."
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.
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...
Us crazies ("I'm on the fun side of crazy," I like to profess) rarely stumble across one-another. Write me a postcard: I'll let you squat in the flat next door for a week; if you get chased out, I also have a shed (air conditioned, but 100sqft).
I've been dying to visit Slovenia (or other poorer EU countries). I'll write back – used to couchsurf before endless eternal septembers.
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The last several folks I've dated have been very odd people, mostly living in vehicles.
I don't have health insurance, either. Or indoor plumbing.
But I do play a lot of music, have time to volunteer, and only take work that requires an alarm clock when I feel like it.
It was the simplest of women whom I enjoyed partnering with, most (a mail carrier, a SF bartender that lived in her van and my grow shed). My last two attempts were with an attorney and then a stripper (both women lied professionally for a living... so not much difference IMHO; I met them both as neighbors).
As I enter my seventh year of celibacy, I am strengthened by finally having gotten my earlylife sexuality under control – maybe it's just aging, but I suspect that Tinder-like dating is what ruined courtship (for me, and many others). After a single 2014 "netflix & chill" hookup, I have never utilized such a meat-market app again (happy for the majority that now do; I just think it's devalued both genders, the "fairer sex" more).
/ramble
I have no plans, and hope I can keep this charade ongoing (for at least another decade). After leaving medical school (almost) two decades ago, I have no plans to die within the mercy of our $American $Healthcare $System™. Wishing you continued simplicity in your mountainous adventures (OR and CO are my top US destinations).
I unwillingly ended up doing the same: M34, fully paid flat in a fairly large city, no car, no ex wifes, no kids, no debt of any kind. My monthly fixed expenses are just bills (electric power, natural gas, internet), public transportation and groceries. Everything else (very little) is a monthly subscription i can stop paying if something goes wrong.
I save most of my paycheque (around 60-70%).
Can confirm that after splitting up with my last girlfriend my monthly expenses went down dramatically.
I am not F.I.R.E. myself ("financially independent, retire early"), but their general rule is that if you save 2/3rds of your paycheck (and don't change your expenditures), you can retire after about a decade of working.
Congrats on your achievement!
>I unwillingly ended up doing the same
I consider myself among the luckiest people I've ever met, however strange life has been (and simple mine seems, to outsiders). Are you happy or sad about your current simplicity (I cannot tell from your wordchoice "unwillingly")?
Yeah I’m around that saving rate but it’s a fairly new thing for me, to which i’m still getting used to. I guess if all goes well i might be able to retire in ten years.
I’ll be honest, i don’t really count on that. I don’t have hard evidence but i have a strong feeling/intuition that advice was valid in the old world but might not be valid in the future world.
> Are you happy or sad about your current simplicity (I cannot tell from your wordchoice "unwillingly")?
I wrote “unwillingly” because my initial plans on how to use the flat i live in and how to employ my current earn rate was radically different than what I’m doing right now. Life took a different turn. Such is life, I guess.
I am not unhappy. I am acutely aware I am moderately successful (i don’t call myself “privileged” or “lucky” - i built my current situation) and that there are a lot of people in much worse situations than i currently am (heck, that was me ten years ago).
I am old enough to understand things come and go. This is a somewhat flat (but stable) part of my life. Happier times will come, sadder time will come, more tumultuous time will come, more exciting times will come: such is life.
>advice [that] was valid in the old world but might not be valid in the future world
Nor even now.
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>"When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game." –Toni Morrison (Nobel Author, for Beloved (a novel) [1987])
...quoted with no shade to you...
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>"Just remember Neo, all I'm offering is the Truth" –Matrix
>"They hated him because he told the Truth" –Galatians 4:?
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.
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?
Universal Basic (and High) Income will most likely ease this transition.
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!
They are addicted to wealth and aren’t willing to share.
But, somehow, they will implement UBI.
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.
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.
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.
* I target jobs I've got an advantage at (e.g. they use backend Kotlin, which is a bit niche but I have several years experience in).
* I'm friendly, talkative, and if the energy is right, will banter. Doesn't sound like much but being easy to talk to is a massive advantage.
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.
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.
I am a well networked person and I cannot offer any help of 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 already from the layoffs that are surely coming, probably shortly into 2027.
But it looks like Im by far the minority, if I remember recent discussions?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
i never mentioned winners and losers, so please do not put words in my mouth.
any business MUST be profitable to stay in business (in a healthy way).
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.
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.
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.
Male priviledge for 90% of males in Europe is non zero probability or being drafted and losing limbs of have 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 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 really have time to do what you want. Assuming you were saving and investing while employed.
I agree, but it's an opportunity tempered by how long your runway is compared to the ambiguity of what's next. Sure, if you saved $100k and your ongoing expenses are low, you should generally feel comfortable spending $3k to $10k going on a long-term adventure or something. But if there's no prospect of income when you come back, or 6 months after you come back, or 2 years after, the more money and time you spend enjoying yourself is an opportunity cost as much as it is a financial one. Having spent a shit-ton of my "career" (like half) unemployed, I'm definitely on the side of using your free will the way you wouldn't get to otherwise, but there's this anxiety of not having any answer to "how the fuck am I going to pay to live in the near future? how fast is my clock ticking?"
There's only so many times you can mentally ride out the space in between paid work where there's the real possibility your entire net worth drops to literally zero or negative.
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.