The number of just straight out NO's I've gotten has been surprising and disheartening. I've been a developer for 20 years and genuinely don't think I've gotten an outright "no" before this year. Usually just no response. I've gotten maybe eight or nine actual rejections this year. It's honestly worse, emotionally.

Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these days is interested in any sort of training.

There have been two gigs I was really excited about that seemed more-or-less exactly what I have spent the past decade doing and they've BOTH actually replied that they didn't think my skills were a good fit. I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it.

Before COVID I would regularly apply for jobs, almost always get them, and decline largely to keep my interview skills fresh.

This last year of looking has been the total opposite. I've applied for umpteen places, and gotten a little bit of email back and forth, and a single interview (it's in a couple days, wish me luck).

> I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it.

The simple answer is that they probably had no intention of hiring you, or anybody, in the first place.

The amount of fake job listings is absurd.

Why do they bother wasting time on interviewing the person though? Or does it never get that far?

Companies can have legal requirements to post the job, but have no intention of hiring a random outsider.

It costs nothing to simulate activity, the costs are incurred on the candidate.

Pipelining, mostly.

It is one trick that allows management to lie to everyone, and to implement downsizing. Fact is that A LOT of US businesses became unsustainable due to the tariffs (which Trump totally did for "US first" and not, I repeat NOT to get an extra tax started for him to spend), the retaliatory tariffs, followed by Trump doing the largest mass-firing in US history, presumably because this is listed in introductory economics textbooks in the chapter "what caused the great depression".

So a LOT of businesses are now in the position that they have to raise prices significantly into the worst market in decades. So they'll get significantly less revenue and they'll have to go into overdrive on saving money. That means no hiring, layoffs, price hikes, shrinkflation, ... the whole thing. They have to do a lot less with a lot less.

How does management respond to this? Well, management generally isn't competent. Their only job is to negotiate, and now that will really be put to the test. The smarter ones know that negotiation doesn't even matter under these circumstances (since it's a fixed pie being divided: someone has to lose). So they're maximizing their runway and getting out. And first, of course, they lie. They tell people even inside companies that they're hiring, even to the point of having interviews. They post job postings, because that's part of doing covert layoffs: they replace full time employees by temporary ones, even interns. They wait with price hikes until they're through inventory. They notice they've signed long-term contracts with Walmart that they cannot fulfill. And so on. So they lie to maintain their reputation for after the crisis (so on their next interview they can believably claim "I could have saved the company, but I found a better opportunity ...").

So I bet we'll be seeing a LOT of managers, especially higher up, suddenly decide they need to find a new job, and when it turns out that doesn't work, take a 2-3 year excuse to take a break.

As for replacing these people with AI: they're not spending ... and AI is expensive. Sure there's startups using AI, but larger companies are just firing people and not replacing them. Certainly they don't see the current period as a good time to change ... anything.

Governments should be "countering the crisis" and hire, according to economics textbooks, and increase social spending with the savings from the decade past ... except ... there are no savings from the decade past. So governments are firing, laying off, saving on healthcare, and so on and so forth. The US obviously has everyone's attention but the UK is doing the same (frankly, worse) and so is the EU.

Trump will be the most desperate manager of all, doing anything and everything he can to delay this from happening until the midterm elections in November, like lowering interest rates. But the thing everyone needs to remember about interest rates: they only lower for a good reason. The problem for Trump is ... either he delays this to beyond November or he becomes a "lame-duck" president, unable to do anything.

Have you tried jobs.now ? In theory those are positions legitimately looking to be filled.

>I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it.

Maybe someone on a visa that can't leave and will take peanuts.

The only silver lining in this mess is that it does seem like this was finally the push for my industry to start seriously pushing for unions. Of course, corporate won't let it come easy but I only see momentum building now.

> Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these days is interested in any sort of training.

No one has the resources left to pay for it, that's the thing. Clients are cutting budgets because no one is buying their stuff, so everyone is looking for seniors and above only, and replacing juniors/intermediates with AI.

Trickle-down ideology is now beginning to eat itself, the ouroboros is complete - turns out, eventually the entire economy will crash down on itself when people can't afford things. Even Henry Ford already knew this...

>> No one has the resources left to pay for it

Record profits reported by tech companies says the opposite. Money are there, but no will to spend them on people.

We had multiple layoffs recently so parent company could report a billion USD in quarterly profits.

I work in a FAANG as a SWE. I'm not the on selecting candidates, but I do interview a lot of them. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a 50+ year old candidate. 99% of the candidates have less than 10 year experience, and are in their 20s or 30s.

So yes, ageism is real. I suppose the company gets away with it by saying they look for candidates with 3-10 years of experience?

At that stage, I think I would pass Leetcode with 2-3 months of practice, and I don't mind putting the work if this is what it takes. I'm just not sure I'd be given the chance.

Being overqualified is indeed a real phenomenom. Employers can think your too expensive, or that your desperatem and that you might not stick around long. All valid concerns.

Yeah, once you hit 50 the wall is real.

You need to maximise your earnings during your 30s and 40s to be able to just do contracting, etc. then.

What’s admirable is that you’ve actually applied to jobs below your pay grade. Most people won’t because doing that grind in your 40s is actually hard especially if you have kids.

So what these people do if they can't find a job?

Were you flexible with re-location or you were looking just at you current region or it is that bad no matter your flexibility?

Do you have a thesis for why that might be happening? Ageism? Overqualification? The next generation of hiring managers not knowing what to do with you? Past experience being deemed irrelevant to modern SWE problems? Is it all just a bad market? Your profile strikes me as the last one that would struggle with landing a gig.

Uncertain outlooks in general + why hire people if AI soon will solve everything everywhere all at once?

My brother who is nearly 50 and has worked in tech since the dot com boom, got laid off in January and couldn't find a job until last week. This job, too, was just a contractual position at his old Fortune 50 firm.

He has an engineering degree from one of the top 5 engineering colleges in India, a Master's from one of the top 5 engineering schools in the US. He built some of the systems that form the foundation of the entire call center industry.

And now he pivoted to GenAI and has dozens of very impressive public projects including some heavily starred open source repos

And yet...nothing.

Ageism in the tech industry has never been worse

> 7 round interview with NBCUniversal in 2023

Name and shame, this should be the norm. People are too shy on this subject. Thank you.