I've been casually job hunting for a couple months since rounds of layoffs started at my company.
I've applied to umpteen places and haven't had a single callback. In my twenty+ years working as a dev, this is the worst I've seen it since about 2005.
Laid off from tech and out of work for two years. Thousands of applications. Ran out of contacts, luck, savings, patience, everything. I start my retail career next week earning $12/hr. I can't even provide for my own rent and utilities anymore, even after moving.
I almost can't believe it's come to this, sometimes. But another part of me says that's just ego talking, and anyways plenty of others are also desperate for any and all scraps to feed themselves. Problems like mine aren't difficult to come by.
Recently went on the market after my employer of 16 years went to shit. Got lucky with a hybrid gig that is really WFH 98% of the time after 120 applications and 26 interviews spread out over 15 companies. It was a roller coaster that I do not recommend.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve been employed since 2019, got laid off 3 weeks ago. I’ve applied to over 70 jobs and not a single has replied other than to reject me. This is brutal.
There are no jobs. I've done this for two years now. Bunch of bullshit job ads or referrals to jobs that turn out never got approved internally.
Tech hiring is gone, especially in non-direct-engineering roles such as Product, Design, Project/Program Mgmt etc
Mostly the priorities are not competing. You can and should build more homes but the end goal is to improve utility of land which can further drive prices up thus helping both cases.
You can first build more homes - prices go down and more people come into the city and prices start going back up because of increased economic activity.
Who says home prices must always go up? That's an incredibly dumb thing to say. Houses depreciate. Maybe land prices always go up (maybe over very very long time scales because of currency devaluation) but that's a tiny fraction of the value of a home.
There's no good reason to expect homes to magically appreciate.
There are many places in the US where you can buy a house for less than 50k.
If you want prices to drop in popular areas then we have to make it easy for people to actually build houses and increase supply in popular areas. Of course giving homeowners a say about whether housing is allowed to be built near them, of course they are going to vote against it because they have an incentive to keep prices high.
It's basically illegal to build dense homes in most cities. And despite what people say, the vacancy rate is at historic lows so its not just "people are keeping them empty"
Its a disgrace that people deny the supply crunch we are in
Housing as an investment creates all kinds of terribly misaligned political incentives for local democracies. A land value tax would've helped by shifting people's nest egg from the value of their homes to their accumulated savings from income.
As it is, NIMBYism is likely the biggest driver of rising costs of living, rising homelessness, rising municipal debt, and generational class divides.
Devil's advocate, I don't think we should keep building more housing insofar as it encourages population growth (which it does). Like highways, there will always be barely enough, no matter how many lanes/houses we build.
But population growth is the overwhelming factor in all of our sustainability issues.
I think if you believed 7-8% loans were normal, you might be more likely to bite the bullet and make your move.
But if you believe 3-4% is normal, then you’re probably waiting for rates to return to “normal.”
I think it’s a side effect of years of low interest rates… people are conditioned now to believe low is normal, and they want to hang on until we get back to that.
I was hoping rates would stay “high” for a while which I thought would soften the housing market so I could buy, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Instead of prices dropping, inventory just dried up.
Shows how silly I am for thinking I could time the market.
If you could get a lower price on the higher interest loan, you could pay it off early and save a lot of money. If you have a very high price with low interest, paying it off early has much less impact on the amount paid.
The job market is scary. I can afford a better house right now but am scared shitless I won’t be able to keep my income up. So we stay in our small old house for now, maybe forever.
In a way this is the ultimate goal of conservatism in its literal sense to conserve. The rich want have their place in society safely entrenched at the top, with no risk of people rising from below to displace them. Those at the bottom should stay locked in there and work and toil because that is the natural order of things.
Nobody is switching jobs because if you move you likely have to switch two jobs rather than just one.
Improving mobility means that you have to make a single earner household a viable pathway again. That means bring house prices down and subsidizing childcare.
Which would cost a bunch of billionaires a couple of pennies. So it will never happen.
The problem with building more homes and bringing down the cost of housing isn't a couple billionaires as much as a massive geriatric class of NIMBY homeowners.
I'm surprised you were downvoted because it is a huge difference with previous generation. Its also a reason people move to big cities because its easy to get a variety of jobs for each partner.
Almost no one under 40 cares. In fact for most of us we'll net a profit (not expected, straight up in most cases including one or two events) just self insuring.
Unprecedented mobility allowed unprecedented competition. The core of the problem is that when there's a job posting or a house for sale, you're competing not only with people in your local area, but also with people from all over the world. For example, in my city HALF of home sales are to foreigners. The effect is that top x% keeps amassing wealth, while the rest suffers from brain drain and depopulation. Literally same problem as Tinder - it promised men to date all over the world, in effect it made them compete with other men from all over the world, and nobody's getting dates.
The problem will fix itself when moving to a big city completely stops being a viable option, and average Joe will be forced to live in bumfuck nowhere. Once enough Joes stay in bumfuck nowhere, they'll eventually build a working small-scale local economy.
As far as I can tell, the problem isn't so much a lack of jobs or a lack of homes but rather that they aren't in the same place. In small town America, the problem isn't a lack of housing stock, it's that it is hard to afford it with few good paying jobs. In big city America, the problem isn't lack of jobs, it's that it is hard to find a job which pays enough for you to afford the limited housing stock.
I think this is a large reason behind the polarization in America today. We aren't all facing the same aspect of this imbalance.
I was hoping that the work-from-home movement was going to help with this, but RTO seems to be in full swing. So, I think our best bet would be to stop incentivizing the concentration of job creation. Absent a fix, we will have to wait a few decades for the imbalance to even out.
We're heading further into a reality where there just aren't enough jobs. All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. There's just not enough floating around to pay people, it's all going into LLM electricity or graphics cards.
We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to afford rent.
It won't continue like this forever. The line doesn't always go up.
Just a single data point against this. I got interviews with 4 companies out of 30 or so I applied to. Cleared all the onsites. Think FAANG, famous hedge fund, popular data analytics platform, and defense. 4 different industries. Job market's not the best, but it's also not that bad if you have 5 YOE+. Offers were good, ~$50-100K over my current pay.
So many people are using AI during the interviews to cheat, as long as you don't use AI and are good at leetcode, probably not that hard to snag an offer. I also interview people at a FAANG, and #1 reason to reject people these days is AI use. If you don't use AI and can leetcode and system design, you're pretty solid and will stand out from other half-baked candidates.
Was this very recent? The job markets for software engineers has been horrid, at least from mid 2022 to mid 2025. Maybe it’s changed now?
Anecdotally, I know a few engineers with 10+ YOE in NYC, Seattle, and California, all with actual FAANG or FAANG adjacent work experience, who couldn’t find jobs. One of whom even took a minimum wage job, and another who nearly did the same as well.
Maybe the tax code change is kicking off an industry revival?
Let me guess, you went to an elite university and you worked in Big Tech? I think you should be proud of your success, but it's not indicative of the larger American economy or the tech industry in general. There are reports that new grads in CS have higher unemployment than philosophy majors. Something is structurally unsound, even if the kernel of the industry composed of people like yourself is sound.
I'm finding it really hard to detect who is using AI and who isn't for leetcode questions. I'm not even sure its a big deal because as soon as they start they get all the AI tools anyway. I try to talk more about their work experience now.
There is a very simple solution to AI cheating and I'm not sure why it hasn't made a comeback - fly candidates in for in-person interviews (which btw, if people remember, was the norm before COVID).
neonate|6 months ago
donatj|6 months ago
I've applied to umpteen places and haven't had a single callback. In my twenty+ years working as a dev, this is the worst I've seen it since about 2005.
forducks|6 months ago
I almost can't believe it's come to this, sometimes. But another part of me says that's just ego talking, and anyways plenty of others are also desperate for any and all scraps to feed themselves. Problems like mine aren't difficult to come by.
sqircles|6 months ago
mathiaspoint|6 months ago
It seems better now than it was two years ago.
khernandezrt|6 months ago
ulfw|6 months ago
tennisflyi|6 months ago
hackernoops|6 months ago
[deleted]
chao-|6 months ago
When the balance is not broadly possible, our system seems to favor "home prices must always go up", at least in the short term.
simianwords|6 months ago
You can first build more homes - prices go down and more people come into the city and prices start going back up because of increased economic activity.
mathiaspoint|6 months ago
There's no good reason to expect homes to magically appreciate.
Dig1t|6 months ago
If you want prices to drop in popular areas then we have to make it easy for people to actually build houses and increase supply in popular areas. Of course giving homeowners a say about whether housing is allowed to be built near them, of course they are going to vote against it because they have an incentive to keep prices high.
aaron695|6 months ago
[deleted]
daedrdev|6 months ago
Its a disgrace that people deny the supply crunch we are in
Hammershaft|6 months ago
As it is, NIMBYism is likely the biggest driver of rising costs of living, rising homelessness, rising municipal debt, and generational class divides.
sovietswag|6 months ago
It feels to me like a good faith counterargument to the YIMBY build more housing line of thought, so might be an interesting perspective
Ferret7446|6 months ago
But population growth is the overwhelming factor in all of our sustainability issues.
petra303|6 months ago
Esophagus4|6 months ago
But if you believe 3-4% is normal, then you’re probably waiting for rates to return to “normal.”
I think it’s a side effect of years of low interest rates… people are conditioned now to believe low is normal, and they want to hang on until we get back to that.
I was hoping rates would stay “high” for a while which I thought would soften the housing market so I could buy, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Instead of prices dropping, inventory just dried up.
Shows how silly I am for thinking I could time the market.
wakawaka28|6 months ago
DonsDiscountGas|6 months ago
la64710|6 months ago
As far jobs are concerned the job market is completely fucked up. Their is oversupply and there are no wage increase.
It does not take a genius to understand why there is no mobility.
DANmode|6 months ago
instead of what it should be: safety for your family.
800xl|6 months ago
clipsy|6 months ago
Literally anywhere in the "bottom" 99% of the country by real estate costs?
Eddy_Viscosity2|6 months ago
Herring|6 months ago
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/americans-vi...
> 41% of Americans say the government should provide more assistance to people in need
> 30% say it's providing about the right amount
> 27% say it should provide less
41-57? If there are issues in America, it's because Americans want it that way.
mathiaspoint|6 months ago
RickS|6 months ago
https://x.com/lindsaywise/status/1956170542601421040
UmGuys|6 months ago
bsder|6 months ago
Improving mobility means that you have to make a single earner household a viable pathway again. That means bring house prices down and subsidizing childcare.
Which would cost a bunch of billionaires a couple of pennies. So it will never happen.
Hammershaft|6 months ago
rr808|6 months ago
roncesvalles|6 months ago
mathiaspoint|6 months ago
anal_reactor|6 months ago
The problem will fix itself when moving to a big city completely stops being a viable option, and average Joe will be forced to live in bumfuck nowhere. Once enough Joes stay in bumfuck nowhere, they'll eventually build a working small-scale local economy.
toomuchtodo|6 months ago
FiatLuxDave|6 months ago
I think this is a large reason behind the polarization in America today. We aren't all facing the same aspect of this imbalance.
I was hoping that the work-from-home movement was going to help with this, but RTO seems to be in full swing. So, I think our best bet would be to stop incentivizing the concentration of job creation. Absent a fix, we will have to wait a few decades for the imbalance to even out.
JackMorgan|6 months ago
We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to afford rent.
It won't continue like this forever. The line doesn't always go up.
Zambyte|6 months ago
UmGuys|6 months ago
dkiebd|6 months ago
[deleted]
mathiaspoint|6 months ago
unknown|6 months ago
[deleted]
yolovoe|6 months ago
So many people are using AI during the interviews to cheat, as long as you don't use AI and are good at leetcode, probably not that hard to snag an offer. I also interview people at a FAANG, and #1 reason to reject people these days is AI use. If you don't use AI and can leetcode and system design, you're pretty solid and will stand out from other half-baked candidates.
winter_blue|6 months ago
Anecdotally, I know a few engineers with 10+ YOE in NYC, Seattle, and California, all with actual FAANG or FAANG adjacent work experience, who couldn’t find jobs. One of whom even took a minimum wage job, and another who nearly did the same as well.
Maybe the tax code change is kicking off an industry revival?
ipnon|6 months ago
rr808|6 months ago
roncesvalles|6 months ago
nlawalker|6 months ago
Can you elaborate? People don’t do well in the interview and say they could do it if they had AI with them? Or…?
Edit: Sorry, I missed “using AI during the interviews to cheat”.
jb3689|6 months ago