3w ago

Looking for a job is the most annoying impossible thing

Seriously, I wanna go

every time I read some carrer growth opportunity bullshit. It's either a job or it isn't.

I really despise anything remotely related to linkedin or whatever kind of creature dwells in that place. Can everyone do this stuff? Like, is this really how everyone gets a job? I can't deal with all this pretending, everything requires having a linkedin profile, but not only that, you gotta sell yourself somehow. And I don't even use social media.

Well, I have a bachelor's degree from a good University, I'm good at what I do, here's a portfolio. But no, I have to prove I deserve to be selected as a producer of wealth for my potential boss by pretending to be someone else. Can't we all just be practical about this shit? I have to keep trying to put myself into boxes and trying to fit with a sort of profile that I just can't and don't know why.

Am I autistic? Like, do I go get a diagnosis and maybe that will help? Do I go do something on my own? Then I have to figure out what an then sell it, and I'm bad at that. I don't know what to do and I'm tired of trying. (I was almost crying while writing this paragraph).

Honestly though, I just wanted to rant and this is one of the few places I feel safer in. Thanks for reading my

rambling

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I've shot out HUNDREDS of applications in the past 14+ months. I've had maybe a total of 8 or 9 interviews in that time. This is in tech, so I get that shit is changing, but in my defense I've been doing my role for about a decade, and it isn't something that AI has taken over JUST YET.
It's frustrating, soul crushing, and i hate it. Im this close to just applying to stock shelves or fill online orders at the whole foods a block over from my partners.

Yep, don't forget all the chatbots and automatic emails they put you through...
- I have to wonder, do they even end up hiring actual good candidates or just people who are good at cheating this system?
  
  I think it has to be nepotism. Literally every job is getting the Hollywood treatment and I wouldn’t be surprised if just to flip burgers teenagers needed to viciously compete with each other in some burger flipping competition and only be paid in “exposure”.
  Sauce: I am meeting with a job coach as an autistic person and even she was confused on why I’m unemployed. There’s a good chance that you’re completely fine and your only crime is not being rich, and not having any rich friends/family.
  
  People who are good at cheating the system. Also remember a lot of times the chatbots weeding everyone out is the point. Then they can claim the position can't be filled.

In the past couple years they've pivoted hard to LLMs, and it really makes you wonder whether they value anything on the human side.
Fortunately I live in an area (somewhere between the Appalachians and the Rockies) where living expenses are reasonably affordable, and minimum-wage jobs are constantly hiring. I don't know what I'd do if I was still stuck on the "affluent career" bandwagon. My vocation is undermining capitalism now, and it turns out networking with radicals is remarkably fulfilling.
What's your degree/experience in?
- In the past couple years they've pivoted hard to LLMs, and it really makes you wonder whether they value anything on the human side.
  HR is just a department. They detest work much like anybody else. And most of their job is down to shifting work around. For applications, there's 2 options: either you enter your shit into the system, or they do. Guess which they choose. After that, either the computer makes a decision, or they do, guess which one they choose.
  Somebody has to enter all the info into the computer. That can either be you, or it can be HR. Somebody has to make decisions about the stuff that has entered the computer and that can either be HR, or the computer that you put your shit into.
  HR is hostile to employees, because it works for your employer. But HR is also hostile to your employer, because they work for them and also hate that fact, much like anybody else. Left unchecked, any given HR department will design the most atrocious application process possible, because it means less work for them, and then blame it on young people, the job market, trump, biden, what have you, anything that gets whoever employs them not to question why they can't find any people to do the job.
  What I don't understand is why so many business owners trust them night unconditionally. They're materially in the same role as any other folks that work for you that do not get this privilege. Best of my guesses is they're the job cops and get treated as such through osmosis.
- I'm a Design graduate, it was a very complete bachelor's on 3 main areas: graphic design, product design (stuff like furniture, ergonomics in tools and utensils even user interaction) and interior design. I had even hands on experience making actual wood furniture with wood working tools and everything, printing and crafting an actual book, all kinds of cool stuff. I live in Brazil though, and this was all free public education, although gated by an exam. But I have 0 working experience, since I didn't do any internship before graduating, and getting a job in this area has been quite difficult.
  
  That's really cool! I hope life throws a few unconventional yet challenging opportunities your way.

I worked on a cover letter for a few hours only to have the application automatically rejected first thing the next morning
- This is sad. It was probably some automated shit too...
  
  I have ChatGPT make my cover letters for this very reason. If they aren't gonna try, neither am I.
  
  I was thinking the same thing - there's no way someone was bothering with that shit at 7am on a Monday unless there's some automation cooked into it.
  I haven't applied for jobs in like 10 years, so I took it a little hard, but I'll just have to get used to it lol. I need to figure out how to make the bazinga machines write a cover letter draft for me to edit.

Annoying is putting it lightly. It's the main work task that is openly, proudly hostile to ND people and autistic people in particular

I feel your pain, nothing fills me with dread more than searching for jobs. Makes me feel genuinely sick.

This is what tricked me down the cooking for a living path. Kitchens are pretty much the only places that getting a job isn't a nightmare. Talk to a chef, if you know about food talk a lil shop, if not you're probably aiming for dish anyway but if you show some interest or even just have solid knife skills to help out with prep and if you've got fuck all that's not bad either cause it they're the ones teaching you, you'll be doing it their way. Id rather train someone from dish up that's easy to work with than some arrogant recent culinary school grad. Then usually you get a short trial shift to just make sure you're not entirely incapable of doing the job and that the rest of the staff doesn't think you're a weird creep or whatever and then you're in. The twist is that it's a brutal job that doesn't pay good.

It's soul crushing
- It has to be on purpose:
  If you’re unemployed and looking for a job? Well you don’t have a job right now, therefore no one wants nor needs you!
  If you have a job? Employers intentionally being as unreasonably picky as possible forces you to be loyal to your boss.

Something like 60% of all words posted to LinkedIn come from LLMs. It’s all bullshit and nobody likes it if that makes you feel better

I decided to change careers beginning of COVID and get a bachelor's in computer science. State paid for it and it's a top 5 CS uni, so I guess I can't complain but the job market sucks soooo much ass.
I feel your pain. I hate linkedin. This is my only social media (besides linkedin). The hoops for corpo jobs are unreasonable. I'm hoping to get enough experience to be able to wfh at like a non profit or something for ok pay.
Probably gonna go back to bangin nails
- Yeah, absolutely this. I'm incapable of doing all they wanted me to do. Once they wanted me to submit a VIDEO talking to a camera and introducing myself. Like, am I signing up for a job or a reality show??
  
  I had the exact same experience.
  Got through two questions and I was like wait this isn't me wtf am I doing I don't want to work here anyway

Imagine what we could get done as a society if we fired as many people as possible whose jobs are to say "no" when someone wants to work.

As someone who just started a new job after hundreds of applications, I sympathize

I was unemployed for two years largely because job-hunting was so miserable. I was qualified in my field with experience, but like you say, they make it into the most dehumanizing experience possible.
Death to linkedin, death to resumes, death to cover letters, death to having four successive interviews for a job, and death to corporate HR managers.

I know this is probably too much of a change but consider applying for a trade union apprenticeship. IBEW, IUEC, ILWU, carpenters, etc.
- Actually it might not be too far off. I did some woodworking in uni

Some advice: optimize your CV for the ATS. Nowadays it is very easy for people to mass apply. And if no human sees your CV, you are going to be rejected anyways. The biggest hurdle is going through the automated system.
- I have to look into this. Maybe i can put some invisible text on the pdf and let that be it
- Any tips on doing that?
  
  I saw someone on Reddit mention Jobscan. No idea if it even exists, works, or is good though, I don't have time to look for work right now.

I've bee lucky to always land in "you gotta know someone to get it" jobs, but they've all been trade or operating jobs. There's alway room for apprenticeships, but they're not as good as they used to be. Gotta have all the certs and paperwork and also be willing to eat shit and smile.

I’ve been effectively unemployed for 20 months and I just secured a job with the government as the walls are being closed in by Elon and Vivek.
I would have really advised you to seek a government job and get good at applying on USAjobs because you don’t have to play nearly as many stupid games as you do in the private sector. But there’s a real possibility that’s going to change with Trump in charge.
Dems suck but really, Republicans do make everything shittier
- I'm not in the US, but republicans will make South America shittier too I'm sure

I was feeling very much like what you describe after I quit my PMC job - which was quietly being taken over by machine translation and chatbot shit. What I did was pivot to childcare, specifically after school stuff. No idea if there is any real infrastructure for that where you live, but for me it's been pretty rewarding. It's an active, extremely varied job and when I walk in the door it's like my personal issues disappear for a while. Kids kind of put things into perspective or something. It can be hard, disorienting and rough sometimes (kids can be little assholes, and realizing all the fucked up shit in their lives that make them do so can be depressing), but it feels meaningful in a way that no office job I've ever had has done.
Wage is shit though, and I'm massively overqualified (have an MA in a completely unrelated field). It is however pretty cool that my most important qualifications in this job are actually things I like to do in my spare time - music, games, sports etc.

The amount of jobs I've interviewed for, only to be rejected but then offered that exact same job but as unpaid "work experience" confounds me.
"Yes we want you to work here, but we don't want to pay you to work here."
Also is it me, or is there a huge uptick in companies looking for scientists to produce model data that they can train AIs on?

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Having a job is worse. Especially a good job.
- Maybe I don't have to worry about that if I never get one

What is your degree in?
(No pressure, I'm a Classics B.A.)
- Design, in general. Graphic design, products and ergonomics, interior design, UX
  
  Seems like a good degree for the current state of industries, tbh. I think you are struggling with "selling yourself" as a mentality, which is warranted - I hate that shit, too. But, I with a less relevant degree eventually was able to land a job I consider worthy of my ability and you can, also. You may not even need to make a linkedin (I didn't have one because I also hated it); to avoid the network-mill that is linked in, I'd recommend work-shopping your resume to hell and back, getting comfortable in interviews, and getting efficient at applying to jobs via indeed.
  I know this advice isn't super clandestine, but still if you want me to go into further detail, please DM (i.e. don't want to wax poetic if you aren't interested).

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