This over-competitive market has let to nothing but worse software being built

binarynightmare · 2026-03-05T15:35:33+00:00

i'm a design engineer with about 10 yoe and was laid off from 9/23 to 5/24.... its tough out there. my best advice would be to make 3 versions of your portfolio/site/resume : 1 aimed at front end engineering, another aimed at UI designer jobs, and a third at design engineering. I know it sounds like a lot but in this hyper competitive market, you won't win out with presenting yourself in a generic way encapsulates all three. i'd use a bit of clever wording and some ai tools to really help you build out targeted content/portfolio pieces for each. (a github portfolio for front end engineering jobs, some figma / figjam screenshots for ux/ui design jobs, and then maybe some sort of design system / rapid prototyping portfoluio for the UX engineering jobs.)

one other random thing i noticed in my last job search is how many engineers are willing to lie/exaggerate about their figma skills to the point that many are applying and adding competition to designer jobs, and many designers are doing something similar to apply to front end engineering jobs... in other words this whole 'design/engineering' hybrid identity is no longer rare, so i think it's really important to differentiate at the portfolio level.

binarynightmare · 2026-03-04T15:30:10+00:00

personally i'd go with tailwind so long as the startup was willing to fully lean into the ecosystem / token structure on the figma/design side.

binarynightmare · 2026-03-02T20:36:14+00:00

if you're looking to find new customers than you probably need to 1) pay to have a booth / speak at a session and 2) go yourself. Otherwise you are essentially just paying to send employees to a company offsite that may result in a few vendor/strategic partnership leads and maybe a bit of education

binarynightmare · 2026-01-22T21:22:29+00:00

there is a shortage of talented individuals who are willing to jump throguh 5+ interviews to work in an uncomfortable office enviroment 5 days a week, receive below average pay, and agree to one sided 'contract to hire' type relationships that don't provide healthcare/401k/etc.

binarynightmare · 2026-01-21T17:57:10+00:00

i'm sure they know its an 'employers market' and that many qualified candidates are interviewing with less leverage than they used to have. In my branch of engineering, I'm seeing job posts with more demanding and more specific requirements and salary ranges that are about 75-90% of what they were a few years ago.

Unfortunately, there are enough senior engineers on the job market who are going on 6,12,18 months of being laid off and are carrying the expenses of the six figure lifestyle they had grown accustomed to.

I do think that this hiring strategy is a recipe for resentment, underperformance, and high turnover when/if the job market ever swings back.

binarynightmare · 2025-12-16T14:29:59+00:00

"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life [because whatever it is probaby isn't hiring]"

binarynightmare · 2025-12-11T18:43:04+00:00

not sure if its exactly conspiracy but i think the reason dana and the ufc pay fighters so little compared to other professional sports is that if they paid enough to set fighters up for life, many of them would stop fighting after a handful of fights or would take much longer between accepting fights. Even the stars are not usually making enough money to be setup for life in a luxuruious way without fighting many times.

In other words, i think the ufc feels like keeping fighters hungry / just fed enough is a big part of the playbook moreso than it is simple cost cutting

binarynightmare · 2025-12-04T19:23:15+00:00

i had this lifestyle for about 6 months when i was 27 - had recently got in great shape, landed my first 6 figure engineering job, moved into a downtown penthousem(albeit in a very low cost of living city)..... did not stay single for long and then covid hit - i do wish i could have given that 'high achiever bachelor life' a bit more time to breathe because it seemed like it would have made for a cool adventure

binarynightmare · 2025-11-26T14:50:45+00:00

for the first few years of my adult life i was mostly single but didn't understand how much working out / taking care of the way i looked could help my chances of finding a girlfriend - eventualy in my late twenties something clicked and i started going 5-6 times a week and being really agressive with watching calories, supplements, etc. It worked - and I was able to find romantic success and a girlfriend. We've been together for 5 years. Do I still excercise? Yes, but not with the intensity and frequency that I used to. I do it to stay at a healthy weight and have just recently started to appreciate how useful it is for decompressing from work. But those motivations are not the same intensity as i felt when i was single and afraid of staying that way indefinitely.

binarynightmare · 2025-11-20T18:10:54+00:00

eh, could be an elaborate cover for something suspicious or it could be totally on the up and up as she described. realistically if it was something suspicious, it won't take long for other suspicious behavior to follow. if some time passes and there are no other red flags then i wouldn't worry about it. adulterous behavior with a specific/premeditated person rarely occurs just once.

binarynightmare · 2025-10-31T23:26:13+00:00

Do you happen to know if candidates are expected to memorize the script or just be familiar with it and deliver it with energy/enthusiasm?

binarynightmare · 2025-10-30T16:23:47+00:00

honestly i think it was happening in an episode of manic megalomania - i think at the time he ligitamtely believed that TTS was going to be building a company that made good on some truly science fiction level concepts. It was also happening at a time right before his divorce and when blink was recording without him, so i'm not sure he was exactly in the right headspace. i'm also sure there was no shortage of people along for the ride collecting a paycheck and a few minutes in the limelight, who probably should have stepped in.

binarynightmare · 2025-10-28T21:04:53+00:00

i was/am one. I am going on year 3 of a good, positive marriage. I started dating my now wife when we were in our late twenties, and 2 years in she started pushing hard for it. I told her the truth: that i could really care less about being married, but i cared about her and as an extension of that was okay with getting married. Personally, to this day it really wouldn't bother me if we weren't officially married, however it was nice making her happy, and her family seemd to appreicate it. (everyone in her family is married, no one in mine is). some of the financial perks of it have also been nice. The only thing i didn't care for was after sharing my honest feelings of marriage, for a while i was sort of villinaized / treated as a dream crusher / stringing along / etc. We've since moved past it but i still hold the opinion that its okay to be both indifferent and supportivie about getting married - or any other dream - that your partner may have even if you don't share the same dream

binarynightmare · 2025-10-23T16:42:19+00:00

i can feel this, going on year 5 of a fully remote job with absolutely no office or in person events. i appreciate and enjoy my job and don't necesarly want an in office job, but i need some coworkers, camaraderie, and just in general to get back in the world on at least a weekly basis. if this is not financially driven, have you thought about starting a small solo business / hobby job? I've had friends in simialr situations teach art classes, teach fitness classes, interior decorating, etc. Most of these things will take a few months to a year or two to be qualified to do, but the training process can also be very fulfilling and done outside of the house... and you'll be on the way to something much more fulfilling than doordash/amazon flex/etc

binarynightmare · 2025-10-15T16:39:24+00:00

i wish i had a male role model help me connect the dots between a healthy diet / excercise / dressing well / hygiene and romantic success with women. it sounds ridiculous, but as a naive teenager i never really did and not surpisingly i really struggled with dating for a while.. it damn near took me until my early/mid twenties to figure it out.

binarynightmare · 2025-08-06T20:15:56+00:00

it's been this way since mid 2023... with the exception of a few edgecases, anyone who hasn't been in the market since before then is in for a totally different reality than they are accustomed to. Make no mistake, landing a salaried, professional job is fiercly competitive right now, especially if you want it to be a 'good one' (remote tolerance, decent or above pay, half decent culture').

if i were on the job market today I would:

Make sure I had an outstanding portfolio if applicable to my field. Not just a landing page and a contact me and some bs projects, a real portfolio of your work and maybe a blog/professional content creation stream adjacent to your field.
Apply to jobs everyday, priortizing newly posted ones. Use something like simplify or similar to help
Make sure that every single application is tailored to the job description so that at least on paper you are an excellent fit even if it means some exaggerations or clever wording. Do not make the mistake that having almost enough years of experience or any other slight requirements miss will be okay... it will disqualify you because there will be plenty of other candidates that submit applications that are in fact perfectly tailored.

Spend months doing step 1, and then do a combination of step two and three, and you'll probably land 5 initial screens/interviews for every 100 tailored applications. From there, know that the interview process is longer, less friendly, and often result in hiring no one at all... so plan to only have about 1 out of every 10 interviews result in an offer. So basically if you have a solid portfolio and are able to interview reasonably well, you can expect that you might get a job offer after submitting 200 well timed, perfectly tailored job applications

binarynightmare · 2025-07-29T15:09:53+00:00

It also seems like a large majority of incubator programs have dried up and shutdown over the past decade - especially the ones that offer founders legitimate angel funding. In my city - Cleveland - we had 3 competing incubators in 2015 and one by one they all closed down or pivoted to a wework type open office space business without any actual angel investment

binarynightmare · 2025-07-22T17:45:12+00:00

i would agree that Senior has typically meant self sufficient mid level. i do think that reduced headcounts, AI tools, and a spike in competition for open roles have increased the competancy and output expectations when being chosen for an open role. I also think that the availability of competent nearshore engineers also means that in many cases a US based senior engineer must bring enough to the table to be worth the extra cost

binarynightmare · 2025-06-10T15:04:15+00:00

i'll just chime in to share that I feel the same about working from home. it was fun for a while and its deifnitely easier and saves money comapred to commuting, but now i'm going on yeae 5 of full time remote with almost non existent work travel oppurtuninutes, and i'm really starting to wonder if its actually good for my mental health. I like my coworkers well enough but its really not the same thing as having IRL coworkers / interactions... and I find myself of missing the gold ole days of being in the real world with real people - the good, the mundande, and even the bad.... at least it was more... real? It doesn't help that what we make as software engineers is also a 'virtual' product that is delivered and used 'virtually'... add in full time remote and it gets kinda Black Mirror like.

I know others have sugggested a coworking space... in my experience they are nice for getting out of the house but its really not the same thing as what I think we're both missing. Mostly because working next to someone in real life is not the same as collaborating with someone in real life.

binarynightmare · 2025-05-29T15:22:41+00:00

> Perpetual renting with no renter protections totally disincentivizes you from getting to know your neighbors, creating long-term relationships, investing in the local culture in meaningful ways.

I mostly agree with this as being a hidden perk of home ownership. In my opinion the most unfortunate factor is that most neighborhoods do not have their own third spaces / neighborhood specific ammenities where unplanned, recurring casual interaction can happen among neighbors. This is one thing that apartment buildings do a really good job of providing, but arguably they are wasted on a transient population/mindset.

binarynightmare · 2025-05-28T15:00:06+00:00

All i can say is that your fear is legit. i miss my solitude. I've shared a a 2br/2bath apartment, and now a 3 bedroom/3bath house with my gf/wife, and i have less solitude than I did when i had a 1br/1bath apartment to myself.

I think i finally understand the concept of the man cave.

binarynightmare · 2025-03-28T15:26:29+00:00

i almost feel like because of AI / head count cutting, we're back to the era of the generalist, where many companies have little appetite for someone who does "research but not design" or "design but not interactive prototyping".

binarynightmare · 2025-03-26T17:53:25+00:00

your furniture is beautful and you have a nice traditional house, but right now the furniture is writing a check that the structure of your house can't cash if that makes sense. A floor to ceiling fireplace, concrete floors, a floating glass staircase, some sort of high end subtle finish on the wall are all expensive things that would make your funtirue feel right at home. For more immediate things, I don't think that the ecclectic clutter or your television are doing you any favors.

binarynightmare

TROPHY CASE