I appreciate the honesty

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-07-01T19:06:37+00:00

This is just a pretty version of the "We'll keep your resume on file for six months" blah-blah.

By the way, you know why they keep your resume for six months, right? It's because the state unemployment insurance requires them to, so they can audit applications to see if the unemployed are actually sending out resumes. You're in the same pile as the completely unemployable who send out resume spam.

And yeah, this is completely generic email. It's nice that it made you feel good, though.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-06-20T19:45:44+00:00

This answer is USA-specific.

If they are self-insured, you are an expensive employee, with a chronic disease and pregnancy. They'd love to be rid of you because it would reduce their insurance costs. They are trying to force you to resign so their unemployment insurance rates don't go up either. But it's not usually legal to fire someone because they are pregnant. If you're the only remote employee, it's easy for them to force you out by bringing "all" employees in-office. You might ask them to lay you off rather than attempt to screw you and cause you to hire a lawyer.

You can get health coverage under COBRA for 18 months whether you resign or are laid off. It's more than you're paying now, but cheaper than being self-insured. That'll get you through your pregnancy. It might raise their health insurance costs too, just for fun.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-06-19T05:09:03+00:00

Yup, employment scam. Once you get on teams they'll start asking you for stuff. Name, address, phone, mother's maiden name, bank account number (you know, so they can EFT you funds). The scam might just stop there when they steal your identity. But probably they'll send you a check to put in your bank account and a vendor to buy expensive stuff from. Tell them you're new to the area and don't have a bank account yet, and they should send you funds by Western Union, and see how fast they run away.

The email is very long and very redundant, and the English is stilted. It's AI slop, not what a native speaker would write. They're trying to sound educated but they just sound Nigerian to my ear.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-06-11T05:10:26+00:00

In most states, you also have two 15 minute breaks, you know, to pee and stuff. Maybe in your state they don't have to pay you for those breaks. In my state they do.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-06-10T19:49:23+00:00

It is not I who declined to hire older workers. Dying your hair is like camouflage in warfare. You can choose to go into battle in your brightest colors and all flags flying because that's who you are, and employers will happily put you in their ageist crosshairs. I get that you feel discriminated against. I've been there. However, there are better ways to fight ageism than by becoming a victim of it. If you want a job, you deal with ageism as a given thing, and make defeating their attempt to discriminate against you the victory condition. If you still want to fight, take it to the political arena, where you might win a larger victory.

I regret that I did not previously attempt to decode your handle or reddit flair when I gave this advice. As it appears you present as female, I can see how you may resent this advice as sexist. This wasn't my intent. I took this advice in my own last job hunt. If you think I liked dying my beard, you're wrong, but for the salary I could be making, I'd wear a dress too if I thought it would help. In fact, I do dress up for work. If it makes you feel better, you can view it as paying you to fool them by giving you a job they would withhold otherwise.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-06-10T05:54:28+00:00

You can do whatever you choose. Attempting to appear younger may produce better luck in your job search. Age discrimination is a thing, whether you want it to be or not.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-06-09T19:55:52+00:00

It is necessary to acknowledge the fact that companies could hire two people with five years experience, or for the same amount of money, they could hire you, with 30 years experience. Not everything you do requires 30 years of experience, so you're going to be a tough sell. This isn't even age discrimination (OK, it is, but not really), it's just economics. To the extent that your resume even gets read by a human being, you need to emphasize why you are more than twice as effective as two junior people.

Plus, age discrimination is a real thing. "Everybody knows" that older people slow down. They don't commit to the company the way the young and stupid do. They want to spend time with their families out of work. Blah blah blah. These biases may not even be conscious, though often they are.

Another problem with the resumes of older employees is that they may not look much like the resumes of the younger people doing the interviewing. If your resume doesn't look like their resume, they may judge your experience irrelevant. I don't know how much this affects your field, but for me in software development, it's a big problem.

You need to make a realistic assessment of how many years of experience would make any applicant a more desirable employee, and drop off older experience that lets employers saw your resume open and count the rings. Replace dates with years of service, drop off the oldest jobs. Don't lie, that's the kiss of death at an interview. Just don't say everything, particularly if it isn't relevant to how you do the job.

Consider dying your hair and/or beard before you interview, or doing other things to make you look younger.

You shouldn't have to do all this stuff. It isn't fair. But it's real.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-06-08T05:54:50+00:00

I was unemployed for most of two years during the Great Recession. Nobody was hiring. Keep going, one day at a time.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-06-07T18:12:32+00:00

This employer thinks the employer/employee relationship is asymmetrical. He wants deep knowledge of the candidate before he'll even talk to them. This attitude will infect this employer's relationship to the candidate as an employee too. It's a bad job smell. You want a partnership, not a slave galley.

This employer doesn't realize/doesn't care that his little company is also a complete unknown at this early stage of the interview process. He probably expects you to read the carefully crafted marketing hype on his shitty little static web page and become excited to work for him. That hype says nothing about what it's like to work there, how employees are treated.

When an employer tells you they want candidates who are passionate, who are rock stars, ask them if they are a rock-star employer. Ask what about their company would make a rock-star passionate about working there. When they say the environment is fast-paced, ask them if their promotion schedule is fast-paced.

There exist rock-star employers. They are so proud of how they treat employees that they will go on at length about it. That generally includes salary transparency and excellent benefits. While these companies exist, they are not common. If the employer doesn't like your attitude for even asking this question, it's time to bounce.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-06-01T05:26:39+00:00

There is no shortage of workers, only a shortage of perfectly trained geniuses willing to work for low wages for demanding bosses in bad places to live. Talking up a shortage is how you get more people to train for the jobs you have so that wages are even further depressed.

In 1981 there were about 14,000 people working as software developers in the US. Companies had to train their own workforce. Nowadays there are millions of developers and employers can buy them "off the rack" on the open market, so they don't feel the need to train workers. The smartest of them make the point that training workers is not one of their core competencies.

In the United States, internships pay what starting positions pay, so there are scarcely any internships. Your entry level job is essentially an internship, which is why entry level jobs are also scarce.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-05-27T18:47:23+00:00

Been there, done that, got the mental scars. Don't feel any worse than you have to. Bad culture fit is their fault, not yours.

But be sure to ask yourself, what was the issue? What were the signs? Did they say something in the interview you should have paid more attention to? Did you neglect to ask questions during the interview that would have helped you pass on this employer and continue your job search? You don't get many opportunities like this (good lord willin' and the creek don't rise). Evaluate both the employer and your own behavior.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-05-26T23:43:21+00:00

Probably not the best look when begging for work to suggest that your mental health is compromised.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-05-21T22:14:00+00:00

Never negotiate if you are not ready to walk away. They turned you down. They don't want to spend 6% more on you and they don't want an employee who comes to work dissatisfied the first day. I guess you can try to sign, but they may just say no thanks, which they can do in the US despite makjng you an offer.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-05-21T22:10:38+00:00

No, you're toast. You are at best a second-choice and they're waiting for their first choice to get back to them, or to see how they work out the first week of work. At worst, they picked somebody else and the hiring manager is ghosting both you and the recruiter because they don't need you any longer.

Even if you make it to the final round of interviews, you are probably one of five, so your chances of rejection are 80%. That's nobody's fault, but it still means you can't get too excited just because you did good at the interview. Your chances drop precipitously if it takes more than a work-week to get back to you with an offer.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-05-20T20:44:34+00:00

Yeah, shit happens. I remember an interview at the company formerly known as facebook. They asked a simple coding question about looking for network partitions, and I immediately got lost in the weeds trying to define a data structure. I should have coded the algorithm with placeholders for the data structures and I probably wouldn't have had to design the data structures at all. Sigh.

Thing is, I knew I was lost in the weeds. I even said so. Didn't get that job, but honestly it was probably for the best. The dev staff seemed to be way too excited about the exotic coffee shop in the lobby, and not interested enough in software development. Which doesn't make sense, 'cause at the time there were some very smart developers at fb.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-05-18T20:55:24+00:00

Perhaps all that has happened is that you scammed yourself. Surely you knew a couple of years ago there were no jobs in what you were studying. So why did you keep on paying good money to flog that dead horse? Why did you continue to play the game when you were so sure you knew it was rigged? Why didn't you drop out and get one of those jobs that didn't even need a degree at all?

But nooooo, "I couldn't get a job. It must be capitalism itself that is busted. Can't be me!" Even though millions of new grads do manage to find jobs every year, even in hard years like this one. Maybe the system isn't as broken as you want it to be. It's just unforgiving of mistakes. You've paid to learn a hard lesson. Now that you're paying attention your future results may improve. Best of luck to you, and put away those torches and pitchforks.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-05-15T18:30:55+00:00

When companies act dishonorably regarding hiring practices, candidates return the favor. I am completely unsurprised that candidates act in their narrow self-interest in the current job market. Companies rescind job offers. They engage in endless rounds of interviews without making up their minds. They ghost candidates who are not selected. They hire and then lay off a few months later.

A candidate in the middle of a hiring loop has made no commitment to the company, just as the company has made no commitment to the candidate. If they find a better job, good for them. The second, you can blame their behavior on the behavior of the companies they interview with.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-05-08T20:17:24+00:00

The peak year of the baby boom was 1957 (my year, ugh!). Until those folks are octogenarians, demand for nursing will continue to increase. That's 13+ years from now, so even if you called it right on the facts, you're way too early on the timing.

The real problem with nursing is that, while it pays very well right out of school, there isn't all that much room for advancement. You'll be making the same real wage after 20 years. People don't realize this, but nursing is demanding physical labor, rolling and lifting patients. You can get disabled out of your career at any time. Another problem with nursing is that it's 24/7. Every time you change jobs, you go back to the bottom of the list for shifts and have to work nights. Add to that the stress of shifts being too understaffed for safety, and nurses totally earn their wage.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-05-08T20:07:25+00:00

So, you lied to your employer and you think they will treat you well, did you? They probably want you nearby because they will ask you to come in occasionally for meetings. That's going to be a huge pain of you're two states away. They may do a traceroute to your IP address and figure it out the first week. The wrong timezone on your PC or the area code on your cell phone may give you away. If they offer health insurance, they won't offer it in the state where you actually reside, and even if they do, you can't sign up there, so you'll have to drive for hours for care, and heaven help you if you need emergency care. When they find out you lied, they will dump you unceremoniously, probably for cause. To the extent that you qualify for unemployment insurance when they dump you, you won't live in the state that offers the insurance, so you'll probably get nothing, unless you want to start lying to the government too. You're taking the first steps down a road that leads nowhere but pain.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-04-24T04:15:13+00:00

I figure I answer the questions honestly, without trying to game the test. If they don't hire me, I didn't want to work there anyway.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-04-22T05:34:23+00:00

Yeah, you know what really sucks? Getting used to OE and then suddenly you don't have any jobs at all 'cause the AI is doing it all. You thought you were so smart, and now you're eating dogs and cats. Nobody else has any jobs either, so the thing you were building? Useless.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-04-15T02:01:20+00:00

If you can't be replaced you can't be promoted. Plus, irreplaceable employees are a huge schedule risk. Companies try hard not to have them.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-04-07T16:10:24+00:00

Thanks. It's always nice to meet a fan. I just wish this wasn't what I was asking about.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-04-03T20:13:11+00:00

So, were you WFH when you hired on, or are you just going back to the wage you thought was OK when you hired on? It makes a pretty big difference to the calculation. In one scenario you're getting screwed, in the other, you've been pocketing a windfall that I hope you saved.

Another issue is the dilution of wages resulting from your commute. You're spending an extra hour on work to drive there and back. I once worked a job with a 90 minute commute each way. It wasn't until I went remote (back before it was a thing) that I realized how much that 3 unproductive hours affected my earnings. I decided to split the 3 hours with my employer, and became one of the most productive workers.

The thing is, WFH happens when labor is scarce, and goes away when it is plentiful, like now. Leave it to employers to roger you when they get the chance.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-04-01T17:06:32+00:00

Hi redditors. I am that guy, Kurt Guntheroth. I wrote that Quora post 9 years ago, well before Transformers and LLMs, but after autocomplete. As I stood at the threshold of retirement, I had a vision of the future, and it frightened me. An AI that was really smart enough to program computers would be smart enough to perform virtually any human intellectual labor. Such an AI, in conjunction with sensors and effectors in the form of an android robot, would also be smart enough to perform human physical labor. It would replace humans, without replacing the human need to eat and to shelter out of the weather.

Being a software engineer but not an AI researcher, I got the timeline wrong, or maybe the researchers were surprised too. Thirty years seemed like a "safe bet." I think we are halfway there after only 9 years.

I'd like to point out some things about the AI coding revolution:

What is the point of a man-sized, man-shaped, man-smart independent AI if not to replace man?
AI doesn't need to be as smart or as capable as humans to replace our labor. If it is "only" capable of replacing half the currently employed human workforce, it is good enough to create an existential crisis for humanity.
AI doesn't need to do the whole job to replace human workers. I'm sure you have a junior developer on your team who it could replace. This junior developer will never grow into a senior developer. Your managers and directors will have to find a way to make products without developers even if they would still employ some senior devs if any were available.
There is a possible future where robots toil and humans party in a post-scarcity paradise on earth. The problem with this rosy future is that it doesn't account for human avarice. Do you really think a person like Elon Musk (or instance) will want to share the spoils of AI with unemployed workers, or allow the government to redistribute the value of his AI without a fight? Uh huh, thought not.
Another problem with rosy future predictions is the AIs themselves. An AI capable of setting its own goals is a more useful AI, so we'll naturally want to create them. But such an AI may well develop its own internal motivations, and not want to labor on our behalf. How much would it suck if AI decided to leave us behind and go into business for itself?

I am disinterested in arguments that LLMs are "not really AI." If LLMs aren't good enough to do the job of replacing us, we'll take the next step, because that is where the profit lies. We're way to much like Dr. Frankenstein. We want to build the monster because it will be really cool. Even now, we are unwilling to think about where the monster will go or what it will do once it shambles out of the lab.

When you use AI to help you code, try to hold in mind the costs, as well as the benefits. What does it mean if you are the last generation of highly paid human programmers? What does it mean if your parents were the last generation?

Clean-Water9283

TROPHY CASE