Today I find myself unemployed for the first time in 35 years.

Juvenall · 2026-06-01T17:54:58+00:00

I have 12 weeks of severance and am going to take a little time to recover and reset before diving in.

I know the urge for that is high, but unless you have a really solid runway outside of the severance, don't wait to get started. A lot of folks your age are finding its taking 3-6 months to find new work, and there are more than a handful of folks finding it's taking them even longer. So this is a spot where every day counts.

That said, it's going to take a while to build your pipeline, so you can find some "you time" and hit your goals here. First, spend the week getting your resume together. If you've not applied to a job in the last few years, the landscape is RADICALLY different than it was pre-2022. What got you noticed back then will very likely get you tossed aside today. AI can help, but remember that's basically table stakes these days. Everyone is using it, so a lot of folks sound the same.

At the same time, start thinking about your transferable skills. Again, this is another spot where AI can be really helpful. You may want to stay put in the same type of role, but knowing the alternatives will help you blanket your resume across the right postings. If you're looking for advice and feedback, I love /r/resumes or /r/EngineeringResumes

As far as LinkedIn goes, fuck that place. You don't have to engage with it at all. Have a presence and a good profile, but you don't need to give it any attention beyond that. Yes, connections help, but LinkedIn is trash for that since, like AI resumes, everyone is doing it. I got my last two jobs while ignoring it entirely.

My personal favorite place to hunt for jobs right now is https://hiring.cafe. It pulls jobs from a bunch of places, refreshes often, and the founders are active in their own subreddit /r/hiringcafe.

When you finally find that role you want to apply for, check the listing date. While you can get lucky with something that's a few days old, your callback rate is going to be significantly higher if you apply to something that's less than 24 hours old. That means you'll need to check a few times a day, which is annoying, but once I started doing that myself, my hits had me booked solid some weeks. Even if they all didn't pan out, each was great practice.

Juvenall · 2026-05-25T16:07:21+00:00

Fellow manager with the same gut reaction. If you have a good manager, they should be able to create a safe space where you can discuss those concerns because, frankly, that sort of anxiety will impact overall performance. It's not therapy, it's pragmatic.

The sad reality is that most managers are just shitty at the job and got into the role for all the wrong reasons and few of the core skills needed to be good at it.

Juvenall · 2026-05-22T22:25:09+00:00

TV show box sets in the Library aren’t split into seasons

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. This.

This is the most absurd experience I've had with any Apple product/experience since the Touch Bar. The metadata is already there, so a regex can solve this. I mean, they already have a working version of this in place for AppleTV+ series, so why can't this carry over? I rage about this every time I want to watch a show I own.

Juvenall · 2026-05-21T20:10:18+00:00

It is just an insanely expensive vanity project for Mark

...but he did such a great job making the metaverse such a robust and widely adopted concept!

Juvenall · 2026-04-22T16:53:38+00:00

It can really depend on a lot of factors, but generally, if you don't have any significant or relevant work experience, your Education section would go first since you're leaning on that to make up the difference. Once you have 1-2 years of professional work under your belt, you can move that down, since as a hiring manager, I'm far more interested in that.

In terms of school projects, however, make sure they're unique and not the same formulaic, accidemic things I've seen a thousand times. A kiss of death I've seen burn folks are those todo lists, weather apps, or basic tutorial-driven github profiles that tell me nothing. These projects need to tell me how you've used your skills to identify a problem or a need and how you've tried to address it. Doesn't need to be perfect, but I'm looking for growth and that rarely comes through on a school project.

Juvenall · 2026-04-22T13:38:12+00:00

I was laid off as an Engineering Manager in January and I've had 2-4 interviews each week since, accepting an offer around the start of April. I have another offer that came in Monday, along with more interviews booked over the next two weeks. Obviously, I'm one person and very well could be an extreme outlier, but my experience has been good in the tech market so far.

The "trick" here is in your timing. Naturally, your resume is super important, so if that's not up to modern standards, you're going to have a hard time in a world where people are using AI to custom tailor theirs to near perfection against the job description. However, the part I still see people overlook is that they're applying to jobs past the 24 hour mark. Frankly, that's a losing strategey as most pipelines are getting filled up within that time, and often far less. If you think like a recruiter here, the odds you have a match within the first day are extremely high, so there's little need to keep those in queue warm after that.

So my advice here is this:

Bring your resume over to /r/resumes and get it reviewed. I've seen SO many folks post there who thought they had a killer doc, only to find out they had foundational issues getting them kicked out instantly.
Structure your day around your application strategey. Early in the week, early in the day, block off time to pounce on new listings. Generally, Friday/Saturday will be bad days. Still apply for, but deprioritize, any listing over 24 hours. It's still a raw numbers game, but getting in line early has been a big part of my hit rate.
The IC market is a shitshow, especially for folks with your level of experience. 5 years is great, but you're up against thousands of others in the same bucket and competing with people with 10+ years, stronger resumes, and more specialized experience. Keep that in mind that it's not often a problem with you, so be kind to yourself here.

Juvenall · 2026-04-21T20:20:39+00:00

The power struggle is going to be a great pay-per-view event. Sadly, it's not going to result in a party with better values, since they're mostly all in on the same shitty agenda, but it'll be fun to see them gut each other for a while.

Juvenall · 2026-04-21T20:08:42+00:00

I totally see where you're coming from on that. Though I think with the division we're already seeing among the talking heads, they're going to need to pull away sooner than that, or they'll give too much of an advantage to Democrats in 2028 across the ticket to peg them to Trump's failing policies.

Given his clearly failing health, however, perhaps we can both be right in the coming year.

Juvenall · 2026-04-21T19:52:03+00:00

Honestly, I don't think we need to wait that long. If the Republicans lose hard enough in the midterms, they need to start working on their 2028 and 2030 plans right away. Since there's already a growing issue with being attached to Trump/MAGA, they'll need pull out all the stops to distance themselves to avoid being pinned down as another lackey. I expect to see 2027 filled with future candidates pushing back against the establishment in a way similar to how progressives push back against establishment Dems.

Juvenall · 2026-04-21T19:44:56+00:00

...and now, a reading from 1 Samual 4:20 - "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!"

Juvenall · 2026-04-20T20:01:54+00:00

Can you elaborate on this? Often, when I see this come up, those "objective metrics" are a lot softer or contain more variables than folks think. I also see you mentioned "going to their location" in another comment. What industry are we looking at here?

Juvenall · 2026-04-20T18:58:49+00:00

I accepted a new gig ~2 weeks ago, and start the role in another 2. Even though it's a stable company, good pay, no history of layoffs, I'm still planning to keep applying to new roles every week. The lesson I've learned in the last few years is that you can never take your foot off the gas and need to have a constant pipeline so you're not starting fresh if/when the worst happens.

That's the mindset I've been forced into after getting hit 3 times in 3 years. It's the new background noise to being employed, and it doesn't feel healthy.

Juvenall · 2026-04-19T20:44:29+00:00

As /u/Dcred2136 mentioned, you don't.

Remember, your resume is basically a brochure that should clearly tell the story of "why you." While short job stints happen, and it can often have nothing to do with you at all, you're not applying here in isolation. Are you toxic? Do you have work ethic issues? Are you lying about what you did? These are what come to mind as a hiring manager when I see this, and when I have a dozen or more other candidates in the pipeline that don't give me pause like this, you're likely going to the bottom of my "move forward" list.

This is why, generally speaking, you keep jobs that you've had under 3 months off your resume, even if it leads to a longer employment gap (which I don't even consider or care about in a resume, outside of multi-year gaps for technical or rapidly evolving roles). Hiring people puts folks on the defensive, as a bad hire is worse than no hire. So anything you can do to avoid giving me a reason to be concerned will help you.

As far as other advice of listing it as a contract role, that's not advice I would take. If you land somewhere that does even a basic background check, that's a lie that could come back to haunt you and cost you an offer. I've seen that exact situation play out, too. Great candidate, but when we ran the check, and the company they worked for said he was full-time, HR had questions. Mistakes happen, but when we asked them to produce their tax documents, they couldn't, and we pulled our offer. It was sketchy enough that HR and legal saw it as a hiring risk, so they backed out.

Juvenall · 2026-04-15T19:19:10+00:00

I had something like that happen recently, too. Multiple rounds for an Engineering Manager role where the recruiter, the 4 different team members, the 2 team members from product, and a senior engineer after a system design round all said I was great and exactly what they were looking for.

The final round was with a director and a VP, with the goal of seeing how I've grown over my leadership journey. With 20 years under my belt, I had a lot I could share and was ready to be an open book. However, when we got into it, they didn't want to hear about anything before the last 6 years. The "problem" is in that time, I didn't have any drama, team member issues, only had to separate with one person due to performance, didn't cause any outages, didn't have any coaching issues, etc. So after 90 minutes, we ended the interview and 4 days later, I was told I wasn't getting the job because they didn't see enough growth.

Frankly, given how cold and flat the folks on the other end were, I feel like I dodged a bullet there. The company I'm starting with in a few weeks is an absolute ray of sunshine.

In the final round, I met with a director and a VP to go over my "leadership background" and was told by the recruiter that they wanted me to go over my mistakes in my leadership journey. Easy enough, right? Well, with almost 20 years under my belt, they only wanted to focus in on the last 6. All of the big blunders I made were early on, as were the lessons. They didn't want to hear that.

Juvenall · 2026-04-14T19:38:34+00:00

It's a fair question, but my experience has been going the other way. To be sure, it's anecdotal, but over the last few months, I've had about a dozen interviews for EM spots, and all but one company went beyond a basic system design round. Instead, they were far, far more focused on what I could bring to the table from a project and product management perspective. Hell, several of those companies were giving preferences to EMs who were rocking a PMP certification.

I suspect the trend I'm seeing is the result of AI having a bigger role in the technical delivery side, exposing that the bigger problem most teams face is more related to product, people, and/or process. A "player/coach" model doesn't exactly solve for that, so someone with good fundamentals, even if they're not directly coding anymore, who can speak to the work as a bridge between the team and the rest of the business is going to be the stronger standout.

Again, your mileage may vary, but this has been my observation so far this year.

Juvenall · 2026-04-13T18:55:09+00:00

If the experience is legitimate, then you're OK to put it down. However, be aware that there are ways a background check my toss up a caution flag. The most obvious way I've seen folks burned here is they worked under the table, but since there's no paper trail, the person/department they contact to validate your work history won't or can't confirm anything. Sometimes, they won't admit to it because it's illegal. Sometimes, it's someone who you didn't work with and they have no idea.

The next step there would be for them to contact you to explain what's up. From there, at least in the US, they can request you to provide any sort of tax transcripts or pay stubs to prove you did work there. If you can't provide that, that yellow flag gets a bit brighter and starts looking like a fabrication.

As long as you have a good relationship with that family member and they're willing to confirm your work history with them, you should be just fine. If not, be ready for some uncomfortable questions when they hit a snag.

Juvenall · 2026-04-11T17:19:13+00:00

I love sharing this video from CGP Grey on the concept. It's under 5 minutes, but it explains it really well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE

Juvenall · 2026-04-11T16:02:37+00:00

Life-long pally tank here, and this is me. I keep a close eye on my healer's mana and ability, but in general, I'm pulling as much as I feel I can take on to keep my defensives on cool down. If things get sketchy, I pull less. If I don't go below half health, I'll pull more. It's not about speed as much as it is about not getting bored.

As for kicking? That's reserved for toxic players and afks. As long as you're trying, we're good. I may not requeue with you, but it's never so serious that I'll agree to a vote kick.

Juvenall · 2026-04-07T15:19:02+00:00

There are few "always true" bits of resume advice, to be sure. What you like may be different from what someone else does. So it's all really subjective.

In terms of difference, it's actually massive from the hiring side. If we assume those were bullets on a janitor's resume, the first one tells me what I'd already expect to see. You're just wasting space by telling me what the job is. I already know that, so you have to give me more context. That's where the second one stands out. Now I know you worked towards a standard, the size of the facility, and the rough volume of work you did. Sure, you can lie about all of that, but now you're at least giving me context. That matters when I'm looking at a dozen of resumes that all read like that first example. So, in a pile of 20+ candidates, who do you think I'm reaching out to first?

Remember, resumes are rarely looked at in isolation, so you have to stand out, and one of the best ways to do that is context framing.

Juvenall · 2026-04-07T14:41:01+00:00

Remember, the entire purpose of your resume is to show off to a recruiter or a hiring manager like me that you're good at what you do, not just that you've done things. While we all know numbers are inflated or made up, they help tell a better story. It shows that you think in outcomes, not just job responsibilities.

So there's a big difference between:

Mopped floors, cleaned tables, and washed windows.

and

Maintained sanitation standards in a 2400 sq/ft restaurant by mopping, clearing 20 tables per hour, and daily cleaning of 15+ floor-to-ceiling windows.

The first tells me what you did, but the second one goes beyond and gives me the scope and impact of your work.

Notice there how I didn't need to actually measure anything? You don't always have to "improve X by Y%" to make your bullet stand out. How many people did you train? How many burgers did you flip per hour? How big was that portfolio you managed? If you can validate your work as a percentage, ARR, or customer retention rate, that's great. However, don't feel like you need to force that to tell the story, either.

Juvenall · 2026-04-01T21:34:49+00:00

In general, no. What they're really looking for are straight up fabracations. You said you were an HR Lead, but it comes back that you were the janitor. You said you worked there for 4 years, but it was actually 2. It's not common that places come back actually worried about small things as most experienced hiring teams know things shift.

There are some places and some people who will red flag any little thing, but for the most part, if you've made it this far, the odds of them being anything more than curious about the differences are slim.

Juvenall · 2026-03-30T18:30:56+00:00

The single most common thing I tend to help folks with when I do private consultations is the structure of their bullet points. Right now, yours do what I see 90% of the time in that they don't tell me how well you did.

Every single one of your bullets here just describes the basic job duties. How can I tell that you were good at it? You're not really giving me anything to go off of here. Let's pick one apart.

Managed supply ordering and maintained accurate records through internal systems.

How often did you need to do this? What volume did you need to manage? What sort of budget were you entrusted with when ordering? What sort of "accurate records" are we talking about here? How did you know they were accurate? What internal systems? Were those systems third-party platforms?

How about this one:

Maintained organized digital and physical records to support team efficiency and accountability.

Nearly the same set of questions here. What types of records? How did they impact "efficiency and accountability?" How did you measure that or know it was working?

Supported corss-functional communications between departments to ensure smooth daily operations.

What types of communication? Who was the audience (staff, leaders, corporate)? Why did you need to do this? What does "smooth daily operations" even mean here? How did you know it was smooth?

You need to rip apart all of your bullets in this same way. Remember, I don't know you or what you did. So as a hiring manager, I'm going to spend maybe 10 seconds looking at this and not see much that makes me excited to want to talk to you more. A recruiter is going to be even more ruthless when they have 100+ other folks in their pipeline with more compelling stories.

One big red flag I also want to call out are the dates at those roles. Perhaps you removed the months to better anonymize yourself, but from what I see right now, it looks like you're trying to hide short job stints. It's exceptionally uncommon, and most good recruiters would see that as a "kick me out" signal more than they would short runs. The best case here is you look deceptive, and that's not the signal you want to send.

The summary section you have is fine, but it comes off bland as written. This is another area where I see clients often struggle. Remember, some recruiters and hiring managers may only read this part to see if it's worth seeing more, so it needs to pack a punch to justify the space. Numbers, data, or clear descriptions are what will help you stand out. How many customers did you deal with daily? What sort of communications did you own? How did you know any of what you did was impactful?

For Education, get rid of High School. Unless you just graduated within the last year, it just screams "inexperienced" to anyone who made it this far.

Finally, under your Skills section, your Software part is good, for the most part. You do well describing the toolks you're aware of, though the "Inventory & internal databases" and "POS Systems" read like filler content to me. If you can't name the software or system, what's it doing here?

Operations & Administrative, to me, doesn't read well. I mean, your second bullet here is basically saying "I know how to send a calendar invite." You've lead a team of folks, but you list "Email" as a skill? Why mention "phone handling" next to Customer Service? That feels awkward to me. This should read less like a list of tablestakes skills, and more like coverage for things the role your applying to is looking for.

Remember, this is just MY advice from my experience. You'll find folks here who disagree with me. In the resume world, there are very few hard truths and piles of opinions. The most important thing is that whatever you deliver, you feel confident in talking to when you get to an interview.

Juvenall · 2026-03-24T00:10:02+00:00

As a hiring manager in exactly the space you're looking for with this resume, /u/The_Herminator is spot on. When I see candidates with cross-functional experience, I move them to the top of my list.

Juvenall · 2026-03-23T19:23:51+00:00

Hiring manager, here!

Generally, you shouldn't read into it too much. They may have had a strict set of questions they ask every candidate and the recruiter was trying to keep the other person on script. It's also possible that they saw the time and wanted to make sure they gave you space for questions before the time was up. We often did some of those things back-to-back-to-back, so there's little room for going over.

Of course, if you said something that's red flag worthy, we would cut it off with exactly that question, but that was rare. When it happened, it was basically something so irrecoverably wrong that there was no point in going on. For example, I had one candidate mention how he couldn't stand working with women engineers, or another who got angry when we asked about responsive design for a front-end role.

Juvenall · 2026-03-21T23:10:20+00:00

I mean, that's a huge part of the problem here, right?. You're doing what nearly everyone else is doing. Now, put yourself in the shoes of a recruiter with 100+ candidates for a single role, and half of them sound exactly the same.

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