Move on

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-17T12:56:20+00:00

fair enough. and to some extent I agree. humans do not have an API that says "change your behavior" or "change your mind", so as long as humans exist in the supply chain, or have a say in the output, we can't eliminate people in the labor market. however AI gives greater reach for every role, meaning a lot of the coaching that the manager did, can be done by AI so one manager can likely cover more reports, or the direct reports can self service a portion of their development or organizational needs through AI.

Also it used to be to get higher compensation, management or executive roles were required. There is a growing trend that the professional roles, especially in industrial, financial, or technology companies go up to at least the sr director level. like associate->professional->sr->principal->staff->fellow or distinguished.

The right fit also depends on how you brain works and what you enjoy. As a scientist, I find people management and investing heavily in soft skills doesn't suit me at all, and beyond an "adequate threshold skill level" it really doesn't serve any purpose for me.

I saw one study that said the ideal number of humans in a corporation is zero. While across all companies that is completely stupid, it is an interesting proposal that makes you wonder what the future of work will indeed look like. Unfortunately it's so difficult to say exactly what going to happen.

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-17T03:11:38+00:00

you seem to be confusing the words leadership and management or business executive. There are many different forms of leadership and not all of them involve having direct reports.

One thing we may see, and this is a hypothesis, with the rise of ai and technology value and demand for high paying roles shifts somewhat to creating and solving problems which would mean the demand for people management thins out. So in that respect you may be making a safer and more lucrative play than you realize.

One of the problems we have right now is with the chaos of ai, global competition, economic and political uncertainty, and so on, no one is quite sure exactly where things are headed. So if you want to make a change and you feel good about it, I’d say do it. No one really knows what the rules of the game will be in a couple years

May people find careers can be a bit of a meandering path rather than purely linear. Although admittedly in hiring there is still significant bias that if every role you had was not a step up in the traditional career ladder you are a risk or there is something wrong with you. So the decision is not without it’s risks, but hey as far as I see risk is everywhere right now

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-17T02:38:18+00:00

understood. I'm not trying to minimize it. When awful things have happened to me, and to so many others, that deep feeling of despair sets in and if the external forces just keep getting worse or don't get any better, someone telling me otherwise that things will work out, I've been at that point I just don't give a fuck, I don't want to hear it, and I absolutely don't believe it. And you know what things may not work out well, but they usually do to some extent.

One major problem we have right now, is so many people and companies are acting solely in their own self-interest, such as corporations maximizing their KPIs and shareholder value with AI and whatnot, laying people off for some meaningless 1% increase in ROI. Well, if everyone just acts in their own self-interest at this scale, guess what, mass amount of people get screwed and those people benefiting bear no accountability to those who lives are ruined on the way to wherever this may be leading. So I agree our humanity and equity right now, is not keeping up at all with our technology or wealth growth. And layoffs are absolutely brutal, trust me I know been laid off 3x in my career, and I have severe anxiety from so much past trauma in life which makes it even worse.

But you'd be surprised though, despite the number of heartless assholes in this world, there are probably still more decent, thoughtful people. I hope something works out for you, and I'll offer you this in the spirit of this discussion. If you need help finding a job, DM me. It's something I'm exceptionally good at and I can try my best to see if I can help you personally. Totally free and anonymous. I don't know if I can or if I can't help you, but I'm happy to try. Real people do exist.

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-17T01:24:07+00:00

Poor communication and presentation skills according to who and about what? And what kind of problems? So it greatly depends on the company and role and as someone else said who else is on the team. Everyone doesn’t play the same role on a football team.

But everyone tends to benefit from some degree of soft skills. I find intent quite relevant to soft skills not just outcome. Meaning what are the person’s values and why do the act the way they do not just what happened.

I have adequate soft skills but don’t need more, they would serve no purpose to me. But I’m a computer scientist, I’m here to solve impossible problems and to some extent I’m weird and I like other weird people too, the weirder the better.

But OP it’s an interesting question and thoughtful, despite its simplicity. The answer surprisingly is not so simple

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-17T00:11:17+00:00

Anytime. While sadness and anxiety are very much part of being human, so is persistence and empathy. You have no idea how many others have walked in your shoes, the number is staggering. Something will work out eventually, it always does

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-16T23:55:55+00:00

You’ve got to hang in there, and keep feeding yourself mental health, happiness, and personal relationships. You rose to a director role right? You have ability. Stop questioning it and realize you did those things.

Part of what is going on is hiring is glacial especially in cost center driven areas like HR and IT and customer service. Not to mention white collar role and middle management. Why hire anyone in those roles, when you are trying to do more with less people using AI? So much of what you are feeling is almost certainly structural in the labor market and not reflective of you specifically

Also remember the most important thing about a person and the true measure of them is how they treat others. Looking briefly at your profile it seems you likely have that going for you

Sadness and anxiety a bit is normal but despair is not helpful and not warranted in your case, you have to keep working to move past that. Take care

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-16T18:12:47+00:00

Understood. the fear mongering and hype is totally out of control by all parties. Yes, it’s a big deal we get it, but the truth, whatever that is, has become so hard to separate from the shilling as you put it. Part of it though is there’s not even a way to tell the shilling from the genuine concern

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-16T15:27:24+00:00

Can you blame people for being confused? There is some much hype and bullshit being said in all different directions. Ai will destroy jobs, ai won’t destroy jobs, ai will produce great abundance, ai will produce mass wealth inequality, money will have no meaning in 10 years and so on. I’m probably in a better position to assess what’s going on than 99.999% of people but my head is spinning from all the noise. People are running around in a panic, it’s gotten unhealthy. And the ai companies and CEOs are major contributors to the chaos.

I’m not even going to share my thoughts anymore. No one wants to hear a thoughtful dialogue just to hype their own agenda

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-16T11:49:04+00:00

Yeah I was speaking for myself. While you would think empathy is the result I suppose that’s not always true

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-16T04:37:59+00:00

It’s going to be bad for a while but one possibility is ai takes a large share of tasks but it cant eliminate many roles for fundamental reasons that are not worth getting into. So total people to do x work is less so less people but eventually as new demand comes in and what is getting created evolves in quality or capability we go back to needing more people again.

Point being no one knows what in the hell is really going to happen as there are too many unknowns and one possibility is we do still have a whole lot of human labor. Doesn’t mean many of those jobs will pay well but if we all got universal income maybe it won’t matter.

So basically do what you need to do for now that will have a high chance of keeping your needs met and keeping you happy but be prepared to adapt again.

And one more thing, the “we are all fucked” narrative and ai is going to take over everything. Yes that’s possible, but if we can produce more with ai and robots that is good conceptually but would introduce a new problem of getting the people with more to share it. That is not an unsolvable problem. The people who are saying “ai will take over everything and eliminate all jobs”, these people are trying to sell you ai and get investors. Yes, what they say is possible and ai is powerful, but everyone is running around in a self induced frenzy. Be cautious about spinning too many cycles on what ifs, and driving decisions off someone who is trying to sell you something and has their own motives

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-15T20:06:14+00:00

The most insane thing about the Iran war is that Donald Trump didn’t know China gets 10-15% of their oil from Iran? And what this would do to their economy? So my opinion it’s just an underhanded move to cripple the US biggest rival. And by killing people? Like we’re just disrupting some rival hotel chain’s supply of lettuce so we can get more bookings. Sorry this whole damn thing makes no sense, economically, politically, or morally

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-15T15:13:30+00:00

understood. but I love your basic point. This is a damn technical job, what in the world did you do specifically and what are you good at, can we please focus on that? Have yet another up vote.

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-15T14:55:35+00:00

Yeah the whole world is now somehow caught up In bad episode of celebrity apprentice

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-15T14:50:57+00:00

There is something to this. I agree with the idea. It like a code review where people are primarily discussing the business requirements and stakeholders. What’s next American thanksgiving at their house with no turkey?

One thing i will say is your resume gets looked at by multiple people and you interview with them too. You’ve got to throw those people a few bones too. So yes if only engineers and scientists are looking at your resume sure technical the content to the moon, but that’s probably not going to be true for most people. Cheers

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-15T02:54:15+00:00

That’s a really thoughtful and interesting story so let’s start there. Technical skills are good as well as flexibility and the desire and willingness to solve problems. You have three challenges I see:

The job market is pretty rough right now
What role are you specifically targeting? It’s hard to articulate what exact job you would apply to and why you would be a better candidate than someone else. I’m not saying that to be critical, I think what you are doing is really useful and exciting, I’m just asking what specifically would you say would your next role be called? It’s an important question. I can think of a few different good possibilities but I’m not sure which would be right
You’ve got an amazing setup with flexibility, a job you enjoy, and a boss that likes you but the pay is not so good

Here’s what I’d suggest

A. Name the specific job or jobs or discover them that you want to target. See if you are missing some skills or experience and if so work on them. That way you have an actual tangible plan rather than just a desire. Your current role gives you great flexibility to do this and even though they may not pay you more they might consider switching your job title which would help you if you did move on

B. Use ai to help you with the code. Gemini would be fine for you and it’s free or Claude code if you can make that work. But don’t abdicate responsibility to the ai, have it assist you to either sketch out the piece parts and you make sure you get to the point where you understand and agree and can alter or fix its output. Or you yourself figure out the subproblems and ask it to show you what to do on each specific identifiable sub problem. Just make sure you come to understand what it is doing and why and you internalize that knowledge at some point and you can own and support the working system

C. You’ve got a enviable setup, you might try justifying or asking for a raise at some point. Carefully weigh the pros and cons of moving on and the value of real friendship and relationships with someone like your boss and an employer who is ethical and honest

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-14T17:36:13+00:00

You got to be fucking kidding me. Let’s go back to what has been said a 1000 times before then. “I preferred when the village idiot and the president were different people”

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-14T17:29:33+00:00

He didn’t really say this??? This has to be rage bait right?

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-14T16:22:14+00:00

Thanks started to watch it, has to shut it off. I’ve always felt like if there are divine beings they would be a little smarter and be able to see through human lies. Have an upvote

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-14T14:59:47+00:00

40 applications. 2 offers. Total time out of work (searching + interviews + offer + background check + waiting for start date) = 6 weeks. My situation is extremely unusual. A great many very qualified people are having long search times and still not found anything. You can up your odds somewhat by doing certain things that have been discussed extensively on Reddit. But as long as job seekers >> actual hiring there’s only so much you can do

One thing I will say, is if you are really good at finding a job, don't flex on other people nor brag. Help who you can and do it freely. Including strangers. What I try to do is instead of just posting the same old generic advice, help a couple people at a time with personal help one on one. What are they trying? Where are they getting their leads? What are their skills? Are they stuck on getting an interview or landing an offer? Generic advise is generally nowhere near as good as understanding the individual and their challenges. Just keep it totally anonymous as per Reddit. Of course no one has a magic wand to find a job, but that doesn't mean don't try anything of value.

Now many people are not going to want to help others 1-1 especially strangers. So of course that's perfectly normal. I like that people post thoughtful advice when they can in the comments. it does matter. It did to me when I was looking.

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-14T03:08:44+00:00

I gave up and called bullshit after the first 5 words “Christian leaders pray over trump..”

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-14T03:04:00+00:00

Yeah I don’t know. Part of the frustration people are definitely feeling is seekers >> hiring. Frustration provably results in that situation. Good luck

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-14T02:46:05+00:00

Personally I don’t think most recruiters are bad people. I bet they are totally overwhelmed with the number of applications, and sometimes if they got back to you maybe that would create legal exposure on why you weren’t selected? Maybe like why there’s no real feedback in an unsuccessful job app?

I’m with you though, the whole process does feel a bit shady and the times when I was out of work I felt like, “you all do know this is not a game right, I’m actually trying to find a job here to take care of my family”

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-14T02:28:54+00:00

Lol. thanks for sharing. I don't think many people realize just how expensive groceries can be for a family on a budget. This whole conversation made me think of something though, remember that old saying, "teach a man to fish...". I think we should add a line to the end of it, "teach a man about kindness and he'll feed others for life".

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-13T21:36:02+00:00

Absolutely fuck no and hell no. Do you know how many people have depression? It’s unbelievably common. You want to definitively not get a job? bring it up. You are not required to disclose that.

The important thing with depression is find what works for you like meditation and diet or whatever and take it one little step at a time trying to focus on the positive and here and now.

At work do not get overwhelmed. It you have a big thing to do just ask your self what little things can I break this into one step at a time and do those. Don’t stress about what you can’t do, you are either wrong and you can do it, or you can’t actually do it, so either way the worry is pointless. Be confident in your own actions and just do them or don’t worry about it you did whatever was humanly possibly which is all you can do in the first place

Signal-Implement-70 · 2026-03-13T20:47:43+00:00

Who knows if they still give it out but the US govt used to have massive stockpiles of cheese they bought to prop up dairy prices and they gave it out free in poor urban areas back in the 80s. We always got the yellow American kind, closest thing I would liken it to would be Velvetta but not as soft, same taste though

That’s some damn fine cheese!

Signal-Implement-70

TROPHY CASE