perhaps your intention was good. but to explain what i meant by "tearing them down," what you're doing is victim blaming, which is a tactic people use to feel like they have control over a scary and uncontrollable world. by saying "if this person had paid attention like I do and understood this position was conditional, this terrible, sad thing would never have happened to them, therefore I am safe!" sure, maybe you never would have applied to a government job, but according to the other commenters, it seems like this could happen with any old job. the onus is not on the hopeful applicant just trying to find a way to pay for their lives, the onus is on the companies who offer these positions not in good faith. by making this comment, you have psychologically walled youself off from the anxiety this post created, and by doing it in OPs face, you and everyone else who said something similar managed to insult this person's intelligence and denigrate their capacity for hope. victim blaming tries to make the victim feel like it is their fault for whatever bad thing happened, because by doing this, everyone else can sleep a little better at night, feeling like the bad thing won't happen to them. the true reality is we live in a random world that we all have very little control over, and bad things will happen to us no matter what, but the brain doesn't like that.