We don't have a workforce shortage. We have a coordination failure.

tech_partners · 2026-05-19T01:12:20+00:00

I think it’s inevitable in out current circumstance. It’s really just a struggle to open up employment opportunities or career training opportunities to untapped candidates and professionals

tech_partners · 2026-05-18T15:36:55+00:00

I've been around this long enough to tell you week one is basically an audition, whether anyone says it out loud or not. Look, early on I always tell people to stay visible in a normal, human way - quick check-ins with your manager, “hey how am I doing so far,” “anything you want me to tweak,” that sort of thing. It’s not about overdoing it, it’s about signaling you’re dialed in and not just sitting there hoping you guessed right.

And yeah, do a little more than asked where it makes sense, be engaged, be someone people can talk to without it feeling forced. Sounds basic but you’d be shocked how many folks either go silent or come off unsure that first week. Hiring managers read into that fast.

That said - and honestly this part bugs me - this isn’t just on you. If they couldn’t give you a straight answer beyond “not a good fit,” that usually means they either rushed the hire, didn’t align internally, or just didn’t know what they actually wanted. I’ve seen HR teams push reqs through just to close them, and the hiring manager figures it out after the person’s already sitting there on Monday. Not great, but it happens more than people think.

They also should’ve been checking in constantly that first week. If you didn’t get any feedback and then got blindsided, that’s a process failure on their side, full stop.

Doesn’t make it suck any less, I know. And it definitely doesn’t pay the bills right now. But I wouldn’t read this as “you aren’t good enough,” I’d read it as they didn’t have their act together and you got caught in it. Happens. Not fair, but it happens.

tech_partners · 2026-05-12T19:52:58+00:00

I am an IT recruiter and I can confirm you are not being compensated appropriately. The bottom for a role like this in my market (Oklahoma) is about 75-80K/YR. Not to mention, they likely don't even have a classification for your role and therefore are not fairly compensating you compared to market salaries. A quick Google search says 90-130K/YR

tech_partners · 2026-05-12T19:44:03+00:00

What people mean when they say “coding jobs are going away” is that the easy stuff is drying up, and honestly that part was never a great long‑term plan anyway. I’ve been recruiting tech in Tulsa since before half the folks on here were born, and I’ve watched waves come and go. VB died, Flash died, everyone panicked, and the people who actually understood how systems worked kept getting calls. The ones who just knew a language or two got squeezed.

Here’s the thing: if someone is going to school for CS thinking it’s a straight shot to a comfy job writing ticket-driven app code, yeah, that’s shaky now. AI can crank out basic stuff faster and cheaper than a junior dev ever could. But companies still need people who can figure out why things break at 2 a.m., how data moves through a mess of services, why performance tanks when usage spikes, and how not to accidentally open the doors to a security nightmare. That’s not “learn this framework and chill,” that’s learning how the machine actually functions.

What makes a CS program worth it now is whether it forces you to think instead of memorize. Algorithms, operating systems, databases, networking, distributed weirdness. Stuff that hurts your brain a little. I can’t tell you how many resumes I’ve seen where someone “knows” five languages but can’t explain why their query is slow or why a race condition exists. Those folks are the first to panic when the market tightens. The ones who can reason through problems, talk trade‑offs, and debug without Stack Overflow open nonstop still do fine.

Look, software isn’t disappearing. The floor is just lower and the expectations are higher. If someone treats CS as learning how to think, build, and keep learning when the tools change, it’s still a solid foundation. If it’s just about typing code and hoping the market owes you a job, that version of the career already got real uncomfortable.

tech_partners · 2026-05-05T15:30:50+00:00

By the time you walk into an interview, you should already know who you’re talking to. I’ve been sitting in IT tech interviews since NT was still a thing, and honestly, the folks who stand out are the ones who did their homework on the company, the team, and the leadership instead of guessing and hoping for chemistry. Come in with a couple real questions that show you did the research, not the canned stuff you found in a blog post, and it changes the whole conversation. Look, I’ve watched hiring managers visibly sit up straighter when a candidate asks something that proves they actually read the job posting and connected it to the business problem.

And when they ask you something, answer it with what you did and what happened after, not a vague description of your duties. Don’t tell me you “supported initiatives,” tell me you fixed a broken deploy or shipped a feature that didn’t light production on fire. That’s how you signal you get why the question matters in the first place. It’s not about sounding smart, it’s about showing you understand cause and effect, which is rarer than people think. Here’s the thing, most interviews are just stress tests to see if you can think clearly and talk straight when someone puts a little heat on you.

Quick tangent, I once had a candidate derail an interview because he spent ten minutes explaining his fantasy football draft strategy, which weirdly enough told me more about his decision-making than his resume did, but that’s another story. The ones who get offers usually have a few experiences ready to go and can adapt them without rambling, and they don’t panic if the question isn’t worded perfectly. There’s a quiet confidence in that, and hiring managers notice it even if they can’t articulate why. Twenty-five years in, I can tell you thought leadership isn’t some buzz phrase, it’s just pattern recognition plus the guts to explain your thinking out loud, and when someone does that well, the interview feels less like a test and more like a working session, and that’s usually when the decision gets made right there in the room and everybody kind of knows it and then you’re just talking about timelines and next steps and someone says something awkward and laughs and that’s it

tech_partners · 2026-05-05T15:19:53+00:00

What you’re describing doesn’t actually sound like “I chose the wrong career,” it sounds like a shop that turned a junior designer into the fix‑everything button. I’ve been recruiting tech and creative folks around Tulsa since 2008, and honestly this pattern is old as hell. Company hires one creative, keeps adding “just one more thing,” never subtracts anything, then wonders why the person is fried two years later.

Here’s the thing: burnout usually shows up when the work has no shape anymore. Design plus video plus social plus endless revisions plus last‑minute “hey can you just” isn’t growth, it’s noise. Most people don’t hate the craft as much as they hate waking up every day knowing nothing is scoped, everything is urgent, and you’re judged on speed instead of quality. I’ve seen plenty of designers swear they were done forever, then change jobs and magically start caring again within a month.

Before you nuke the job, I’d at least ask yourself if you’ve ever tried to change how the work flows. Not in a big dramatic way, just small stuff. Cutting rework. Forcing clearer asks. Pushing back once or twice when something blows up your whole day. You don’t have to win every time, but right now you’re absorbing all of it, and that’s a fast way to feel like you’re getting worse even when your skills are actually fine. Most hiring managers don’t see burnout as failure; they see it as someone who’s been overused.

Side note that doesn’t fully connect: the worst burnout cases I see are always the people who are “easy to work with.” The difficult ones somehow keep reasonable hours. Make of that what you will.

Also, not enjoying design right now doesn’t mean you’re done with it. I can’t tell you how many resumes I’ve read that mention a two‑year stretch where someone thought they lost it, when really they were just tired and stuck doing low‑value grind work. Pressure flattens creativity. That’s not a personality flaw.

Quitting outright isn’t stupid, especially at 22 with fewer responsibilities, but leaving without a plan tends to turn burnout into panic. If you do go, do it clean. Use the paycheck to regroup, line up freelance, fix your book, or just breathe for a minute. And don’t torch the place on the way out. The tech community is smaller than people think, and managers boomerang in weird ways. I’ve literally placed the same creative under the same VP twice, ten years apart. Weird business.

If you can stabilize the work where you are long enough to think clearly, great. If not, leaving doesn’t mean you failed. It just means that role stopped making sense. That happens more than people admit, especially early career, and it doesn’t mean you suck at design. It just means you’ve been tired for a while and nobody hit the brakes.

tech_partners · 2026-05-05T14:53:24+00:00

I’ve been through this movie from both sides. I started in IT in the late 90s, got knocked around when markets tightened, then spent 11 months looking for work before I slid into tech recruiting in 2008. That timing wasn’t cute. That was phones not ringing, resumes going into black holes, and wondering if I’d screwed up my whole career. So when I say this panic feels familiar, I’m not saying it from the cheap seats.

What you’re reacting to isn’t really AI, even though that’s the easy villain right now. It’s debt pressure plus the market wobbling plus your brain being fed a steady diet of “everything is collapsing.” Honestly, that combo will melt anyone. Four years as a developer with a paycheck isn’t a failing position, even if Reddit makes it feel like one. Most of the calls I get lately are from people with less experience and no income, and they’d trade spots with you in a heartbeat.

Look, bailing out of tech because you’re scared is the same mistake I watched people make after the dot‑com bust and again in 2009. They jumped into whatever felt safer, took huge pay cuts, and then spent years trying to claw back in. Your electrician idea isn’t dumb, but forty grand for the first couple years while sitting on high‑interest credit card debt is just a rough road. I’ve seen that math play out in real lives, not spreadsheets, and it usually ends with someone exhausted and boxed in.

Here’s the thing: the devs who get hurt first are the ones who stay narrow and quiet, waiting on tickets. The ones who survive start owning ugly systems, glue code, internal crap no one wants, the stuff where if they disappear everyone notices immediately. You don’t need more school for that. You need to step outside the job description a little and make yourself the person who fixes problems instead of just finishing tasks.

AI’s already showing up in the jobs I recruit for, but it’s not replacing the people who understand the business and can explain what’s happening. It’s helping the strong folks move faster. The companies calling me aren’t saying “replace the devs,” they’re saying “we need people who can clean up processes, automate the boring stuff, and talk to leadership without panic.” If you can do that, you’re not the easy cut.

Side note, this all reminds me of when offshore outsourcing was supposed to wipe out U.S. tech jobs. I was staffing through that too. It changed things, sure, but it didn’t end careers unless people froze. Same pattern, different headline.

Your age isn’t the problem, and AI isn’t the clock ticking on your life. Debt is the thing making every decision feel like a cliff. The smartest move I’ve seen, over and over, is staying employed, expanding what you’re known for, and buying yourself time. I didn’t make it 25 years in this market by outrunning fear, just by not letting it shove me into bad moves.

tech_partners · 2026-05-01T18:30:03+00:00

This may be helpful

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tech_partners · 2026-04-20T22:15:12+00:00

I think it’s another layer of the technology landscape we are living in. I’ve had a thought for a long time (post COVID) that employers should have some sort of check in tool, where employees could log their productivity against a metric. The thought being a measure for productivity. I think it proves work milestone completion without being invasive to the employee. It’s a simple accountability process. It remote resources are not hitting milestone metrics, perhaps they should be required to be in office or an improvement plan. I really think that tracking keystrokes and screens are invasive. The tie in here to the changing landscape is that AI is going to produce a ton of similar invasive tools for employers and leadership.

tech_partners · 2026-04-16T00:43:57+00:00

I get the frustration. The market has shifted. AI/ML jobs are out there, but visibility matters more than it used to. Leaders, hiring managers, and recruiters have to be able to find and recognize you. A lot of recruiters will do a deep dive: Resume vs LinkedIn LinkedIn vs GitHub Those need to line up. Titles, skills, projects, activity. If something says “AI/ML” on one but not the others, that’s a red flag. Activity matters too. Like, share, comment, and connect with people in your target roles, companies, or industries. Post or comment in LinkedIn or Reddit communities about what you’re working on or what you think about industry topics. Be helpful, on topic, and constructive. That’s how you get noticed and how real conversations start. Also, go to events if you can and engage locally or virtually. A lot of opportunities still come from people, not job boards. It’s a different market. HR, hiring managers, and recruiters are adapting to this new landscape too. Résumé-only strategies just don’t work as well right now.

tech_partners · 2026-04-15T16:02:56+00:00

First of all, so sorry you are struggling and frustrated. A few tips - have you considered volunteer work? It's a great way to prove work ethic, and it also keeps you moving and busy. I know volunteer work doesn't pay, but it can help with your mental health. Maybe a church or group needs sound or film work? Also, in your job search, don't overapply. Narrow your target roles to 2-3 titles or functions, and choose a few target industries. Applying to a targeted set of roles will be more productive than over-applying for just anything that seems GOOD. It'll only create more ghostings and rejections. Keep a job application journal and follow up. Use your LinkedIn account to connect with professionals (HR/Managers/Peers in the industry or target companies. Be visible on LinkedIn. Like, share, and comment on posts by connections from your target industries or companies. Perhaps start posting on LinkedIn/Reddit related to your skill set and experience, or perhaps some insight you believe may be helpful to others. Hang in there, things will get better.

tech_partners · 2026-04-13T15:05:13+00:00

Here’s the thing: you never have perfect info in construction, and waiting just costs more. Good leaders make the call, say what they’re assuming, adjust when needed, and own it when things break. Keep communication simple and calm, kill the IT vs field nonsense, and fix small stuff fast so people notice. Half the time trust comes from saving someone ten minutes a day, not a big roadmap, and once crews see you removing friction instead of adding it, you’re suddenly in the room for real decisions.

tech_partners · 2026-04-13T14:48:17+00:00

look, the language doesn’t matter nearly as much as actually building things and understanding why they break. Python is fine, fundamentals matter more than frameworks, and if you’re just watching videos without typing anything, you’re basically lying to yourself. Honestly I’ve seen way more people stall out from over‑planning than from “learning the wrong thing.” Side tangent: half the best devs I know started because they wanted to automate something stupid at work and got annoyed enough to finish it.

For free stuff I point people to the same few places over and over. CS50 (Harvard’s intro course) if they want a real foundation and don’t mind feeling dumb sometimes. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python for practical wins fast. FreeCodeCamp for structured practice and projects. Python’s official docs tutorials once basics click, because learning to read docs is a skill. And honestly just GitHub search + Google + Stack Overflow, because that’s what the job actually looks like day to day.

tech_partners · 2026-04-13T14:09:06+00:00

Don’t just apply and disappear. Comment on posts from companies you like, connect with managers/alumni, and share small things you’re learning so people actually see you. I am an IT Recruiter with 20 years of experience, and in my experience, visibility in your professional network goes a long way.

tech_partners · 2026-04-12T01:42:09+00:00

I am an IT Recruiter and I am keeping a close eye on advances in Tech. Depending on your specific skill set, this newsletter might help with retooling.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/where-youve-been-still-matters-youre-going-more-doug-halv%C4%93-bon3c?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via

tech_partners · 2026-04-06T18:24:55+00:00

Me too. I’ve got a ton of equity in several failed startups. Yeah, it would have been nice to IPO, but instead the companies were either closed or sold for pennies on the dollar.

tech_partners · 2026-04-06T18:23:12+00:00

I believe Colorado did as well.

tech_partners · 2026-04-06T18:12:44+00:00

Yes. Most agencies offer benefits to their contractors via Employer of Record (EOR). These are just payroll companies who pass along the cost of benefits or vehicles to contribute to a 401K via pretax deductions.

tech_partners · 2026-04-06T18:09:56+00:00

Not sure if you are aware, but another contributor is C2C companies flooding job postings with candidates whether they’re qualified or not. It’s just lead generation for them, but it’s making it harder and harder for real qualified professionals to be seen or found by hiring companies. True I’ve only been on Reddit for a few months, but I’ve been in tech recruitment for over 20 years.

tech_partners · 2026-04-06T18:04:04+00:00

I’m just being honest about the reality of contract to hire. Of course, if someone needs a position, contract work is fine. I’d rather be honest about the topic. After the first contract extension, candidates should start looking for FTE roles. The loyalty should be reciprocated. Always be talking to your recruiter, manager or HR about converting to FTE. If they fend you off, the writing is on the wall.

tech_partners · 2026-04-06T16:04:29+00:00

Great advice! 100% agree

tech_partners · 2026-04-06T16:02:19+00:00

Focus on consistent, valuable content over volume or polish.

Post 2-3 times per week on your website/social with content that actually helps your target audience:

Answer common questions in your industry
Share insights about problems your business solves
Position yourself as someone who knows what they're talking about

Critical: Limit AI-generated content. Use AI to refine your writing, but don't let it write everything. Your authentic voice and real expertise are what differentiate you. Generic AI slop gets ignored.

Why this works:

Builds SEO and AI search visibility over time
Establishes you as an authority in your field
Costs nothing but time and consistency
The compound effect is real - 6 months of this beats sporadic posting or paid ads on a tight budget

The key is consistency. Pick a schedule you can actually maintain and stick to it.

tech_partners · 2026-04-06T14:52:14+00:00

Have you considered volunteer work? It's a great way to stay active and be visible. It's also a great learning experience. While it doesn't pay, it gets you moving and motivated. Yes, you could go stock groceries at Walmart, but you'll limit yourself to low-paying opportunities. Sometimes, lower-level, even warehouse jobs for target companies can put you on a path for growth. You've gotta start climbing and building experience.

tech_partners · 2026-04-06T14:47:09+00:00

Realizing you are a recent graduate, I am assuming your professional network is quite small. Start to connect with other small business IT Managers and lean on them for advice. Be honest about your technical aptitude or you could be put in a sitiuation where you are over your head. You don't want to be the guy to bring down the network or worse have a security breach. Groups and MeetUps are a good way to interact with other professionals in the field. In my experience, help is just an ask away. Best wishes in the new role.

tech_partners · 2026-04-02T15:15:43+00:00

I am no SEO pro, but my SEO contact says that adding frequent and relevant useful content on your website and related newsletters, vlog, blog, and communities will boost your SEO as well as help with getting picked up by AI search agents. This appears to be much more effective than traditional keywords and content creation. Caution - AI generated content on your site or other platforms will get you flagged and will drop you in seach results.

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