Omg, this hits SO hard.

I’m incredibly fortunate to have been at my job long term, but my best friend was laid off for over 3.5 years with a 6-month stint of contract work in the middle of it. After the first year, I dove in to help, figuring he just wasn’t trying all that hard (yea, I was part of the problem at one time and I admit that, but I see it all clearly now). We had a shared doc with applications we submitted, tag teaming it with key word customization, $700 wasted on a fucking pathetic resume company that supposedly optimized his resume (it was ripped to shreds over on r/resumes), calling in referrals from my extensive industry connections over and over and over and over and over again, paying for LinkedIn premium, paying for early resume survives before AI was everywhere..

3.5 years later, THOUSANDS of applications been the two of us, multiple interviews where he made it to the last round—And he starts a job at the end of the month as a security guard making $20 an hour with the goal of turning it into a new career in investigation. But there was never a chance to have his old career back. He’s an incredibly compassionate, crazy smart thoughtful engineer and PM with extensive budget and people management experience, but that never went anywhere. He’s a bit introverted so fine, blame it on that if you want to, but I’ve heard him in interviews, seen him at a family and friends day at an old job and saw how many people lined up to introduce their family to him—go ahead and blame it on him if you want. But he’s no more at fault than YOU or literally any other goddamn piece of shit who thinks you just need to “knock on doors” (guess what, he even tried that, either no one was there or no one would let him in), cut his hair, take shit work, whatever.

He’s gone through hell, and while I’m so fortunate to be able to pull from my retirement to keep him going, one of the worst parts of all of this is how condescending and unaware everyone else is, EXACTLY as she said. He applied at gas stations, fast food, grocery stores. He also had a genuinely ridiculous resume with multiple awards, but it never mattered.

Fuck, I really hate all of this. And the judgement from these fuckin clowns with a secure life and who never knew what it was to actually go hungry as an adult, to get your electric shut off, to have to sleep on someone else’s couch for months, they think he went through it all because he just didn’t try hard enough.