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Comment by NewOrderNow | Hacker News Reader

I don't.

I have been a professional job seeker for 11 years since I have left college. I guess I would call myself a front-end developer though I have never had a front-end job. I am able to find work here and there as a freelancer and I have worked one tech job in QA in my 20s. I am now in my 30s. I make the majority of my money flipping stuff and working in service industry jobs and occasionally find work as a designer, developer, photographer, videographer, video editor, and much more....I know how to do a lot of things, but finding a job isn't one of them.

This has developed a lack of trust in humanity for me and a great mental illness. I have and probably won't ever trust an individual again when one grows up trying their hardest to develop skills when skills don't matter.

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This hits close to home. Working front desk at a hotel currently. Just the latest in a string of crummy jobs, stuck climbing up and falling down the bottom rungs of society.

Had a couple programming jobs after college. One was a startup that folded after a couple years when the president, CEO, and CFO all got indicted for tax fraud. The other was at a game studio a friend from college started that seemed to be successful... Then he started using company accounts as his personal piggy bank and stopped paying his employees.

That part you wrote about developing a lack of trust in humanity really resonates with me.

By now, I've lost touch with anyone else I knew in the industry. A couple medical issues wiped out my savings, so I don't have money to relocate. And the only jobs I've been able to find in my area barely cover monthly expenses.

These days, I try to forget I'm only ever a few paychecks away from homelessness and utter destitution. Instead, I just focus on keeping up my health and tinkering with the latest technologies. All I can do is hope someday a position near me opens up for a Rust dev or K8s admin or whatever the next thing happens to be and be ready when it does.

Anyway, hang in there. You're not the only one stuck in a rut. Keep holding on to whatever it is that still brings you joy. Never let them take that from you.

Half of my body is numb and I've needed a doctor for 5 years. I do the opposite: ignore health and hope this all ends soon.

We need more stories like this. I can relate. There is too much survivorship bias in society. To those trapped in the pit of hopelessness, don't give a f*. I apologize for my language, but crude as it is, it has solved a lot of my mental weaknesses.

I would say to everyone trying to fit in a world that looks for cultural fits - do not try to put a mask, find those like you and be straightforward to recruiters. Some will resonate with you and others will just brush u off.

Without sidelining to ideologies, I feel that society really needs to think again about a basic income to sustain human life. It is easier said than done but it is also easier said to people to 'fit' as a jack of all trades in an specialized world. Sometimes it is easy but most of the time, it is crushingly difficult.

If I knew that getting a job had nothing to do with skill, I most likely would have never tried in life and be happy because of a lack of college debt. Now, just hopelessness.

> I make the majority of my money flipping stuff and working in service industry jobs and occasionally find work as a designer, developer, photographer, videographer, video editor, and much more....I know how to do a lot of things, but finding a job isn't one of them.

If you're doing all those things, it sounds like you're finding lots of skill-based jobs, as well as selling directly. In what way don't you know how to find a job?

I am making money. I have never had a job with benefits. Never had insurance. Like I said, I can find ways to pay half the rent here and there.

But based on the experience here, it seems like people found work out of college, were able to focus in field because their expenses were paid for by a company and were able to create a family. None of this is an option when I spend 12 hours + a day trying to find money doing various work I genuinely don't care about.

Sadly lots of jobs are things people the employee doesn't care about :-) I'm still not clear on what skill it is you're lacking to find a job - as you say, people find jobs at a young age, for the first time. It's not (exactly) a skill to practice in itself, although there are practicalities that can be hard to get right depending on one's situation.

What is the (part of the) skill you think you're lacking?

No clue, when I get a decade's worth of automated responses with no reason, I most likely haven't grown or learned anything to help me get a job.

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