Hacker News Reader

Comment by iberator | Hacker News Reader

Unemployment and forced downshifting. From 200k programmer to McDonald's worker and call centre worker in just 4 years...

Its brutal. Once you are out at 35+ for an even year or two - it's impossible to go back.

AI takes jobs faster than creating new ones.

ps. Just got laid off from the Temu call(chat) centre. AI IS taking our jobs.

completely devastated

View on HN

I really feel for you man. Keep trying, I know my 12k+ employee org has lifted its hiring freeze and committed to raise engineer headcount by 10% by December. I think the dark days are starting to be over for tech hiring in general, I know other orgs are hiring again too.

And you write code? How's your product sense? Got a resume?

I designed and wrote some custom cpu(stack based RISC cpu with fixed operation/operand size) architecture simulator, with assembler and almost with forth compiler on my phone when I was homeless...

Nowadays out of tech - too tired after 11h shift to do stuff. No weekends.

Got kicked out from McDonald's for being too slow (competing with 20yr olds is HARD), gonna be kicked out from temu in 2 weeks due the AI (80% staff reduction!) despite the best CSAT...

I'm worried about having any job stability. Programmer's ship sailed away I guess. (I lost to the 40B$ AI supercomputer so it's fair :)

/venting off

I understand you're out of tech right now. I understand it's tough right now. Have you worked professionally in tech before?

Yeah, as backend programmer.

Strange. I took 3 years off from 2022-2025. I got a job immediately at FAANG. I did have to relocate back to Silicon Valley.

I'm from Europe and not FAANG material.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com