this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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I've been unemployed for 6 months now. Resigned from my old job because I was fed up with how I was getting treated. In hindsight, it was probably a rash decision, but I never expected that getting a new job, with all my skills and experience, would be this difficult. I completely chew thru all my savings, sold half of my stuff, and even ended up borrowing money from my folks to survive. I'm glad my parents were able to help me out, but I feel pretty bad asking them for money when they've been retired for years, and it should be me supporting them instead. It really sucks, it feels like I failed my parents and failed at life, especially when I keep hearing stories of how well off my cousins are, how they're married, own a house, own a car, have kids etc and meanwhile I'm still single, flatting, and don't have any assets worth mentioning. Sigh.
Politicians: “Look how great the economy is doing!”
Job market: doesn't exist
Housing: doesn't exist
Homeless people: everywhere
Why there aren't massive riots, I can't fathom. Civilization is coming apart at the seams and everyone is just…okay with that.
Yeah, that's why I didn't say “protests”. Our forefathers didn't get a 40-hour work week by asking politely.
Even that doesn't really explain it. The streets are crawling with people who were evicted from their homes because their jobs didn't pay enough to cover rent. These people have nothing to lose, and yet they still stay quiet.
I think you are vastly oversimplifying things. For starters, who is going to organize this? If you don’t have food or shelter, your only focus for the day is find food and a relatively safe place to sleep at night.
But, let’s say that they did organize. We know what the outcome would be: the police would show up, beat the shit out of them, jail them, and throw away what few possessions they have left. And most people’s reaction to that would be “I’m glad the police finally cleaned up our streets” because, whether they want to admit it or not, most people hate the poor, and especially hate the unhoused and just want them to disappear. I can say that with confidence because that’s what happens in major cities when the unhoused do anything, every. time. Those who have been suffering for a while have had the spirit beaten out of them, and the recently unhoused quickly learn to follow suit if they want to stay alive and have any hope of improving their lives because if you have any criminal record whatsoever, you immediately become unhirable to 90% of businesses. Creating problems for the system is a way to guarantee you will remain unhoused for the rest of whatever life you have left after.
Yeah, that's true. Everyone seems to hate the homeless. And they'll probably continue to hate the homeless even as millions of working middle-class people lose their homes as a result of the housing and job crisis. Hell, the newly homeless will probably hate themselves, too.
But I don't understand why. These homeless people didn't choose to jack up their rent and slash their wages; their landlords and employers did. They're victims, not perpetrators. Why would people hate them? Is everybody's brain malfunctioning from microplastic poisoning or something?
So, they remain docile because they cling to a false hope? As far as I can tell, once you're homeless, you're going to stay that way for the rest of your life, no matter what you do, precisely because everyone hates you for being homeless.
I wish I had a good answer for your first questions. My best guess is some mixture of American propaganda about poor = lazy, puritanical views that hardworking people are morally good, and a refusal to believe that it will happen to them because they are good, hardworking people.
As for your question about the unhoused, I’ll paraphrase something my spouse, who has been unhoused, told me in the past:
“The false hope is necessary. The people who lose that hope are the ones who OD trying to escape (though those who still have that hope may also use drugs as an escapism) or quietly kill themselves and no one but the few unhoused they know will notice, and most won’t have the energy or mental space to care.”
^^ to add a bit to that of my own; we have studies that show the psychological effects chronic starvation and stress cause: increased irritability, impulsiveness, decreased ability to plan or critically think (from their own previous ability, not saying it immediately drops your IQ to like, 70 [also, let’s agree to brush over the issues of IQ as a measure of intelligence since I am just using it as an example]). And that is a permanent effect. It doesn’t rebound if you suddenly become food-and-shelter stable. Your brain is just permanently fucked up.
Also, I don’t know where else to include this, but I feel like it is important if discussing this topic. My spouse was unhoused for approx 1 year. It has taken 5 years of therapy to get them to view themselves as a person again. After 12 months, they had internalized their treatment as subhuman to the point it has taken 5x that to undo. And that’s not like, positive self-esteem. They still have insanely low self esteem and negative views of themselves and their abilities (along with CPTSD). This is them viewing themselves as a person as much as any person walking down the street. I cannot imagine how it is for people who have been unhoused longer.
Keep your head up! Its definitely stressful being between jobs. I just experienced that this year, however mine was forced on me when the company let a bunch of people go to save costs/restructure. I guess the good part there was it included severance. It took me about 3mo to find a new job, but holy hell those months were super stressful. I cut out all extra spending, switch to minimum payment on my loan, dropped services we didn't need and of course stopped buying stupid shit.
No idea what you do, but my line of work can be remote/on-site and I thought finding a remote position from anywhere would be easier, but ultimately started looking at local companies with some on-site. This turned out good for me because of everyone's push to be full time remote.
Thanks, I appreciate your kind words. I'm in IT (sysadmin) and would prefer to work remote, but tbh I don't really care at this point. At first I was a bit choosy because of my overconfidence, but now I'm open for anything - even part time, short term etc - across the whole country even. Applied for several dozens of jobs so far, only had one interview call and I blew it - my mind went blank on a simple python question, although I nailed the rest of the interview, I guess they weren't impressed when I said I knew python (which I did, but.. oh well). I do have another interview coming up, but my confidence has taken a big hit. I used to think I knew this shit inside out and companies would be lining up to hire me, but boy was I wrong. It's come to the point where I'm willing to take a 40% paycut and go back to tier 1 roles.. not like I haven't applied for tier 1 stuff but I friking didn't even get an interview call, or let alone a rejection mail, so yea, I'm seriously doubting myself at this point.
I did not have much serious interest either and considered my resume really strong. I quickly started wondering where the disconnect was.
Since I was laid off, one benefit I was given was access to a placement company. They helped with my resume formatting and I had a human coach who I met with a handful of times who initially helped calm me down but also gave me pointers on my online presence (LinkedIn profile). The companies website had videos that went over resume building, interviewing, negotiating etc, but I honestly didn't find them as useful.
If you want to message me I'd be glad to help. I can look at your resume (not an expert) but am in IT (solution architect) and can at least compare it's layout style to what I ended up with. I can try to remember/write up the things my coach had me change on my Li profile.
I don't know if I have much info/help to give but I can share what I did.
That's pretty similar to my experience, although I'm maybe slightly less seasoned than you in terms of experience. I wasn't exactly expecting to get a new position immediately, but given all the talk in the media of a needy job market, I had a pretty damn hard time getting so much as a call back from most places.
Yeah the job market is so fucked up, being told everywhere needs people, except for every company you just applied for lol.
On one end you have HR sitting on their ass for months, advertising for jobs already filled (only finding out weeks later), go through 2/3 interviews to not be picked or put on hold even following up for a couple months, random filters that screen out proper candidates while keeping ones who bloated it with keywords... long lines to even speak to someone at career events. Been through it all. I picked up every single god-damn call and still it took 10 months. The whole process is so denigrating and it makes it easy to fault yourself for it. (Lesson learned: don't do that!). Other thing I learned is many companies for some fucked up reason like to hire around the same time so often it was 3 interviews 1 month, 0 interviews for the next two.
On the other hand, from recruiting side you have an avalanche of applications to sift through, many of them AI garbage nowadays, and if you interview someone that can't say much about a project they put on their resume, what can you do?
With inflation at the level it is, and salary offers not keeping up either, even if you can land something it's not quite a golden ticket on its own.