My odds are probably not great to reach out about this specifically but I figure it’s worth a shot since I’m in a major depressive episode and I need to channel it into something. If you read all of this, thank you.
I’m a thirty-something disabled trans woman in the US who works in tech. I’ve been doing programming for almost 15 years and I have been unemployed since January of last year. I am at my wit’s end trying to navigate this AI-infested, ATS fueled hell that is interviewing at any god damn tech company in 2024.
I used to work fully remotely for an airline company, and that was lovely. All through my career, even pre-Covid, I’ve had coworkers who worked completely online with us from all around the world, and it was never an issue. 2020-2022 were honestly something of a relief to me as I was finally able to make time and space needed to keep my health condition in check. I need to use temperature-regulated medication at all hours of the day, and that is of course much easier to do from my home than on the bus, or the train, or an office building. Now tech is apparently allergic to the concept and is forcing all of us back into offices around the country and as an immunocompromised person due to said condition I really can’t risk any more than is necessary, or else get even more serious complications, or die. If I absolutely must I’ll go back…but I can’t even do that. I have exhausted all of the local options I am aware of to radio silence, and we can’t afford to move or drive anywhere (no car). I have genuinely never seen a job market this bad, and I was a late teen working in 2008. I am very desperate and need help finding anything, anything that I can actually do.
I am not capable of prolonged manual labor anymore, but my wife works a minimum wage job at this local chuck e cheese knockoff to support us in the mean time, which means she is surrounded by an apathetic, anti-mask population and hundreds of teenagers and kids daily. She is the only one who wears an N95 to work; everyone else, including coworkers, refuses when offered. It was the only thing we could find to keep us from homelessness. To say we are stressed out is putting it lightly.
We aren’t hurting for money (yet) but my savings ran dry long ago and we are on the razor’s edge. I just want to work safely again, man. I’m sorry if this is not the right place for something like this, but I don’t know what else to do.
Check with engineering firms, there's a big push lately to bring more programming into design and you'd be working with Lisp and Python writing auto drafting stuff.
I've been doing that for a few years and it's pretty solid. There's also stuff for remote SQL management for SCADA systems. One of my coworkers just got a mostly remote gig (1 day/week in office) at $80k plus benefits starting and he has no experience outside school.
Lisp and Python
Do you have more info about this? I have been doing a lot of hobbyist lisp stuff (Racket & Scheme) with a little bit of python on the side, too. That sounds almost too good to be true, lol
My specific experience is with AutoLisp and the Arcpy library for ArcGIS Pro. We do fiber optic network design and permitting, so having someone that can auto draft a spliced network using code is invaluable. Otherwise you have someone going page by page on a print tracing millions of fibers from the service point to the terminal to make sure it was designed correctly.
My job is to write code that takes a physical network of underground bore paths or aerial span runs and connects each service point along that route to that network and allocates fiber cables according to design guidelines from the client.
Here's an example of one of our maps:
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That's just a single street, we usually do whole cities. Currently about halfway through building a new network in Houston.
From my experience so far in this field, the way I'm doing things is the way of the future and it's going to require tons more people that can do that sort of work. Especially because of the massive amount of money that was basically handed to telecoms recently for FTTH build out across the country.
If you don't want to work directly for an engineering firm, you can also contact them as a contractor that will help them build automation or auto-quality control scripting to help validate designs.
What kind of tech, if you don't mind sharing? a rough list of technologies and tools you're familiar with or specialize in might help narrow things down a bit (or if you'd rather get out of tech, understandable.)
I only know like one person IRL who's been forced back to the office, but I suppose my circle is small. remote work is still out there but the demand is high
edit: I know someone not-super-technical who's gotten into the salesforce niche and always seems to be in demand lately
Specifically it’s Apple stuff.
I do mostly frontend iOS development. At my last job I worked on airport lobby kiosks which were on iPads.
Can you dm me your info? I have a friend that works at a sub-company of Apple and last I saw on GitHub(just yesterday) she was doing a commit on some Swift stuff. I can try and get you into contact with her but no guarantees.
Got it
my company is getting out of the mobile app business and mostly focusing on PWAs and backend stuff, otherwise I'd see if we had any openings...
Unfortunately I think that is likely to be more and more common yeah. Smart phone apps feel to me now like they were just a big bubble that’s soon popping, if it hasn’t popped already. I am not sure what else I could pivot into at this point in my career which wouldn’t just make things harder for me, though.
Smart phone apps feel to me now like they were just a big bubble that’s soon popping
I hope not for your sake but as a consumer I'd much rather use a webapp than be locked into apple/android (and then its one app to maintain instead of 2)
I work in tech and work with a lot of absolutely useless, or at least mediocre guys that still get and keep jobs, so hopefully you can find something even if it means learning some new skills on the fly. Big tech is flying light rn seemingly but smaller firms may still have unfilled positions from the past few years of strong labor market?
I wish I knew, Comrade. I wish I knew of a good way to build co-ops and get people together to do their own things rather than have to rely on these soulless corporations for income. Of course a co-op needs capital to get going, not to mention all the interpersonal issues that come from any team effort.
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The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.
نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.
Not OP but I pretend to know React. You hiring lol?
Last few months I've been playing with React and Astro, making some small project. My professional background is Jave but I'm unemployed so decided to focus on website stuff.
I am not, but I have made JavaScript doohickeys on my own time. Once you know one or two frameworks, for the most part no matter what they’re written in you know em all with a little elbow grease.
Been doing SaaS implementations/project management for about a decade, and im in the same boat as you comrade. It fucking sucks out there. Wishing you the best!
Amber whataboutism volcel police
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The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.
نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.
It's rough out there right now. Lowest rate of new hires since BEFORE Covid last I saw. New job postings is a completely useless metric because most are bogus. I've been technically unemployed since November, my severance package ended in December. Only been doing contracting gigs here and there and draining my savings :(
I'm trying to escape a job where they yanked us back into the office after a year and a half of working remotely. I don't live very far away, but the work environment is terrible for someone with undiagnosed ADHD (that I suspect might be AuDHD) -- open floor plan, boisterous cubicle neighbors who are not software devs and seem to have nothing better to do than huddle around and socialize with no concept of indoor voices, and CHUD teammates who revel in launching into "wife bad, amirite" rants while on calls. Boymoding combined with having to mask my neurodivergent weirdo hermit tendencies is bad enough that just seeing that building triggers my fight-or-flight response.
So anyway, here are the resources I've been checking off and on for the past few months:
- https://hiring.cafe/ -- this has some nice filtering options for restricting results to remote and transparent salaries. Now, as for how many of those companies aren't bullshitting about "full remote" is anyone's guess, but it's a start.
- https://weworkremotely.com/ -- Only lists remote jobs, but promoted listings kind of fuck up the search results page. Doesn't seem terribly active lately, either.
- https://remoteintech.company/ / https://github.com/remoteintech/remote-jobs -- Sort of a master list if you're bored enough to check a bunch of companies for listings that they haven't cross-posted to job search sites
- https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer -- Resources for finding contract/freelance tech work, if you can stand the techie ronin life
- https://stackoverflow.jobs/ -- The nerds built their own frontend to Indeed and slapped their branding over it. Oh well, at least it's not GlassDoor.
whataboutism 
