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.
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.
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?