Regardless of the details of this particular case, let's appreciate that, with this development at the horizon, now is the time where more tech workers will become open to arguments to unionize.
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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From his resume:
Goals I am looking to be part of a small-to-midsized engineering team where I can have real impact by solving hard and previously unsolvable problems by leveraging AI tools.
I would also not hire him. I'm not really familiar with US resume culture, but the whole thing is very unappealing to me. Also from his linked substack, I get unpleasant vibes.
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So many tech bros on copium rn acting like their jobs will never go away, but their bosses have zero loyalty to them and will work tirelessly to replace them with AI. What does it matter if it’s a worse product, or barely functional, if that’s the only option it’ll just be the norm. Companies make and kill products and services all the time, it’s a revolving door, they buy good services just to cannibalize and destroy them. Once AI moves past “vibe coding” nearly all of these jobs will be obliterated over night, it’s only a matter of time on our current trajectory
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with 800application, hes probably only using the same CV/RESUME over and over, to the point companies will automatically ignore it with thier software. gotta change up his resume, or hes like one of those wierd cherry pickers i encountered on reddit about applying jobs, they applied to same company multiple times over different period of time.
He's a software engineer, I'd bet on him automating it in a way that it's been flagged by commonly used recruting tools and is auto-rejected.
Some of those tools also use LLM now, and they're regularly found to be flawed and turning away wanted applicants.
You don't even need an LLM to autoreject someone that lists "Vibecoding" on his resume.
I am vibecoding, but that's because I am not a coder or developer but do it for fun from time to time without a real clue.
TIL im “vibeliving”
probably that too, i wonder if its also reapplying to the same job, or same company over and over again, considering he only wants a niche job which a mistake on his part.
I am very sympathetic to the guy given I expect to be in the same position in year and a half or so, but the article imo is shit. AI has very little to do with this and it's more of the economic conditions these past two years.
In my experience developers are the least class conscious people I know and the puddle deep analysis expected from that sort of people is perfectly captured in this article.
IDK maybe I am just in denial and coping.
Cory Doctorow just posted something very much related to this. It's an excellent read.
Tech workers’ power didn’t come from solidarity, it came from scarcity. When you’re getting five new recruiter emails every day, you don’t need a shop steward to tell your boss to go fuck themselves at the morning scrum. You can do it yourself, secure in the knowledge that there’s a company across the road who’ll give you a better job by lunchtime.
There’ve been half a million US tech layoff since 2023. Tech workers’ scarcity-derived power has been vaporized. Tech workers can avoid the fate of the factory, warehouse and delivery workers their bosses literally work to death — but only by unionizing.
Great article! Really goes to show that even workers making huge salaries need collective agreements. It doesn't matter how much the company relies on your work, eventually, your boss will find a way to fuck you over.
Exactly. It's stuff like this that's convinced me to join a tech union myself. If you're in the UK, you might consider the one I joined.
I'm in Canadian manufacturing and am already part of the Teamsters union!
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He should just learn to code
Oh look, it's me. Except I've put in 600 applications in 6 months without a single response. 15 years as a Devops engineer at fortune 100 companies, and can't make it to round one.
I interviewed for an identical job I was the manager of the department for at a competitor. I at least made it to the first interview with the director of the department. But he told me I was up against 300 people. And they passed me over for in person interviews. Couldn’t believe it. I developed training programs for the last department I lead. I hired people. But still I couldn’t get past the initial conversation.
The world of online jobs is basically the same enshitification as online dating.
In the hypothetical sense you have the opportunity to find more jobs than at any time in the history of employment. But employers also have to field more (and mostly unqualified) applicants than ever before.
So they can find more potential employees, and you can find more jobs, but ultimately the end user experience 9/10 times is just getting buried under a 10,000 person stack of other applicants. You may be the best person for a job, but not even get an interview because the person on the other end of the machine doesnt have time to actually look through that stack.
And then worse yet, job search companies capitalize on knowing they create a demoralizing atmosphere and use that to push products on people. Resume help, professional career guidance, etc etc. Job search companies, like dating companies, dont really want any of their end users to find that much success. They want you to keep applying to jobs. Its the same reason why they dont do more to trim down unqualified applicants for employers. They sell companies on virtual interview bullshit and the like instead. Solutions that just make everything worse
Not to mention that even the companies are suffering from the system they themselves built. The gamified and enshittified hiring process doesn't improve the quality of the workers they get, it just filters the candidates based on a bunch of unrelated skills.
The talent pool has always skewed towards people who know how to play the game, rather than actual talent... but now "the game" they're playing isn't even about useful skillls like human charisma or networking, it's about handling or misleading poorly designed AI tools.
not to mention alot of listings are ghosts listings, and they love to phish for resume so they can use it to screen out more people. also the other side of ghost listing is that they already have someone they hired internally but they put out the listing anyways on job sites.
Wasn't it just last year, that "software engineer" was one of the most "in demand" jobs in the country?
It might still be. But the pool of applicants is even larger.
Make sure you get a college loan and get a 4 year degree!
That's a pretty nice RV. He's doing ok as far as homelessness goes...
Lol edit: not that it's a nice RV, but that he has an RV. Sorry if not clear (it's not clear).
They can be pretty inexpensive all things considered
It is?
Eh, those Shasta ultralight travel trailers are certainly on the mid to lower mid end if the scale as far as travel trailers go, especially if it doesn't have a slide and he got it used. It's also single axle as far as I can tell and a little older, so probably in the neighborhood of 24', not exactly luxurious
Article not clear. Not following how his inability to find a job has any connection to AI?
Edit: Also, https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/29/generative_ai_no_effect_jobs_wages/
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From the software engineer in the article:
“I think there’s this problem where people are stuck in the old world business mindset of, well, if I can do the same work that 10 developers were doing with one developer, let’s just cut the developer team instead of saying, oh, well, we’ve got a 10 developer team, let’s do 1,000x the work that we were doing before,” K says.
Buddy, there is no "old world business mindset", this is capitalism as usual. Even IF (big IF), an employer can get 1000x the output, you guys will NOT get 1000x the compensation. This is exploitation
Let's put this to rest: when productivity boosts are touted as a benefit from using AI, it doesn't mean shit if you work for someone else (i.e. you don't really own your work)
Yeah. Mans was exempt from the orphan crushing machine so he thought it wasn't real.
It is. It's coming for all of us unless we do something to stop it.
I honestly don't even think it's all that relevant if his skills aren't super pro-level or he's looking in the wrong market. Yes, it is true that a lot of people who just had the ability to put together a functional web UI or run SQL commands have been able to command six figure salaries for a while. That is fine. We have technology enough at this point that we can support everyone in comfortable life, as long as they're willing to show up and do a full-time job. We broke the whole economy to where it turns into this special thing if you want a house, vacations, not want to have to worry. Like you have to be some kind of Good Will Hunting person to expect that. Fuck that. This guy should still get $150k. Everyone who works full time and has some training should make $125k a year and the shareholders should get less. Picking on this guy's supposed lack of pro-talent misses the point, I think.
We don't have a shortage of problems to solve. The planet is burning and all our tech is murdering our brains. If we could somehow get the people who want a full-time job and don't have one to start making money by working on those things 40 hours a week I feel like those things would be in better shape.
I wonder how much of his time has been spent applying for other markets. The middle of New York isn't the hottest market and remote jobs are very in demand.
I also think companies relying on solely AI are going to struggle long term or have to spend a ton of money fixing the mistakes that it creates.
just an article posted earlier, klarn is suffering from that exact thing, using AI and they are struggling to survive without employees.
Yeah, this reads more like the guy isn't employable. The tech market has been rough for a while, but not being able to find anything for a year is an outlier.
Looking at his substack, he talks about AI being able to solve the mystery of UAPs. Sooo may be more the guy then the industry.
Not to mention, how are you making that much and not socking anything away for later?
RVs aren't cheap and neither is lot rental.
So the RV was the backup plan?
There’s always money in the RV.
Narrator: This time, there wasn’t.
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