I was laid off recently. I don’t think it was personal, but instead due to massive layoffs from the entire biology-research industry due to corporate paranoia about Robert Kennedy Jr’s attack on the entirety of medical science. I’m not happy about anything in United States politics right now, but I doubt me complaining about it is going to make much of a difference so I’ll refrain from ranting about it here.

So I am looking for jobs again, and I’ve noticed a few things that I felt like I should write down.

Resume Spam Isn’t Very Useful Anymore.

Historically, when I would look for jobs I would apply to every job I’m even remotely qualified for, and eventually I would get a bite. It wasn’t a perfect strategy, and you risk getting some bites from jobs you don’t want, but it mostly worked well enough.

As far as I can tell this doesn’t work anymore, at least not for me. Probably due to a combination of how “jumpy” my job history is and the fact that a huge percentage of job postings are fake, sending out my resume more frequently does not appear to significantly affect the callback rate. It appears that right now, the way you find a job is to set your LinkedIn to “Open to Work” and then pray that a recruiter for an actual company reaches out to you eventually.

LinkedIn Is Horrible.

It’s impossible to know if Hell exists, but if it does then I am quite confident that Hell for me is being forced to spend an eternity on LinkedIn.

People treat LinkedIn like it’s Facebook, which would be fine if it weren’t required to provide your LinkedIn to apply to jobs. People will post their idiotic politics and I have to try and ignore it, and definitely can’t respond to it, becaues I do not need a fucking prospective employer to know my political beliefs.

Even worse, though, are the people who post what I call “Inspiration Porn”. I define Inspiration Porn as the following:

The use of a fake or embellished feel-good anecdote and/speech attempting to invoke a “it gets better” reaction and farm engagement in the process.

You get people posting stories that definitely did not ever happen that will lazily try and loop back to some theme that basically boils down to “keep at it!”.

I hate it. I have no idea how the fuck we allowed this awful platform to become an integral part of our lives. I should start a hashtag, though I would probably have to start using social media first.

It’s Easy For “Interview Skills” To Get Rusty.

I don’t think I’m a worse engineer than I was two years ago, but frustratingly the technical interview has very little to do with how good of an engineer you are, but rather how much you’ve memorized from a set of four or five different problems. This isn’t new, and has been the case for basically my entire career, but something I had forgotten is that doing interviews is a separate skill that is extremely easy to forget.

I have started re-reading undergrad data structure and algorithm books just to have them fresh in my head, but I think the real way to get better at interviews is to just do a lot more of them and try and learn from them.

Interviewing Is Terrible.

By definition, an interview is about proving yourself to another person. Having to prove yourself is never a fun thing; it’s a demoralizing feeling that can make you develop a chip on your shoulder.

It’s too easy to tie your self-worth to the outcome of an interview. Even more annoyingly, it’s easy to tie your self-worth to jobs you didn’t even want.

In fact, sometimes that’s even worse. When I am rejected for a job paying a ridiculous amount of money, it’s easy to tell myself “well, this job was extremely competitive, no shame in losing to the best”, but when I’m rejected for a job that doesn’t have great pay and doesn’t even seem particularly fun, then I get depressed. Are you really telling me that you’re getting applicants more qualified than me for this? I mean, maybe they are, the market is rough right now, but it’s harder to do that level of cognitive dissonance.

Medication Is Helping.

Currently I’m taking a slurry of different medications, and fortunately this particular cocktail of meds appears to actually help control my mood and focus. I’m not getting nearly as depressed about these things as I usually do. It still sucks being rejected, I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to waking up to rejection every morning, but I have been able to move on a fair bit quicker. Medication is pretty cool sometimes.

I Know It Will Get Better.

It sucks right now, but things will improve. This ain’t my first rodeo, I know how these things go. I’ll be alright, even if things are kind of shit in the shorter term.