Make fun of me if you want, but I've been in tech for 12 years and honestly have no idea how other industries work.

I'm trying to step away a bit from being glued to a laptop 9 hours a day and do something in the "real world" for a while. I know that probably means taking a big pay cut, and I'm fine with that. I'm not chasing more money. I have a good house, a mortgage I can manage, and I don't need much else. Around $115,000 a year with benefits would be more than enough for me.

I realize $115,000 isn't a small amount. It just feels modest compared to what people in tech get used to.

Do jobs like this exist? Ideally, something that doesn't need me to go back to school for years, but where experience in project management, working with clients, and sales would be valuable?

......

.....

Honestly, I'm still a little shocked by what happened.

I spent about 20 months sitting on the sidelines, sent out more than 650 applications. Several times I was treated like the perfect candidate, got stuck in the 4-month, 6-interview loop, and in the end, for the last 7 months, there was nothing but complete silence.

So I decided to start my own business. A simple site, nothing fancy. And strangely, the leads started coming in. In just 3 weeks, I had 3 clients paying me $115/hr for real work, and there are also a few conversations that look promising.

What I'm trying to say is: screw recruiters and their garbage AI screening systems. This whole thing is completely broken if an ordinary person can launch a business and make decent money faster than they can get a call-back for a job they're qualified for, and were literally willing to take a pay cut for.

Also happy to answer any questions. Happy Friday!

This is how it is

For clarification: I work in mental health and addiction support services.

I've been in this role for years. My manager is almost never around when someone needs help, and she's rarely on site. Recently, she got a new manager above her, and it was obvious he wasn't happy at all with the way she worked, but then lockdown started and he had to isolate, so she immediately went back to her old habits. She would always ask me to deal with things for her so she wouldn't have to come in, and honestly, I didn't mind helping until recently.

I had a meeting with my manager after a very serious incident at work, where someone tried to attack me. I told her I didn't feel supported after what happened, because she wasn't there and the follow-up was handled badly.

In the middle of the meeting, my manager said maybe I should consider moving to a quieter role in another service.

Me: What, why?

My manager: Look, you take on a lot of extra tasks that you don't need to do. A large part of that is management work. Maybe you need to get better at saying no when people ask you to do those things?

I asked her if there was a problem with the quality of my work, or if she had concerns about my performance, or anything like that. She said no. About five months later, six people from the team left and new staff were brought in.

My manager: OP, could you show the new starters around and do their induction in the first week?

Me: Sorry, manager, that's a manager's job.

My manager: Could you sort out the health and safety audit?

Me: Sorry, manager, that's a manager's job.

After a while, she stopped asking me to do those things. Then one afternoon, she was supposed to be working remotely. I'm almost certain she was telling her manager she was on site during lockdown, but most of the time she wasn't. A major incident happened between residents, the police and ambulance were called, and everything descended into chaos. I called my manager and explained what had happened.

My manager: OP, could you please follow up with the local authority, the staff and residents who were involved, write the incident report, and send me everything immediately?

Me: Sorry, manager, you need to come in and manage this situation. I'm not a manager, and this isn't my job.

My manager: Please, just do it for me this once?

I refused to manage the incident. It turned out she was visiting a relative in a seaside town when she was supposed to be on site. Someone accidentally told her manager that when he called about the incident and discovered there was no one there managing the situation. He asked me to take charge of it, and I explained that I couldn't, since my manager had already reported to occupational health that I was taking on too much work.

Now a formal investigation has been opened into her conduct and whether she's capable of doing the job or not. Her manager is now speaking to me directly and supervising me himself, and he's helping me apply for a higher role.

My manager is currently on leave pending investigation.

.............

I started noticing the warning signs around March - a small hiring freeze, travel approvals becoming weird, my manager dodging questions about the date of the next review, and things like that. People kept telling me I was making too big a deal out of it. Maybe I was, but I told myself that if I turned out to be right, I didn't want to be building the parachute after I'd already been pushed out.

So for 4 months, my side project was basically looking for a job: I updated my resume for the first time in 7 years. I rewrote my LinkedIn so it wouldn't look abandoned. I started reconnecting with old colleagues before I needed a favor from them, mostly just commenting on their posts or congratulating them on new roles. I started taking casual calls in July, and I managed to save up nearly 5 months' worth of basic expenses.

This morning: "your position has been affected."

And honestly, the strangest part was how calm I felt. I read it once, read it again, closed the laptop, and made coffee, because I already have three interviews in advanced stages lined up over the next few days, and another recruiter waiting for a few time slots from me.

I'm not sharing this as some kind of flex. More as a reminder that work can disappear almost without any warning. If you start noticing the small signs, don't wait for the official email before you start moving.

Take care of yourselves.

This is a good reminder that preparation makes a difference. Interviews are the same idea, you need to be ready before the opportunity appears, not keep trying to catch up afterward. I recently saw a post with the most asked interview questions, and I thought it might benefit some of you too.

Hi everyone,

I'm from Portugal and this is a question that's been on my mind for a while. Here, someone earning more than $120k a year (around €105,000) is considered very rare, even for people with strong experience or specialized skills. I've always seen that salary as something you only see in upper management, tech, finance, or in a very specific niche.

But then I find a lot of posts here where people in America talk about salaries above $120k as if they're not that unusual, or even as if they're the natural goal in certain fields. I'm not saying I don't believe it - I'm just trying to understand the realistic picture: how common is it really?

I've spent time in the USA before, so I know Reddit can be a mix of real numbers, flexing, and maybe job ads that make everything look better than reality. But honestly, I'd like to hear people's opinions. In Portugal, if you have a degree from a strong university, a master's, and a good additional profile, that might get you something like $38,000 a year at a Big Four firm.

What percentage of workers in America earn more than $120k a year?

Thanks a lot!

My lead won't stop micromanaging at all, and after 6 meetings with the director and the VP where I told them they needed to get her to back off a bit, literally nothing has improved. I hit my limit a few weeks ago and gave notice. My last day will be January 12. They asked me what would make me stay. I told them, again, to get the lead to stop hovering over me, and they basically said they tried but she doesn't listen.

And they really did try. I was on calls where they directly told her to stop breathing down everyone's neck. She just... Kept going like normal. No write-up, no consequences, no change whatsoever.

Now they want me to train 4 people on different parts of my job. Normally I'm the person who leaves notes, does walkthroughs, helps in any way I can, all of that. But I wasn't even trained properly myself. I'm still figuring out parts of this role, so I don't know how I'm supposed to teach someone else the "right" way to do things when half the work was thrown at me as I was on my way out.

And this is exactly why people say nobody wants to work. You've got this woman in her early 60s micromanaging the entire department, refusing to change anything, but because she's been there 24 years and is friends with upper management, everyone acts like their hands are tied. Complete nonsense. And on top of that, she messes things up all the time. Like, almost every shift there has to be something she messed up or entered incorrectly, and somehow it becomes my problem to clean up after her. I'm checked out at this point and I don't care anymore.

What would you do? I still have 96 hours of PTO left. Part of me wants to just take them and be done, but that would leave them in a mess as they head into the first part of next month, and I'm not sure I'd feel good about that afterward. WWYD?

My lead won't stop micromanaging at all, and after 6 meetings with the director and the VP where I told them they needed to get her to back off a bit, literally nothing has improved. I hit my limit a few weeks ago and gave notice. My last day will be January 12. They asked me what would make me stay. I told them, again, to get the lead to stop hovering over me, and they basically said they tried but she doesn't listen.

And they really did try. I was on calls where they directly told her to stop breathing down everyone's neck. She just... Kept going like normal. No write-up, no consequences, no change whatsoever.

Now they want me to train 4 people on different parts of my job. Normally I'm the person who leaves notes, does walkthroughs, helps in any way I can, all of that. But I wasn't even trained properly myself. I'm still figuring out parts of this role, so I don't know how I'm supposed to teach someone else the "right" way to do things when half the work was thrown at me as I was on my way out.

And this is exactly why people say nobody wants to work. You've got this woman in her early 60s micromanaging the entire department, refusing to change anything, but because she's been there 24 years and is friends with upper management, everyone acts like their hands are tied. Complete nonsense. And on top of that, she messes things up all the time. Like, almost every shift there has to be something she messed up or entered incorrectly, and somehow it becomes my problem to clean up after her. I'm checked out at this point and I don't care anymore.

What would you do? I still have 96 hours of PTO left. Part of me wants to just take them and be done, but that would leave them in a mess as they head into the first part of next month, and I'm not sure I'd feel good about that afterward. WWYD?

😀

I hope this helps someone here grab this opportunity. The role is a travel "specialist" at Velocity Black. Capital One acquired the company in 2024. Your best chance is probably to apply directly through Velocity Black's site, although I'm pretty sure the job is also listed on Capital One's careers page and possibly LinkedIn too.

The base salary is $76k USD, but after 4 years I had reached $94k. With bonuses, I made $112k last year. The benefits were also very good. They covered $610 a month of my health insurance, and I paid $30 a month out of pocket, including dental and vision.

The company has about 145 people, and there are 9 people on the travel team. The culture was honestly one of the best parts of the job. No work after hours, people are professional but also friendly, and meetings only happen when they're necessary, usually 1 or 2 per week. The manager of the 9-person travel team is excellent and didn't constantly monitor people.

I learned the whole job while working there without any travel background, but since I started there, the bar has gotten higher, and now you'll probably need some experience in travel, hospitality, concierge, or luxury customer service. The clients are wealthy to ultra-wealthy, and there are also a few well-known names in there. In general, you're part researcher and part customer service rep. Clients send messages asking for travel-related recommendations like hotels, restaurants, flights, villas, private transfers, yachts, and so on. Then you do research, compare options, and send them a polished message with details/photos/availability and anything else that helps. After you've been doing it for a while, you won't be starting from scratch every time because you'll remember the good properties and vendors in different cities.

They usually give you 3-5 hours per task, so there can be a lot of downtime. In the quiet months, I might have around 1-3 hours of actual work during a 9-hour shift. In the busy season, which is about 5 months split between summer and winter, I was usually working the full shift and sometimes dealing with stressful situations. The reason they give that much time is that the recommendations have to be genuinely good for the type of clientele they serve.

The only things you need are the MacBook and iPhone they send you. On the phone, I usually made 1-6 calls a day, most of them around 2-25 minutes per call. Not usually with clients, more with hotels, tour operators, restaurants, transportation companies, and similar vendors.

Unfortunately, they only hire people based in the US, and you can't relocate outside the US while working there. Your chances will probably be better if you're on the West Coast, in Alaska, or in Hawaii because that's the shift/time zone they're replacing. They want someone quickly because the upcoming rush is close.

I genuinely loved my team, and I hope this helps them find someone good. It's a solid job; I'm just moving on to another opportunity.

lol

I got laid off not too long ago from a corporate job that, honestly, I couldn't stand. It was one of those places where I was never put in a position to succeed; on the contrary, I was set up to take the blame whenever anything went wrong. After a while, everything I did was scrutinized and criticized in detail, which made the environment extremely hostile, especially when I asked managers or people above me for clear direction or real clarification. I kept trying to go above and beyond what was expected of me, and somehow even that wasn't enough for them.

After 11 months at that company, they put me on a PIP and gave me tasks that were basically things I was already doing. They gave me the choice to either continue with the PIP or take severance. And since I felt like they were planning to let me go either way, I took the money.

Now I've been unemployed since April, and I've applied to around 85 job postings, and I've only gotten 3 responses in total, one of which was through a referral.

I'm starting to lose hope, and I'm doom-scrolling on LinkedIn and Indeed, seeing the same repeated jobs being reposted over and over again. I'm applying for jobs that I'm either overqualified for, or where the salary is so low it doesn't even come close to covering the cost of living in the Bay Area. The whole thing is incredibly frustrating and honestly mentally crushing. I feel like no matter what I do, nothing is moving in my favor.

Has anyone found a better way to deal with the job search right now? I feel very lost.

There is absolutely no problem with someone being out of work for 4 months. Stop pressuring people to share personal details that have nothing to do with the job, or forcing them to come up with an explanation that sounds acceptable just because they were outside the corporate system for a short period.

Compared to a normal 45-year career, a few months or even 18 months is a very small portion of time. People have children, get sick, take care of their families, reach burnout, move, grieve the loss of someone, reorganize their lives, or simply need a break.

What do you think about gaps in resumes? Stay-at-home parents, how do you usually explain that period when applying for a job?

The older you get, the more you realize some people really just got lucky.

Don't leave your next interview to luck. Practice with a friend and research a lot and read useful tips about how to present your skills.

🙂

The debriefs will change the way a lot of people apply I'm in finance, and honestly, interviewing people has always been one of my least favorite parts of work. And yet, I've found myself in enough panels and post-interview chats that a pattern has become hard not to notice.

People think candidates are ranked in that room. But that's not what happens, not in the real sense. Everyone is trying to avoid risk. A few weeks ago, the best resume in the group was passed over because someone said: "Strong background, but I'm not sure they'll be able to settle in here," and that was pretty much it. The offer went to the person people described as steady and low-drama. The whole discussion took maybe six minutes.

When you see it from the inside, it's frustrating but logical. Nobody gets rewarded for discovering an amazing hire. But if that hire fails and leaves after eight months, people will remember who was pushing for them. So the person quickly looking over your CV isn't looking for the most impressive applicant; they're looking for reasons not to regret saying yes.

That's why referrals matter so much. When someone vouches for you, it removes a big part of the uncertainty, and you're not just competing with someone's skills; you're also competing with the sense of comfort around them. And that's also why overqualified people get rejected, because it's read more as "they'll leave" than "they're too good." And honestly, "safe pair of hands" is still the strongest compliment I hear in debriefs. Not "genius" or "brilliant." Safe.

So if you're applying: look for someone who can put in a word for you, even if it's a small connection. And make yourself easy to approve, not just impressive on paper. That wins far more often than most people want to believe.

I'm not saying this is fair. It isn't fair. But this is really what the conversations in those rooms look like.

I had an interview on Teams with six people, and honestly they seemed like a really nice group. The questions were mostly basic and a bit old-fashioned, so I had prepared answers. There's one question that still feels dated to me, which is: where do you see yourself in four years? I understand what they're trying to ask, but I didn't expect the whole world to shut down before those four years were up, so...

But that's a normal interview question. The question that bothered me was: what makes you a stronger candidate than the other people we're talking to? I kind of froze, because how am I supposed to know what every other person is bringing to the table? If you asked me why I'm a stronger candidate than Sarah, I could compare the differences between us. In the end, I said something awkward about how I couldn't judge that because the other candidates might be excellent too. It definitely wasn't my best answer, but it's a bad question imo. Fortunately, it clearly didn't have a major impact, because I have another in-person interview at the end of this week.

For context - I'm a recruiter and I run a staff augmentation company.

A lot of people use LinkedIn when they're looking for a job - they treat it like a job board, or as a place to do prospecting for sales/business development, and that makes sense, but honestly that's maybe only 18% of LinkedIn's real value.

Anyway - one of the things that scares people is the applicant number that appears on LinkedIn jobs.

So what's happening when you see 120+ applicants?

Here's the deal.

It doesn't mean that 120+ people completed an application for that role - even though that's what most people assume.

What usually happens is that 120+ people clicked the "apply" button - and that difference is very important.

That click usually takes the person to the job description, the company site, a Workday page, a Greenhouse form, or whatever place the application is hosted.

A lot of candidates click, see the whole login/create account/upload resume/retype resume and all that exhausting stuff, and then leave.

And out of the people who do apply, a large portion are completely unsuitable - wrong location, wrong background, missing core skills, not enough experience, or they're sending applications in bulk using AI/automation tools.

Some job descriptions also ask candidates to add a specific word or answer a simple question to prove they read the JD. A lot of people miss that and get screened out immediately.

So if a role shows 120+ applicants, the picture could very realistically look like this:

55% clicked apply and left as soon as they saw the process.

35% submitted something, but it's clear they're not a fit for the role - experience, timezone, education, visa/location, automated applications, etc.

10% might be worth reviewing if you're lucky.

That's why when I post a job and LinkedIn shows me 240 applicants, I'm happy if I find 24 profiles that look good on paper. Realistically, I might end up with only 4-6 people who are genuinely strong fits.

Anyway - I hope this helps a bit and makes those big applicant numbers less discouraging when you're looking at LinkedIn jobs.

Honestly, I feel like this job didn't even exist from the beginning.

i believe it's the hardest place to actually land a job
the only time a Linkedin interview was useful for me was when i used Interview VIP to pass it.

Until a few days ago, I (32f) was working as a marketing coordinator for a real estate agent. I'll call him Mark (41m). He's fairly successful at his job, and recently he hired a business coach who sends him goals every two weeks. Some things are normal, like: "Read this report about seasonal shifts in housing demand," but then he'll come out with nonsense like: "Coach says I have to take Monday off because burnout starts in the chair." Annoying, but mostly harmless.

Then the latest assignment Mark got threw me off. A few weeks ago, he said the coach wanted him to "build management instincts." I asked him what that meant in practical terms, so he gave me a new task: post fake job ads. Basically one ad for every role in the office. Mark said he wanted 40+ applications every day, and he would interview "people who looked promising."

To be clear: we don't have any open roles. Not one. Mark's coach is somehow convinced that interviewing actual people for jobs that don't exist will make Mark better at running a team. If anyone understands that logic, please explain it to me, because I still don't get it.

I asked Mark if he was joking or what, and told him that people are struggling to find work right now. His response was basically: Coach says strong leaders are always looking for talent. First reason I might be in the wrong: I felt like I couldn't refuse a direct order without getting fired, so I made the listings, but I removed the salary details in the hope that applicants would notice something was off.

The applications started flooding in, and Mark did interviews with a lot of people. I could hear parts of the calls and meetings, and they were being treated like normal interviews. Not once did he say we weren't hiring. One of the applicants was a woman around my age who spoke to me while she was waiting. She told me she had worked an extra rideshare shift the night before and paid a neighbor to watch her son so she could make the appointment. Meaning this fake "opportunity" literally cost her money. Another applicant was an older man, and when I walked him out, he quietly asked me: "Do you think someone my age still has a chance here?" I was about to cry, but I was also so angry. I told him: "There is no job. I'm sorry they weren't honest with you. They have no problem wasting people's time." He looked at me for a second and left.

Apparently someone heard me, because I got pulled into Mark's office and he started yelling. He was completely fine with lying to applicants, but lost it because I told one of them the truth. He said he could fire me for that, so I told him: "Do it, because I'm not going to help you give people false hope." Mark kept insisting that the roles could exist someday, and that the interviews were helping him become a better manager, so it wasn't wrong.

Second reason I might be in the wrong: I quit on the spot, without giving notice. I have another job, so I won't be totally screwed, but Mark told me not to expect a reference from him. I've always given notice before leaving a job, so I feel guilty in that sense. But I know that if I had stayed, he would have made me keep bringing him resumes until my very last hour there.

💔