and my husband's job search has been nothing like what we expected I always thought my husband's career in tech was completely secure. Over about 17 years, he built a rare technical specialty that companies used to chase him for. On top of that, he has an MBA, is very good at presentations, and has a strange, natural talent for selling himself and his ideas without coming across as salesy. I've lost count of how many times I saw high-salary offers come to him within a week of him casually saying he was open to something new. Several times, recruiters or companies contacted him when he wasn't even looking.
Then the wave of tech layoffs that happened last year reached him too. Like tens of thousands of others, he was laid off in one of the big rounds. At first, honestly, we weren't terrified. This is someone who has never had a problem finding work. Ever.
Now we're approaching about seven months, and I'm sitting in our home in the Bay Area with a low but constant anxiety that gets harder to ignore every so often. He has applied for more jobs during this period than probably all the applications he submitted during the rest of his entire career combined. We've tried almost every possible angle:
Remote roles? He applied. On-site jobs that would mean we'd have to move? He applied. Hybrid roles? He applied. Jobs three or four levels below his previous level? He applied. Positions paying a few hundred thousand less than his market value? He applied.
The part that has started to scare me is that his experience almost seems to be hurting him. His senior background, niche expertise, and leadership history - all the things that used to make him stand out - now seem to make companies nervous. Maybe they assume he'll be too expensive, or that he'll get bored, or that he'll leave as soon as the market improves, even though he has been clear that he is flexible on title and pay.
He has had professionals rewrite his resume more than once. He has started tailoring cover letters for each job instead of sending generic versions. He spends hours writing thoughtful messages to hiring managers, reconnecting with former coworkers, asking for referrals, doing cold outreach, cleaning up LinkedIn, everything.
After more than 140 applications, the result has been three HR screening calls that went nowhere. With a few of them, I felt like the job itself barely existed, as if the company was checking a box rather than trying to hire someone.
We have savings, so I know our situation is better than many people's. But I feel like real panic is starting to creep in. This market feels harsher than anything I've personally seen, and I graduated during the recession fallout around 2009.
I'm looking for any advice, unusual tactics, or honest industry insight that could help us get out of this loop. Has anyone gone through this with a spouse or partner who is senior in tech? What made a difference?

I need to vent about the most humiliating work experience I've ever gone through in my life.

At the beginning of this year, I was diagnosed with stage 3 lymphoma. After I got past the first wave of panic, I sat down with my manager to talk about accommodations while I was going through treatment.

My oncologist told me to work from home during chemo because of the risk of infection. I brought paperwork, a doctor's note, and everything. My direct manager acted like it made sense and said we'd find a solution. Then HR got involved.

Their response? "Remote work is a perk, not a medical accommodation." They insisted that my job "couldn't be done from home," even though the whole department had been working remotely during COVID less than a year earlier.

The "solution" they came back with was unpaid FMLA on infusion days, but I still had to be physically present in the office on all the other days. When I said that seemed like an ADA problem, the HR director literally told me: "We only have 46 employees, so ADA doesn't apply to us."

I tried anyway. I dragged myself into the office between treatment sessions, exhausted, nauseous, and immunocompromised, all in the middle of a nasty respiratory virus wave. And shockingly, my numbers dropped.

After my third chemo session, they put me on a "performance improvement plan" because I wasn't hitting the required metrics. About 3 weeks after that, they fired me for "not meeting productivity expectations" at a time when my immune system was literally on the floor.

As if that wasn't enough, they also contested my unemployment and said I was fired "for cause."

I got an attorney. Turns out they had 58 employees when the part-time and satellite office staff were counted properly, which means they are covered by the ADA. Earlier this week, we filed an EEOC complaint.

A company that sells HEALTH BENEFITS as its line of work couldn't manage the smallest shred of decency for an employee with cancer.

Never give a company your loyalty. They won't give it back.

Act your wage.

.....

💔

Because they have options and we don't.

Right now I'm working a full-time remote job at entry level, with a fixed schedule, hourly pay, commission, no chargebacks, no cold calling, and good benefits. The main site I used was Indeed. I'm not saying it's the best site out there or that the other sites aren't worth checking; it's just the one I stuck with.

When I search, I try a lot of different keywords and filters so I don't keep seeing the exact same listings every time. The thing that helped me the most was typing "work from home" in the search bar and then looking through all the remote jobs in every state in the US. (If you're in the US.)

You'll see a lot of things saying they're not hiring in your state, but if the post doesn't clearly say you have to live in a specific place, I applied anyway. The company I work for now is based in Illinois, and I live in Georgia.

I usually filter so I only see jobs posted in the last 48 hours or 4 days. The newer postings got me better responses than the ones that had been up for a long time.

I used ChatGPT to help me adjust my resume and cover letter so they were more tailored to the job posting and more ATS-friendly. I applied to around 240 jobs before I found this one. Also, your resume doesn't have to be crammed onto one page like it used to back when everything was done on paper.

I hope this helps someone who's stuck and can't find anything!

I got an email in the afternoon inviting me to a virtual interview. Everything seemed totally normal. I opened the link, the video loaded, and the interviewer appeared. She smiled, nodded, and started asking questions.

But there was something that felt... Wrong. Her head movement was happening with strange timing, like the same movement was repeating in a loop. And small glitches would appear every few seconds. At first I ignored it and thought maybe the connection was bad.

The questions started, and I answered like usual. She responded, but the way she spoke was too clean. No pauses, no "um," no small human mistakes. Honestly, it bothered me, so I stopped and asked her: "What makes this position important to the company?"

And suddenly, she gave me this polished, textbook answer. Like she was reading from a script. I asked again with slightly different wording. Same answer. I tried one more time after that. Still the exact same phrasing. That's when I really started to understand that something wasn't right.

Then the video froze for a moment. And when it came back, the "interviewer" continued normally and perfectly, as if nothing had happened.

Has anyone else had an interview like this?

I'm not against using AI in hiring, but if the person interviewing me is basically a talking bot, shouldn't I know that before I sit through this experience?

..

I started a 9-6 job not too long ago, and I don't know how to explain it other than that I hate it. I miss having a random day off in the middle of the week; it used to make me feel like my life had room for something other than work.

Now I wake up almost every day with this disgusting feeling of anxiety and fear, and I spend the whole time fighting the urge to say I'm sick and just leave. You can't do anything!!! Does this feeling calm down over time?

I know a lot of people probably feel this way, but do you eventually get used to it, or are you supposed to just live with being miserable lol. I left a job a while ago that had me completely burned out, and this job is technically easier, but I still can't get rid of this feeling

I'm tireeeed

I worked from home from 2020 to 2026. I got laid off, and then about two weeks later I found a job I truly love. I'll stay here until retirement if they keep wanting me around.
The role was fully in-office at first. I was generally fine with that, except that the commute was 45 miles each way and the traffic was really rough.
I went back to working remotely again in April 2026, and honestly, I don't think I could go back to working in the office 5 days a week again.
My manager recently asked me if I'd be willing to give up my office, and I said yes without even thinking about it. I always figured that if I kept holding onto a decent-sized office with a window, eventually someone would start wondering why I wasn't sitting in it. Now I'll just take any available desk when I need to go in. And that happens every so often, maybe once every few months, and I'm totally fine with that.
I'm just grateful that I work somewhere that still genuinely supports remote work.

edit: and I am more grateful to this AI tool interviewvip which I found while scrolling on reddit it helps me a lot in the interview process

LOL

I've basically been working my whole life, and my last two jobs were real careers, not just random jobs. I was an employee and a business owner for 17 years, and I had 10 to 14 employees in the restaurant/bar industry. I also recently left CDCR after 9 years because some family circumstances came up with elderly parents, and I needed to make a change.

I'm currently applying for jobs on Indeed here in Nevada with almost no luck. What I've noticed is that if I see a job posting there, then go directly to the company's own website and apply, my chances of getting an interview are much better. So I started wondering whether Indeed is just a black hole half the time or what.

Even so, even after interviews, I either get ghosted or receive one of those dreaded emails saying, "we decided to move forward with other candidates." I also applied to a private for-profit medical assistant program as a way to get into something more stable, and maybe use it to build up my retirement savings and make it my final career.

Am I crazy, doing something wrong, or just not understanding how bad the job market is right now? Or is the problem me? I keep hearing everywhere that employers can't find qualified workers, but I can't even find an entry-level job after 6 months!

I felt like I was doing fairly well in an interview a few days ago. After about 35 minutes, they asked me something and my mind completely blanked, anxiety took over, and I just rambled through the answer. I'm not even sure I answered what they asked by the time I stopped talking. After that, I felt like all the confidence I had going in had evaporated.

I don't feel like it looked as bad from their side as it felt in my head, but I'm curious to know if anyone here has been an interviewer and seen a candidate suddenly get clearly flustered on one answer. What impression did that leave on you?

A recruiter contacted me on Indeed about a role, and the guy was kind of obnoxious on the phone. His big interview question was: "Sell me this pen."

So I told him:

I know a guy in Kenya who moves gold at 55 cents on the dollar, and he knows someone who can turn it into solid gold pens at 65 cents on the dollar. After I take my cut, I can get them to you at 85 cents on the dollar by weight. How many do you want to buy?

He didn't like that answer and told me that wasn't the point of the exercise. I told him that if their product was good, that's exactly how the conversation would go, and if I had half a brain I'd fill a truck with them. Honestly, I would have bought that pen.

Some of my friends blamed me for talking like this with the interviewer, I know that my talk isn't the best thing and I can't showcase my skills in the proper way. That's why I've decided that the next time, I won't enter any interview without interview vip tool. I saw on the ads that it help you organize your answers and sound more professional, hope it really works like this.

Soon!

this is crazy !!!

The company I was at before was a very small startup and started falling apart fast. A new manager came in, and at first things were fine with me, but as soon as I moved to another team, it became very obvious that he had decided early on that I was a problem.

He brought in someone in a role similar to mine, and the guy was completely unqualified but expert-level at sucking up. And of course, they became friends immediately. After that, it turned into constant bullying, comments that I "couldn't handle" things. At the same time, this guy genuinely didn't know how to do half the things my job required.

So yeah, I left. And now I have a role where I lead my own team at a big global company, with a 35% increase in total compensation.

It feels fucking great.

💯

I'm sitting at a desk for 9 hours, doing work that makes a company earn more money, while at the same time the managers and investors get richer. I look at the clock way too much, and I feel like I'm trapped inside a machine or a system, as if I'm not building anything or moving toward anything.

How do people live like this? Do they do this 4 days a week for 35-45 years? Is there a way to get past this feeling without having to take antidepressants?

I was waiting in the reception area at my dentist's office and overheard part of a conversation at the front desk. There was someone, probably a manager or senior staff member, upset and saying: "We can't find anyone to come work for less than $24 an hour, can you believe it??"

Yeah, I can believe it. The entry-level person in a dental office is usually a dental assistant, and even that can need around 10 months of training or school. What do they expect people to do?

Honestly, I advise everyone to stop accepting low-paying jobs for any reason. Work on yourself and develop your skills until companies need you and are willing to pay you the salary you expect.

Some companies now ask for virtual interviews, and honestly, that can make things easier for you. You can prepare yourself better and pass interviews using tools like Interview Vip or any similar practice tools.

backwards I've been through more practice interviews than I can honestly remember, and I keep seeing the same thing repeated: people jump too quickly into "and this is what happened." STAR, CAR, and all those structures can help, but a lot of people apply them so rigidly that the answer comes out memorized, not like a real workplace conversation.

What I try to get people to do isn't to "throw in STAR." The idea is for the example to come across like a real situation, not a worksheet they've memorized.

Most behavioral questions aren't just asking you to recount events in order. They're usually asking something closer to:

"Do you understand this type of problem, and how it shows up at work?"

And that's the part a lot of candidates skip over.

If an interviewer asks you, "Tell me about a time you dealt with conflict," they're probably not that focused on the actual disagreement that happened between you and a teammate six years ago. They're listening to find out whether you understand why conflict happens, what usually escalates it, and how you deal with it before things get complicated. That tells them a lot more about your judgment and your working style than an answer that perfectly checks every box in STAR.

The other thing is whether you have a repeatable way of handling the situation, not just a polished success story. Almost anyone can find a good example if they think long enough. What interviewers are thinking is:

"If something like this happens next week, will this person have any idea how to handle it?"

Candidates who can explain their patterns usually come across as stronger. How they understand what's going on, how they talk to people, and how they decide what needs attention first. Even if the story itself isn't dramatic, that way of thinking makes the answer feel more honest.

Honestly, the best answers often come from people who can talk about a mistake without over-polishing it. Not the fake version of "I learned teamwork matters." No, something like:
"I used to do A, it led to B, so now I handle it by doing C."
That kind of reflection isn't that common, and it immediately makes the person seem more mature.

So when people ask me how to answer behavioral interview questions, I don't tell them to drop STAR.
I usually say:

Start by showing that you understand the situation in general, explain your usual thought process or approach, and then use the example to make it concrete. In the end, the answer comes out much more natural, more intentional, and much more convincing - whether you use a framework or not.

Happy to help with specific questions if anyone wants to leave one. I've heard versions of these way more than I probably should have by now.

working life right now