The great displacement is already well underway?

I am the author of this piece, and i didn't share it to HN, I don't hang out here. I just gotta say wow, tough crowd. i wrote this piece from an emotionally low point after another fruitless day of applying to jobs. I didn't have a particular agenda in mind. I was voicing what i've been through and some of what I was experiencing with no expectations.

you'll notice in the comments section that the population of substackistan is much less FUCKING CYNICAL AND NEGATIVE than you guys, with many commenters saying they are in the same position. I heard from writers, designers, engineers, going through similar times.

my portfolio site is https://shawnfromportland.com, you can find my resume there. if you have leads that you think I might match with you can definitely send them my way, I will even put a false last name on an updated resume for you guys.

for those who are wondering, I legally changed my name to K long ago because my dad's last name starts with K, but I didn't like identifying with his family name everywhere i went because he was not in my life and didnt contribute to shaping me. I thought hard about what other name I could choose but nothing resonated with me. I had already been using Shawn K for years before legally changing it and it was the only thing that felt right.

As I mentioned in my previous comment on this post, my overall sense is that HN commenters often struggle with fear. It's a scary time to be a professional in this industry, and to be a human on Earth more generally. Sometimes, one of the ways people here try to manage their fear is through skepticism of, and/or hostility toward, accounts where someone has suffered through no fault of their own, which I believe is your case.

Without anger or judgment, I think our industry's culture has room to grow.

I wonder what happens now to workers, who never really thought of themselves as workers, discover themselves as such. 'Individual Contributor' just means _worker_. It's like calling the barista a Customer Happiness Officer.

When we remember how to be on each other's side, this will change; but for now, I'm afraid, we self-perceive, as Cory Doctorow put it, as 'temporarily embarrassed founders'. And we act accordingly.

While there are scepticism and hostility as a result of fear, I think HN is often so focused on trying to understand the world that it neglects to consider the people. I read most of the scepticism as being more about reconciling two conflicting bits of information. It's an impulse towards risk management, not fear management.

I've been helping a friend interview, as well as casually keeping an eye out for a new job myself, and we've noticed that the market is down, but we're still employed, still seeing messages from LinkedIn recruiters and positions on job boards, and my friend is still getting interviews. I got this job a year ago, got an interview for every position I applied to, and this was the top of my list. Meanwhile, Shawn K has applied to nearly a thousand jobs and is driving for DoorDash. What's different? Have things changed in the last 12 months? Are my friend and I also going to be in trouble? How do our resumes differ? What lessons can I learn? Am I safe?

The unfortunate reality of seeing a car crash is that the first thing we do is slow down our speed, tighten up our driving, search for hazards on the road ahead, and look to our own safety. Only after all that do we think "I hope they're okay".