u/LazyPiano6160

Reaching a two year unemployment anniversary as of September, was laid off from last job. 45 years old, 25 YOE, hundreds of applications and facing loosing everything I’ve worked for.

I need a cathartic release, I’m done:

- with applying for jobs and being ghosted
- being tasked with a take-home assignment with unrealistic time expectations
- having a prerequisite to taking to a human blocked by a screening interview with an AI or recording of a video
- seeing the same job I applied for get re-posted every couple of weeks
- attempting to multitask a live coding exercise, whilst concurrently answering quick fire questions from a panel
- having to sit through numerous rounds of interviews, whilst the employer attempts to work out exactly what it is they want
- face rejection because I failed to say the exact phrase the employer wanted to hear
- being forced to accommodate a 4 day in-office policy, because it’s “good for social interaction”
- face scrutiny over my period of unemployment form a hiring manager that is completely unaware of how f***ed the job market is

Finally, I’m done with AI!

your turn…

Companies in the UK and US thought it would be cost effective to outsource engineering overseas?

Remember when the same companies then went on a massive hiring spree, to get inland engineers to fix and refactor said outsourced work?

Vibe coding and AI driven layoffs; just saying 🤷‍♂️

Hang in there y’all, maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel 🤞

Back story for context… 25 years as a web developer, started out in web design and then migrated to front end development (think IE6, CSS, JQuery, shims etc). Designing and building brochure and e-commerce frontends.

I then moved into full stack as WordPress became the dominant platform partnering. Working with design agencies as a self employed turn-key solution, building both the frontend and backend from supplied PSD visuals (oh how times have changed). This was from around 2011

Then came the adoption of React, Angular and Vue and at the time many companies were adopting these alongside in house design systems and component libraries. With a huge amount of experience in semantic, accessible markup, real css / scss skills, and a background in design - it was an opportunity to move into this domain. This was around 2017

Fast forward nearly ten years and the industry had changed a lot, and regrettably: I haven’t. I was able to sustain employment working for companies as a specialist in my domain, assisting product and design to build agnostic UI using component driven development and atomic design principles. Pixel perfect translation, accessibility, responsiveness and a great developer experience was what I was known for. Storybook was my bread and butter, I never actually worked within the main application my UI was being deployed within, instead engineering, testing and documenting components exclusively in storybook. Other engineers would consume my components within the application and take ownership of state integration and data fetching.

Here is the issue, I’ve been out of work for just over two years, the market doesn’t help (I’m based in the UK), and neither does the niche area I’ve specialised in. Most interviews advertise for frontend - my CV states “UI engineer”, and although I get an interview, it soon becomes apparent the skills gap for everything outside of my domain (state management, frameworks, etc) are all lacking. On top of that, AI is really closing the gap on my core skills; with some steering and a good model, it’s very capable of replacing me.

I need to pivot, not sure where though and that’s for me to explore. I’m 45 and nowhere near retirement- I have to sustain an income, but have been fortunate to earn well and within the next couple of years can maintain a comfortable lifestyle on a much lower income.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has experienced what I’m going through and what you’ve done to remain relevant- even if it’s leaving engineering all together.

Thanks 🙏🏼