u/Ok_Drummer_1514

Hiring managers always say they're looking for someone kind, enthusiastic, reliable, good at communicating, and so on. But honestly, that talk feels like nonsense to me. I know a lot of people working at Fortune 100 companies, universities, regular office jobs, and their actual work is really not that great at all. Some of them are annoying, messy, impossible to work with, dishonest, fake, and can't explain anything, yet they're still working in good roles.

I'm in San Jose, and several tech offices, and a lot of people I've met follow the exact same pattern. It makes me wonder how they even got there in the first place when the job market is this harsh. If people like that are getting hired, then either it's mostly nepotism, or hiring managers are secretly filtering for traits they'd never admit out loud.

The whole society runs on connections. Rich people, attractive people, and people with good connections keep getting more opportunities than honest people who work hard. You see this all the time in entertainment and sports too.

Honestly, I think a lot of these positions are filled through referrals, family friends, inside connections, or random luck. Especially roles at big, well-known companies. It doesn't really seem like it's about skill or interviewing well most of the time.

I really don't understand why I feel this way. When I look at my parents, who have been working for decades, it's clear that if they had a choice, they wouldn't choose work, but they endure and continue, accepting it as part of life. But me, I'm completely exhausted, and the idea of continuing this job feels impossible. The truly perplexing part is that my current job situation is something many people would envy. I work from home, and my income is sufficient to cover my expenses and even have a little extra for simple luxuries. I even just returned from a 10-day international vacation. My mind constantly wanders into fantasies of generating passive income, just so I can stop working and truly enjoy my time. I genuinely hate my job. To make matters worse, I have a large amount of student loan debt for a higher degree in this very field. I don't even have the motivation to look for a higher-paying job in my field, despite having the qualifications. The simple truth is that I don't want to work. Is there anyone else out there with a seemingly ideal job situation but still harbors this deep aversion to doing it?

Honestly, I feel completely stuck. I'm 32 years old and make less than 90k a year, and it's hard not to feel like I'm very behind, especially when I see friends and people younger than me easily surpassing $150.

I've been looking for a job for about 14 months, sent out over 1200 applications. I've tweaked my CV a million times, and even paid for a professional service to polish it, but in the end, there have been almost no results.

I've started thinking about going back to school for something like cybersecurity or data analytics, but I keep hearing that the tech market is very tough these days. My degree is originally in marketing and communications, so this would be a major career pivot.
But I'm looking for any advice or personal stories on how to get unstuck and move forward. What did you do to get to where you are?