this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected for 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet (fortune.com)
submitted 13 hours ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/workreform@lemmy.world
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[–] abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us 15 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Software engineer here - I make more than this guy did and I have roughly the same amount of experience in the industry that he does (perhaps a smidge more, going off of his linkedin profile).

For folks who are saying that there's something off about this guy - that would not have mattered two or three years ago. At most he would have just been seen as a highly talented dev who was also slightly quirky.

For those who say it's not about AI and more about the economy - well, maybe. We do have a couple of major ongoing wars right now and moves over the last couple of months by the recent administration of the US haven't helped.

But I was around during the crash back in 2008, and this still feels different. Harder. Before, I had recruiters just banging on my door. Now, it's tough to past the automated screenings unless I have a contact at the company who can refer me there.

Meanwhile, I'm hearing from my co-workers about how great AI is - how they ran their code through it and it came up with a bunch of unit tests for them and some boilerplate code. Vibe coding is already a thing. So is using AI to write your resume and cover letters and applying to jobs.

Likewise, I look upon tools like Devin.ai with increasing trepidation. Today, LLMs aren't good enough to replace a single senior dev, despite a lot of investment happening to move things in exactly this direction. It probably won't happen tomorrow, or even next year. But in 25?

Let's just say that this article really hit home for me.

The other point here is - the day that a person with no coding ability can ask an LLM to create and deploy an entire website, write and manage a brand new app from scratch, is going to be a day that's a win for the people. We want to lower the barriers to entry here, to give this highly elite power to others. Actually, there shouldn't be an elite at all - there should just be a democracy where everyone is equally empowered to create and build great things.

Working in tech will not remain this vaulted, lofty place for much longer. If we aren't content creators, or controlling company owners, then ultimately tech workers like myself are in the same position as any other kind of worker - we work for someone else and serve only at their sufferance.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 points 45 minutes ago* (last edited 44 minutes ago)

I'm a senior mobile dev, and I needed a website for the app which I've never done before. AI was able to help me make one. Is it a well programmed website? Nope! Does it work? Yep!

With my knowledge I was able to troubleshoot problems the AI created, and fix things that came up, but it would have taken me so much longer to do that on my own, or I may have hired someone to make it for me.

I might need to do it better in the future, but for now it works and gets me off the ground.

[–] ne0phyte@feddit.org 7 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

What I don't understand: He writes about 21 years of experience and having made 150k/year. Where is all that money? How can you make 150k and work for two decades and not have any savings/investments to stay afloat even if that means moving to a more remote and cheaper area?

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago

I know several software devs who cannot save a dime and live paycheck to paycheck on around $2k a week.

$2,000. I used to get less than that a month at my first job.

just because you have to be smart doesn't mean you're brilliant. these devs failed to understand what budgeting was and would literally piss their paycheck away by eating out 3-4 times a day, bars, women, toys, etc.

I maxed out my 401k contributions every year. I saved half my check. I was able to save a lot, but recently I've been living paycheck to paycheck because everything is so damn expensive.

my point is, some of it is because of poor financial decisions. some of it is because COL is out of control. it's hard to pass judgment on others when you don't know their story.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 hours ago

Rent, eat out every day, spend money on toys, drive an expensive car and so forth. It is surprisingly common.

[–] beejboytyson@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

You don't know enough rich people.

[–] Novocirab@feddit.org 15 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Regardless of the details of this particular case, let's appreciate that, with this development at the horizon, now is the time where more tech workers will become open to arguments to unionize.

[–] Arigion@feddit.org 34 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

From his resume:

Goals I am looking to be part of a small-to-midsized engineering team where I can have real impact by solving hard and previously unsolvable problems by leveraging AI tools.

I would also not hire him. I'm not really familiar with US resume culture, but the whole thing is very unappealing to me. Also from his linked substack, I get unpleasant vibes.

[–] cornshark@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Can you be more specific? What is unappealing to you? Do you feel like companies don't feel their problems are unsolvable? Do you feel companies don't want someone who uses ai tools?

[–] JustJack23@slrpnk.net 32 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I am very sympathetic to the guy given I expect to be in the same position in year and a half or so, but the article imo is shit. AI has very little to do with this and it's more of the economic conditions these past two years.

In my experience developers are the least class conscious people I know and the puddle deep analysis expected from that sort of people is perfectly captured in this article.

IDK maybe I am just in denial and coping.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 6 points 2 hours ago

in my experience developers are the least class conscious people I know

This matches my experience and it's really frustrating. I remember talking to a coworker years ago and he was just like "I wouldn't join a union. If a job sucks I'll go somewhere else". Incredibly optimistic and myopic.

Well, he's unemployed now. Working on a video game so maybe he's still got that bootstraps energy.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 15 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Cory Doctorow just posted something very much related to this. It's an excellent read.

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 25 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Tech workers’ power didn’t come from solidarity, it came from scarcity. When you’re getting five new recruiter emails every day, you don’t need a shop steward to tell your boss to go fuck themselves at the morning scrum. You can do it yourself, secure in the knowledge that there’s a company across the road who’ll give you a better job by lunchtime.

There’ve been half a million US tech layoff since 2023. Tech workers’ scarcity-derived power has been vaporized. Tech workers can avoid the fate of the factory, warehouse and delivery workers their bosses literally work to death — but only by unionizing.

Great article! Really goes to show that even workers making huge salaries need collective agreements. It doesn't matter how much the company relies on your work, eventually, your boss will find a way to fuck you over.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Exactly. It's stuff like this that's convinced me to join a tech union myself. If you're in the UK, you might consider the one I joined.

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I'm in Canadian manufacturing and am already part of the Teamsters union!

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 hours ago

Teamsters, fuck yeah!

[–] Zedd00@lemmy.dbzer0.com 54 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Oh look, it's me. Except I've put in 600 applications in 6 months without a single response. 15 years as a Devops engineer at fortune 100 companies, and can't make it to round one.

[–] Cocopanda@futurology.today 21 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I interviewed for an identical job I was the manager of the department for at a competitor. I at least made it to the first interview with the director of the department. But he told me I was up against 300 people. And they passed me over for in person interviews. Couldn’t believe it. I developed training programs for the last department I lead. I hired people. But still I couldn’t get past the initial conversation.

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 25 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

The world of online jobs is basically the same enshitification as online dating.

In the hypothetical sense you have the opportunity to find more jobs than at any time in the history of employment. But employers also have to field more (and mostly unqualified) applicants than ever before.

So they can find more potential employees, and you can find more jobs, but ultimately the end user experience 9/10 times is just getting buried under a 10,000 person stack of other applicants. You may be the best person for a job, but not even get an interview because the person on the other end of the machine doesnt have time to actually look through that stack.

And then worse yet, job search companies capitalize on knowing they create a demoralizing atmosphere and use that to push products on people. Resume help, professional career guidance, etc etc. Job search companies, like dating companies, dont really want any of their end users to find that much success. They want you to keep applying to jobs. Its the same reason why they dont do more to trim down unqualified applicants for employers. They sell companies on virtual interview bullshit and the like instead. Solutions that just make everything worse

[–] Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 hours ago

Not to mention that even the companies are suffering from the system they themselves built. The gamified and enshittified hiring process doesn't improve the quality of the workers they get, it just filters the candidates based on a bunch of unrelated skills.

The talent pool has always skewed towards people who know how to play the game, rather than actual talent... but now "the game" they're playing isn't even about useful skillls like human charisma or networking, it's about handling or misleading poorly designed AI tools.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 12 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

not to mention alot of listings are ghosts listings, and they love to phish for resume so they can use it to screen out more people. also the other side of ghost listing is that they already have someone they hired internally but they put out the listing anyways on job sites.

[–] ChickenAndRice@sh.itjust.works 90 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

From the software engineer in the article:

“I think there’s this problem where people are stuck in the old world business mindset of, well, if I can do the same work that 10 developers were doing with one developer, let’s just cut the developer team instead of saying, oh, well, we’ve got a 10 developer team, let’s do 1,000x the work that we were doing before,” K says.

Buddy, there is no "old world business mindset", this is capitalism as usual. Even IF (big IF), an employer can get 1000x the output, you guys will NOT get 1000x the compensation. This is exploitation

Let's put this to rest: when productivity boosts are touted as a benefit from using AI, it doesn't mean shit if you work for someone else (i.e. you don't really own your work)

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 35 points 12 hours ago

Yeah. Mans was exempt from the orphan crushing machine so he thought it wasn't real.

It is. It's coming for all of us unless we do something to stop it.

I honestly don't even think it's all that relevant if his skills aren't super pro-level or he's looking in the wrong market. Yes, it is true that a lot of people who just had the ability to put together a functional web UI or run SQL commands have been able to command six figure salaries for a while. That is fine. We have technology enough at this point that we can support everyone in comfortable life, as long as they're willing to show up and do a full-time job. We broke the whole economy to where it turns into this special thing if you want a house, vacations, not want to have to worry. Like you have to be some kind of Good Will Hunting person to expect that. Fuck that. This guy should still get $150k. Everyone who works full time and has some training should make $125k a year and the shareholders should get less. Picking on this guy's supposed lack of pro-talent misses the point, I think.

We don't have a shortage of problems to solve. The planet is burning and all our tech is murdering our brains. If we could somehow get the people who want a full-time job and don't have one to start making money by working on those things 40 hours a week I feel like those things would be in better shape.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 15 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

with 800application, hes probably only using the same CV/RESUME over and over, to the point companies will automatically ignore it with thier software. gotta change up his resume, or hes like one of those wierd cherry pickers i encountered on reddit about applying jobs, they applied to same company multiple times over different period of time.

[–] mriswith@lemmy.world 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

He's a software engineer, I'd bet on him automating it in a way that it's been flagged by commonly used recruting tools and is auto-rejected.

Some of those tools also use LLM now, and they're regularly found to be flawed and turning away wanted applicants.

[–] bob_lemon@feddit.org 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

You don't even need an LLM to autoreject someone that lists "Vibecoding" on his resume.

[–] vxx@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I am vibecoding, but that's because I am not a coder or developer but do it for fun from time to time without a real clue.

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 3 points 3 hours ago

TIL im “vibeliving”

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 2 points 8 hours ago

probably that too, i wonder if its also reapplying to the same job, or same company over and over again, considering he only wants a niche job which a mistake on his part.

[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 18 points 11 hours ago

He should just learn to code

[–] voytrekk@sopuli.xyz 37 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I wonder how much of his time has been spent applying for other markets. The middle of New York isn't the hottest market and remote jobs are very in demand.

I also think companies relying on solely AI are going to struggle long term or have to spend a ton of money fixing the mistakes that it creates.

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 36 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, this reads more like the guy isn't employable. The tech market has been rough for a while, but not being able to find anything for a year is an outlier.

Looking at his substack, he talks about AI being able to solve the mystery of UAPs. Sooo may be more the guy then the industry.

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 16 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Not to mention, how are you making that much and not socking anything away for later?

[–] alekwithak@lemmy.world 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

RVs aren't cheap and neither is lot rental.

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

So the RV was the backup plan?

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

There’s always money in the RV.

Narrator: This time, there wasn’t.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 5 points 10 hours ago

just an article posted earlier, klarn is suffering from that exact thing, using AI and they are struggling to survive without employees.

[–] Archangel1313@lemm.ee 23 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Wasn't it just last year, that "software engineer" was one of the most "in demand" jobs in the country?

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 2 points 5 hours ago

It might still be. But the pool of applicants is even larger.

[–] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 19 points 11 hours ago

Make sure you get a college loan and get a 4 year degree!

[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 14 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Article not clear. Not following how his inability to find a job has any connection to AI?

Edit: Also, https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/29/generative_ai_no_effect_jobs_wages/

[–] abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us 1 points 1 hour ago

In a working paper released earlier this month, economists Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard looked at the labor market impact of AI chatbots on 11 occupations, covering 25,000 workers and 7,000 workplaces in Denmark in 2023 and 2024.

Hmm, Denmark you say?

Also Denmark,

Denmark doesn’t have at-will employment. Employers may only terminate an employee with just cause and sufficient notice. Just cause can include financial reasons or employee misconduct.

https://www.rippling.com/country-hiring/denmark-employees

Actually, perhaps this points at a way forward... we should employment laws in the US that match those of Denmark.

Not following how his inability to find a job has any connection to AI?

It's in the fortune article:

some of those few interviews have been with an AI agent instead of a human.
“I feel super invisible,” K tells Fortune. “I feel unseen. I feel like I’m filtered out before a human is even in the chain.”

That is, he's getting fewer chances to establish a human-to-human connection to an interviewer, which is hurting his ability to get hired.

The bigger picture is that folks are indeed losing jobs to AI, have had their jobs cut because of AI, see

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/klarna-ceo-says-ai-helped-company-shrink-workforce-by-40/ar-AA1EMHG6

[–] Zenith@lemm.ee 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

So many tech bros on copium rn acting like their jobs will never go away, but their bosses have zero loyalty to them and will work tirelessly to replace them with AI. What does it matter if it’s a worse product, or barely functional, if that’s the only option it’ll just be the norm. Companies make and kill products and services all the time, it’s a revolving door, they buy good services just to cannibalize and destroy them. Once AI moves past “vibe coding” nearly all of these jobs will be obliterated over night, it’s only a matter of time on our current trajectory

[–] JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world 8 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (3 children)

That's a pretty nice RV. He's doing ok as far as homelessness goes...

Lol edit: not that it's a nice RV, but that he has an RV. Sorry if not clear (it's not clear).

[–] Shawdow194@fedia.io 1 points 3 hours ago

They can be pretty inexpensive all things considered

[–] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 9 points 11 hours ago

Eh, those Shasta ultralight travel trailers are certainly on the mid to lower mid end if the scale as far as travel trailers go, especially if it doesn't have a slide and he got it used. It's also single axle as far as I can tell and a little older, so probably in the neighborhood of 24', not exactly luxurious

[–] Voyajer@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

It is?