A commonplace book. Or, how I prove I spend too much time on the Internet. Star Wars is my forever fandom. Right now I'm losing my mind over Our Flag Means Death and Friends at the Table. TERFs, SWERFs, racists, and fandom neo-puritans can fuck right the hell off. (mobile header by edwards-teach)
[gif: John Oliver saying “Welcome to whatever this is...”]
Here's the readme, don't be a dick.
TERFs, SWERFs, racists, authoritarians, and (fandom) neo-puritans are not welcome here.
I will drift in and out as real life requires. I don’t believe in queues because if you see things from me all the time how will you ever miss me? 😘
Sometimes I write fic and put it on AO3 or Tumblr. Very occasionally, I vid. I also do things with embroidery floss or cloth.
While I have your attention:
Change your fucking Harry Potter URL and remove the Hogwarts House nonsense from your bio if you're not a TE/RF apologist; it's 2024 for fuck's sake.
There’s no such thing as a pro-shipper. It’s like being gender critical. The neo-puritan mindset is a straight-up pipeline to TERFism, authoritarianism, and white supremacy.
Listen to Old Gods of Appalachia. You'll learn a lot more about an under- and misrepresented region from this than Vance's hillbilly drag. It's also one of the finest fiction podcasts going today and storytellers have much to learn from and enjoy in it.
Don’t forget to love each other. That includes harm mitigation, calling people on their bullshit, and listening to people when they call you on yours.
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As you may or may not know, I was laid off about a year ago. I still don't have full-time employment, but things are getting less bad. Here are some things I have learned that may help people in the same situation.
Something I need you to understand right now
The market is very very bad. The last time I remember it being this terrible was right after the mortgage busts in 2008-10. It might honestly be worse. The last time I looked for a job was three years ago and it has changed completely.
The number of people applying to available jobs is w i l d. The stats coming out of this r/recruitinghell thread are nuts. 2000 applications, even after screening out the obviously unsuited they still went through 900. There's no way to screen all of them. It is, unfortunately, mostly a numbers game.
I'm not telling you this to scare you or discourage you. But it will be hard, because so much is tied up into work, labor, and our senses of self. And if you're going to get through this, you need to understand what you're up against.
I hope the stuff below the jump will help you do that.
(If you need to contact me hmu on Bluesky or via pearwaldorf at gmail. I have messaging and asks turned off because spam and because I'm not on Tumblr much)
If you've just been laid off or are going to be
If you still have access to your old work's systems, grab what you need.
Get yourself the Laid Off/Let Go Checklist from Never Search Alone. Even if you don't sign up for NSA, this is helpful.
Never Search Alone is a mutual support group for job hunting that is supposed to help you figure out your alignment and purpose (Job Search Council). It feels very silly that we do not run these things in general, because it was actually extremely helpful when I found my JSC.
If you feel like you're spinning your wheels and trying to figure out what's next, this might be helpful for you. It's a lot of work, but I think if you put it in it will help you.
(I joined a JSC that kinda fizzled out so if you have questions, happy to answer them. Also if you want to do a JSC but don't have the money for the book, I can help you with that.)
I found Overqualified through a promoted post on LinkedIn (lol) and it has been useful small bites of information about things I don't want to think about much (like AI in hiring and marketing yourself on LinkedIn). The videos are short (under 5 minutes) and still helpful even if they're a little... yeah.
Give yourself a little bit of time to decompress if you can. You’re probably suffering at least a little bit of burnout.
**MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHEN YOUR UNEMPLOYMENT IS RUNNING OUT.** (This totally didn't happen to me. Nope.)
The Actual Hunt
Sites to use
Hiring.cafe is an aggregation searcher built by Redditors that allows you to filter by lots of parameters, including ease of application, tech stack, cognitive load on the job, mobility, and physical labor required. It has a robust Boolean search that allows you to exclude companies you don't want to work with.
Welcome to the Jungle is for jobs with startups/smaller companies funded by VC (defined extremely broadly: Khan Academy is considered one). This is good if you have a tech stack and/or skill set you're proficient in.
Indeed is what I've been using because it allows you to filter on actually important things, like whether or not a job has a posted salary and allows you to hide companies/positions you're never going to apply for. Also locations that are too goddamn far despite trying to properly dial in what a reasonable communitng distance is. (Ahem.)
Flexjobs is a site that has fully remote positions with people who vet them and make sure they're real. To support this, the site is pay to access. Try the cheap version first--it might not have enough of the types of jobs you're looking for.
The best thing to do if you really want to be considered is to apply on the company's website if possible. Yes, I know it sucks and is way harder than just clicking a couple buttons. But that's a calculation you have to make about effort vs convenience.
Sites to avoid
I have an anti-rec for LinkedIn because it gets so much traffic and you can't exclude companies. Also the jobs get stale really quick because they get so many applications.
Lensa and Wiraa are weird scammy reposters that I have never been able to figure out. Do not sign up or click on links from them.
Pay
You're never going to remember hourly > salary conversions. Keep a note on your computer or a sticky note with relevant numbers:
Minimum wage in your state
When you're applying to remote positions (which vary wildly in pay) you do not want to aim for anything less.
Minimum wage in the biggest city close to you (if it's within commuting distance)
The reason I say this is because there can be a HUGE difference. Washington state minimum wage is ~$16 but varies greatly by locale. You don't want to concentrate on jobs in places that pay $4 less an hour if you could commute to a place that has to pay way more.
The hourly equivalent of your unemployment benefits
Don't even bother applying for anything lower than this if you still have them.
Hourly > salary conversions for round numbers (like $50K, $60K)
This might just be me but it was helpful to see the equivalents
Posted salaries
Personally I never apply to anything without a stated pay rate. In my state (Washington) it's illegal to post a job listing without one if your company has more than 15 employees. Lots of places will attempt to weasel around this by posting pay ranges that encompass whole-ass tax brackets. It sucks and those companies should go on your shit list.
Be aware of your rights regarding soliciting salary histories. It's illegal in Washington to ask for that, but may not be in your state. Some state labor and industries departments also have databases of businesses who have been cited for violating wage laws by employees.
You will quickly learn to feel in your bones Chris Rock's commentary about minimum wage.
Ghost jobs
Some companies leave job listings up for ages and/or aren't actually hiring. These are called ghost jobs and they suck. You'll learn to spot these as you become familiar with what's normal for your market. This list compiles some companies that do the ghost job thing. Which is not to say they're all fake, but this aligns with my experience.
(There are many legit reasons for posting jobs that may not actually be hiring, but we're not dealing with those here.)
Networking
I have a whole post about networking for introverts here. I think it is applicable to even those of you who are not. It also contains a bit of stuff about how to tweak your LinkedIn profile.
Resumes
If you need Word (or other Office apps), you can use it online for free. The only annoying thing is you can't save .doc/x files to your computer, so get used to putting everything in PDF or ODT.
Layout should be barebones. Do not buy the cute little templates from Etsy. I recommend finding any random ATS-friendly template and making sure it degrades gracefully. No columns, minimal formatting (bold and italic, font sizes). Or make a plain-text version.
This guy used to do recruiting for Google and has lots of excellent advice.
This is how you should construct your resume. Nobody gives a shit about the things you did, but rather what you accomplished while you were there.
Construct bullet points in this way, so they flow together and create a coherent picture of what you did. This is also a great place to keyword stuff.
The wait
Honestly I would not expect to hear back. Some people keep track of the number of applications > declines > interviews > offers, but I think that will drive you batty. I have found that if people want you to interview, you'll find out within a couple weeks or not at all.
The thing I was super surprised by? The lower-paying jobs like retail and food service are the ones I hear back from the least. If I'm lucky they eventually close the position and I get notified that way.
The grind. The fucking grind.
You will get a lot of rejections. Try not to take it personally, although I know it's easier said than done.
Like, I got turned down for a job that I was approached for, in that an HR person forwarded my resume to this other person, we talked for 90 minutes and I had an interview, and I still didn't get picked. That was kinda rough.
You will also run across a lot of entitled bullshit in job postings. You do not need to do a video interview or write a goddamn essay to stand out. This is how they identify the desperate.
Please leave time for processing all this, with or without a JSC. You cannot hunt well if you're all up in your head about how much something sucks, and it does suck.
That being said, come up with some boilerplate answers for common questions on applications like "Why do you want to work here?" It will make you feel less like dying of pure resentment when you already have an answer.
Do not be tempted to halt all searching if you get an interview. It fucks your momentum and makes it more difficult to pick back up if you get rejected (and you will).
A lot of feelings and attitudes will come up about how you perceive work, class, and "skilled" labor. Do not shy away from these, because examining this stuff is how we break down and interrogate how we come by these beliefs. Try and be a little dispassionate about it--you can't think clearly if you feel ashamed about having this stuff in your head.
Interviews
(I don't have a lot to say about this because I haven't had enough numerically to see if they're different from the usual advice.)
This is a conversation. You're just getting to know someone new for 20-30 minutes.
But also, STAR, STAR, STAR. You need to be able to think of times in your past where you have demonstrated qualities hiring people think you need to succeed in this job.
Interviews are farces, but that doesn't mean you get to opt out of them. Put on that jobsona, practice it until it feels more realistic. If you have a career center or unemployment office available, ask to mock interview there or with your friends.
I think one of the most important things to do is to ask questions of your own (lots more good lists at the bottom). Not only does it make you look engaged, it also gives you so much information about how the person sees the company and their role in it.
For example, a question I always ask is "What do you like about working here, and what would you change?" If somebody can't answer something as simple as that, it tells you a lot. I interviewed twice at a company with a dress code. Neither person went for the easy answer about abolishing the dress code, instead addressing a more substantiative issue that affected their work. I also interviewed with a consulting firm where the recruiter couldn't figure out a goddamn thing about what she'd change at the company.
Other random things:
It doesn't hurt to ask ideal timelines
Be a little wary of processes that seem to move too quickly
Misc advice
Keep doing it, be consistent, show up.
If you think you're being annoying, you're probably not the type of person who is actually being annoying.
Wherever you stop, that's probably a place you need to ask for help.
FIN
OK that was very long. Here is a picture of a bulldog in a stroller for scrolling to the end.
So at long fucking last, I got hired full-time somewhere. It's not a place I would stay permanently, nor is the pay adequate for the area I live in, but it is something to prevent further economic collapse.
All the advice herein still applies. Two things I would add. The first is to find ways to deal with how much of this is not in your control:
To reiterate, there's a good chance your application might not ever get looked at, because there are so many. That's shitty and unfair but also an objective reality.
You don't know how other people will interview. You can do your best but somebody else might knock their socks off, or tick whatever box the hiring person is looking for. All you can do is your best and that has to be good enough.
Radical acceptance may or may not be helpful, it's just one place to start.
The second is to find community, in the job hunt or elsewhere. Never Search Alone is an amazing resource even if you don't join a Job Search Council. They have an archived list of videos they do on Linkedin every couple weeks that will give you an idea of how the process works.
It's tough, it's terrible, but the shitty market will swing back eventually. Ask for help if you need it, don't forget to love each other.
“Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no… Death is “not.” Death isn’t. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can’t not be on a boat. Rosencrantz: I’ve frequently not been on boats. Guildenstern: No, no… What you’ve been is not on boats.”
— Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (via genocidaltheta)
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it concerns me that people really don’t know that adhd isn’t a personality type or behavioral problem.
adhd isn’t someone who’s personality is driven by fun and disorder.
adhd is someone who’s brain goes all over the place looking for dopamine, because it doesn’t make or register enough of it, and when it finds a source of dopamine, it hyperfixates on it. it’s about deregulation of attention as well as emotions.
it’s not a person who can’t behave. a person with adhd can look like a lot of things. misconceptions about what adhd looks like kept me from even looking for a diagnosis, and it also kept myself and others (professionals, even) from taking my suspicions seriously.
everyone’s encouraged to reblog, but if you don’t have adhd, keep your additions to the tags.
Smart people can have ADHD. And a lot of the time, they compensate for the ADHD with intelligence- until they reach the point where they just can’t overcome it anymore, which is why a lot of gifted + ADHD people have good grades their whole lives and then “suddenly” crash and burn. For some it’s college, for some it’s grad school, for some it’s postgrad or professional exams like the bar. Whenever the things they have to do can no longer be brute-forced at the last minute.
ADHD is often lumped in with learning disabilities but it’s really a DOING disability. We know what we should do. Probably we know six ways to do it. The trouble is actually getting our brains to activate so we CAN do it. Sometimes it’s like you’re being controlled by aliens or something because you say “I need to do X” and you’re going to do it and you just. Don’t.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
That said, has the answer to the question “did classical Athens do something problematic” ever, in all its history and all subsequent discussion, been “no?”
