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

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)
- 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.

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.
- 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

He lost his job to the capitalist owners cost-cutting measures. AI was only the excuse they used.
If you must, hate people, not the inanimate tools they hide behind. Don't play into their game.
- Also AI is not that useful even in coding, some software departments lie about its use to management to stop harassing them for "not using them enough".
  Even worse is that the web is now flooded with barely useful AI generated slop, including documentations and tutorials.
- I read this in the voice of George Carlin
  
  George Carlin having a stroke
- DEY TOOK OUR JERBS!

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.
- 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?
  
  Not op and not native English speaking, but to me it reads like "I want to solve the problems your current staff is too stupid for"
  edited a part I misunderstood
  
  I'm a very experienced software developer. I've tried a lot of "AI" tools and they are just a waste of time. You can use ChatGPT as some kind of search engine, but it fails utterly with more complex tasks and code bases. It's a bit like answers on stackoverflow. Sometimes a bad solution got the highest vote and you find a suitable approach for your problem on page 2. You need experience to understand the difference. AI tools for coding were also trained on hobby code bases, tutorials and such. You can see that in the output. It's missing input validation, error handling, patterns etc.
  Sure you can "discuss" with AI to add those features, but frankly its faster to just write it yourself. (For production ready code, a POC might be ok)
  So if someone shows up claiming he wants to solve my "unsolveable" problems with AI I think they are not qualified enough to understand that they probably won't. Also if an AI tool could do it why would I need them?
  The rest of the resume is also just unspecific. It seems he knows Javascript, as far as I recall. Seems to do frontend and graphics. But I have no idea which frameworks he knows or what was his actual task in these projects. (I just skimmed over the text, this is what I recall. I might be wrong about it)
  Finally the whole context: AI stole my job -> I want a job where I can use AI So apparently he says AI can do his job, which means for me: not qualified
  Please remember: my very personal opinion, based on a 2 minute research. Could be very wrong and biased.

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.
- 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.
  
  Not to mention, how are you making that much and not socking anything away for later?
- just an article posted earlier, klarn is suffering from that exact thing, using AI and they are struggling to survive without employees.
- Oh come on, we cannot expect this class unconscious wannabe professional vibe coder to have market awareness. A lot of software developers are people who basically won the lottery (got into the right field at the right time) and think they deserved all of it. They think the poor people who were in other careers are just worse than them and that's why they're poor.
  He doesn't understand why unseen people aren't clamoring to pay him $150k/year to browse Reddit when they don't even have to anymore to provide the illusion to the market that they're software companies.
  That's right guys, some of this is about impressions and stock prices and always has been. It was the case before chatgpt and friends that you'd have to have a slew of engineers doing stuff to look like a tech company. No longer. Even the big tech companies are doing away with lots of people. So now to look like a tech company you have to keep saying AI into a mirror and hope it conjures up a bunch of new investors.

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

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.
- "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"
  Lets not have any illusions here. Currently this tool is available to the public with reasonable access cost only because it is not at that stage and needs a lot of testing and training. The moment it becomes capable of such feats, if it ever does, tech giants will monopolize the shit out of it.
- It’s really not ai, but the general economy. My company has been tightening down for longer than we have ai - only hiring in India. We’re in one of those phases again.
  People want it to be ai but it just isn’t. Actually I’m a bit worried about my job because I don’t drink the coolaid. Ai is a nice additional tool to help me be more efficient and I use it when it can help. However I will not participate in these overblown claims within my company that we’re saving like 40% of our time because of ai. We all know you’re just making numbers up to ingratiate with the new boss
- 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.
- I'm very happy I started hedging early in my career by saving a very large fraction of my income. Working in tech has been excellent for me, but there's never been any guarantee that this will last forever. At that point, I will probably be ready to live off my savings, should that become necessary. Then it doesn't really matter what any market looks like - I will be able to do whatever I feel like during the days.

Wasn't it just last year, that "software engineer" was one of the most "in demand" jobs in the country?
- Make sure you get a college loan and get a 4 year degree!
- It might still be. But the pool of applicants is even larger.

He should just learn to code

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.

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

dang. poor guy. i cant get a job anywhere in IT and I was a greenfield and brownfield systems architect making a presidential salary. i have worked for a japanese zaibatsu, in education i was responsible for the architecture and implementation of a ~18mm public project, and "in finance" (pls kill me) and startups. i have over 3 decades of experience and ill tell you the struggle is real especially since 47 took office the first time. non-passing transsexuals are chopped off the block every time now. cant even get a job in labor because of my age coupled with the physical disability that made me leave the server rooms behind. now im a destitute homeless sex worker that cant even do that well because of my age and the hostility toward me where i live. strong young white men are now deeply affected and making the papers. vulnerable and marginalized people dont stand a fuckin chance. no one listened to the trans and look at them now.

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?
- 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.
  
  The wisest thing I did was save a lot of money in my 20s and 30s, and then buy and pay off a place to live. I always knew the 150k a year salary days were likely to end one way or another. Now I at least have a pretty controlled cost of living if I have to take a huge salary hit.
- Rent, eat out every day, spend money on toys, drive an expensive car and so forth. It is surprisingly common.
- I don’t know, it just goes out faster than it comes in, no matter what you earn. I think it’s usually an accumulation of decisions, not a single poor choice.
  However there’s also high cost of living areas. I’m sure $150k seems like a lot to most people, but around here it would be a struggle to buy even a starter home if that’s all you earned. And renting can easily be more per month than a mortgage so you’re never getting ahead
  Then there’s college. Not only does FAFSA no longer account for multiple kids, but they assume you use all your savings and get loans. One college asked me to reverse mortgage my house, rather than help with financial aid
  
  I make 25k a year which is huge for me. It took me 2 years of buying all the shit i wanted and then i started saving up and investing. My goal is to have 10k in savings every year, because who knows how long it's gonna last.
- You don't know enough rich people.
  
  Faux rich. You don't get rich by blowing all your money. Your well placed savings paired with reliable income make you rich. Nobody ever got rich by paying the bank all their money so the bank could own their fucking vw touareg with a lamborghini logo.

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/
- 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

Well well well, if it isn’t my greatest fear

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).
- 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
- They can be pretty inexpensive all things considered
- It is?

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
- What does it matter if it’s a worse product, or barely functional
  I spent (wasted) years of my career developing shitty Skype clones for cable companies and ISPs, just so these companies could say they had them on offer even though absolutely nobody ever actually used them. It wasn't even a case of companies ripping off their customers - it was lower-level managers and vice presidents ripping off their own technically ignorant corporate executives. It was depressing busting my ass on this stuff when I knew it didn't make any difference whether it worked or not.

Do people not aggressively prepare for this all the time? If you're being paid $150k a year, you should live like you're getting paid 75k a year and save the rest or use it to purchase some security for the future, like a years supply of pantry foods, or pay down your mortgage if you have one. I have a full-time job and two part time jobs, not because I need the part time jobs but because I'm watching the tech industry dissolve like tissues paper and I'm "holding my spot" in 2 unrelated industries.
- Do people not aggressively prepare for this all the time?
  They do not. People making $150K a year think they will keep making that (and more) for decades to come, and it's ludicrously easy to spend all that on useless shit. Shit, just drugs alone can take most of that.
  
  Literally the reason we established social security in the first place ...
  
  Tbf cost of living in such areas, assuming not remote, can be igher too and that consumes a chunk of the higher salary.
- some of us live in major cities and have to spend that money on frivolous things like rent, bills, food and insulin.
  
  I live in a capital city too, but if I'm not putting away at least 30 of my income, then I'm still living dangerously above my means. I have socialized healthcare but I've still experienced joblessness for 6 months, homelessness for 2 periods of about a year and a half each, and minimum wage. Being aggressively careful with money helped soften these situations, and now that things are going well for me ( I only just stopped living in my car in March) I'm still applying those same principles to my everyday budget.

What happens when AI develops its own programming language that no one understands and knows how to maintain, or how to fix things?
What happens when AI takes control of all the algorithms and sows discontent amongst us all with deep fakes and no one knows who or what is real any more?
This is the real AI apocalypse that I'm scared of.
- I am waiting to see when AI decides that CEOs are actually redundant by-products of nepotism
- ai can really only be used in non-critical things, as in, when people try to use it for anything remotely important it fails before deployment