A "high tech" dead end career that my friends, family, and society were happy to usher me into with big promises of a bright shining tomorrow, only for me to find out too late that it's a dead end, worthless job.
Much of this time I wanted to switch into computer programming instead, which I've been doing on my own since I was 8 years old. Over the years I've built my own Linux distro from scratch, developed a heavily customized version of the Chromium web browser, and other interesting stuff. But oh noes, I don't have the right piece of paper to prove I'm worth anything, and I'm not planning to waste 4+ years of my life and $50k+ to get said paper, so nobody has any use for me.
Once I dared to become self-employed and stayed out of the job market a few years, then I was considered forever useless and unemployable on that basis alone. The job market doesn't want employees, or business owners, it wants slaves. Any extended period of "unemployment" (or underemployment) is the kiss of death.
Frankly, a lot of the programming jobs these days are shit anyhow (especially the type of crap posted to HN's Who's Hiring) so it's hard to get excited about any of it, and at 40+ I am now unemployable due to age anyway, so it's pointless to apply for anything.
alt Hacker News
A "high tech" dead end career that my friends, family, and society were happy to usher me into with big promises of a bright shining tomorrow, only for me to find out too late that it's a dead end, worthless job.
Much of this time I wanted to switch into computer programming instead, which I've been doing on my own since I was 8 years old. Over the years I've built my own Linux distro from scratch, developed a heavily customized version of the Chromium web browser, and other interesting stuff. But oh noes, I don't have the right piece of paper to prove I'm worth anything, and I'm not planning to waste 4+ years of my life and $50k+ to get said paper, so nobody has any use for me.
Once I dared to become self-employed and stayed out of the job market a few years, then I was considered forever useless and unemployable on that basis alone. The job market doesn't want employees, or business owners, it wants slaves. Any extended period of "unemployment" (or underemployment) is the kiss of death.
Frankly, a lot of the programming jobs these days are shit anyhow (especially the type of crap posted to HN's Who's Hiring) so it's hard to get excited about any of it, and at 40+ I am now unemployable due to age anyway, so it's pointless to apply for anything.