popular narrative says that we are all doomed. i refuse to be doomed
propaganda is not just about politics, it is about control
i do not buy this narrative that the job competition is awful, we are all doomed, AI will take all our jobs, IT is dying. the layoffs happen because of the financial crisis (which is not ok to mention out loud, because then the company's share prices will go down), not because of AI (imho).
this is psychological warfare on people that is done to break us, make us docile, make us accept that things are always just getting worse and there is no point in anything other than buying shit on amazon and embracing generative AI.
oh and being pitted against each other by nation-states, if you read any of the mainstream media the people from the countries which your country is against geopolitically are dehumanized. but i digress. the point is that i refuse to be a part of this narrative. i refuse to engage in what i can only call a psyop.
futility and competition in job search
firstly, i've been applying for jobs, and most of the time, there are 100s of applicants for each position. that is a lot of competition. however, many of those people who linkedin claimed have cliked on apply have not completed the next steps of the process, many will be disqualified because of technical issues (for example, they require visa support that the company cannot provide). in the end result, i will be in the pool with much fewer than 100s of people.
i might still not make it, but the scale of competition is not as overwhelming.
secondly, there is a bigger competition when you apply for a job, but there is virtually no competition in doing good work. i have started to contribute to translations of docs of the browser i use and like. i have been looking at someone's github project to learn react, found a leaked credential, and emailed the person. i want to contribute to the open source community and do good things. by doing that, eventually, i will build my own network that is more robust than the network you get out of networking events.
i had found jobs in my previous career through networking, but i had never really tried to network - i just did good work, held open lectures, tried to educate and help. there is no competition when you are trying to do good things since others do not view you as a competitor but instead a collaborator. and this always leads to opportunities (time to an opportunity may vary). that is how i want to view the world and the world has been confirming this over and over again.
conclusions
you can refuse the narrative. build your own narratives based on your experiences and data you have access to! you can read mainstream media (i include popular youtubers in that, as well), but treat it more like a visit to the zoo where you can observe the animals without interacting or thinking that this is their natural habitat.
we are not doomed. we are in a financial crisis - they happen regularly. things are tough, but they are not hopeless. you can refuse to feel hopeless. it is amazing what human spirit can do.
i am refusing to be doomed.
wrote this post in the middle of reading issue 617 by the Flaming Hydra