Help, I'm in real trouble... (Need a job.)

Hi all,

I don’t know if many here can relate to my situation, but I’ve recently recovered from some health issues, and I’ve been 5-months without a job. I just need about $1,000/month to get by and am willing to do ANY software/online remote work to keep the lights on.

Like many, I have family to support - not kids but an elderly Mum with many health issues. I just feel like I’ve let her down in my inability to find a job, and I just feel numb; perhaps it’s despair setting in and I’m grasping at straws.

If anyone can help me network / find something that would absolutely mean the world to me.

Due to my unique situation I can only work remotely online, and this makes it much harder for me to find anything. I’ve been applying till the cows come home but sadly I haven’t found a break (yet). If this goes on for a few more months I will need to shut down my homelab and start trying to eBay everything under the sun just to keep a roof over our heads.

Best regards,
Mike.

5 Likes

It’s rough out here man. Some web dev firm took all my business and charged their clients so much they’re unwilling to accept any improvements/updates

start going to places and asking around. A lot of people would give you some side work based off your story but you would have to find thriving businesses that aren’t tight on $$$

3 Likes

I totally understand the pain and hope you have better luck than me. Just spent the better part of an hour or so turning things off in AWS to cut my costs down.

Backups!! Who needs backups right?.. :sweat:

2 Likes

TBH I would treat this reality as a doomsday scenario… find ways to run everything locally because the infrastucture is crumbling…

3 Likes

You might looks for remote positions in Europe, job situation in IT around here is stable. But I do not know how many are offering full remote or work places where you do not need the local language of the country the company is in. But might be an idea.

1 Like

from my experience things follow the triangle:

  • cheap + power efficient = low perf
  • high perf + cheap = !power efficient
  • high perf + power efficient = high cost

Until some ARM rack servers come down in price in the used market to where they’re on par cost wise with a r420 or something then running a homelab will still be expensive to operate.

Do you make any online videos, looking to expand my horizons?

I started https://www.youtube.com/@CrustyEngineer which ties my interest in Rust and embedded, but right now I’m focussing on sorting out the home situation and once I’m stable again, I’ll try and get back to this.

Since I’m in Sri Lanka, it’s pretty hot here so I’ve been running an AC 24/7 in the dedicated server space. Now, I’m switching it off at night and going to alternate like this for the time being.

Running 6x 3KVA APC UPSes but thankfully none of them are at max load. My main VM slice is a r740xd but with a handful of drives; it’s mainly dual Xenons and a lot of RAM.

Overclocking is fun when it gets to -40c here where I am from lol

2 Likes

Super lucky mate, hehe. Back in the dialup days I used to toy with peltiers to keep an old Intel Pentium III cool. I used a fish tank and some random pump. Fun times.

1 Like

I’m in the same boat basically, been looking for the past year and a half. My homelab is actually saving me money because it means I can have business websites for the self-employment income which is all my wife and I have had for more than a year on my own stuff instead of paying for those, it’s getting real close to looking like trying to swap over to self-host email because the business email we have it starting to look real expensive.

1 Like

Where have you applied? Have you had your resume reviewed? Finding a tech job is hard so you need to work to sell yourself as much as possible.

With that being said, you probably can find a contract web dev position. They don’t pay that well but it would be something. Also recruiters tend to not like unemployed people. (Sucks but that’s the way it is)

In the meantime I would strongly advise seeking help from a local charity. You probably can find a local soup kitchen to lower food costs. I know it can be embarrassing but sometimes we have major life crises and not getting help is not a great path. I’ve scene talented people end up homeless which is incredibly sobering for me. (They ended up with severe schizophrenia when in there mid 30s making 250k)

2 Likes

Hey,

I’m not sure if its viable, but in Poland the tech job crisis isn’t that much of a thing, at least for programmers, there are still lots of remote positions and the most common type of contract is b2b (nearly everyone who is earning more than the first bracket, at least in IT, switches to this type of contract since its not taxed as much as contract of employment). I don’t know how that will work when you’re based outside of EU economic zone (there is EU and EU economic zone, those are two distinct, but overlapping in some cases concepts).

If you know java and/or typescript then I suspect you could find something based here, but you’d need something that is ok with communicating in only english… which is kinda tough even if you’re on-site. But well, since you’re saying that you’re out of options it may work out somehow for you.

Btw. if you’re short on money I’d just shut down the entire hobby homelab thing right away, right now you need a job and be very continuous of expenses, I hope this doesn’t come off like I’m being rude or something but collecting non-essential expenses right now is very unwise.

2 Likes

Hey, appreciate your comments and yes, I totally agree! I’ve shut off my gitlab servers, and just running my primary-freenas for now. It houses my “critical” data, which my laptop syncs over rsync, and that gets pushed (at a much slower pace now) into S3.

Over the past few months I’ve been watching my S3 like a hawk and been keeping the API requests down, so right now I’ve been tweak my AWS costs to sub $130/month. I’ve been spelunking with ncdu and have been able shave a several hundred gigs of about 1TB in S3 (much if which is in Glaicer etc); this is mainly a doomsday backup, if/whenever my ZFS vdevs go belly up on me.

FYI thanks for the feedback, I’ll look into that ASAP!!

BTW also thanks to everyone and the community, you don’t know how uplifting your feedback has been!

I feel this pain. I work for a small business as a contractor, and while for the longest time there wasn’t really an issue, suddenly they’ve started scrutinizing the work I’m doing, determining if it’s even necessary.

It’s gotten to the point now where I now have to get approval to even do a task, even a really simple one. I can’t help but think this is their way of trying to force me out. Seeing as it is a small business, I’ve had to wear multiple hats in the company, which is all well and good, I’ve never asked to be paid for each effective position I was working, I was happy making a decent chunk of change. But lately the business owners have gotten cheap, going so far as to say some of my services to clients should be offered at an in-house discount, although they have not provided any of my equipment and I had basically brought everything myself when we started the business.

At some point things come to an end, so I’m lining up opportunities myself (even more flexible ones), with one in the pipe that looks on track for me to be on-boarded in a month or two.

I hope you find some relief, soon, and know you are never alone!

7 Likes

I think the answer lies in creating a proper business yourself… look at where selling ourselves to vicious animals who only respect their own wallets has gotten us…

We gave the keys to income to people who do not care about another human’s well-being. We oversold ourselves and made it easy for these business owners, all while knowing deep down they don’t have our back, we’re only extremely useful at the current moment… but that can change at the drop of a hat.

Tech businesses need to be run by tech people. Otherwise this is what we get… slavery

5 Likes

Eek, I’m feeling your pain as in the past I was in a similar situation (to a certain degree). I was naïve (when starting out) and had a verbal understanding (Gentleman’s agreement) with my immediate boss & the family run company owners. They sold their shares to a corporate marauder who slandered my good name to everyone he met. Brought in his staff, to axe the existing staff. First my boss got axed, then my colleague (we were the only two maintaining a 20-server Chef + Ansible stack for some huge global brands).

TL;DR, when it was my time under the guillotine (he and his staff) promised my final month’s pay till 1700pm on the 30th of the month. At 1730 hrs another international call to the UK and I was told I will NOT get paid due to accrued annual leave taken outside my contract over the course of over 2-years. Every leave/break was pre-approved by my boss and the original owners.

The new owner was set to play me out for over $4,000/-; thankfully almost a decade ago, but shudder.

3 Likes

Yeah, in my case it’s the managing partners who are starting to show their true colors after all these years, while putting on a facade on the marketing bits. What’s worse is that a lot of my coworkers, most of whom are not contractors and are instead fulltime through an HR organization (owned by a friend of one of the managing partners, hmm) are either oblivious to it, or turning a blind eye to it because they know they are safer than the few of us who are contractors.

In the partners’ minds, they have such little understanding of IT and how it works, even after nearly six years, that they still believe IT should be reactive rather than proactive. One of the reasons the office runs as stable as it does, is because I’ve always been proactive on staying on top of things before they become an issue and impede workflow (time is money, and all). They had the audacity to tell me just recently that’s I’ve just been doing make work. I’m at a point now where I’m slowly transitioning away and I will just let them crash and burn.

When the calls come that I need to react to something, I will take my time remedying the situation if they want to devalue and play games with my time, up until I just stop answering all together. At this point I have no obligation to remain professional with the, nor any official contract to adhere to.

It’s one of the reasons I sought to pivot away from IT all together; I just don’t enjoy it at the professional level anymore and it’s been so bad that I don’t even enjoy computing at a recreational level anymore.

Totally agree.

Ouch! I too recall when I hit serious burn out (different reasons); it’s incredibly disheartening when you do your best in your role and then it is taken for granted. I have a relative who’s a 18+ year veteran at a large IT group, he went cold turkey as soon as he resigned (in terms of enjoying computing).

What you said strikes a nerve as there are bits of Rust programming I enjoy (just out of curiosity), but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be up to deal with the transactional nature of “business”.

I do hope you complete your transitioning strategy, all the best!!

1 Like