a very Nietzschean fish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pearwaldorf) wrote2025-07-25 11:53 am
pearwaldorf) wrote2025-07-25 11:53 am
(no subject)
I really do think I would have been better off stupid.
I have been out of work for about a year. Some of it was me, thrashing through a skills-job mismatch. The rest has been the shitty job market. I now have some clarity about how I intend to proceed in the medium and long term, but the current concern is getting some fucking money in.
Please understand, I do not believe there is such a thing as unskilled labor. But there are some jobs where your purpose is to be a warm body that does things occasionally and shows up on time. This is not rocket science (although the way SpaceX is going? Eyy!).
I read a long thing on the politics of humiliation and it clarified a lot of things about the current milieu. It’s very long but extremely illuminating. “Humiliation is the forced recognition of domination.”
This can be done in many ways, both exceptionally grotesque and mundane.
—
During the job search, I have signed up for some silly things that are not completely useless.. One of the videos mentioned “the job market of XYZ years is gone. The job market of last year is gone. And you have to accept that.” It is unfortunately true.
The solution, according to this guy, is to market yourself on LinkedIn. All that value proposition create urgency CTA bullshit. Hawk your personal brand in a systematic way.
Y’know, all the shit that makes me (and other people like me in this regard) want to die.
If I were less aware of all the stuff around me I would just fucking do it because that's the way the world works. But I see it. I see what companies are trying to do to take advantage of this employers’ market. This combination of political uncertainty leading to lack of job mobility and a sustained capital strike that started after the Great Resignation.
I’m a perfectly talented and competent worker, but I do not believe the market should be tight enough that I have to attempt to differentiate myself for a position that pays $60K a year (which is exactly median for King County).
And it feels stupid to dig in my heels so much about this. Extremely entitled and bourgie when people are out there picking strawberries while dodging ICE or sucking in auto exhaust on the sides of freeways because they have no other way to survive. I don’t like writing cover letters, but I’m good at them. I’ll spin a goddamn magical narrative about how I’ll solve a problem you have with skills I bring to the table. But I don’t want to and I don’t think I should have to. (See? Entitled and bourgie and too fucking good to do what it takes.)
I'm probably going to have to do all this regardless because I don’t want to be a mooch on my parents and the unemployment money is gone.
But I will be kicking and screaming and doing this the whole time
I have been out of work for about a year. Some of it was me, thrashing through a skills-job mismatch. The rest has been the shitty job market. I now have some clarity about how I intend to proceed in the medium and long term, but the current concern is getting some fucking money in.
Please understand, I do not believe there is such a thing as unskilled labor. But there are some jobs where your purpose is to be a warm body that does things occasionally and shows up on time. This is not rocket science (although the way SpaceX is going? Eyy!).
I read a long thing on the politics of humiliation and it clarified a lot of things about the current milieu. It’s very long but extremely illuminating. “Humiliation is the forced recognition of domination.”
This can be done in many ways, both exceptionally grotesque and mundane.
—
During the job search, I have signed up for some silly things that are not completely useless.. One of the videos mentioned “the job market of XYZ years is gone. The job market of last year is gone. And you have to accept that.” It is unfortunately true.
The solution, according to this guy, is to market yourself on LinkedIn. All that value proposition create urgency CTA bullshit. Hawk your personal brand in a systematic way.
Y’know, all the shit that makes me (and other people like me in this regard) want to die.
If I were less aware of all the stuff around me I would just fucking do it because that's the way the world works. But I see it. I see what companies are trying to do to take advantage of this employers’ market. This combination of political uncertainty leading to lack of job mobility and a sustained capital strike that started after the Great Resignation.
I’m a perfectly talented and competent worker, but I do not believe the market should be tight enough that I have to attempt to differentiate myself for a position that pays $60K a year (which is exactly median for King County).
And it feels stupid to dig in my heels so much about this. Extremely entitled and bourgie when people are out there picking strawberries while dodging ICE or sucking in auto exhaust on the sides of freeways because they have no other way to survive. I don’t like writing cover letters, but I’m good at them. I’ll spin a goddamn magical narrative about how I’ll solve a problem you have with skills I bring to the table. But I don’t want to and I don’t think I should have to. (See? Entitled and bourgie and too fucking good to do what it takes.)
I'm probably going to have to do all this regardless because I don’t want to be a mooch on my parents and the unemployment money is gone.
But I will be kicking and screaming and doing this the whole time
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