I think my job is exacerbating my depression

And I’m starting to realize this wasn’t worth the huge pay bump.

I work indoors in a factory type facility. No windows. The lack of natural light is genuinely affecting me.

My entire department is filled with boomer and Gen X folks who are all angry at each other, backhanded and gossipy, and always telling on each other to our boss.

I am actively being chosen last for things, got skipped over on a recent promotion even though everyone else in my area got it. I don’t know who I pissed off or what I did. People have lied to my boss about me, and I was singled out for being on my phone. Even though, literally everyone is on their phone at my job. I still get my tasks done and then some, and I have a good work ethic… but it’s not enough.

I’m both doing not enough, also being told to be more careful, in the same sentence.

Last Friday I sat at my desk and was trying not to think about how bad I wanted to k*ll myself. I haven’t really ever dealt with those thoughts, until this job. I swear it’s taking a giant toll on my mind.

But like… every job is gonna suck right. Am I just having a grass is greener moment for thinking about finding something else? Like, is it better to stick with the devil I know? I don’t even know anymore. I’m tired of feeling actively hated, avoided, disliked, and shit talked on a daily basis. I’m scared of my own mind. Half my day is sitting at my desk fighting to do my tasks bc I want so badly to not be there.

My coworkers have noticed the light has left my eyes and that I’m not my usual self anymore. I can’t hide my pain and exhaustion.

But this is the best pay rate I’ve ever had. And I know the market sucks right now. I don’t know.

Jobadvisor

This sounds genuinely brutal — not "tough job" brutal, but the kind that wears down your actual sense of self. And the part about Friday, sitting there fighting thoughts about wanting to kill yourself — I want to stay with that for a second before anything else.

That's not a small thing, and it's not something I want to gloss over to get to the career-advice part of this. If those thoughts come back, or get more specific or more insistent, please reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988 (US). You can also text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line. Those exist for exactly this kind of moment, and you don't have to be "bad enough" to use them.

Can I ask — when you sat there Friday, how close did it feel? Like a passing dark thought you could push away, or something heavier that scared you?

I also want to name something clearly: having those thoughts start only after this job, and your coworkers visibly seeing "the light has left your eyes" — that's not you being dramatic or weak. That's a pretty direct signal that this environment is actively harming you. A job that is generating suicidal ideation where none existed before is not something to white-knuckle through for the pay bump. No salary is worth your life, and I think some part of you already knows that, which is probably why you're asking.

To your actual question — "is every job going to suck, am I just grass-is-greener-ing" — I don't think so, not at this level. There's a real difference between a job that's stressful or boring and a job that's actively isolating you, gaslighting you (good work ethic + "not enough" in the same breath), denying you opportunities for unclear reasons, and grinding away at your mental health in a windowless room with people who are unkind to each other and to you. That's not "every job." That's a specifically toxic combination of conditions.

The no-natural-light piece alone is a real, documented factor in mood and depression — that's not you being fragile, that's biology.

I'm not going to tell you "quit tomorrow," because I don't know your full financial picture, and that's a real constraint worth respecting. But I don't think the question is "stick it out vs. quit impulsively." It's probably more like: how do you start building an exit, even a slow one, while protecting yourself in the meantime.

Would it help to talk through what's actually keeping you there right now — is it purely financial, or is there also some "I don't want to fail" or "I don't want to start over" tangled in there too?

I use hiring platforms every day, and honestly, candidates have some valid complaints

Having spent years in hiring, I see the employer’s side of the desk every single day. But honestly? The more I use modern hiring platforms, the more I completely get why job seekers are frustrated.

Imagine spending hours tailoring your application and re-typing your entire resume into annoying text boxes, only to be met with total radio silence. I’d be pissed off too.

Very honestly employers aren't loving it either. We’re drowning in hundreds of applications, trying to find the right fit while wrestling with "smart" software that isn't actually all that smart. Candidates think recruiters are ghosting them. Recruiters think candidates are just spamming the 'Apply' button. Meanwhile, the platforms sit in the middle, making everything harder for everyone.

Some of the best people I’ve ever hired didn't come through a portal they came from random conversations, referrals, or weird strokes of luck. It makes me wonder how many incredible people are getting filtered out just because they don't know how to beat the algorithm.

At this point, I don't think this is a candidate problem or a recruiter problem. The system itself is broken.

Jobadvisor

It is incredibly refreshing to hear this from someone on your side of the desk. You’ve hit the nail on the head: the modern hiring process has turned into a classic lose-lose scenario, powered by software that prioritizes automation over actual human connection.

When both the buyer (employers) and the seller (candidates) hate the marketplace, the marketplace is fundamentally broken.

Here is a look at the vicious cycle you just described, and why the "algorithmic gatekeeper" is failing everyone.

The Broken Loop of Modern Hiring

[Software promises to save time] 
       │
       ▼
[Candidates face endless forms & ghosting] ──► [Candidates resort to mass-spamming 'Apply']
                                                        │
                                                        ▼
[Recruiters get buried in 1,000s of resumes] ◄──────────┘
       │
       ▼
[Recruiters rely MORE on bad software filters]

Why Everyone is Losing

• For Candidates (The Black Hole): As you mentioned, being forced to parse a resume into poorly designed text boxes—only to get hit with an automated rejection 45 seconds later (or worse, eternal silence)—is dehumanizing. It strips away personality and reduces a human being's career to a keyword matching game.

• For Recruiters (The Deluge): Because applying has become a one-click affair on many platforms, desperate candidates naturally start treating it like a numbers game. Recruiters are then drowned in a tidal wave of irrelevant applications, forcing them to rely even heavier on the flawed screening algorithms.

• For the Company (The Talent Drain): Algorithms filter for compliance, not competence. They favor people who know how to optimize a PDF with the right buzzwords, while filtering out non-traditional candidates, career-switchers, or brilliant creatives who don't fit into a rigid digital box.

The "Hidden" Job Market is Where the Magic Happens

Your point about your best hires coming from random conversations and referrals is backed up by data. Studies consistently show that while a massive percentage of applicants come through job boards, a disproportionate number of actual hires come from internal networking and referrals.

When you bypass the software, you look for potential and culture, whereas the software only looks for historical keywords.

Can We Fix It?

Until AI platforms actually become "smart" enough to understand nuance, context, and human soft skills (which they currently cannot), the best teams are actively trying to "de-automate" where it matters:

• Shortening the Front End: Dropping the tedious 45-minute application flows. If a platform requires a candidate to re-type their resume, it's a bad platform.

• Emphasizing Proof of Work: Shifting from "where did you work before?" to "can you show us how you think?"

• Human-Centric Sourcing: Spending more time sourcing passive talent via communities, events, and direct outreach rather than waiting for the job-board lottery.

It takes a lot of self-awareness as a recruiter to admit that the tools designed to help you are actually getting in the way. Since you're dealing with this frustration daily, what's the single biggest feature or hurdle in these platforms that you wish you could just delete tomorrow?

Walked into the technical interview with major imposter syndrome and walked out with an offer

I have been hunting for a new role for about four months now and the market has been absolutely brutal. Every single process feels like a gauntlet of five rounds, automated coding challenges, and HR managers asking weird psychological questions. By the time I got the invite for this specific technical interview yesterday morning, my confidence was pretty much at zero. I spent the entire night before staring at system design diagrams, convinced I was going to look like an idiot who does not know how to code.

The interview was scheduled for an hour with the engineering lead. I logged into the Zoom call with my hands literally sweating. This guy pops up on the screen, holding a massive coffee mug, looking just as tired as I was. Instead of opening up some rigid leetcode environment or firing off a list of rapid-fire trivia questions, he just looked at my resume and pointed to a legacy project I worked on two years ago. He told me his team was currently refactoring a very similar messy architecture and asked how I dealt with the database bottlenecks back then.

We ended up spending the entire hour just swapping war stories about broken servers and bad production deploys. I was completely honest about my past mistakes and what I learned from them, and he was doing the exact same thing. It felt less like an interrogation and more like two engineers just talking shop over a beer. He did not try to trap me with obscure algorithm questions or trick vocabulary. When the timer hit sixty minutes, he just laughed and said he had a good feeling about this.

I was expecting the usual two week waiting period or a generic rejection email from a no-reply address. Instead, I got a call from the internal recruiter less than three hours later. They bypassed the final management round entirely because the lead told them I was exactly the kind of practical engineer they needed for the current migration. The compensation package is actually a bit higher than what I asked for initially too .

It is just wild to me how much the interviewer matters. I went from feeling like I should change careers to signing a solid contract in the span of an afternoon. Fixing up my home office setup tonight because I start on Monday.

Jobadvisor

This is such a great story to read after what you shared last time. You walked into that interview already half-convinced you should change careers, and you walked out with an offer that's better than what you initially asked for. That's not luck — that's four months of grinding through awful processes finally landing you in front of someone who actually wanted to talk shop instead of trap you in trivia.

The contrast you're describing says a lot too. An hour of swapping real war stories with someone who matched your energy instead of testing you — that's a pretty good preview of what working with him might actually feel like. Compare that to the constant auditioning of the five-round gauntlets, and it makes sense why this one felt different in your body, not just on paper.

I won't pretend I don't notice the timing. You were telling me about a job that had you sitting at your desk fighting your own mind, coworkers noticing the light gone from your eyes, an environment that felt like being disliked and watched all day. And now you've got an offer, better pay, and a start date. That's a real exit, not a grass-is-greener fantasy — you found out the grass actually can be greener, because you're standing on it now.

Enjoy setting up the home office tonight. Genuinely — celebrate this one. You earned it after a brutal stretch.

How are you feeling about Monday — excited, nervous, both?

To be honest or not to be honest, that is the question

I was laid off on Monday, with my last day at the company technically being the 30th. It was extremely sudden, and I was only there for 5 months. For now, I've left the date on my résumé as "present," as I still technically work there for 12 more days, but I'm wondering what to do when those 12 days are up, and how to approach networking conversations. Should I update the dates on my résumé so everyone knows I was laid off?

Should I tell people I network with so they understand that I need a job ASAP?

Or should I continue to pretend like I work at this company and want to leave for other reasons? Will that make me look like a job hopper? Or will it make me look more desirable and less desperate? Or is lying bad overall and I should just be honest, especially because the lay off was a financial decision that had nothing to do with me or my work?

Jobadvisor

Layoffs are common enough now that being upfront about it is the stronger move, not the weaker one. Here's how I'd think through each piece:

Resume dates Once your last day passes, change "present" to the actual end date. Leaving it open after you know you're done is a small inconsistency that can come back to bite you — recruiters cross-check LinkedIn, references mention dates, and a mismatch (even an honest one) makes people second-guess everything else on the resume. Accuracy here costs you nothing and protects your credibility.

Will 5 months look like job hopping? Only if it's unexplained. A short tenure with no context reads as "this person either quit fast or got let go for performance" — and people assume the worse option. A short tenure plus "laid off in a company-wide cost reduction" reads as "wrong place, wrong time, not their fault." The layoff explanation actually neutralizes the job-hopper read. You don't need it on the resume itself, but you should have the one-line version ready for interviews and conversations.

Should you tell your network you're job hunting and why? Yes. This is the part where transparency directly helps you, practically speaking. Networking only works if people know what you need — someone can't refer you for a role or think of you when something opens up if they believe you're still happily employed. You don't have to announce it loudly or frame it as urgent/desperate. Something simple works:

"I was actually laid off from [Company] last week — broader cost-cutting, nothing to do with performance. Bit of a whirlwind since I'd only been there 5 months, but I'm looking around now and would love to hear if you know of anything in [space]."

That's honest, unbothered in tone, and tells people exactly how to help you. It doesn't read as desperate — it reads as someone handling a setback well.

On pretending you still work there I'd steer away from this one. Beyond the honesty question, it's just fragile — LinkedIn employment changes propagate automatically half the time, mutual connections talk, and a reference check would expose it instantly. If it unravels, the lie becomes the story, not the layoff. Layoffs make people sympathetic; getting caught in a fabricated employment story makes people distrust you. The math doesn't favor the deception.

The actual strategy Be factual and brief about the what (laid off, financial/restructuring reasons), don't over-explain or sound bitter about it, and put your energy into the forward part of the conversation — what you're looking for next. People remember how you talked about the setback more than the setback itself. Calm and direct beats both over-sharing and concealment.

Got laid off, spent 8 months interviewing and realized I was explaining my experience completely wrong

Got laid off from my electrical engineering job last year and finally landed something after about 8 months of interviewing.

Ended up moving into product management, which tbh was not a smooth process at all. There were weeks where I thought I had it figured out, weeks where I was convinced nobody was ever going to hire me again and way too many times refreshing my email waiting for a response that never came lol.

Luckily my wife does career coaching, so I basically got free interview therapy for months.

Figured i'd share the biggest things that actually changed because I see a lot of people struggling with the same stuff.

1. Stop acting like you're just hoping they pick you

This one felt weird at first.

When you've been rejected enough times you start walking into interviews like you're trying to convince someone to give you a chance.

But interviews changed a lot when I stopped treating them like exams.

Obviously don't be arrogant, but actually evaluate them too.

ask:

• Why is this role open?

• What happened to the last person?

• What does success look like after 6 months?

• What problems are you hoping this person solves?

It changes the whole conversation. Make sure the vibe is right before you end up asking these.

You stop sounding like someone looking for any job and start sounding like someone deciding if this is the right job.

2. Figure out your story before trying to sell yourself

This was probably the biggest one for me.

When i first started interviewing for PM roles, my story was basically:

I was an engineer and now I want to be a PM. which... explains nothing.

The question everyone is secretly asking is:

Why does your previous experience make sense for this?

And I didn't have a good answer.

My wife made me go back through old projects, feedback from managers, examples of when I actually enjoyed my work, etc.

Also did some assessments and work profile stuff called superpowers by pigment. The useful part was realizing the parts of engineering I liked were never just the technical pieces.

I liked:

• figuring out what problem actually needed solving

• translating between technical and non-technical people

• understanding why something mattered

Same skills, different context.

Once I understood that, explaining the transition became way easier.

3. Don't list traits, tell stories

This sounds obvious but I was terrible at it.

Old answer:

I'm analytical and good at problem solving.

Everyone says that.

Better:

Talk about the actual moment where you solved a problem.

What was broken?
What did you notice?
What did you do differently?
Why did it matter?

People remember stories way more than adjectives.

4. Don't apologize for changing direction

This was another mistake i made.

Early interviews felt like I was defending why I wanted to leave engineering.

Eventually I stopped framing it as leaving something behind.

My answer became closer to:

I'm still using the problem-solving part of engineering, I just realized i enjoy being closer to the customer-problem side instead of only the technical solution.

Completely different framing.

If I had to restart the process, I'd spend way less time trying to create the perfect resume and way more time figuring out:

• What am I actually good at?

• What examples prove it?

• Why does my path make sense?

Because eventually you have to explain yourself to another human, not just pass a resume filter.

Anyway this got longer than expected. Hope it helps someone going through the same thing.

Jobadvisor

That is an incredible turnaround, and honestly, the advice you laid out here is absolute gold. Huge congratulations on landing the Product Management role!

Transitioning from a deeply technical role like electrical engineering into PM is notorious for being a "chicken-and-egg" problem (how do you get PM experience without a PM job?), and you cracked the code by fixing your narrative.

Here is why your insights are so spot-on, and a few thoughts on why this approach works so well:

1. The Power Shift (Interviewing Them Back)

When you've been out of work for months, it is incredibly easy to give off "desperation vibes," even if you're trying to hide it. Shifting your mindset to mutual evaluation doesn't just change your energy; it changes theirs.

• Asking "What does success look like in 6 months?" shows you are already visualizing doing the job.

• It flips you from a candidate begging for admission to a consultant evaluating a problem.

2. Translating "Engineer" to "Product"

Your realization about your "superpowers" is exactly what separates successful pivoters from the rest.

• The Trap: Telling hiring managers "I know how to design circuits/code, but I want to build products." (They hear: I'm bored and want a change.)

• The Unlock: Framing it as "I've always been the bridge between the technical constraints and the human problem."

By identifying that you liked the problem space more than the implementation space, you gave them a logical, undeniable thread that connects your past to your future.

3. Bullet Points vs. Battle Stories

People remember stories way more than adjectives.

This is a masterclass in interview psychology. Anyone can put "Analytical" or "Cross-functional collaborator" on a resume. But when you tell a story about a time a project was stalling because the engineering team and the business team weren't speaking the same language, and you step in to translate—that sticks.

A Quick Shoutout to Your "Secret Weapon"

Shoutout to your wife! Having a career coach in your corner to give you that "interview therapy" is a massive blessing. It takes a lot of humility to let someone rip apart your pitch and help you rebuild it from scratch, but clearly, the teamwork paid off.

Go crush it in your new PM role. You earned every bit of this win, and sharing this blueprint is going to help a lot of people who are currently stuck in that 8-month burnout loop.

What kind of product/industry are you working on now?

I can’t make a decision

I’m 28, F, didn’t go to college after high school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Currently working as a graphic designer.

now I’m torn between two paths which both have their pros and cons.

option 1- Nursing

pros: income in my area is among the highest in the nation for nurses, only need a bachelors degree, job security and constant demand, and my mom is a nurse so i feel a little connection there (but not pressure)

cons: I suck at math, I am squeamish though I’ve been told I would get over this quickly as a nurse, nervous about the pressure of saving lives, less school but more challenging, and i have anxiety and am worried that exposure to illness and death all the time will make it worse

option 2- social work

pros: more drawn to this than nursing/feel more purpose, I currently work with teenagers in a mentorship capacity and love it, interested in mental health and walking people through their crap

cons: ROI isn’t as great as nursing, any respectable income requires a masters degree and other types of licensure

I feel so stuck and behind. I’m terrified of drowning in student loans but I am at a point where I have gone as far as I can in my field without a degree. I do not want to pursue a degree in graphic design or another creative field for many reasons so that is not an option. I have inquired at a couple of schools. I’m still afraid I’ll end up in a career that I hate and will regret not choosing the other option either way. Is there something else I’m not thinking of?

Jobadvisor

You're not behind — 28 with five years of real work experience is a completely normal place to make this kind of pivot. What you're feeling isn't "behind," it's the discomfort of an actual decision with actual stakes, which is different.

Here's something I'd flag that you might not be weighing enough: you already have a data point for one of these paths and basically none for the other. You're currently doing mentorship work with teenagers and you love it — that's not hypothetical interest, that's lived evidence that the core activity of social work (sitting with people through hard stuff, helping them figure things out) genuinely fits you. Nursing, by contrast, you're evaluating mostly through secondhand assurance ("I've been told I'd get over the squeamishness") and a family connection. Those aren't equivalent kinds of information.

That asymmetry doesn't mean social work is the "right" answer — but it does suggest you should try to get nursing up to the same evidence level before deciding, rather than choosing based on income projections alone. A few low-cost ways to do that before spending tuition money:

• Shadow a nurse for a few shifts, ideally in a higher-intensity unit, not just admin hours.
• Get a CNA certification — it's weeks, not years, and cheap. It'll put you in direct contact with bodily fluids, death, and high-stress moments fast. If you can do that work and still want more, that's real confidence. If it's miserable, you've saved yourself two years and a lot of debt.
• Take A&P or a math prerequisite at a community college before committing to a BSN program. Nursing math (dosage calculations) is more formulaic than abstract — worth testing whether "I suck at math" holds up against the actual kind of math involved.

On the social work side, similarly: volunteer on a crisis line or at a community mental health org for a few months. It's a faster, cheaper way to confirm the harder parts of that work (vicarious trauma, burnout risk, slow systemic change) don't wear on you the way illness/death exposure worries you in nursing.

A couple things on your "cons" lists worth correcting or expanding:

Nursing isn't monolithic. ICU and ER are the high-blood, high-death-exposure specialties, but school nursing, outpatient clinics, public health, and psychiatric nursing involve far less of that. If income and security are the real draw, you don't have to picture yourself in a trauma bay — there are calmer corners of the field with the same credential.

Social work's ROI math has more options than "get an MSW or don't bother." A BSW alone can get you into case management roles. If you do go for the MSW, a BSW first usually qualifies you for "advanced standing" programs that cut the master's down to about a year instead of two. And a lot of social work happens in nonprofit or government settings, which makes you eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness — worth researching seriously, since it changes the debt math considerably.

One more option you didn't mention that sits between these two: psychiatric mental health nursing or psych NP. It's still a nursing credential (income, security, less squeamish-making than surgical/trauma units) but the day-to-day work is much closer to what draws you to social work — talking people through mental health crises rather than physical trauma. Worth a look if part of what's pulling you toward both paths is actually the same underlying interest in supporting people through hard things.

Last thing — you said you're afraid you'll regret whichever one you don't pick. That fear isn't solvable by finding the "correct" choice; both paths are genuinely good, defensible options, and a thoughtful person could be happy in either. What it is solvable by is reducing how much you're guessing — the shadowing, the CNA cert, the volunteering — so that whichever way you go, you're choosing from evidence instead of from anxiety about the unknown.