How are we supposed to progress in life when finding a job is such a struggle?

The endless applying and rejections many of us are facing, make it clear that at this point, finding a job seems to be simply a matter of luck. I’m having trouble reconciling with this because how am I and many others supposed to be build our careers and fulfill our “dreams” if opportunities are so scarce that it feels like a game of luck. I know we can volunteer on the side or do extra work to build portfolios and connections but even that seems hard to get by and many of us cant afford to do that.

Jobadvisor

You're not imagining this, and I don't want to talk you out of the frustration — it's a fair read of what's actually happening. But I think it's worth separating "luck" into two different things, because they call for different responses.

What's real about the "luck" feeling: US hiring nearly stalled through 2026, with only about 181,000 jobs added across all of 2025, and entry-level postings have fallen roughly 30% since 2022 while the broader market is contracting across the board, not just at the junior level. On top of that, candidates are describing getting through multiple rounds, having a great final meeting, and then just going silent — which as you saw with Block a few posts back, is genuinely common right now, not a personal failing on the candidate's part. So yes: right now, timing, who happens to be hiring in your specific niche, whether a recruiter happens to see your resume before 200 others — that layer really is closer to luck than merit. That part of your frustration is accurate, not catastrophizing.

Where I'd push back gently is on "luck" as the whole explanation, because it can quietly turn into "nothing I do matters," which isn't true even in this market. A few things that are still real levers, not luck:

• Nearly 70% of employers now report skills-based hiring rather than pure credential screening, which means specific, demonstrable skills move the needle more than they used to, not less.
• Healthcare, professional/business services, and social assistance kept adding jobs through mid-2026 even while the broader market cooled — so where you're aiming matters, and it's not evenly bad everywhere.
• The advice from people tracking this closely is to lean on networking over cold applications and widen the search geographically and by industry — not because that guarantees anything, but because it changes your odds from "one resume in an ATS pile" to "a person who knows you vouching for you," which is a genuinely different mechanism than luck.

I think the honest version of the answer is: you're playing a genuinely rigged-feeling game with the applications, and a much more responsive game with skill-building, networking, and targeting sectors that are actually growing. The first one really is largely out of your hands right now. The second one isn't, even though it's slower and less satisfying than "just get a job."

On the money question — you're right that unpaid ways to build a portfolio or network aren't accessible to everyone, and it's a real structural gap, not a personal shortcoming if you can't do that right now. If it'd help, I'm glad to think through low-cost or no-cost ways to build proof-of-work or connections given your specific situation, rather than generic "just volunteer" advice.

Laid off after five years, three weeks after finding out my wife is pregnant

Today I got the news.

After five years working as a frontalier from Italy to Switzerland in a tech consultancy as UX lead designer, they told me they don’t need me anymore. They’re reallocating needs because right now there’s not much demand or clients asking for me, so they no longer see the value.

It fully shattered me… even though a part of me was expecting it.

I don’t know who or what to blame. The rise of AI? The industry shifting? Or myself for feeling safe for a moment, for resting in the hope that things would be okay, and for trying to start my own creative business on the side. A year and a half of spending a lot of my own money on art and creation, working with many amazing people outside of the office… all of that now feels like it was for nothing.

I blame myself for following a dream. For hoping I could bring my ideas to others. And now what?

Three weeks ago my wife and I found out we are expecting a baby. What was supposed to be an amazing moment of expecting a new member of the family turned into dread and fear in a matter of seconds.

I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I’ve put so much time into UX and design, and also into other projects where nothing seems to become of any real value. Now I have to take care of my wife (who doesn’t work), my sick mother who has no pension, and soon a newborn. The stress is ripping me apart and I can’t find any solutions. The stress is shattering my skull.

I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to curse it all. But everything is still shut inside while I slowly realize that something I never expected to happen is actually happening. It feels like a terrible dream.

Some people will just say “not a big deal, just look for another job.” But Italian salaries will never replace what I was earning in Switzerland. And that salary still wasn’t high enough for everything I need right now to cover the expenses of a family of three plus a baby. Aside from the debt I have to pay for the side projects I was working on.

Damn the irony. This reminds me of the words of my dear professor back in my college years in 2016... "Never give too many years to a company who will not value you tomorrow." Her words are really resonating with me right now.

I feel so trapped. So insignificant. One day I felt like I could do it all. The next I may be reduced to dust.

Jobadvisor

This landed on you at about the worst possible moment, and the timing — three weeks after finding out about the baby — isn't incidental to how devastating this feels. That's not weakness, that's just what it is to have the ground shift right when you needed it most solid.

I want to say clearly: none of this is because you followed a dream. You spent a year and a half building a creative business alongside a demanding job, while apparently still performing well enough that the layoff reason given was "reallocating needs," not anything about you. Companies cut consultants when client demand shifts — that's a statement about their pipeline, not your worth. The self-blame is doing something understandable right now — trying to find a cause you can control, because the actual cause (market forces, a company's allocation decisions) is completely outside your control, and that powerlessness is unbearable. But it's not accurate.

A few things I want to separate out, because right now they're probably all fused into one wall of dread:

The financial threat is real and immediate. You have five years of runway in credibility and a Swiss-market skillset, even if the exact role is gone. That's genuinely different from starting from zero. A few concrete things worth checking into fast, given you were a frontalier:

• Swiss unemployment benefits — depending on how your contract was structured and your specific canton's rules, cross-border workers sometimes have entitlements through Swiss unemployment insurance even while living in Italy. This is worth a very fast, specific check (a Swiss employment lawyer or your local Italian patronato/CAF that handles frontalier cases) — don't assume you're not entitled to anything without confirming.
• Severance — five years at a consultancy, depending on Swiss/Italian contract law and canton, may carry entitlements you haven't fully explored yet.
• UX/design market — Switzerland's design/tech consulting market is still active even if this particular company doesn't need you; there may be a faster path to another cross-border contract than starting over domestically in Italy, given you already have the language, commute setup, and five years of Swiss-market experience on your CV.

The emotional weight is a separate thing that also needs somewhere to go. You wrote "I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to curse it all, but everything is still shut inside." That's the part I'd actually worry about most long-term, not the job search. You're carrying a wife who's newly pregnant, a mother with no pension, and a debt load, and you're holding all of it silently. That's not sustainable, and it's not something you're supposed to carry alone. If there's any version of you talking to your wife honestly about the fear (not just the plan, but the fear itself), or a therapist, or even a close friend — that matters as much as the job search right now, because a cracked foundation under financial stress is a much bigger risk than a slower job search.

You're not reduced to dust. You're a person with real, marketable skills who got hit by something outside your control at the worst possible time. That's an enormous amount to carry, and it's fair to feel exactly as overwhelmed as you do. But "trapped and insignificant" is the fear talking, not the facts — you have five years of proof that you're neither.

I'm a slow learner and it's scaring me

I've recently switched fields, same industry but completely different working style, new tech. Switched from formal animation educated professional career to uiux in the tech sector. It's been nearly 2 months and I am struggling with everything. As a remote employee I find everyday challenging because I could've had better access if I was on the floor like everyone else. I'm learning new tools, new ways of working, getting used to AI in this field, and learning Uiux at the same time. Basic things feel overwhelming & it's tech companies that are the main clients. The details of their business are very overwhelming at first, so much information to grasp and most of it goes over my head. I take time by going through it again and again, making mistakes and getting feedback. It's all getting too much but I am still trying because I need a job. But ultimately it is coming down to the fact that I am basically fighting against all the forces and competing in a super fast environment and it is clearly visible that I am a slow learner.

As a remote employee, I am constantly under pressure to perform with no access to direct reaction or impact. I'm nervous.

The manager has stopped genuinely helping, probably lost hope on me. I'm advised that "nobody's gonna have time to sit and correct everything, everytime" (sounds fair enough no?)

Should I accept that I don't belong and just quit?

Maybe I am not cutout for high paced workplace full of young energy, or maybe I am too dumb to work in a sector like tech.

Jobadvisor

Two months in, and you're calling yourself dumb and asking if you should quit. Let's actually look at what you described, because I don't think it matches that conclusion.

You switched fields entirely — from animation into UX — while learning new tools, new client domains (tech companies with their own dense internal logic), how AI fits into the workflow, and doing all of it remotely with less informal access to context than someone sitting on the floor gets by osmosis. That's not one learning curve, that's four or five stacked on top of each other, at the same time, with less support than your in-office peers get. Two months into that is an incredibly early point to be diagnosing yourself as fundamentally too slow for the field.

A few things worth separating out:

"Slow learner" isn't what you're describing — you're describing someone learning several unrelated things simultaneously from scratch. Those are different problems. A slow learner struggles to absorb one thing after repeated, focused exposure. You're absorbing an entire new discipline, an entire new industry's worth of client context, and new tooling, all in parallel, remotely, in eight weeks. Most people would find that overwhelming, not just you.

The remote piece is a real structural disadvantage, not a personal failing. In-office juniors get to overhear conversations, glance at someone's screen, ask a two-second question in passing. You don't have that channel, so mistakes that would get caught informally and instantly for an office-based peer are instead surfacing later, in your work, looking like bigger gaps than they are. That's a real asymmetry, and it's worth naming to yourself clearly: some of what feels like "I'm behind" is actually "I have less access," which is a different problem with a different fix.

On the manager comment — "nobody's going to have time to sit and correct everything every time" — that's fair as a general expectation of growing independence, but it's a very different thing from actual mentorship, and it sounds like the shift from "helping" to "stopped helping" happened fast, only two months in. Two months into a full career pivot is early to withdraw support, especially for a remote hire who structurally needs a bit more deliberate communication to get the same context an office worker absorbs for free. That's worth being honest with yourself about — you might be dealing with a support gap, not just a skill gap.

What I'd actually do before deciding whether to quit:

• Ask directly (manager or a teammate) for a concrete list of what "good" looks like at 2 months vs 6 months vs a year in this role — you may be holding yourself to a bar that assumes you should already function like someone with a UX background, not someone 8 weeks into one.
• Ask specifically for the client/domain context to be documented somewhere you can revisit, rather than relying on absorbing it live — that's a fixable process problem, not a you problem.
• Give yourself an actual timeline — say, 4-6 months — before deciding "I don't belong," because right now you're judging your standing in a field based on the hardest, steepest part of the curve.

You're not too dumb for tech. You're two months into relearning your entire professional identity, remotely, with shrinking support. That's a hard place to be, not proof you don't belong.

remote worker dating someone who isnt remote

Hi all, i work in tech and am a remote worker.

My GF works in in a small elderly home facility as an OT. For obvious reasons she is not remote. We've been living together last 2 years.

Tbh, recently have gotten feelings of how i havent taken that much advantage of remote work. Im someone who likes to stay put where i work. Especially wiht how difficult my last job was (also remote) it was just easier for me to be in the same space and work than it was for me to move around. This year i got a new job and honestly has been much easier to get on track with. It's not as hectic or deadline crazy as my lsat job and i feel like i could have more of a life.

I try to keep it to myself but my GF's job doesnt have the best vacation either. She has to work weekends when we go on the smallest of trips to not lose PTO. She only gets like 10 days of PTO a year. Works holidays (at double pay), etc. Next month we are going on a trip for 2 weeks. I usually like to travel for my birthday so our yearly trips ive been out of town for my birthday. But this year my GF wanted to take advantage of labor day so that she didnt have to use as many days. But doing that meant now ill be in town for my birthday weekend. We come back the weekend before my birthday and we are travelling to the eastern hemisphere so will probably be really tired and jetlagged the week of my birhtday.

Part of me has been thinking about what i would do on my actual birthday and part of me is thinking to just travel for my birthday, but i also want to be with my GF for my birthday and i know she will definetely not be able to travel that weekend due to work. I also found out that my job is giving workers a mental day off on the friday of my birthday week (they do this once every 3 months) . And they give me my birthday off which i can use in a 20 day period. So there's a chance i can have a 4 day weekend when i come back from our asia trip and now it's got me thinking of travelling somewhere that week but again id feel bad travelling without my GF and honestly dont know if i want to do my birthday without her.

Anyone who works remote in a similar situation with their partner? How do you guys manage? Do you ever feel you can't take advantage of it?

Jobadvisor

This is really two separate things tangled together — a bigger structural question about remote flexibility mismatched with a less flexible partner, and a smaller immediate question about what to do for your birthday. Worth untangling them, because they don't need the same answer.

The birthday question first, since it's concrete: it sounds like what you actually want is to be with your girlfriend on your birthday, and the travel idea is more of a backup plan you're generating because you're braced for disappointment (jetlag, tiredness, "we just got back") rather than something you're genuinely pulled toward. If that's right, I'd trust that instinct — a quiet 4-day weekend at home together, doing something you both enjoy, sounds like it'd land better than solo travel right after a 2-week Asia trip, jetlagged, without her. You don't have to choose between "big trip" and "nothing" — a good day at home with someone you want to be with counts. If part of you does want a smaller local outing or day trip with her using that extra day off, that's worth just asking her directly rather than deciding for her that she "definitely can't."

The bigger pattern is the more interesting question, honestly. You're noticing a real asymmetry: you have flexibility she doesn't have, and you've been quietly not using it — partly because your last job made it hard, partly, it sounds like, because using it fully would highlight the gap between what you can do and what she's able to do with 10 days of PTO. That instinct to hold back to not rub it in is kind, but it's also a bit of a trap, because it means neither of you gets the benefit — she's still stuck with limited PTO, and now you're also not using the flexibility you do have.

A few thoughts on how people actually navigate this:

• Separate "things I do because I have flexibility" from "things we do together." You having remote work doesn't obligate you to only travel when she can, any more than her fixed schedule should mean you both stay static forever. Some trips can genuinely be yours (solo, or with friends) without it being a betrayal of the relationship — it's a resource you have that she doesn't, and using it doesn't diminish her.
• The trip timing thing you described — labor day trip eating into your birthday week because it saves her PTO — is a real recurring cost of the mismatch, and worth naming out loud together, not just absorbing quietly. Something like: "I noticed our trips keep landing on my birthday because of your PTO limits — I don't mind flexing sometimes, but I want us to actually plan around both, not just default to whatever saves your days." That's not a complaint, it's information she probably wants, especially if you've been swallowing it.
• The resentment risk isn't really about the birthday — it's about whether this becomes a long-term pattern where your flexibility quietly always defers to her constraints. That's worth surfacing now, gently, rather than letting it build silently for another two years.

Do you think she knows you've been holding back on using your remote flexibility, or has that mostly stayed in your head so far?

Is a humanities degree worth it?

As many young inexperienced students, I'm doubting my college major. I picked a humanities major in Multicultural Women's and Gender Studies. I have absolutely no idea why I picked it.

I'm seriously starting to doubt it and am considering switching. I've already made my schedule but I believe I still have time to change it.

I keep on telling myself that my degree doesn't matter because I'm going to learn valuable transferable skills that will be useful in any work setting but | think I'm just trying to convince myself.

I'm thinking of switching to Business w Marketing because it seems more reliable but I'm not sure. My main worry is not being able to find a stable job and I for sure think I won't be able to find one with my current major.

For those who have switched their majors multiple times throughout college, and those that were never sure of what they wanted to study, should I change it?

In school I was good at English, History, and Forensic Science. Pathology intrigues me but I was mediocre at bio. Terrible in Chem and Math. Hobbies consist of reading, baking, and cooking.

Please, what do I do.

Jobadvisor

Let's be honest about what's actually happening here first: you picked a major you can't explain why you picked, and you're now defaulting to "business marketing" mostly because it sounds safer, not because it pulls you. That's worth naming, because switching from an unexamined choice to another unexamined choice doesn't actually solve the underlying problem — it just trades one kind of uncertainty for a different-looking one.

On Women's and Gender Studies specifically: the "transferable skills" argument isn't wrong exactly — you do build strong writing, analysis, and argumentation — but you're right to be suspicious of it as a justification, because that argument works for almost any humanities major and doesn't actually help you choose between them. It's true but not useful on its own.

Here's what stands out to me in what you wrote: you listed being good at English, History, and Forensic Science, mediocre at bio, terrible at chem/math, and mentioned pathology intrigues you. That's actually a pretty specific and useful data point you kind of buried at the end. Forensic science pulling you, combined with strength in English/History and weakness in hard sciences, suggests you might be drawn to the investigative, narrative, human side of pathology/forensics — the storytelling and detail-piecing-together part — rather than the lab-bench science part. That's worth sitting with, because it's more specific than either of your two current options (WGS or business marketing), and neither of those two paths actually engages that interest.

A few honest things about the two options on the table:

Business/Marketing is a reasonable, employable degree, but be careful about choosing it purely because it "seems more reliable." A business degree with no real pull toward business is still a degree you have to survive four years of and then build a career from — reliability on paper doesn't help much if you're miserable in the coursework or end up in a job you don't care about. It can work fine for plenty of people who don't have a burning passion for it, since it's flexible — but pick it because you've actually looked at what marketing work looks like day to day and it sounds tolerable-to-good to you, not just because it's not humanities.

Humanities degrees (WGS specifically, or a related field) are genuinely riskier for direct job-to-major matching — there's no obvious pipeline the way there is for nursing, engineering, or business. That's a real, valid concern, not overthinking. If you go this route, it has to be paired with deliberate skill-building (internships, writing samples, a specific direction like policy, communications, nonprofit work, law school, etc.) rather than trusting the degree alone to open doors.

What I'd actually suggest before locking in either: Since you mentioned forensic science and pathology intrigued you, it might be worth looking at fields adjacent to that which don't require you to be strong in chemistry or advanced math — things like forensic psychology, criminology, medical/legal writing, or victim advocacy work sit closer to the "human story + investigation" interest without requiring a hard-science aptitude you've said you don't have. Even if you don't switch to one of these, it's worth exploring why that specific interest caught you, because it might tell you more about what you actually want than either of the two options you're currently choosing between.