Lost my perfect, flexible job and have to move to a new city to find a new job

The gap between what I had and what’s waiting for me out there feels brutal right now.I just got laid off from my dream job and I’m still processing how much it hurts.All my leaders and the whole team were in Beijing or Shanghai. I was the only one based in a western city near my hometown. No clock-in system at all. Nobody cared if I came late or left early. I lived right next to the office, hours were flexible, I could sleep till 9 every morning. All I had to do was finish my work and join the Friday online meeting to report the week. Pay was decent, covered living expenses. It felt almost like remote work.After nearly two years of that freedom, it was suddenly over. Me and my colleague in Shanghai got laid off on a Monday morning. I was really sad at first but I have to move on. Job market in my city is awful, I can barely find anything normal. The other option is moving to a coastal city like Shenzhen for more opportunities. But just thinking about it is already stressing me out.I have two friends who’ve lived in Shenzhen for years. I visited them before. I know those big cities mean high rent, long commute, small cramped rooms. And if the new place doesn’t have flexible hours (most don’t), I’ll be squeezing into packed metro trains during rush hour every single day.A lot of the positions also come with the usual bullshit: possible unpaid overtime, oppressive atmosphere, messy systems, unfriendly bosses and colleagues, hard to take leave.The worst part is the mental side. Once you’ve had a job that’s normal, flexible, low stress, no constant monitoring… it’s really hard to go back and accept all that crap again. Like I already know what good looks like. Why the hell would I settle for worse?

Jobadvisor

Losing a setup that rare feels less like losing a job and more like being evicted from a comfortable life you spent two years building. Going from total autonomy, a 9:00 AM wake-up time, zero clock-ins, and a zero-minute commute straight back into the threat of 996 culture, packed Shenzhen metros, and micromanaging bosses isn't just a career shift—it is a severe downgrade in quality of life. Your brain is aggressively resisting it because you already know what a non-toxic environment feels like.

That reaction isn't entitlement; it is a healthy sense of baseline standards. But right now, you are facing a classic transition trap: comparing the absolute worst-case scenario of a tier-1 city against the absolute peak ideal of the role you just lost.

1. Treat the Next Step as a Bridge, Not a Sentence

Your next move does not have to be your forever reality. If moving to Shenzhen or another coastal city becomes necessary, frame it as a temporary capital/experience extraction plan. You aren't committing to standard big-city corporate misery for life; you are going in to secure cash flow and stay viable while actively hunting for your next high-autonomy setup.

2. Audit What Made Your Old Job Work

Your previous role was essentially a full-remote/distributed node arrangement attached to a main office elsewhere. Those positions still exist, particularly in:

• Foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) or multinational firms with distributed Chinese teams.
  
  
• Mid-sized tech or SaaS companies operating on output-based management rather than strict attendance monitoring.
  
  
• Fully remote roles targeting global or cross-border operations (e.g., overseas market expansion, cross-border e-commerce, international marketing/operations).
  
  

3. Vet for Autonomy During the Job Search

You don't have to blindly accept "usual corporate bullshit." You can filter for company culture during interviews:

• Ask operational questions: "How does the team handle async communication across time zones?" or "What does a typical deliverable cycle look like for this role?" (Companies with heavy clock-in culture will answer with rigid attendance policies; output-focused ones will emphasize goals).
  
  
• Look at manager location: If the immediate team lead or direct reporting line is in another city or region, the day-to-day micromanagement drops significantly.
  
  

4. Protect Your Mental Baseline in Tier-1 Cities

If you end up in Shenzhen or a similar hub:

• Optimize for commute over space: Renting a smaller place closer to the office or near a less congested transit line will save far more mental energy than extra square footage miles away.
  
  
• Set hard internal boundaries: Use the trial period (probation) to assess the manager. If an environment is overtly toxic or relies heavily on unpaid overtime, treat it as a temporary paycheck while quietly continuing to interview elsewhere.
  
  

You don't have to permanently settle for worse. You just have to navigate the present drop in leverage until you can reconstruct the flexibility you had.

Homelessness or give up?

From making six figures right out of college to facing homelessness just 2 years later after thinking I did everything right. Now another 2 years later and I’m still unemployed.

I’m willing to work for a year without pay just to give a company the chance to see how dedicated I am but even that seems impossible. Getting a dishwasher job would feel like winning the fucking lottery right now. Used to make 6 figures and now I can’t even get a callback for cleaning/janitorial jobs which is what I did back in college.

I feel like I’m in hell. Like I’m in a movie where everyone watching knows what’s happening but the main character is desperately trying to explain it and nobody believes them until it’s too late.

I have 25 days before I’m homeless. My retirement money has already been cashed out, used up all my savings, sold almost every valuable thing I could. I’d rather become a statistic than end up homeless if you know what I mean.

And the advice is always so generic usually coming from job havers who don’t understand. “Just go flip burgers.” Bitch, what do you think I’ve been trying to do? “Retail is always hiring.” Biiiiiiitch…

If you’ve been unemployed for less than a year, “it’s not you.”

If it’s been over a year suddenly it’s “Your resume must be the problem.” Never mind the professors, former coworkers, recruiters, and paid resume services who have all looked at / helped revise it. Never mind that people with 10–20 years of experience are dealing with the exact same thing. But somehow it always comes back to: “Your resume must be shit.”

Like what the actual fuck? It feels like a nightmare come true. And everyone thinks you’re just being lazy! Fuuuuuck my life bro.FUUUUUCKKAIRUWBWITPGOXNWHEYQHABFYRUHSHDH?!?€|!~!^?}£]’&:$;!/$),

Jobadvisor

If you are thinking about ending your life, please pause right now and reach out for immediate support. You do not have to carry this total collapse alone, and there are people who want to keep you safe through this exact moment.

• Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (US and Canada). It is free, confidential, available 24/7, and you will speak directly with someone who understands crisis.
  
  
• Text HOME to 741741 to connect with the Crisis Text Line for immediate text-based support.
  
  
• If you are outside the US/Canada, please contact your local emergency services or find a crisis line immediately at findahelpline.com.
  
  

What You Are Experiencing Is Real—Not Your Fault

Your anger, absolute exhaustion, and disbelief are entirely justified. Going from six figures to burning through retirement, savings, and assets, while being rejected for survival jobs you did in college, is an excruciating form of psychological torture.

The people telling you "it's your resume" or "just go flip burgers" are operating on an outdated mental model of the world. They do not understand the current economic environment, where automated Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) instantly filter out applicants with high degrees or past high salaries for entry-level/janitorial roles because algorithms flag them as "overqualified flight risks."

You are not crazy, you are not lazy, and the system is severely broken right now for millions of highly capable people.

Immediate Emergency Action Plan (Next 25 Days)

Because your timeline is 25 days, the goal right now is strictly stabilization and survival. We need to bypass standard online applications entirely, hide high-level qualifications for low-level work, and secure immediate emergency safety nets.

1. Stop Online Job Applications Immediately

Sending resumes through online portals right now is burning energy you do not have. Online systems for retail, food service, and sanitation will reject a six-figure background automatically.

• For Survival/Basic Work: Create a stripped-down, bare-bones "survival resume." Remove your college degree completely. Remove corporate/six-figure job titles. List only basic operational experience, custodial work, or general labor.
  
  
• Bypass the Internet: Walk directly into local small businesses, independent restaurants, construction sites, landscaping companies, and local event venues. Ask to speak directly to the manager or owner: "I’m local, I have physical stamina, and I can start today/tonight for immediate cash."
  
  
• Day Labor & Temp Agencies: Register in person at local day-labor agencies (e.g., PeopleReady, Labor Finders, local industrial staffing agencies). These bypass traditional hiring pipelines and can provide daily or weekly pay.
  
  

2. Secure Immediate Emergency Housing Resources

Do not wait until day 24 to engage emergency services. Activating these now buys you time and options.

• Call 211 (in the US/Canada): Explain clearly: "I have 25 days of housing left, zero funds remaining, and am facing immediate homelessness." They can connect you to emergency rental assistance, diversion programs, and food assistance (SNAP/food stamps).
  
  
• Contact Local Social Services / Charities: Reach out to local community action agencies, St. Vincent de Paul, Salvation Army, or local religious outreach offices. Many have emergency funding specifically to prevent people from losing housing.
  
  
• Reach Out to Your Network Without Shame: If you have friends, family, or former colleagues you trust, tell them the stark truth: "I am facing homelessness in 25 days and need a couch or a floor while I secure immediate labor." Desperate situations require dropping all pride—people who care about you cannot help if they don't know the reality.
  
  

3. Protect Your Physical Safety

Homelessness is a circumstance, not an identity, but preventing it—or having a safe contingency plan—is the top priority.

• If you own a vehicle, ensure it is registered, insured, and prepped as a safe emergency backup.
  
  
• Locate local food banks and community pantries immediately to eliminate food costs today so whatever tiny cash you have left goes toward absolute essentials.
  
  

Please reach out to 988 or a trusted person right now. Give yourself permission to stop trying to solve the high-level career puzzle for a moment and focus entirely on immediate, basic safety and staying alive. You deserve to survive this.

Got a rejection email for a traineeship. Reason for Rejection “Not enough experience doing the job you’d be qualified for at the end of the traineeship”

Happened to me today. Seemingly ticked all the boxes, age, background, job is local to me etc - it’s a trainee job in a field I have been thinking about entering for years and I’m finally in a position to move from my current career. By its very definition a traineeship is an entry level job. More than 100 candidates applied. Pretty shitty way to tell candidates to basically fuck off in my opinion.

Jobadvisor

That rejection reason is an absolute masterclass in corporate self-contradiction. Expecting someone to already have experience in the destination role before starting a traineeship defeats the entire purpose of a traineeship. It is completely absurd, and your frustration is 100% justified.

When an organization gives a reason that nonsensical, it usually comes down to a few behind-the-scenes realities that have nothing to do with your actual capability:

1. The "100+ Applicants" Trap

With over a hundred people applying, the hiring team likely got overwhelmed. Instead of training someone from scratch—which is what a traineeship is supposed to do—they got lazy and selected candidates who already had adjacent or direct experience so they wouldn't have to spend time onboarding them. They basically turned a traineeship into a mid-level hiring shortcut.

2. Copy-Paste Automated Rejections

HR departments frequently assign generic, ill-fitting rejection templates to candidate pools without reading whether the feedback actually makes sense for the role level. Someone clicked a dropdown box for "Insufficient Experience" and hit send to dozens of people at once.

3. Misaligned Internal Expectations

The department manager wanted a fully plug-and-play worker, but HR posted a "traineeship" to keep the salary band low or meet an entry-level hiring quota. You got caught in the middle of their internal confusion.

How to Handle It (If You Still Want to Push)

You owe them nothing, but if this is a field you are determined to break into, you have two options depending on how much energy you want to invest:

Option A: The Polite "Hold Them Accountable" Reply

You can send a brief, professional response that gently calls out the paradox while keeping the door open. Sometimes this gets passed up to a hiring manager who realizes how ridiculous the automated email sounded.

"Thank you for letting me know. I noticed the feedback mentioned needing experience in the target role—since my goal in applying for this traineeship was specifically to build that foundational experience, I’d love to know if there are specific skill gaps on my profile I could work on independently. If any future entry-level or true trainee opportunities open up, I’d welcome the chance to stay in touch."

Option B: Cut Your Losses and Target Real Entry Points

If a company treats traineeships like mid-level roles before you even walk through the door, their internal training programs are often just as chaotic. Look for:

• Smaller local companies or agencies where you can pitch your transferable skills directly to a team lead rather than going through an automated HR filter.
  
  
• Networking / Informational interviews with people currently working the job in your area to ask how they actually broke in without prior experience.
  
  

It feels like a massive slap in the face to be turned away from an entry-level door for lacking experience, but that rejection reflects their broken hiring process, not your potential.

Companies should be fined for advertising jobs they aren’t genuinely hiring for

If a company advertises a job that isn’t approved, funded, or genuinely available, it should face a fine.

Job seekers spend hours tailoring résumés, writing applications, preparing for interviews and sometimes completing assignments. Meanwhile, some companies post “ghost jobs” to collect résumés, test the market, create the appearance of growth or build a future candidate pipeline.

Obviously, a legitimate position can be unexpectedly frozen or canceled. But companies should be required to disclose when a posting is only for future opportunities, remove listings when hiring stops, and confirm whether advertised positions were actually filled.

Enforcement could focus on clear patterns: continuously reposting the same role, leaving unavailable positions online for months, collecting applications without an approved opening, or interviewing candidates for jobs that were never realistically available.

Applicants are expected to provide accurate information throughout the hiring process. Employers should be held to the same standard.

Would you support fines or reporting requirements for companies that repeatedly advertise jobs they aren’t genuinely trying to fill?

Jobadvisor

The proposal addresses one of the most systemic pain points in the modern job search: ghost jobs. Enforcing penalties or reporting mandates for deceptive listings would reset the balance of power between job seekers and employers, though designing enforceable policy requires navigating real operational friction.

Arguments Supporting Fines and Mandatory Disclosures

• Puts a Cost on Candidate Exploitation: Right now, the cost of posting a fake job is virtually zero, while the candidate bears all the cost in time, energy, and unpaid labor (e.g., take-home assignments). Financial penalties force companies to treat candidate time as a real resource.
  
  
• Curbs Fraudulent Market Signals: Companies frequently leave phantom postings live to project artificial growth to investors, scare competitors, or signal to overworked internal staff that "help is on the way." Penalties would disincentivize using recruitment portals as corporate PR.
  
  
• Eliminates Deceptive Data Scraping: Unfunded listings are regularly used as passive data-harvesting mechanisms to build internal resume databases. Mandating clear disclosures prevents companies from tricking applicants into providing personal data under false pretenses.
  
  
• Fixes Economic Data: Official labor statistics relying on active job postings give an artificially inflated view of market health. Transparency rules would yield accurate macroeconomic data on true labor demand.
  
  

Challenges and Counterarguments

• Proving Intent is Extremely Hard: Distinguishing between a deliberate ghost job and a position frozen mid-search due to budget cuts, team restructuring, or sudden market shifts is legally ambiguous.
  
  
• Risk to Small Businesses: Strict compliance mandates could penalize smaller firms with volatile budgets or limited HR bandwidth, favoring large corporations with dedicated legal and talent teams.
  
  
• Shift to Hidden Hiring: High regulatory risks for public job boards might drive employers to rely heavily on informal networking, referrals, and unlisted roles, making the job market less accessible to everyday applicants.
  
  

Framework for Actionable Regulation

A workable policy would likely balance transparency mandates with targeted enforcement rather than blanket fines for every canceled role:

1. Mandatory Listing Labels: Require employers to explicitly label posts as either "Immediate Opening" (active headcount/budget approved) or "Talent Pipeline/Future Opportunity" (proactive sourcing).
   
   
2. Mandatory Expiration Window: Force job boards to automatically delist roles after 30–45 days unless HR actively re-certifies under penalty of fine that the opening remains active and funded.
   
   
3. Pattern-Based Enforcement: Focus regulatory scrutiny (via labor departments) on systematic abuses, such as keeping a role live for 6+ months while simultaneously executing company-wide layoffs or hiring freezes.
   
   

Requiring basic honesty in job advertising is a reasonable consumer protection standard. Requiring clear labeling and auto-expirations is the fastest, most enforceable way to eliminate phantom listings without stifling legitimate hiring flexibility.

Is it appropriate for a recruiter to ask me how I am supporting myself?

I had an interview with an HR rep yesterday and it was basic questions about my background and experience. She then eventually got a bit personal and one of the questions was how I am supporting myself?

I found that weird and just ended up answering that information is for me to know. And kept my mouth shut. Things became very awkward after that.

I get it they’re trying to lowball me and see how desperate I am. I was ok with whatever salary, but why ask something this personal?

**am in USA, and a citizen

Jobadvisor

Asking how you financially support yourself during unemployment is inappropriate, highly unprofessional, and completely irrelevant to assessing your ability to do a job.

While it is generally not explicitly illegal under US federal employment law in the way asking about your race, religion, pregnancy, or disability is, it skirts dangerous legal territory and violates standard professional hiring practices.

Here is why recruiters ask this, why it hurts their process, and how to handle it if it happens again.

Why a Recruiter Asks This (and Why It's Bad Practice)

• Probing for Desperation / Salary Leverage: Your initial instinct was likely correct. Some recruiters attempt to gauge your financial runway to see how urgent your job search is. If they sense you are struggling, they may attempt to offer a lower salary or less favorable terms.
  
  
• Probing for Resume Gaps / Employment History: Recruiters sometimes use crude, intrusive questions to check if you've been working under the table, doing gig work you left off your resume, or taking an unexplained break.
  
  
• Risk of Unlawful Discrimination: Probing into a candidate's personal finances can inadvertently reveal protected class information (e.g., spousal income, disability benefits, inheritance, alimony, or socio-economic background). Employers are legally advised by counsel never to ask financial status questions because doing so opens them up to discrimination claims under Title VII or state laws (such as laws prohibiting discrimination based on credit history or public assistance status in certain states).
  
  

How to Pivot Away Without Making It Awkward

Your impulse to set a boundary was completely valid, but outright refusing to answer ("that is for me to know") often triggers a defensive or awkward standoff.

If an interviewer asks a personal or invasive question about your unemployment or finances in the future, the best approach is to deflect, reframe to your career, and pivot back to the role:

• The Soft Pivot (Focus on Preparation):
  
  

  "I’ve been fortunate to structure my situation so I can focus full-time on finding the right long-term professional fit, which is why I’m so interested in this role."

  
  

• The High-Level Answer (Focus on Activity):
  
  

  "During this transition, my primary focus has been staying sharp, doing freelance/consulting projects, and looking for a team where I can add immediate value like [mention key skill]."

  
  

• The Direct Professional Boundary:
  
  

  "My personal financial arrangements are completely managed, but I’d be happy to talk more about how my recent project work applies to what you’re looking for here."

  
  

Red Flag Consideration

An HR representative who asks personal questions about your personal finances or living situation is showing you a glimpse of the company's culture. It often indicates weak professional training, a lack of respect for personal boundaries, or an organization that views candidate leverage through a predatory lens.

If they penalize you or ghost you for declining to answer an invasive personal question, they likely saved you from a toxic workplace.