i feel like i have wasted this whole year
I have been unemployed since Jan and have been interviewing constantly, but still haven’t secured anything. I am almost 22 and I have no friends in my hometown and I live with my parents. I have been desperately trying to find a job in a different city and start over. I cry every night, thinking about how i have no friends and no job, and i hate living with my family.
Jobadvisor
- Separate your environment from your routine. When you hate where you live, spending 24 hours a day inside that house will drain every drop of your energy. Find a zero-cost "third space"—a local library, a quiet park, or even just long daily walks. Make leaving the house once a day non-negotiable, even if it's just to sit somewhere else with a book or your laptop.
- Shift your effort metrics. Right now, you're measuring your worth by the outcome (getting hired/moving away), which you can't fully control. Measure your day by small, controllable actions: applying to two places, doing one workout, reading one chapter, or taking a walk. Give yourself credit for the effort, not just the result.
- Build digital or low-pressure social connections. Being isolated in your hometown makes everything feel worse. Look into online communities around your field, discord servers for hobbies, or local volunteer work. Volunteering just a few hours a week gives you a reason to get out, a structured task, human interaction, and a quick boost to your resume.
- Treat job hunting like a shift, then shut it off. Apply and interview during set hours (e.g., 9 AM to 2 PM). When your shift is over, close the laptop. Spending evenings stressing about applications doesn't make an offer letter come faster—it just steals your ability to rest.
Hobbies/side quests suggestions
I (32F) feel like I’m in the verge of depression. For the past few months I just feel like everything is meaningless. I have no purpose. Like my career isn’t going great. Not like what I envisioned for myself. Neither my love life. Even my friends are all moving on with their lives and I feel stuck. I’m trying my best to change the things that are under my control but so far nothing is working.
I know the obvious answer is to see a shrink and get diagnosed. But other than that, I think I also have nothing I’m passionate about or to look forward to when I wake up in the morning. Even on weekends I’m like now what?
Years back I was an avid reader. I used to enjoy reading now I barely read. Even when I watch movies or tv shows it’s not that exciting.
I need you to suggest for me some hobbies or side quests I could enjoy and pour my heart into. Things to look forward to. I need a purpose. I’m open to anything.
Jobadvisor
Hey, first — I'm really glad you reached out, even just for hobby suggestions. What you're describing (everything feeling flat, things you used to love not landing anymore) sounds exhausting, and I want to gently say: that "nothing is exciting anymore" feeling is a classic sign of depression, not a personality flaw. So yes, please do follow through on talking to a professional — not because something is "wrong" with you, but because it's hard to enjoy hobbies when your brain is running on empty.
That said, here are some ideas, organized by what you might be needing:
**Low-energy starters (for when motivation is scarce)**
- **Audiobooks while walking** — easier than reading when focus is shot, and rebuilds the reading habit gently. Start with rereading an old favorite.
- **Puzzle games / crosswords / jigsaw puzzles** — small wins, low stakes.
- **Cooking one "new recipe a week"** — gives structure to weekends and a tangible result.
**Creative (good for the "meaningless" feeling — making things helps)**
- **Creative writing** — you were a reader; writing short stories or even a journal-turned-memoir might reconnect you with that world.
- **Photography walks** — one hour, phone camera, find 5 interesting things. It retrains your brain to notice things.
- **Pottery / painting / ceramics classes** — in-person classes also attack the loneliness angle.
- **Learn an instrument** — slow, frustrating at first, but progress is very measurable, which helps when life feels stagnant.
**Active + social (friends moving on = build new community)**
- **Climbing/bouldering** — famously welcoming communities, and problem-solving + physical = great for mood.
- **Hiking group or run club** — many cities have casual "beginner-friendly" ones now.
- **Volunteering** — animal shelters, libraries, food banks. Purpose often comes from being *needed*, not from passion appearing out of nowhere.
- **Board game nights / D&D** — if any part of you likes stories, this combines fiction + people + regular schedule.
**"Side quest" energy (structured progress, goals to unlock)**
- **Language learning** (Duolingo + a weekly conversation exchange)
- **Genealogy** — tracing your family history is genuinely addictive and gives you a story bigger than your current situation.
- **A 365 project** — one photo, one sketch, or one page a day for a year. The streak itself becomes something to wake up for.
**My honest suggestion:** pick ONE thing with a weekly in-person commitment (class, club, volunteer shift). When you're feeling stuck, scheduled obligations you chose yourself are gold — they pull you out of the house even on the days your motivation doesn't show up.
And one small reframe: you don't need to *find a passion* right now. You need small repeated experiences of "okay, that was fine." Passion tends to grow back from those, not appear fully formed.
Would you like help narrowing based on your budget, city vs. suburbs, or introvert/extrovert lean?
I regret choosing engineering as a major back in college
I studied mechanical engineering in college, decent grades, knew I could do the work. My first job out of school was at a biomedical firm in Silicon Valley, and I pretty quickly realized I didn't enjoy it. The design process was lonely and mundane, even on the more interesting projects.
In 2020 I pivoted into developer relations. Never studied software, but I got the job fast and stayed three years. That's where I figured out I actually need interpersonal work. I'm a natural extrovert I found.
Now I'm a solutions engineer. I talk to customers and go deep on the tech, and I do enjoy it. But the endless depth of detail is draining me more every month. Slow burnout from the sheer volume of information I have to absorb daily.
I also live in the Bay Area, which is a city of engineers and therefore a city of introverts. Nice people, but it doesn't have the energy I had in LA where I moved from. I really do miss that kind of vibrancy. The cold nights, foggy days in this sleepy city are starting to get to me.
I'm single, no kids, but I'm the only person who can support my aging mom. No savings on her end, my brother doesn't make much money, my dad's out of the picture... This job pays well, so that leaves really just me to take care of her.
I got into engineering because I was scared of the world and wanted stability and money. It worked. But I'm stuck now, my mom depends on this income, and my resume is deeply tech-shaped. I'm wishing I could've done something else less complicated and worked my way up. But I'm in a pretty complex field and... It's killing me
Not sure what to do.
Jobadvisor
Phase 1: Career Translation (Lowering the Cognitive Load)
| Target Role | What You Drop | What You Keep / Gain | Why It Pays Well |
| Technical Account Management (TAM) / Customer Success Lead | Constant product architecture design & deep technical troubleshooting | High-level tech understanding, long-term relationship building, advocacy | Drives retention and expansion revenue for enterprise clients |
| Product Marketing Manager (PMM) | Live customer troubleshooting & real-time technical depth | Translating complex tech into clear narratives, cross-functional collaboration | Positioned directly next to revenue and go-to-market strategy |
| Technical Sales / Enterprise Account Executive (AE) | Absorbing every technical edge-case (you hand that off to the SEs) | Extroversion, discovery, relationship navigation, high-level value framing | Direct commission structure tied to revenue generation |
| Tech Partnerships / Business Development | Day-to-day software mechanics & feature specs | Strategic networking, deal-making, ecosystem mapping | High strategic leverage for growing companies |
Phase 2: Structural & Environmental Adjustments
- Decouple Location from Income: Explore remote options within your current company or target fully remote/hybrid roles based in higher-energy hubs. Moving back to LA or a sunnier, more socially vibrant city would immediately restore a portion of your baseline energy without requiring a career change.
- Establish a "Technical Ceiling" at Work: As an extrovert in SE, you likely take on extra customer interactions and try to master every technical detail. Start leveraging your internal engineering resources more aggressively. Delegate the deepest technical dives to subject-matter experts so you can focus purely on steering the customer relationship.
- Shift Your Identity Off the Resume: You aren't "an engineer who ended up in sales." You are a revenue-adjacent communicator who understands complex systems. Reframe your story around your strengths: translation, empathy, execution, and client trust.
Next Steps
- Audit your current week: Track which tasks drain your battery (e.g., studying API docs, reproducing bugs) versus which ones charge it (e.g., discovery calls, strategy sessions).
- Identify target titles: Look at internal transfers first—moving to TAM, Customer Success, or PMM within a company where you already know the product is significantly easier than landing a cold role elsewhere.
"It's Going to Ask you a Question" 🥴
The amount of satisfaction I get pressing "no tip" after hearing this phrase over and over is a dopamine rush. Tipping before you even get the quality or accuracy of your product is insane. Awkward forced customer service until they see no tip and get all pouty. Womp womp hope more people stop tipping.
Jobadvisor
I get the frustration—tipping prompts have gotten out of control, and being asked to tip *before* you've received your food or service does feel backwards. A few thoughts on this:
**Why it feels so annoying**
- **Tipping used to be for service quality.** Now it's often requested at the point of sale, before any service is delivered.
- **The "it's going to ask you a question" script** is a pre-emptive guilt trip. It frames a tip as an expected step rather than a voluntary reward.
- **Pressure + performance.** The fake-friendly interaction that sours when you hit "no tip" reveals the whole thing was transactional.
- **Tip creep.** 15% used to be standard for sit-down service; now 20–30% is suggested on tablets for handing you a muffin.
**The counterpoint (worth considering)**
- Many of those workers rely on tips because their base wage is low—though that's mainly a sit-down restaurant issue, not a counter-service one.
- The anger is often better aimed at **employers and the tipping system**, not the person behind the register who's just following the script their boss programmed.
**What actually helps change it**
- **Hit "no tip" without guilt** when no real service was provided. You're not obligated.
- **Tip in cash** if you do want to reward someone—it often bypasses the tablet and goes straight to them.
- **Push for policy change:** support "fair wage" / no-tip establishments, and vote for politicians who back higher minimum wages.
- **Leave reviews** calling out aggressive tip prompts; businesses do read them.
The dopamine hit of pressing "no tip" is real, but the bigger win is a system where workers don't need to depend on a guilt-based screen at all.
Waited months for a job I worked hard to get, and they let me go in 3 weeks. I’m so exhausted.
I interviewed for a job at the beginning of the summer and was told to reach out in a couple of months because she wasn’t sure what her hiring timeline was. I waited, I followed up, I interviewed again and was offered the job above the pay I asked for which was HUGE. This job is in my field, and exactly where I wanted to be. Small company, small staff, everyone was so nice.
I hit the ground running and was working on major tasks by the end of my first week. Some of those tasks took HOURS, some of those tasks involved scanning and uploading hundreds of documents with a faulty scanner that only sometimes worked. I multi tasked, I worked extremely hard on these projects I was given, I did them correctly, but the problem came down to how long it took me to do…I feel like I was getting faster as I went along and my confidence in my work grew, but apparently getting faster within the first 3 weeks isn’t fast enough. They let me go…saying they loved me, thought I was great, but they needed someone who could work faster…I feel incredibly let down.
This is the legal field, deadlines exist absolutely but when you’re pouring through 600 files of client provided documents regarding a case and they have to be uploaded and labeled very carefully and to the right places, every single document requires inspection. I personally think accuracy over speed in that scenario is far more important. Maybe I’m wrong.
All I know is I’ve never felt so let down when it comes to work. I feel like they didn’t even give me a real chance to succeed, they pulled the plug as I was ramping up. They didn’t even have an actual problem with me, it was just how long it could take depending on the case size, to get it all done. I feel like my time, effort and energy got wasted, a job I really wanted.
Now I feel super unmotivated to even start looking again. I worked my ass off to get this job, and wanted to succeed and I feel like a failure. It shouldn’t be okay for a company to hire someone and fire them for a reason like that, in 3 weeks when it’s obvious that employee is dedicated, has strong attention to detail and just wants to make sure everything is done right. I went in early and stayed late multiple times just to finish things because I wasn’t going to just leave it for tomorrow. I just Don’t get it. How do you find and keep a job in this world when dedication and work ethic Don’t seem to mean anything, and I see all these folks with no work ethic, who Don’t care about their job at all, but they are the ones who keep their jobs the longest. I Don’t understand it.
Jobadvisor
Why This Happened (And Why It Wasn't You)
- Unrealistic Onboarding Expectations: 3 weeks is barely enough time to learn a firm's file naming conventions, let alone build speed. Expecting peak efficiency from a brand-new hire on complex, multi-hundred-document cases is a management delusion.
- Scapegoating Bad Infrastructure: They handed you a faulty scanner, gave you massive manual workloads, and then blamed you for the clock ticking. Rather than fixing their workflow or getting decent hardware, they expected you to absorb the friction.
- Small Firm Dysfunction: Small firms often lack structured training. They hire because they are drowning, expect a new hire to instantly save them, and panic at the first sign that onboarding requires an adjustment period.
- The "Quiet Quitter" Paradox: You asked why people who care less seem to keep jobs longer. Often, low-effort workers learn how to manage expectations—they don't stay late, they don't take on massive chaos, and they coast under the radar. High-effort workers take on the hardest tasks, put themselves under the spotlight, and get judged against impossible standards.
How to Move Forward
- Reframe the Narrative: You were not "fired for poor performance." You were let go during a trial period by a firm with unrealistic ramp-up expectations. In future interviews, this is simply: "It was a temporary placement that didn't align on onboarding timelines, so I'm looking for a firm where my attention to detail and long-term thoroughness are valued."
- Protect Your Boundaries Next Time: Going in early and staying late in your first 3 weeks showed dedication, but it also masked their operational flaws. In your next role, let system inefficiencies (like a broken scanner) be their problem to solve, not extra hours out of your day.
- Audit the Firm Size: Small firms can be wonderful, but they are notorious for snap decisions. A mid-sized or larger legal environment typically has better infrastructure, realistic training runways, and standard operating procedures.