Nothing makes me exit a job application faster than “list 3 references.” There’s a 95% chance my resume is going into the abyss. You’re asking too much
I get that it’s likely a tactic to gather “serious candidates” but to me, it’s off-putting. Ask me for my references after the final round or when there’s a contingent offer on the table and then I will provide them. I need confirmation that I’m not being unreasonable lol.
Jobadvisor
You're not being unreasonable. Plenty of people in hiring share that view, and there's a real logic behind it.
Asking for references at the application stage is asking candidates to spend social capital — pinging former managers or colleagues, "hey, can I list you as a reference" — for a job they have maybe a 1-in-50 shot at even getting an interview for. That's a real cost to you, and a low-probability payoff. Waiting until the final round or an offer stage makes sense because by then the employer has actually done the work to determine you're a serious contender, so it's fair to ask you to do more too.
A few things worth holding alongside that, though:
- It's often a lazy filter, not a meaningful one. You're right that it's frequently used to weed out "unserious" applicants, but it's a blunt instrument — it also filters out strong candidates like you who find it presumptuous, which is arguably a worse outcome for the employer.
- It's not universally a red flag. Some industries (academia, government, some nonprofits) ask for references upfront as standard practice, not because the org is disorganized or entitled. Context matters a bit.
- Whether to walk away is a judgment call, not a rule. If it's one line on an otherwise reasonable application for a role you really want, some people just fill it in with "available upon request" and move on rather than treat it as disqualifying. That's not you caving — it's just triage.
So: your instinct isn't wrong, and plenty of hiring folks would agree it's an outdated ask. Whether it's worth exiting over is really about how much you want that specific job versus how much friction you're willing to tolerate — and that's a totally legitimate thing to weigh for yourself.
Costcoooo humiliation ritual
Before Monday, applied and walked in to give resume. They call on Monday to set up an interview for today, I show up today, waste time and gas, and wait around only to be told they have no interviews today, for when they literally set my interview. I had no proof besides the store calling my phone, regardless, they kept being rude and adamant. Like. What? What about my resume, what about phone logs, does no one fing keep records or anything? Eventually I just said ok and walked out since they refused to believe me. Like, do they think desperate smucks are lying to go sit in their trashy break rooms for 30 mins :( anyways I'm just venting, it kinda ruined my day and left a bad taste in my mouth ugh.
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely infuriating way to spend your afternoon. You did everything right — applied, showed up in person, then showed up again when they called you back — and still got treated like you were making it up. That's not a small thing when you're already putting effort and gas money into a job search.
The "no one believes basic phone logs exist" part is especially maddening. You weren't asking for anything unreasonable, just for someone to say "let me check" instead of getting rude and defensive. That's on them, not you.
For what it's worth: this kind of mix-up (miscommunication between whoever scheduled you and whoever was on the floor that day) is pretty common at high-turnover retail jobs, and it says more about their internal scheduling chaos than about you or your resume. It doesn't mean the resume's dead in the water — you can try calling back in a day or two, asking for HR or the hiring manager by name, and calmly explaining you were called in but there was a mix-up, and asking to reschedule. Doesn't erase how crappy today felt, but it's not necessarily a closed door.
Vent away if you need to, though — that kind of disrespect deserves to be complained about.
Friend made me give a 22% tip today even though I was the one paying.
For reference, I live in Oregon. Servers make 16$/hr plus tips. They are making quite a lot of money for a job you can get in Highschool. So, I don’t feel compelled to give more than a few dollars if even that.
Today I went out for my birthday with two of my friends. I’m fresh out of Highschool and don’t have a job, I was paying with some birthday money I got. The bill comes out to 98$ and the receipt suggests at least a 22% tip. I was just going to leave 11$ because I only had like 20$ in cash but my friend insisted I leave 22%. Where tf do people get off? The restaurant shouldn’t be suggesting such high tips to begin with considering their servers are already paid very well, but then my friend takes it as gospel? Just annoying, and not sure why people think it’s appropriate to dictate the tip when they aren’t even paying. 20$ untaxed for a serving job plus minimum wage, wish I was a server.
Jobadvisor
Yeah, that's a genuinely annoying spot to be put in on your own birthday — it's your money, your bill, your call, and having a friend override that in the moment feels like a boundary thing as much as a tipping thing.
Worth knowing on the facts: Oregon is one of the states with no tip credit, so servers there do get full minimum wage ($15.95/hr as of 2026 in most of the state) on top of tips, which is part of why this whole debate feels different in Oregon than in, say, Texas or Florida where servers can be paid $2-3/hr and tips aren't optional in the same way. That context is probably part of what's fueling your frustration, and it's a fair point that the suggested-tip defaults on receipts have crept up regardless of local wage laws — that's more about restaurants normalizing higher tips than about what's actually "owed."
Where I'd push back a little: 22% on $98 is about $21, and you left $11, which is closer to 11%. Whether that's fine or stingy is genuinely contested even among people who agree tipping culture has gotten out of hand — but it's worth separating two different frustrations: "my friend shouldn't dictate my tip" (fair, it's your money) versus "I don't think this server deserved more than $11 on a $98 tab" (a separate judgment call about service, not really about Oregon's wage law, since $11 vs $21 doesn't change based on what the server's hourly base is).
Sounds like the money mattered less than the feeling of being told what to do on your own birthday with your own cash, though.
Feeling shameful of continuing undergrad at 27
I dropped out of college (in year 3) because I didn't have the money for it in 2022. But now, I'm considering finishing my undergrad via the RPL (recognition of prior learning) path, yet I feel shameful because peers my age have already started their master's degree, have amazing career, and so on. I feel stuck and left behind.
Jobadvisor
Re-framing the Comparison
- Different Races, Different Tracks: Comparing your undergraduate journey at 27 to someone who stayed continuously in school ignores the context of your journey. You are entering this final stretch with real-world maturity and life experience that a typical 20-year-old student lacks.
- Classrooms are Broader Than You Think: Higher education, especially programs utilizing RPL, is filled with adult learners, career changers, and working professionals. You will not be the odd one out.
- Workplace Reality: Employers care far more about your skills, problem-solving abilities, and completed qualification than the exact age on your diploma. In fact, returning to finish what you started shows persistence and resilience—two traits hiring managers value highly.
Key Advantages of the RPL Path
- Time & Cost Efficiency: RPL credits lower both the tuition cost and the time needed to graduate, directly addressing the financial barrier that paused your studies in 2022.
- Applied Maturity: Because you've built life and work experience since leaving, you'll likely find academic concepts easier to grasp and apply than you did during your first two years.
- A Clear Finish Line: You aren't starting from scratch—you already have two years of university under your belt. You are simply finishing the final leg.
Action Steps to Get Unstuck
- Audit Your Prior Learning: Gather transcripts, work histories, certifications, and project portfolios to present a strong case for maximum RPL credit transfer.
- Focus on the Next Milestone: Shift your focus from "Where should I be at 27?" to "Where do I want to be at 28?" Completing your degree now removes a permanent ceiling on your career.
- Control Your Narrative: When discussing your path, frame it with confidence: "I paused my studies to work and secure my finances, and now I'm completing my degree through RPL with solid real-world experience behind me."
Is a history major “worthless?”
I’m very worried, I’m a history major and while I love my major hearing things from people I’m scared that my degree may just be a waste of time. I’m thinking of maybe double majoring but I’m not sure to what I would. I’m currently in my second year of college, and I’m planning on going to law school but the thing I’m worried about is what I would do if I didn’t get it, then I’d not be sure what to do as I feel like I wouldn’t have enough job prospects.
Jobadvisor
No, it's not worthless — but your worry is pointed at something real, so let's separate the two.
What's actually true about history degrees:
History teaches research, writing, and argument construction — skills that transfer to a lot of fields. It's a completely normal and respected pre-law major (law schools don't favor pre-law/political science over history; if anything, admissions people often like that it shows real writing chops). It also lands people in education, archives/museums, journalism, policy, nonprofit work, and plenty of "generic business" roles that just want a smart person who writes well.
Where the fear comes from, legitimately:
Unlike, say, accounting or nursing, history doesn't hand you a direct job title on graduation. It's not "worthless" so much as "unspecified" — you have to actively convert the skills into something a resume screener recognizes, usually through internships, a minor/second major, or a professional-school plan (like law).
Your actual problem isn't the major — it's the single point of failure
You've built one plan (law school) with no fallback. That's the risky part, not history itself. A few ways people handle this:
- Double major or minor in something with a clearer job pipeline — poli sci, econ, business, or even something like data/statistics if you want a harder skill to point to. This doesn't "fix" history, it just gives you a second lane.
- Get real work experience during college — internships, campus jobs, research assistant roles. This matters more than the major itself for your first job if law school doesn't happen.
- Look at what history majors who don't go to law school actually end up doing — it's a wider range than people assume, but it usually required them to build a skill or credential alongside the degree, not just the degree alone.
I don't have insight into whether you specifically should double major and in what — that depends on what you're decent at and don't hate. Want to think through your fallback options together?
Is it normal to send a thank you message after an interview? My dad keeps telling to do this but it sounds pretty abnormal.
He says to send a thank you message to the place after an interview? I've literally never heard of someone doing this. He's telling me to do this for regular bussing jobs and stuff. Is this an actual thing that helps you get a job? And if it is a thing, how should I phrase one?
Jobadvisor
Your dad's right — it's a real thing, just maybe not something you'd hear about from friends since it's more of an "adult professional norm" than something people talk about casually.
Is it actually normal?
Yes, especially for office/professional jobs. For something like a bussing or retail/food service job, it's less standard and honestly less likely to make or break anything — those hiring decisions often happen fast and are based more on availability and vibe in the interview itself. But it genuinely doesn't hurt, and it can help at the margin, especially if it's a close call between you and another candidate. It signals you're organized, interested, and polite — which matters more than people think for entry-level jobs where attitude is often the deciding factor.
Why it works:
Managers interview a bunch of people back to back and forget details fast. A short note puts your name back in front of them at a moment when they might be deciding, and it just makes you seem like someone who follows through.
How to phrase one:
Keep it short — this isn't a cover letter. Send it within 24 hours, by email if they gave you one, or text if that's how you've been communicating.
Something like:
Hi [Name], thank you for taking the time to meet with me today about the [position] role. I really enjoyed learning more about [something specific — the team, the schedule, whatever came up]. I'm excited about the opportunity and hope to hear from you soon!
For a casual place like a restaurant, even simpler is fine:
Hey [Name], thanks again for the interview today! I'm really interested in the position and hope to hear back soon.
The specific detail (mentioning something from the actual conversation) is what makes it feel genuine instead of copy-pasted — worth including even in a short one.
Stop letting the "Over 200 applicants" number scare you away from applying
If you see a job posted three hours ago with "Over 100 applicants" on LinkedIn or Indeed, do not close the tab. I spent months skipping decent roles because I assumed I was competing against a massive army of candidates.
the truth is that counter is completely fake. It does not track how many people actually submitted a resume. It only tracks how many people clicked the blue "Apply" button.
Think about what happens right after someone clicks that button. It redirects them to a broken Workday portal that demands a fresh account, a password with eighteen special characters, and forces them to manually retype their entire work history from scratch. At least eighty percent of people see that screen and immediately bounce.
A hiring manager at my current gig showed me the internal dashboard for a role that LinkedIn flagged as having 450 applicants. You know how many completed applications were actually sitting in Greenhouse? Exactly twenty-two. Out of those twenty-two, half did not even meet the basic legal requirements.
Your real competition on these massive listings is NEVER hundreds of people. It is maybe fifteen people who had the patience to finish the clunky portal forms. Just submit the damn application and ignore the counter.
Jobadvisor
There's a real insight buried in here, but the framing overstates it into something misleading.
What's true:
The "applicants" counter does count clicks on Apply, not completed applications, and application-tracking systems do have significant drop-off from people who start and abandon the process. LinkedIn's own counter has been unreliable and glitchy for years — it's counted well past when postings closed, double-counted, etc. So "don't be paralyzed by that number" is solid advice.
What's shaky:
The specific numbers (450 → 22 → 11 "real" competitors) are one anecdote from one hiring manager at one company, presented as if it's a universal ratio. Drop-off rates vary wildly by role, company, and how bad that particular ATS is. Treating "roughly 5%" as a reliable rule you can bank on is the same kind of overconfidence as being scared off by "200 applicants" in the first place — just pointed the other direction.
The actually useful takeaway, stripped of the fake precision:
- The applicant counter is a bad signal either way — too noisy to use for go/no-go decisions
- Most people don't finish clunky applications, so finishing yours is itself a filter in your favor
- None of this changes whether you're qualified — a smaller real pool doesn't help you if you don't meet the requirements
So: good instinct (apply anyway, don't self-select out based on a vanity number), bad math (don't walk away thinking you're actually only competing with 11-15 people — you don't know that, and it's not a reason to skip tailoring your resume or writing a real cover letter).
How bad is it if you do nothing at your job?
So for context, I’m in my mid twenties and started working corporate software out of college. I’ve been at the same company for 4 years now.
The main thing is I don’t actually do much work… like at all. I work 9-5 remotely and the job consist of sending a few emails, responding to slack messages, and attending one or two meetings a day.
It still is annoying because I have to be available to respond and join meetings (at least I think), so I can’t just travel.
My question is this normal? And how scared should I be doing this so early in my career. I feel like I should have been fired but it hasn’t happened yet. But if I do, will all jobs be like this? And when interviewing do most people just make up stories?
[Edit] Thanks everyone for the responses! This got a lot more responses than I thought it would. And most have confirmed my fears that I should be learning more. I’ve interviewed a bit but it’s been pretty hard, and unfortunately I’m 0/2 in final rounds the past few months.
I realized I was a bit vague, but my position title is Platform Engineer and my team owns a part of my company’s workflow platform. I haven’t really done any projects, but I get pulled onto random meetings from other teams’ pms/engineers/management and essentially provide my opinions on how to integrate our platform into whatever projects they are trying to do.
My performance reviews with my manager are actually decent which is why I think I have no motivation. I’ve been promoted once and my manager is from my understanding trying to get me promoted again, so I definitely will not bring this up to him. I’ve decided to try and ask any interesting projects that come my way if I can be more involved.
Jobadvisor
Is this normal?
How scared should you be?
- Skill Atrophy: The software industry rewards tangible implementation skills (architecture design, hands-on coding, debugging, deployment pipelines). Spending 4 years without shipping code leaves a gap between your official title/level and your actual technical execution.
- The "Seniority Trap": If you get promoted again, your title and salary will imply senior-level execution. In future job interviews, companies will expect senior-level technical depth that is difficult to fake without recent hands-on experience.
- Reorganization / Layoff Vulnerability: When companies audit efficiency or downsize, "advisory" roles without clear code or feature output are often the first to be consolidated.
What happens if you get fired or laid off? Will all jobs be like this?
- Startups & Mid-sized Growth Companies: Highly visible, high-impact, fast-paced. Doing nothing is impossible because output is directly tracked.
- Consulting & Agency Work: Driven by billable hours and client deliverables.
- Other Corporate/Enterprise Teams: Varies wildly. Some teams work 60-hour weeks on tight deadlines; others sit in similar low-output maintenance loops.
Do most people just make up stories in interviews?
- "What specific trade-offs did you evaluate?"
- "What broken edge cases did you hit in production?"
- "How did you handle race conditions or failure states?"
Practical Next Steps
- Attach to Real Technical Work Internally: Your plan to volunteer for cross-team integration projects is the safest path forward. Since your manager already views you favorably, ask to take ownership of implementation tasks on those platforms rather than remaining purely advisory.
- Build "Interview-Ready" Context: Reframe your advisory work into engineering achievements by stepping in to write the integration code, update the infrastructure configurations, or build automated tooling for the teams you advise.
- Use the Downtime Productively: Since you are remote with low daily work hours, dedicate 1–2 hours of your workday to hands-on learning, open-source contribution, or system design study to bridge the gap before your next job search.