The Labor Market Is Broken. How Did I Almost Become Homeless?

To keep this blog from being a saccharine success story, let me tell you about the fly in the ointment.

In May 2024, I left a company — a large holding where I had worked for almost six years, practically since school. The departure left a very unpleasant aftertaste, but I'll save that for another time. At that point, I focused on my own IT startup, but at that stage, the project wasn't ready to generate any significant money. So by September 2024, I entered the labor market for real for the first time.

That's when I faced its harsh reality. I had good experience, in-demand skills, energy, and motivation, but mostly I got rejections at the resume stage. Interview invitations were as rare as snow in the desert, and almost never led anywhere. It felt like being dunked into a huge pit of crap. 💩

I'll be honest: I got scared. I lost faith in myself and succumbed to despair. Whether out of fear of starving or sheer desperation, I accepted a job that I knew wasn't right for me and seemed like the lesser of two evils. Sure, I didn't lose much in salary, but I was stuck with utterly crappy tasks and processes. But that wasn't even the main issue. This job simply went against my nature. I didn't just not enjoy it — I literally hated it, and myself along with it.

Unsurprisingly, I lasted only six months. By February 2025, I quit with no backup plan, no fallback, no guarantees.

So I went for round two. Over four months of job searching, I received almost 900 rejections across various platforms. Sometimes it got absurd. Some said, "Oh, you have experience at SUCH A BIG company, you're not a fit." Others said the opposite: "Well, sure, you didn't work at a shawarma joint, but we're in a bigger business, you're not a fit" 🤡. Half of my applications were never even viewed.

I bought career consultations, paid for resume reviews by professional recruiters, and tried many other things. Almost everyone noted my great experience and excellent resume, but nothing helped: I still couldn't get past the filters.

In the end, old partners helped. They pointed me to a vacancy at Sber, which I applied for. Not without adventures, but in July 2025, literally on the eve of my birthday, I received the long-awaited offer. Let's consider it a gift from Sber. Ahead were interesting tasks, a strong team, many activities, and a serious position in one of Russia's largest companies. You could say, a happy ending.

So what's the moral of this story? I'll give unsolicited advice on "what and how to do to get a job" in future posts. For now, here are a few philosophical conclusions.

1️⃣ First, compromising yourself for money or anything else is a path to ruin. I don't believe in fate or higher powers, but I've noticed one thing: when I'm in the right place and properly fulfilling my "purpose," it's as if luck starts to favor me. A strong tailwind begins to blow, and I quickly achieve success. Conversely, when I slogged away at a job I hated, even routine tasks met with monstrous resistance. The Myth of Sisyphus.

2️⃣ Second, the labor market and the hiring system itself are largely broken — and we'll talk about that separately. To those currently looking for work or about to start, I want to say this: rejections, even if there are 900 of them, do not mean you are crap 💩. I had submitted my resume to Sber before and received no response, but when I finally got in, it turned out I had never even been in their database. I simply didn't pass the filters.

3️⃣ Third, don't despair. Get rejected, endure, and keep searching. Your purpose will find you; you just need to believe.

Dear readers, what was your job search experience like?