Why are leading job sites shit?

Why are leading job search sites in the USA shit? I’m looking at ZipRecruiter and it’s crap. Advanced search doesn’t give you the ability to filter on keywords even. The results are often highly irrelevant. I get job notifications from them everyday which are almost always wildly irrelevant. You would think being able to filter +/- keywords would be essential.

And then of course there are the incessant ghost jobs, and the zillions of jobs posted through Indian tech scammers/middlemen/headhunters who want to make a quick buck with their fake companies. There are probably visa-scamming jobs on their as well. What a disaster.

And looking at the salaries and job descriptions now compared with 20 years ago, it’s absolutely shocking. I’m seeing salary ranges for some positions in the 50K range which is utterly outrageous. 20 years ago the low-end salary range was upwards of 90K. The cost of housing and everything else has gone up astronomically in the past twenty years. so these types of salaries aren’t even livable unless maybe you live in closet with 10 other people.

I might not be the brightest, most mathematical person in the world, but I’m not stupid either. I have the ability to learn and master computer languages and skills when I study them. The problem isn’t that, the problem is that there are a huge number of skills and technologies out there and you have to choose and focus on ones for fields in which you think you have a realistic chance of getting a job.

But the way job postings have been in recent years has made it difficult if not impossible to find jobs. Every job post will have a list of different skills. For example, for configuration management tools alone, there are multiple ones like Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Salt, etc. Should every job candidate be expected one human being to learn all these tools in depth? You could invest an extensive amount of time learning just one of these tools, but why if no one is ever going to pay you for it? And configuration management is only one area. Think of this situation amplified many, many times.

It seems like the most important skill would be the ability to be able to learn new tools but that’s not what employers put in their job requirements. They want candidates with multiple years of experience using multiple, specific tools for multiple tasks.

I found this to be the case even with non-tech jobs. Even for simple jobs like a park maintenance worker who essentially drives around and empties trash bins in a park, employers often want candidates with multiple years of experience doing specific tasks. It’s insane.

It was never like this before. In the past when I was younger, and before the Internet, I could respond to classified ads and register with temp agencies and provide them with my resume. Based on the skills on my resume, employers actually wanted to hire people like me. I felt like my skills were needed and wanted.

One thing I think that has happened is that a lot of the people responsible for hiring for jobs at companies now are ‘dreamers’ – foreigners who were given preferential college admissions by universities – who have something against hiring native American citizens – or else perhaps people who have simply gone to college and been utterly brainwashed.

Now in this current United States I feel that, despite having spent decades in technology and learning different skills and tools, I’m not needed nor wanted. I feel that my country has literally thrown me away. It feels like a punch to the gut and sometimes it makes me physically ill when I realize how dire and terrible the situation is.

It’s almost impossible to even find postings for entry, junior, and mid-level jobs. Everything is senior level. Also, as technology progresses, it is increasingly difficult if not impossible to be able to create a home lab environment on which to learn, as the types of server infrastructure which employers require multiple years of experience on are enterprise systems costing tens of thousands of dollars.

At the same time all this has happened, I have seen my city become flooded with foreigners, to such a vast extent it has completely destroyed the old city I once new. The White middle class is gone. Those were the people who innovated and created small and medium businesses. They are the people who hired people with skills like me. That’s all gone now. The city feels like a completely alien and utterly drab place. I guess if you’re Mexican or Chinese it might be a place to be excited about. There are many of your compatriots here who will hire you for jobs. You can get all types of work including gig and temporary jobs.

But if you’re not Chinese or Mexican you’re basically fucked. I don’t think I’ve seen one White maintenance worker of any kind here in at least twenty years. I knew people who worked exactly those types of gig jobs and managed to go through college way back when. Those days are long gone.

Also, because of the flood of labor, I see an inordinate amount of job postings that include skills from a wide range of specialties and what were once considered distinct careers in IT: systems administration, database administration, network administration, etc. These were once distinct fields and to expect candidates to have in-depth knowledge and experience in all of them is frankly outrageous.

I’m not a jobs expert, but I’m guessing there’s no one tracking how extremely bad this situation is. I mean for example going back to the year 2000 and looking at the tech jobs posting categories on Craigslist and looking at all the jobs posted there, evaluating them in terms of the skills that were sought after, the salaries being offered, and the volume of jobs, compared with the present.

Based on my experience the change has been absolutely catastrophic. Yes I know Craigslist is pretty much dead for jobs, but there is no other site that is close to equivalent to what it was back around 2000.

There is LinkedIn, which makes me bring up the issue of privacy. Why should it be necessary to spray minute details about my career, educational and job histories to everyone on the Internet, just so I can work? Who thought of that?

I understand that in any field there are going to be some prominent people, like innovators and big name developers whom everyone knows and who travel around the world to speak at conferences. But for an average job where you’re working for some company in your little niche, is it necessary for all the details of your life to be publicly posted for everyone in the world to see?

There has been absolutely no progress in the job market for people in the field of information technology, and things have gone backwards.

What has happened to the IT job market in the United States is nothing short of a travesty. It is a mass betrayal of tech workers and nothing short of treason.