Please feel free to reach out, and then we can see if there is a good match.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/ https://github.com/shellandbull

I'll send an application over. my contact email is code.mario.gintili [at] gmail [dot] com

The best analogy I can find, if not a tired one, is the equivalence of software engineering to tool-and-die making.

In prior generations where manufacturing was king, it was a necessary operational skill set in order to produce things at scale, yet is much less (if no longer) relevant in the age of additive or subtractive manufacturing, where quantities can be varied according to immediate requirements.

Along the same lines, a skill set in traditional software engineering is less enamored in the age of AI agents that can better regurgitate boilerplate code.

The corresponding next-level-up analogy is the tool-and-die maker that learns 3D modeling + additive manufacturing, with FE analysis and CNC skills as a fallback. For software engineers, it's AI agent prompt engineering and data modeling, according to use cases defined by business needs.

You need to put on your entrepreneurial hat and figure out how to do things faster, with greater accuracy, relevant to business needs - not navel-gazing at package management and build automation exclusively.

This is, of course, an extremely naïve view of the state of things, though I cannot imagine, as a generalist, how one could survive with increasingly niche skills that, a decade ago, would have commanded six-figure salaries.

Good luck!

Also 3D printing is good at making unique objects, but if you want to make ten thousand of the same object, you definitely need someone who knows the "old" ways. They're not irrelevant at all. And you can even use a 3D printer to help make your tools and dies.

I do 100% agree with you, thanks for the good wishes

But more importantly, this is only relevant for vomiting boilerplate code. I don't know about you but I always did a lot more than that.

I wish that rto was being handled with more flexibility and empathy, and I appreciate that travelling to work can be very difficult to reconcile with location and parental/caring responsibilities, but this is unfortunately where we are.

I'd also recommend looking beyond startups and pure software/tech companies. There are many businesses in eg manufacturing, or in less mainstream locations, that struggle to hire decent devs.

For context: I'm a UK-based developer and have recent experience of a fairly substantial period of unemployment. I now have a job with a great business, but also with a substantial commute.

That's where I'm aiming for.

I know there's a million companies that would benefit from my work and can pay well, but they're just not the ones that find you on Linkedin, or post on Hacker News

1. The "hidden job market" is real - most roles never get posted publicly. LinkedIn connections and warm intros close more doors than cold applications.

2. Consider targeting specific niches where your Rails/Node/Go stack is highly valued. Fintech and healthtech companies often prefer experienced engineers who can ship reliable code over "move fast and break things" types.

3. Don't underestimate smaller companies (50-200 employees). They often pay competitively but get far fewer applications than FAANG-adjacent companies.

4. Your GitHub looks solid. One thing that sometimes helps is having a few short-form technical posts on your own site or blog - it helps establish expertise when hiring managers Google your name.

The market will turn. 10+ years of shipping real products is valuable, and companies that recognize execution skills will find you. Keep pushing.

I don't know if companies are just in a "wait and see" stance to see the effect of AI coding agents, or if it's the sign of a wider slowdown.

100% remote is also a tough ask. I've noticed increasingly job roles are listed as 2-3 days in the office as companies awkwardly transition back to the office.

At least, that way you know it’s not the remote work portion that’s keeping you from a job.

I’m in the US and everyone I’ve talked to who wants to move have been discussing the challenges of getting a foot in the door anywhere.

> I’m in the US and everyone I’ve talked to who wants to move have been discussing the challenges of getting a foot in the door anywhere.

Really? I thought the US was doing extremely well

Your best bet to find a job in this market is to have some connection to the hiring manager. It might be a friend of a friend of a former colleague. Or both having membership in the same semi-open community. But you need a way to say “hey, I’m a real human being and especially interested in this job; please at least take a look at my resume!”

The company I work for is a medium sized business, in residential and commercial construction. For example, a recent react native mobile dev position my company posted had about 300 applications in the first hour, with about 500 total in the first week on indeed. Of those applications, 90% didn’t have most of any of the requirements for the position. The job description says that we don’t sponsor H1B visa’s (because it’s stupidly expensive now). Of the 10% that somewhat met the minimum qualifications, all but 1 required sponsorship. This was listed as a hybrid role, only 20 people applied from the region where the office is.

We already know from previous roles that a huge percentage of people with resume’s that say they have the required skills, actually won’t come close to making it through the interview process.

While as a company we like AI/ML tools, and encourage our staff to learn them, and use them where appropriate, we want to invest in everyone’s skills with new tools. We try not to use AI where a human connection is important (hiring, sales, etc). We’ve had to resort to AI for dealing with the massive influx of low quality job applications and it sucks.

Basically anyone who goes above and beyond at this point automatically get’s at least an interview.

I do understand why so many people are just applying to every job that shows up, it makes sense. But it really does make the prospect of finding those few great people very difficult.

We aren’t a ruby/rails shop otherwise I’d reach out to OP.

Thank you

Keep in mind that at some places this is general policy, and that tech is given an exception. For example, my company has 2-3 days in-office, but everyone in tech is allowed to be 100% remote, even though that’s not written anywhere.

That being said, this is about unemployment not affordability. I can afford where I am, if I had a job

Hypothetically being able to afford something if things were hypothetically different is not an indicator of what is affordable in reality.

unemployment is an extraordinary circumstance for me. Extraordinary circumstances affect affordability in an extraordinary way.

even with employment far below my usual pay I can afford where I am.

Is there a particular specialisation you have, and then how does someone who needs that specialisation find you?

Particularly if the job is 100pct remote, you’re participating in a global market.

Or if there’s a local company that needs you… even if the work isn’t the most challenging… Can at least leverage the real-world relationships? Anyone at prior jobs who can help with connections? (Never hurts to ask).

I hope you are able to find something that provides at least an emotional boost while the broader search continues!

Being a generalist and having experience delivering products all the way its what makes me stand out. That being said, I've done some cool pieces with backoffices and dev tooling and developer experience

> Or if there’s a local company that needs you… even if the work isn’t the most challenging… Can at least leverage the real-world relationships? Anyone at prior jobs who can help with connections? (Never hurts to ask).

I've done my best and decided to take any job even if it doesn't pay as much. I have exhausted all of my prior connections

Thanks for the good wishes

After the post-COVID boom, companies started laying off people in large numbers. Couple that with tightening restrictions on remote work, most US companies now require work authorization, EU companies have tax compliance requirements, etc.and remote options without a formal employment relationship have become nearly impossible to find.

I don't think learning new programming languages will make much difference at this point. There isn't a new shiny technology that everyone's chasing, and AI companies are hiring very few people. Your best bet is probably finding an in-person job and relocating.

Over the last two years I have applied to at least 150 jobs. For each application which would accept a cover letter, I wrote one. And I only applied to roles which I really believed I would fit into - I didn't just spray and pray.

I think I've had 4-5 companies that I got to interview with. The closest one to hiring ended up choosing another guy who had a little more frontend experience (this was for a backend role). But they said they really liked me. That's great, but it doesn't help :)

The rest were usually silent rejections. I'm actually grateful when I receive a rejection email (vs indefinite silence).

Along the way, I've built maybe 8 demo projects as part of the application process. I got to show off a few to the companies, and despite delivering what I honestly believe were clean, quality solutions, I didn't get the jobs.

Eventually I gave up applying for some months. It's just to demoralizing to keep trying and getting nowhere. Now I build things that make me happy (for no money), like my new web game, Vector Defense -> https://michaelteter.com/vector.html

I've started applying to companies again. If nothing happens in the next six months, I'll most likely walk away from my tech career and just get a "regular job". Maybe I'll open a gym in Bangkok; they don't have many, and the few decent ones have surprisingly high monthly fees. I could compete; and I love hospitality and providing nice experiences for people. So if anyone wants to partner with me, hit me up!

That's kind of a throwback. (I know these are different games.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_TD

Good luck in your search!

There are still plenty of jobs at local software shops, banks, consulting firms, hospitals, government agencies and more, and you are at the front of the line for all of those. A lot of them enforce as little as 2-3 days in the office. Apply there instead.

I've come to learn that your salary as an engineer is more directly tied to your company's success rather than your personal outcomes as an engineer.

I've seen people padding buttons for £700/day working for large brands

I've seen people train open weight models for £350/day trying to ship an MVP.

The last permanent role I negotiated had a TC of £160,000/year. I'm open to go down to £90,000/year or even less for the right opportunity

As for contract work, my last 3 projects were £600/day, £700/day and £550/day. Again, I can go down for something stable.

If you want that £160k+/year, you might as well either go to a quant firm like Citadel or Jane Street (But there is a 0% chance it will be remote) or build your own startup.

> I'm open to go down to £90,000/year or even less for the right opportunity

£90k is not bad, but not the best either, but anything higher than 120k in the UK means you lose 45% of that.

But the risk is that someone else will go even lower than your offer until the role can be done internally by another person using an AI agent.

The point is, most businesses that are non-quant and non-big tech, non-big AI do not want to pay the extortionate level of taxes in the UK and it makes SWEs in the UK look very expensive and the jobs + office move off-shore.

I have assessed various AI models & agents. I don't think I can be replaced by them, so I feel safe on that end.

That being said, I don't think my potential employers fully understand that.

> The point is, most businesses that are non-quant and non-big tech, non-big AI do not want to pay the extortionate level of taxes in the UK and it makes SWEs in the UK look very expensive and the jobs + office move off-shore.

Yes, this is where contract work came particularly handy. But the government made a big deal about taking them offshore due to IR35 pushing them out

Intelligent people are cutting costs instead of trying to earn more money

In the UK you're usually "discovered" by a company's talent team or independent recruiters.

I've had very little to no success with direct applications

What covid did to office work lasted many years and now there is finally a reverse reaction where people (not just office managers) are rediscovering that hey we actually get things going if we sit in the same room, at the same time, working on the same problem.

AI is a bit like outsourcing / off-shoring. Best results are on tasks that are well-defined, of a fair size, and well-documented. Incidentally the tasks that used to go to someone sitting remote.

as it stands, I have now been unemployed(while searching) for 3 months.

I have decided to make some serious changes to my search and what I do with my spare time.

I'll post a follow-up to this.

Idk how I'm supposed to talk about the last 2 years in interviews and every move up and out. I would have left earlier but it's challenging

Rather try to reduce hours to 75% if possible, or in the worst case: Smoke a joint in the morning :-D

But do not quit right now1

Hopefully future employers are sympathetic to the situation some of us (alot of us?) are in

Unless the company is a FAANG company or hedge fund, the UK tech scene is dead.

I don’t see any good UK startups worth joining in the UK. All the good ones are in SF / NY, etc.

Try to look beyond startups and pure software companies. There are many businesses in eg manufacturing or in less fashionable locations that struggle to hire decent devs and will often pay pretty good† money.

† obviously not London/SV/NY/FAANG money

> Unless the company is a FAANG company or hedge fund, the UK tech scene is dead.

That is VERY, VERY true

> I don’t see any good UK startups worth joining in the UK. All the good ones are in SF / NY, etc.

There's a few popping up all over the EU too but from my search a single hub in the US(Say Austin, TX) has a bigger and better ecosystem than the entirety of UK+EU.

Funding is better over there too

The primary difference is that many expect on-site and they pay is generally not US-startup scale.

Many companies also expect you to at least have some knowledge of their local language (e. G., German, Spanish or Polnish) and not just English. One has to adapt to be competitive here.

Software Development Lich. Does have a nice ring to it.

Maybe my old Nintendo Switch can be my phylactery. I have a particular fondness for it.

And programmers haven't gotten any better in the last 5 years

And my Github https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-gintili-software-engineer/

Not even remotely close, but I'm certainly not thriving in any identifiable way. I'm just leaving a comment in hope that things improve. I ain't there (UK) no more, but if I werzle, I'd say:

Best wishes from Pill.

Good luck and keep pushing! There's something out there, for sure.

I have ~20 years of experience. I wrote a book about Ruby. I have GitHub repositories with thousands of stars. I have my own successful projects written in Ruby/Rails. I’ve spoken at conferences and contributed a lot to the Ruby/Rails community. I was a perfect match — and I still wasn’t hired.

This wasn’t a one-off. The same thing happened with several Ruby/Rails startups.

You know what I did next? I switched to Gen/Applied AI. And the difference was huge. The feedback became much better, and salaries were 25–50% higher. The tech itself wasn’t that different — mostly dynamic languages. I had to learn new things, but it took months, not years.

I also pushed myself deeper toward understanding AI properly. I genuinely enjoy this space. I started learning the fundamentals and even built my own learning materials (for example, howllmworks.com). You don’t need to go that deep to get hired, but I wanted to. The field is fascinating.

What’s funny is that many companies hiring “AI engineers” don’t really know what they’re doing. I’ve had interviews where they openly said: “We don’t really have AI expertise, but we know we need AI.” That’s how things are right now. It’s both good and bad. They can’t really judge your skills properly — but that also means your chances of passing are higher.

As for the Ruby/Rails world — I’m honestly very disappointed. The market feels completely saturated. There are too many experienced engineers competing for too few roles. Being good is no longer enough.

One company literally told me my interview performance was too good. They suspected I was using AI. That was the feedback. Twenty years of experience, open-source work, a published book — none of that mattered. “You’re too good, and there are too many candidates like you.” That’s how I understood it.

I’ve seen this happen repeatedly. It’s not just one bad experience.

At this point, I genuinely believe the Ruby/Rails ecosystem is shrinking. The whole “one-person framework” idea that DHH has been promoting made sense years ago, but not anymore. The problems it was solving simply don’t exist in the same way today.

With LLMs, the world changed. You take the best tools available. Next.js with standardized React components instead of Stimulus and Turbo. Hosted auth instead of rolling your own. When I needed to integrate something like Clerk, I just dropped in a component and moved on. There are tons of ready-made solutions in the React ecosystem.

Now compare that to Ruby. Are there modern AI libraries? Yes, technically. Are they well-maintained? Not really. You’re often dealing with abandonware. LangChain officially supports Python and TypeScript — not Ruby. And like it or not, AI today is happening in Python.

The more time you spend clinging to Ruby/Rails, the further behind you get. That’s just reality. My advice is simple: if you can, move on. The opportunity window in AI is wide open right now, but it won’t stay that way forever. 2026 is probably the last really good entry point.

A lot of money is being thrown around at AI, it's a good time to open a company :) I agree.

> As for the Ruby/Rails world — I’m honestly very disappointed. The market feels completely saturated. There are too many experienced engineers competing for too few roles. Being good is no longer enough.

Ruby/Rails, and other platforms NEED deep AI integration. That wave is coming.

I am surprised that people don't do a rails new for their new startups. I still see it as the king of web frameworks.

> With LLMs, the world changed. You take the best tools available. Next.js with standardized React components instead of Stimulus and Turbo. Hosted auth instead of rolling your own. When I needed to integrate something like Clerk, I just dropped in a component and moved on. There are tons of ready-made solutions in the React ecosystem.

Show me those ready made solutions? I haven't used them commercially so I can't vouch for them

> Now compare that to Ruby. Are there modern AI libraries? Yes, technically. Are they well-maintained? Not really. You’re often dealing with abandonware. LangChain officially supports Python and TypeScript — not Ruby. And like it or not, AI today is happening in Python.

True, I should probably ship something in Python and just add that to my inventory.

> The more time you spend clinging to Ruby/Rails, the further behind you get. That’s just reality. My advice is simple: if you can, move on. The opportunity window in AI is wide open right now, but it won’t stay that way forever. 2026 is probably the last really good entry point.

I agree with you! time to move to new pastures

Technology never matters, but marketing does. Traditionally you had to use 'esoteric' technologies to attract top talent, which has long been held as an important factor in startup success. Rails had that moment in the sun, but that was decades ago.

Granted, it remains to be seen if the talent differential still matters in the AI era, but hiring norms haven't caught up either way.

disclaimer: we are 7 days a week in person

Edit: To answer your question I work at least probably 14 hours, but there are times when it's less and times when it's more, depends how hard I can push given the constraints. It varies.

Is this sarcasm?

Isn't the idea of the site to "hack" as in thinking outside the box, building your own projects and companies, doing things in interesting new ways?

I do believe in the 1 man SaaS legends. Any of us could build a little app overnight and watch it succeed.

I just don't have the sales/marketing muscle to my efforts

It's all fun and games until the bank takes back your house.

Also, while I love programming, I have zero interest in owning a business.

Right now(specially looking at the world economy) It's all about getting yourself a nice, stable placement.

I haven't stopped hacking away, but I need an income

1) No family to support 2) A set of assets to support not having income?