Transcription
I literally just got roasted in a meeting today, and honestly, I kind of deserve it. I got laid off a few weeks ago from Microsoft, and to be honest, I don't necessarily feel stressed about finding a job. We'll continue looking for a job in the field. It was a little iffy. They're calling it a termination based on things that happened in 2023 for tech layoffs are really big. Literally, every single one of these companies are conducting layoffs, even companies that, like, you've never even heard before.
But right now, if you look to the layoffs, I mean, just last year, we got probably like 150,000 people being fired in the tech industry, and this year so far, almost 80,000. We're kind of on track to fire the same amount of people as last year, which is 150,000 people. That's insane considering some of the highest paying jobs are in tech, which means that some of the highest paying Americans no longer have jobs.
And Intel is still on the layoff spree. What in the world has happened to Intel? Somebody tell me, what's Intel's problem here? They just fired off another 529 people. I mean, the layoffs are nonstop. Intel has basically gutted like a third of their entire workforce in the span of like less than 15 months. And this company is really struggling because they used to be like this massive semiconductor provider. And they really screwed up over the years, like not partnering up with the latest iPhones. You know, that was supposed to be a deal they were going to sign like a decade ago, but they neglected that. Said they only want to make computers. They also didn't really do well in the AI race, which Nvidia and AMD did extremely well. And their semiconductor production is also being taken over by a lot of Taiwan companies, too. Intel just simply isn't doing good, and the stock price reflects that. Stock price is the same as back in the late 1990s.
Intel cutting 21,000 jobs. That was just about a month and a half ago. And the fact that they cut 21,000 jobs is insane to me, which makes it by far the biggest layoff by a massive company, uh, this year. Okay, it's bigger than Microsoft. It's bigger than Amazon layoffs. 21,000 people. That comes just after the 15,000 job layoff by Intel because Intel fired like 15,000 people last year. Intel is just cutting just too many jobs just in the span of like 12 to 15 months. They probably fired about like 38,000 people. And that's not even an exaggeration. And Nintendo will continue to reduce more and more of their holdings, including this massive real estate building in Europe, which they have for more than 40 years. And the selling of this like 12 acre site is raising $12 million, which isn't even that much money.
And yes, layoffs are everywhere. It's not looking good. But let me tell you, there are more Intel layoffs than I've ever seen. They recently got a new CEO, and this is the new CEO's entry, just basically doing some of the fattest layoffs. We're seeing tech layoffs. We are seeing insurance companies firing people because revenue is extremely bad due to Trump's policies. We're also seeing massive cuts in healthcare. We're also seeing massive cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, which is affecting a lot of workers. We're also seeing massive layoffs in the banking sector and the federal sector. So you got all these layoffs, all these people in the market getting jobs, fresh college grads trying to get jobs, too. So they're competing with you, and also people coming to the US through visa programs to work as well. So the job market is just too hyper competitive to the point that people can't even find jobs despite having 10 years of work experience, which traditionally could easily land you any job that you want.
Check out some of these videos, guys. Did anyone else get laid off from Microsoft today? No, just my husband. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, we had some surprise news this morning. There was a bunch of layoffs at Microsoft, and a lot of people in Seattle, Bellevue area did get laid off with severance packages, including him. So, um, we now have a big decision to make whether we stay here in the US or go back to Australia. It all depends on where he can find another job. Uh, so yeah, if anyone has any job opportunities or contacts for, you know, jobs in tech, in program management, coding, that kind of stuff, yeah, just hit me up in the comments, especially if it's here in the Seattle, Bellevue area or even back in Australia, like in Sydney, Sunshine Coast, Brizzy. Um, we're open, we're open to seeing what we can get and seeing where this leads. Okay, thanks.
I just don't think that no one is just talking about this enough. Bro, can someone please tell me why it's so hard to find a normal 9 to 5 job in 2024? Can somebody please tell me that? I'mma tell y'all something. I used to work at Chick-fil-A last year, right? I worked there from October to probably, I'm gonna say around April or something like that. Then basically I got fired for a reason I'm not going to talk about. And then I'm thinking that, hey, this is just a little time to just decide what I want to do in life because this is my, that was my senior year of high school. Now I graduated. Now I'm just trying to find me a new job. Tell me why I went on Indeed, put in so many applications, and did not get a single job. Not a single one. I'm talking about I applied at Starbucks. I applied at W. I applied at Car Wash. I, I applied at Subway, um, um, McDonald's. The list, the list goes on. I applied at almost every fast food place that you could ever think of. And I did not get a call back from any last one of them.
Okay. Okay. I'm going to tell y'all this. I got an email back from Starbucks saying that they're full. They're not hiring. But come on, bro. And I'm saying it be the people, it'll be the restaurants and businesses that be having saying that the word "hire" sign out front of, out front of their store, front of their business, be the ones that be the main ones not calling back. I mean, if y'all are putting up the "we're hiring" sign, ain't the whole point of that is to accept applications or at least give emails or calls back. I'mma just tell y'all that trying to find a job in 2024 is not for the weak, bro. I'm going to tell you that right now. Yeah. So, if you got a job right now, stay there because it is becoming progressively hard to get a new job.
Tell me why I went into my local shoes this week. Went in, filled out application online, called, and she's like, "Oh, yeah, you want to set up an interview appointment?" I said, "Let's get it." Thursday. Thursday comes around. I'm there. I'm dressed up all nice. I walk in there with a smile on my face. I greet this one person. He tells me, "Okay, so we're going to do the one interview today, and then depending on how things go, we'll have a second interview and we'll send you an email regarding the second interview." Right then, right there, red flag goes off my head thinking, I'm not getting this job at all. So, they just told me to come in for an interview knowing damn well they're not going to give me the job. They just want to see what I look like. Mind you, any job I've ever gotten, and I've had to do an in-person interview, I got the job the same day. And apparently, I do not fit the description of a shoes employee. We go do the interview. I think I do pretty good. Stumbled over my words a couple times, you know.
Long story short, 28 years ago, I started in this building as a contractor. And, uh, know a lot of you guys want story time as to the last video. Listen, I don't want to leave. I like my job here. I'm going to miss my friends. I've said goodbye to everybody today. This is officially my last day at Microsoft, and you know, doing the old tour around to some buildings I used to work at and, you know, saying goodbye to people. But this is where it started. This is where it's going to end. I do want to say, I know a lot of people think I have ill will or I'm angry. I'm just sad. Uh, I like working for Microsoft. I get it's a big corporation. They can only do what they can do. But I want to thank them for all they've done for me over the years. I really have enjoyed working here and I'm going to miss it an awful lot. So, everybody that has all those weird comments in the last one, they really are a good company. I don't like how this is ending, but story time of how I got fired from my corporate America job because of social media. Buckle up your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen. Wow, this primer smells so good.
I graduated college in 2019, and I really wanted to work for a beauty brand because I love beauty so much. And I was able to land a job at L'Oreal, which I was so excited about. They especially wanted me because of how much I loved beauty. I even had an Instagram. It only had like 2,000 followers at the time. Fast forward to 2020, I was starting to grow a lot on social media, and a lot of my posts started to go viral. I also did so well at my job that I even got a new role. Everyone I worked with knew I had social media because that's honestly why I got hired, because of my passion for beauty. So my manager knew, HR knew, everyone knew. One day I just get this random email from HR, and they want to have a meeting. And honestly, my heart sank. I'm like, "What did I do?" And I get on this call, and they're like, "Oh, your social media? Yeah, it's a conflict of interest." So at this point, I'm like, "What do you mean you guys knew about my social media? You know, you never said it was a conflict of interest." Apparently, someone anonymously complained about my social media saying that it was a conflict. So that's where the conversation even started. Now, at this point, none of this mattered because I actually got a new job, and it was with Chashido. I was already moving on to a new role. So that whole chapter just closed. Everything is fine and well.
I worked for Chashido for about 8 months before another conflict happens. So when I worked at Chashido, everybody knew about my social media again. Same kind of situation, but this time I guess one of my videos on TikTok went violently viral. Someone at the company, I guess, saw my video and then told on me and was wondering how I was able to do my current day-to-day job and social media at the same time. At this point, it's November 2021. I was given two choices at this point. So, either work for social media or work for my corporate America job. I tried so many things to try to stay there and do social media at the same time. I even asked if I could just do social media posts about their brand and like the brands that they own, and they said no because I'm not properly trained by any of their makeup artists. It's funny because at this time, a lot of the brands that they own were trying to send me PR and wanted to work with me, but yet they were trying to tell me that I basically wasn't good enough to do posts for them. I didn't want to mention that I didn't even work in marketing. I literally worked in product development. So, it had nothing to do with social media. So, I told them, "No, I'm going to keep doing social media." So, they told me I need to either resign or they'll fire me. So, I said, "All right, go ahead and fire me." They fired me 3 weeks before Christmas. At the time, I cried for like 3 weeks because I really did not know what I was going to do. I did not make enough money on social media to sustain this as a full-time job. By the next month, everything changed, and this became my full-time job. I still love Chashido so much. I love all of their brands. So, there's no hate. There's no shade towards the brand at all. Just wanted to share my experience cuz I've been seeing a lot of people talk about this kind of issue, and I think it needs to be addressed. None of this would be possible without you guys. So, thank you guys so much for supporting me from the bottom of my heart. I am so grateful.
So, I just found out that I did not get the job that I was interviewing for. Or I made it around to the final interviews and everything, and they just decided to go with somebody else. It is what it is. And in full transparency, it was definitely a rush application, and it was going to be the easier route that I knew I was settling for. So like, there's something in me that's not even like mad I didn't get it. Um, it's just kind of like, oh damn, I like I could have had the security and the comfort that I like want so badly. Um, but it's okay. There, there's other jobs to apply for. There's other things to have, you know, working in my favor. And I'm just going to keep on moving forward. It's not going to break me. It ain't going to shake me. It just is what it is. Just the nature of the world of work we're in. So, I'm going to keep on moving. Keep on doing my thing. And that's it. Didn't get the job.
The hardest part about unemployment, especially extended unemployment, whether you were impacted by layoffs or you were fired or whatever it may be, the hardest part is continuing to have the energy to show up for yourself in an environment, in a job market where the narrative is constantly telling you that you spending all this energy showing up for yourself is not adding up to anything. It's not working. And I can't tell you like how much energy it takes for me mentally every day to be doing the same thing over and over again, to constantly like get be getting my hopes up and then get not getting the job or getting ghosted or spending all this time doing these take-home assignments and then not hearing back or whatever. It's just, it is such an exhausting job market. But I don't have a choice. I have to continue to wake up. I have to take care of myself or to the best of my ability. I have to go through all these motions day in and day out. I have to constantly change my approach because I'm maybe I'm not doing things right. Maybe everything they're telling me to do is not what I'm supposed to be doing, and maybe I should switch it up because whatever they've been telling me to do, it's not, it's, it's been months and I still haven't landed anything. So, I have to change my approach. That constant code switching, that constant like need to feel like you're not doing it right because this job market is terrible, and it's just constantly like hitting at your ego. That is what is so [ __ ] hard about unemployment. You are just constantly putting in so much effort every day. Not only to do job search, but just to function as a human being, probably more so than you were doing when you had a full-time job because this type of work is rooted in a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, which is just a lot, can be a lot harder to manage. And then you start to question yourself, like, is it me? Are all these rejections coming? Cuz like, I'm stupid. I'm, you know, what am I doing wrong? Like, what is wrong with me? And then you internalize it. You internalize these rejections. You internalize all of this negative energy that you're constantly facing every single day. And then you make it, you tell yourself, you convince yourself that it is a reflection of yourself. And doing that every single day, several times a day, it's not good for the mental health. It's really not good. But again, we don't really have a choice. We have to wake up the next day. We have to continue to show up because we can't be unemployed forever. We can collect, we cannot collect unemployment forever. But again, it just makes it so much harder because it's rooted into so much anxiety and negativity and toxic thoughts about yourself that you're getting reminded of like consistently.
Like I am 32 years old. I have 10 years of professional experience. I have my Masters from Georgetown. And I don't say that to brag. I feel like I could go on a whole tangent about higher education and how I think it's more valuable to have like real life world work experience than a bachelor's degree. Whatever. Doesn't matter. I have all these credentials, right, that to society are seemingly impressive. I even know a girl who like won a Forbes Under 30, 30 Under 30 award. And no, she didn't pay for it. She legitimately won it for the work that she's done in marketing, and even she got laid off. Like, and here I am just like again, 10 years into my career being like, "What the fuck?" Like, "What, what the [ __ ] am I doing wrong?" And I'm sure there are some things I'm doing wrong. I'm sure I could clean up my interview answers. I'm sure my resume could be better, but you just don't know which variable you're not doing right. So, you don't know like what to improve. Or I don't know. It's just, it's just hard. It's hard to wake up every day to show up for yourself. Not just from like a job perspective, but just in general. Like the world is [ __ ] right now. The world is [ __ ] [ __ ]. Okay. And the economy sucks. The job market sucks. The world again, society is just so [ __ ] right now. And I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I have to get up. I have to show up. I have to put in all this unpaid labor into trying to figure out my next step, but I don't really know what my next step will be or when this chapter of my life will be over. And this is just constant in my brain, right? And that is what's so hard about unemployment, showing up for yourself in a world that makes it really hard to do that, in a world that tells you what you're doing is not enough, even though you feel like you're putting in so much mental energy to do so.
I am a senior at Cornell. I've applied to over 300 jobs. Who has a job right now? It kind of sucks cuz the school's expensive. I'm an Econ major. I have a 3.7 GPA, and I cannot get a full-time job. The only reason I'm not broke is because I've saved up working on campus and then also doing class action settlements on claim. Basically, brands pay you out. So, I made like 8K doing that so far. Definitely recommend. It's passive income. But if I didn't have that, I would literally be broke. I cannot get a job. I know. I might be cooked. What do I do?
If you ever need a little bit of reassurance that it's not you, it's the job market. Just know that last week I applied and interviewed for a part-time bookseller position at a local bookstore near me. And mind you, this bookstore just happens to have a stationary section. It's like a bookstore, but they just casually have stationary products like most bookstores do. So, I went to the interview, you know, prepared to answer questions about books, about stationary. But I went in because I like books. Anyways, I get there, the interview, it goes good. You know, it could have gone much worse, could have gone better, but it went well. Like, have experience. I have full open availability. Again, this was a position that was part-time, $19 an hour, about cap, 20 hours a week. Also, I mean, it's a retail job, so it doesn't matter, but I have a degree, and I also have conversational skills in two additional languages. And this bookstore was located in a highly tourism-centered area. So, I'm tri-lingual applying for a part-time bookseller position at a tourist hub location. Anyways, they got back to me yesterday, uh, to tell me that I didn't get the job, which, you know, is fine. It's whatever. It happens. But what killed me the most about them telling me I didn't get the position was not because I didn't have the qualifications or the experience to back me applying for the position or having a bad interview. It was the fact that I was beat out by somebody with more stationary experience. Like, we're really at a point in time where we can't even get part-time retail positions because we're getting beat out by people with some of the most like specialized skill sets. Like, what do you mean, like I didn't get the job?
There is no such thing as a good job anymore. And I think that we need to collectively just understand that. The days of just applying or walking with application or calling or knowing a friend and getting a job, those days are completely over. And what's even worse is that like you can't even go get a job at anything under like $25 an hour and live a life by yourself, live a life independently. And I wish our parents understood.