A man with 14 years of professional experience has turned to the internet to seek advice after struggling to find a job following a recent layoff.
“I have 14 years of work experience. I have been out of a job for over 4 months now and it's starting to mess with my head a bit. I have been applying everywhere but I am not getting proper/no responses…,” the user posted.
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In his post, the man said the prolonged unemployment was beginning to affect his mental well-being.
Without directly blaming AI related restructuring seen recently, the user said that his situation could also be due to a few wrong career decisions and joining workplaces that did not turn out as expected.
“Most job applications just go into silence and it's been draining. For anyone who's been through something similar later in their career, what actually helped you during that phase??...” he asked.
Recently many such posts have emerged on Reddit and other platforms, where people raised concerns about being laid off as industries undergo massive AI-related restructuring.
The user said that it has been more difficult than he anticipated to get back on track. As per the post and comments, the user worked in customer support and operations.
14 years of experience and still struggling after a layoff to get back on track
by u/SNiTCH2_0 in IndianWorkplace
As the post gained traction, many people reacted that his sector was the one that was heavily impacted due to AI.
“Voice or chat agents do the customer facing work, another set of agents evaluate their performance, another writes SOPs and call scripts, another does analytics etc etc. What used to take a team of 100 - 1000 humans - support, team leads, managers, QA team, audit team etc - all will be replaced by max 2-3 humans managing and orchestrating these AI agents,” a user said, advising the professional to upskill and work on his resume.
Echoing similar sentiments, another wrote: “Stay strong and focus on learning - AI+logistics or some other part of Ecommerce. It's highly likely you would get a call this year. The budgeting exercise would have started in most major organizations to figure out what next year looks like. This means recruitment will slow down till the end of year and pick up again sometime at the end of January.”
Other people also reacted similarly to the post, noting that the Redditor's domain is increasingly being embedded with AI. This can make job opportunities scarce in the field.
“Bro this is the most affected sector by AI, learn a new technology,” read a response.
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The post has triggered a discussion about how AI is transforming workplaces, leaving laid off professionals with a lot of uncertainty. While the general discourse for such professionals is to upskill, the Redditor also shared that he does not have much financial resources to invest in such initiatives at the moment.
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