literally survivorship bias

And then get no jobs because lack of recommendation/bad market/AI, etc..

I'm in the physical security space, straddling electrical work and hardware with IT application/basic networking/database administration day to day. It's way easier than it looks, but only if people put in a minimum amount of effort to learn and maintain the skill set.

I can confidently say that 95% of the techs for the three biggest companies in the industry (and many small groups) know absolutely nothing beyond what some old dude showed them when they started, and never understood why things are done the way they are or how to actually do things properly. Like setting hardware on fire levels of bad. And these aren't just "bad techs", they're the "top guys in the area".

Turnover is insane, there's always an opening for a new field guy. That gets your foot in the door to then learn as much as you can independently and potentially being the one guy who actually knows this shit in the whole region. It only takes one or two times of saving a job from going totally south or fixing a problem nobody else could figure out (usually something fairly obvious) to look like a damn rock star. Then once the company just starts throwing you all of the bullshit jobs nobody else can do and declines when you ask for a raise/better position you take that shiny new resume and hopefully the contacts at the customer sites you worked and move to someone who appreciates the skills you bring. Repeat forever. Profit driven service business fucking sucks and none of this should be necessary, but here we all are using LinkedIn because we have to and picking up the slack for pennies.

I forget why I started writing this, and know the first step sounds like a tone deaf "just find a job" but I literally trained up brand new techs who went from bullshit entry pay to 6 figures in 2 years by being 10% better than the average old timer. If you're looking for an industry that's been very badly in need of competent skilled workers, physical security is something to look into and no matter how bad the market gets security is something all of these big ass companies will gladly pay for.

Related, if anyone is looking in the next few months in CA or WA hit me up, we could use another colleague and the company isn't profit driven due to not needing to generate profit.

Imagine giving this advice to a struggling friend in the real world. Absolutely unhinged from reality, thanks for the laugh