this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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Honestly have to agree. I was skeptical on your take until I read his blog post. I see zero reflection on it. Instead I see blame and anger, and yes frustration.
Look, the market is trash, but there are jobs for those willing to learn. He mentions php. Php hasn't been relevant for new jobs for a while. The only time I mention my php knowledge is it it's in reference to an older project I did. He mentions he's kept up on AI by "reading HN and articles" and then saying he has 5 projects he has essentially vibe coded it sounds like. That's not keeping up with AI from a software engineering standpoint. That's just using AI tools and reading articles. Keeping up with AI from an engineering standpoint to me is using their apis, running models, training your own models. Go under the surface, show curiosity.
We work in a field where a fundamental requirement is to keep learning. It's very easy to get comfortable in a role and not learn anything new, but you'll get stuck there. If you have unemployment learn every library you can. Learn Rust, Go, random languages. Choose the packages you don't know very well to build your app. Deploy your app yourself, learn CI/CD and infrastructure. Don't stand still.
I'm a dotnet engineer now. Right now that means I'm 40% dotnet, python, nosql, kubernetes, and React. 5 years ago I was Angular. 10 years ago I was php and webforms. You can't just say "I learned to code, I'm done!". In this field it's never done.
Edit, I also want to call out two other red flags from him. He's unemployed but the thought of in office was a red line for him? I prefer WFH of course, but if it's door dashing or an office, it's a no brainer. Then also if you have that many connections on LinkedIn and no one will vouch for you, that's a moment of introspection. I won't say all or even a majority I would expect to help out for me, but I have a decent network. You have to keep that up
PHP is still massive. I wouldn't highlight the language, but there's nothing wrong with using modern PHP for web applications. Most of the world's websites are probably still based on WordPress, although websites have gotten better at hiding it these days. It's fast, easy to use, massively popular, and some of the PHP frameworks beat out "modern" languages in terms of features and productivity by a long shot. I know software developers like to joke about older tech like PHP and Java, but it's what the world still very much runs on, and especially with PHP people seem to have drunk a bit too much of the Kool-Aid.
Based on bos current CV (https://shawnfromportland.com/Shawn_K_Resume_2025-8.pdf) I think he should be perfectly employable as-is. Experience with various frontend and backend systems in a wide variety of business segments.
I can't see what his CV used to look like (went 404 after HN tore him to shreds it seems) but it seems he's made four new iterations based on the URL alone. I'm guessing he tried to pivot into the "vibe coding" "AI developer" ecosystem as of late in hopes of catching a trend, because based on his experience I don't think he needs to hide his actual competence behind AI like that.