Ask HN: Give me your terrible job-search advice

By: SMAAART

’m hunting for a new gig, aiming for an Operations role with an AI or AI-driven company in NYC, and the usual “good” advice hasn’t moved the needle.

I am reading Ideaflow by Jeremy Utley, and in it Jeremy reminded me that sometimes the fastest way to good ideas is to start with awful ones.

So I figured I’d ask the HN tribe: what’s the worst job-search advice you can come up with? The sillier, riskier, or more doomed, the better. I’ll sort through the carnage for anything I can twist into something useful.

Hit me with your terrible ideas.

By: justinyee17

3 hours ago

Develop and advertise the premise of a revolutionary tech product that claims to transform the world using NFTs, crypto, and AI. After obtaining funding for explosive growth within 2 years, rug pull your userbase, raking in millions of dollars in personal assets.

Discard your identity, go into hiding, and run from the FBI for 32 days, until a group of anonymous hackers uses OSINT to retrieve all your data and triangulate your position from your cell phone.

Then, proceed to engage in an 8-hour standoff with the authorities until they flashbang the room and take you into custody. Plead not guilty in your court hearing, even though you know you are, and constantly bring up how you're a good person and always enjoy playing mahjong with your many, many friends.

You get sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, while your words garner sympathy from a niche internet subgroup that claims you were wrongly convicted. Continue to serve your sentence until you're released in 2035, when the job market will finally pick up again.

Since no publicity is bad publicity, at least one CEO will be impressed, regardless of your moral reprehensibility, and reach out with a job offer. But now you don't need to work, because you already have $32 million, a megayacht, and a lifetime's supply of lemon lime soda.

Also, "It's your resume."

By: cindyllm

2 hours ago

[dead]

By: 4ensic

4 hours ago

"Follow your dreams". Without a backup plan, this will statistically doom the vast majority of those who dream of online gaming, being an influencer, or playing professional sports.

Sure there are people who make a living in all 3 areas, but the odds are definitely not in your favor.

By: reify

3 hours ago

I can highly recommend psychoanalysis.

It would be of great benefit to a safer society, if you reflected on your use of the words:

Sillier, riskier, more doomed the better, and the carnage.

Classic material for us psychological types.

maybe you should reconsider working with ai or in any tech role.

you might even find that working in ai or any place in the tech industry, was not your first choice.

The human unconscious mind (ai is not conscious, its a sales pitch), has many ways to manipulate us.

I can recommend a decent book for you:

Lacan: A Beginner's Guide - Beginner's Guides by Lionel Bailly

By: mac3n

4 hours ago

engineering job fairs