I appreciate the who's hiring / who wants to be hired posts. I am curious if we can flip this pattern a little and have some discussions on how people found jobs they are in, or jobs that were meaningful and impactful in their careers.

Locating: How did you find the job? Did it find you?

Interviewing: Was there anything you did that made a difference? Different strategies that might not be intuitive?

Surviving: Every job has its flaws, what have you done to maintain your ability to earn an income despite issues that had made previous jobs difficult / unpleasant / untenable.

Currently unemployed, quit my job working for one of the states in the US earlier this year because they were not treating software development as a first class citizen. It's hard to get work done when you can't get any testing, can't get any infra or PM support, have to do everything yourself in a vaccum. Have to run apps on a server in the closet.

First time in my life I "chose myself" and quit a job instead of staying in something that was very negatively affecting my mental health. It's been hard to find a way to get back into employment without addressing fears of hostile, toxic work environments.

Fingers crossed for some ideas or directions that can give me some new things to try instead of just doing the same shit that fails over and over again.