"The first thing recruiters say when they see my profile is it's very expensive"

Recruiters want talent that is close to free and Stanford / Oxbridge level of prestige and intelligence.

In the past the recruiters would just scan the school / FAANG employer and just put you on the "potential" pile to get your toe in the door in front of the other 500 applicants that applied with you.

Now today it is 1 position 2000 applicants and AI ATS systems now looking at the applications.

Why hire anyone when the recruiters and existing managers can just use GPT-5 / Grok 4 or Claude to get the job done for less than $20?

It's not just engineering or management graduates that cannot find jobs.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but why would you choose doordash over a lower paying project management job and work your way back up, especially if they've "fallen behind on their mortgage payments"

Tangentially but I've yet to see a free retirement planning web app that properly models your incoming peaking at a certain age. They usually just ask for your current salary then assume yearly increases until retirement ! How is that not pure deception? Sure it probably applies to lawyers, doctors etc but what about the masses?

The reality seems to be when you get too expensive and too old at 45/50 you get made redundant and then have to eat through some savings and then take a 50% pay cut finally ?

Other tools like Projection Lab (not a submarine ad I promise) let you define employments and rbitrary points at which your salary increases or decreases, allowing much better modelling

Here is the secret decoder ring needed to understand what is going on: "too expensive" is a code word for "too old." It's just simple age discrimination.

As long as my beard wasn't grey, I had no problem getting job offers. Once I got a new job in 14 hours.

Now, even if you get a phone screen, they can see your grey beard, and you never hear back from them.

How is he 51, managing 150 people, and not financially independent? Americans need to learn that you can't guarantee employment stability. You need to live FAR below your means. He should have sold his home and down sized before letting himself fall behind on a mortgage, and his wife should have been out doing doordash too. Stay at home wife is for the rich.