Two things:

>Or you’ll be told to network. With who? Where? How? I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but most of the big meetups in Melbourne are absolutely flooded with people awkwardly job-seeking, and they’re generally pretty miserable.

Begging for a job with a bunch of other beggars isn't networking, and I'm hardly much of an expert here, but I did find it's more about being someone that someone else wants to introduce to other people. You can get there by going through things with people, maybe as coworkers, on projects, or boards, or be standout and wow at conferences where we're talking shop problems. Sort of like starting a business, you can become someone that people want to call or invite or introduce, because you get things done, or do a thing, or know people, or whatever.

Go do things with people and get to know them. Networking gets easier the less you deliberately try to do it, IMO. Then, the calls don't stop, the invites, the pitches, the "hey, got an idea to run by you". Jobs and poaching, sure, gigs started, appointments made, careers switched, etc. But the key seems to be networking ahead of time before you might need your network by staying in motion, not begging at job fairs or "we're unemployed and getting beers" events, and never isolating yourself.

>No, it’s actually the vague aura permeating society that if you lose your job, you will mysteriously die. >The thing is they are in the midst of a psychological crisis, precipitated by their working conditions, and the advice to continue under those conditions can be just as irresponsible, if not more so, than quitting entirely. It’s not that there’s no risk, but the fear seems to outweigh the risk.

You can get used to anything, even if you shouldn't.

> Once we had some of that sales pipeline working, I had a dreadful moment where I realized that I would struggle immensely to participate in a conventional job search again because the idea that you need permission to earn money is sort of ridiculous, but it’s the only model that most people in corporate environments have ever experienced.

Various really smart people in our world keep rewriting Marx and it makes me wonder how different our working conditions would be if people read a little outside the "Chicago school of economics" validated selection of books about economics, rather than occasionally stumbling across things that have already been discovered and discussed extensively the last two centuries.