Software engineer who lost his six-figure job to AI opens up about being rejected from 800 roles

Daily Mail​

29-05-2025

A seasoned software engineer - once earning a comfortable six-figure salary - is now living in an RV, driving for DoorDash and battling financial insecurity.
At 42, Shawn K - whose full legal last name is just one letter - finds himself among the early wave of knowledge workers dealing with the economic fallout of AI advancements, a trend he believes is 'coming for basically everyone in due time.'
In a personal essay on his Substack, Shawn painted a picture of his current reality.
'As I climb into my little twin sized bed in my small RV trailer on a patch of undeveloped deep rural land in the Central New York highlands, exhausted from my six hours of DoorDash driving to make less than $200 that day, I check my emails one last time for the night: no responses from the 745th through 756th job applications that I put in over the last week for engineering roles I'm qualified or over-qualified for,' he wrote.
He closed in on the 800 application mark in over a year of being an unemployed software engineer.
Despite owning three properties – a fixer-upper in upstate New York and two cabins on rural land – his financial situation has only worsened since being laid off from his engineering job, which paid around $150,000 annually.
He has since told DailyMail.com that he had moved to New York to care for his family and grow long-term equity with real estate, an opportunity he said didn't exist on the West Coast for more than 15 years.
Shawn attributes his sudden unemployment and job search issues to AI.
'Something has shifted in society in the last 2.5 years,' he wrote in his Substack, describing how AI caused him and many talented developers at his previous company to be laid off despite the company's strong performance.
He said in his Substack that getting his resume seen has become a 'sisyphusian task' - in reference to a task requiring continual and often ineffective effort - and the technical interview process a 'PTSD-inducing minefield.'
Shawn explained that companies are doing what they know best: practicing capitalism.
'The economics are very simple: if you can produce the same product and same results while drastically cutting your expenses, what business wouldn't do that? In fact you would have to be crazy not to,' he wrote.
'We have reached a time where human labor is no longer a necessary input to generate economic value, which is a drastic departure from everything that has come in history before.'
Shawn estimates he has interviewed with about 10 companies in the last year, often getting through multiple rounds but never receiving an offer.
He wrote in his Substack that he suspects his resume is 'filtered out of consideration by some half-baked AI candidate finder service because my resume doesn't mention enough hyper-specific bleeding-edge AI terms.'
If he makes it past the bots, he explained that he is then competing with 'the other 1,000 applicants (bots, foreign nationals, and other displaced-by-AI tech workers) who have applied within the first two hours of a job posting going live.'
He said in his Substack that he is often more skilled than those who interview him for roles, and that he believes his age plays a factor in his inability to secure a job.
Shawn also explained that he has gradually been lowering his job expectations.
Initially targeting engineering manager roles, he then applied for positions at his previous level, then at lower pay, and eventually, 'anything and everything I was capable of,' including a Wordpress theme developer role offering less than half his worth.
He even researched expensive engineering manager certificate programs, but lacked the investment money needed - this was also true for roles like crane or equipment operator, drone surveyor pilot, or CDL driving.
Eventually, he decided to consider an entirely new career and is now attempting to start a pressure washing business.
In the meantime, he rents out his city house but explained in his Substack that it doesn't make any profit, which is the same fate for a cabin he rents out on Airbnb.
He also is a DoorDash driver - something he described as destroying his body and his mind.
He recounted his struggles with the New York State unemployment system, which he described as 'one of the most ineffective, counterproductive, unhelpful, wasteful, hopelessly bureaucratic toxic messes.'
Now living in an RV, Shawn told DailyMail.com that the hardest part of this lifestyle shift is 'knowing I have the skills and capabilities of building software that can generate millions of dollars... yet I don't have the cash runway to focus for a few months on building a product like that and bringing it to market.'
He emphasized, 'The mortgages still need to get paid. The pressure is extremely real to get money for the very real and immediate needs.'
Despite the immense pressure, Shawn strives to maintain a positive outlook.
'It's mainly survival instinct. I don't have much of a choice,' he told DailyMail.com, explaining that the alternative is losing his houses and moving into his car.
'I've actually been through harder times than this,' he said.
'I went from being homeless in my car in Oakland California to owning three houses in four years.'
He explained that he practices yoga, exercises often, spends time in nature, talks to his friends, and tries to lean into positive thinking.
Forcing himself into a positive hopeful mindset is usually his primary task of the day.
'Some days I lose that battle,' he said.
Shawn believes his story is not unique but rather something that will eventually happen to a lot of people.
He wrote in his Substack that while people think AI job replacement is in some faraway future, it's actually happening in the now.
The solution? He believes businesses should hire more technical people, abandon pre-AI playbooks, and reinvent themselves as AI-first businesses.
He believes AI should be leveraged to 'invent new science, crack the challenge of clean renewable energy, solve cancer, etc.'
'AI replacing jobs is only a bad thing because we have a system that says you aren't entitled to feed yourself or have housing unless you spend the majority of your time working to make a company rich,' Shawn wrote.
'AI is exposing that as a lie.'
He urged others to let the machines do the work and to instead focus on the real problems society faces.
'Let's put the rights of a human above that of a corporation, let's ensure every human has the right to food water and housing,' he wrote.
'Universal Basic Income is a start, it's the least we will have to do to avoid the worse of the coming collapse.'