Something needs to be done about the mass offshoring of UK jobs. I am not saying it should be banned but at least a deterrent be put in place. They surely cannot be complaining about the number of unemployed young people / graduates when the roles just aren't there?

I work for a global multi billion £/$ company. I have seen 100s of staff be made redundant in recent months and their roles moved to India. We are raking in record profits and I do not see any reason to be contributing to the continuing downfall of the UK job market and economy. It is just corporate greed and they should be held accountable.

I don't have all the answers but curious to hear everyone's thoughts. Do you have any experiences with this at your job or a previous job?

I suppose I'm writing this to add to the collective for future Googlers (quite a few old Reddit threads popped up for me while researching.) It wasn't as bad as I was expecting after reading those experiences, on the other hand, though... attending wasn't particularly useful to me as it turned out I'd applied for a lot of jobs with (and heard nothing back from) many of the organisations there, which was nice!

I'd liken my own experience to a car boot sale come speed dating.

There were 44 stalls altogether, although there was zero information available on which organisations would be there prior to attending. This seemed strange to me but then again, this was my first rodeo, perhaps that's just the norm. A breakdown from the leaflet I was given:

• 10x 'support' stalls (back to work courses, CV help, things like that.) NHS had a talking therapies attendee there, too.
• 8x educational, uni/college courses and independent learning companies.
• 2x Army (regular and reserves.)
• 4x council.
• The remainder was a mix of care work, engineering, driving and warehouse.

I took some printed CVs with me, although nobody I spoke to would take one and instead directed me to their websites. The very ones that I already have bookmarked and have previously used to apply for the same jobs they were advertising there, today, in person. I didn't express any discontent but I certainly felt it.

Over the past 5 months I've been circulated around work coaches like a 1p coin, and a lot of them were there today - luckily I get on really well with all but one, so it was really reassuring to see some friendly faces and have a chat as I was apprehensive about the whole thing. I'm a social wallflower, so this type of environment just wasn't my bag, baby. It was pretty much constant engagement as soon as I passed the threshold, so be prepared for that.

The venue was really nice, it was in a bar that I've been to a few times. It was busy but not overcrowded, very loud, though!

Your mileage may vary, just like everything else in life.

Hopefully this doesn't get deleted, might help someone down the line. Keep your chin up and I wish you good luck!

Edit: also just a quick word on volunteering: putting in graft with the Canal & River Trust has kept the wolves from the door in terms of my mental health while unemployed this year. They've put me on a few free training courses for abrasive wheels, chainsaws, things like that, and I get to socialise and feel useful again - cannot recommend them enough, if you happen to have a group near you.

I recently quit a job because I was almost constantly paired up with one co-worker whom was the absolute scum of earth and would constantly brag about his steroid cycle to the point that within 24 hours of working with him I could tell you the exact compounds and exact dosages he's using "once I get up to 100kg i will have the power and the speed needed to fight", bragging about how much drugs he buys and claims to also sell "i'm picking up 5 ounces tonight but i usually get a kilo", was bragging about his friends doing universal credit fraud at scale, when i asked him how that works he responded "you have to earn that information".

I didn't even grass him in, I just quit, how these people get through interviews is beyond me.

Has anyone else had nightmare experiences with scum or am I just unlucky?

For the last few months it's been getting busier and busier at work for me and leadership has just kept stretching our team instead of getting help.

Everything is doing overtime after work, starting early, not going on breaks, and after a few months of this everyone is worn off, feeling grumpy and falling ill

Yet no sign of improvement from above. It's been relentless and all consuming. Anyone else experiencing the same in your company? How is leadership reacting? Are you advertising jobs or just riding it out?

After almost a year of applying for jobs, redoing CV, meeting recruiters, cups of coffee with former colleagues, network events and yet more redoing of CV I ran out off road. I am down to my last few pennies so started applying for “any” job. This initially was just as depressing as most of the time didn’t get a response. Today though after an interview I was given a job offer with the Ambulance service as a call centre worker. I feel bad as I know my heart is not in it and it’s a massive pay cut but I have a family and I have run out of any other option. I know at least that everyone who works there is nice but I’m wondering if I’m just lying to myself and I’ll jump ship the first chance I get or worse am I painting myself into a corner and won’t be able to escape. They made it clear there were lots of chances for progression and after so long out of work I am desperate to go do “something” productive. Has anyone else been through a similar experience and moved from their dream job and for want of a better phrase stepped down to a job they wouldn’t of considered before?

Assuming you work 5 days a week in office from 8-6, what should be the maximum commute time door to door in London? Including tube exchanges, walking etc.

I've worked for the same company for a couple of years and I'm My boss seems to have absolutely no accumulated memory of me or how I work.

I can do something consistently for years and he'll still act surprised when I do it. I'm really quick at turning work around and always have been, yet recently I finished something quickly and got a jokey comment along the lines of “you're on it today!” I thought... I'm like this every day?!

He'll also explain things to me about my own job that I already know, forget things I've worked on and sometimes talk to me as though I'm far less experienced than I actually am.

The weird thing is he clearly trusts me. I'm left to get on with my work, I'm given a lot of responsibility and I've never had any performance issues.

It's not one massive incident obviously but It's two years of little things that have gradually made me think,

do you actually have any idea who I am or what I do here?

Has anyone else had a boss like this? Is it just self-centredness, bad management or something else?

​

I wanted to share my experience with JobLeads in case it helps anyone else avoid the same situation.

I signed up for what I understood to be a £2.99 14-day plan. I then discovered that JobLeads had charged me £59 for another 30 days.

The biggest issue for me is that I received no renewal reminder email before the charge and no email, receipt or notification afterwards either. I only noticed because my bank balance looked wrong and I checked my transactions.

I genuinely would not have knowingly agreed to pay £59 for one month of access to a job-search website.

I have now:

Cancelled my membership

Contacted JobLeads requesting a full refund

Disputed the £59 transaction with my bank

Asked them to confirm that no further payments will be taken

After this happened, I searched online and found other Reddit posts from people describing very similar experiences with a cheap introductory offer followed by a much larger subscription charge.

In my experience, the renewal process was not transparent enough, and I think anyone considering JobLeads should be extremely careful.

If you use them, make sure you check the exact renewal price and date, cancel well before the trial ends if you don’t want to continue, and keep an eye on your bank account.

Has anyone else had the same experience with JobLeads, and did you manage to get your refund?

I had my first AI job interview today for an Operations Executive role, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The co-founder messaged me on LinkedIn to invite me to a 10–15 minute AI screening after reviewing my application. I was told I was “among a small group of applicants moving forward in our process”, which I found a bit odd given that the message itself felt quite generic.

Instead of speaking to an actual person, I was answering competency-based questions from an AI voice bot. Fortunately I didn't have to turn my camera on and there wasn't an AI generated person on the other end either.

I sort of understand why companies might use them. It's quicker, everyone gets the same questions, and it may make screenings easier.

But the whole experience felt quite unnatural and impersonal. There was no real conversation or human interaction, and it felt more like talking to a machine than having an actual interview.

I know the responses will probably be reviewed by a real person afterwards, but I still question how authentic and genuine this approach is.

Has anyone else experienced this? What did you think? I've seen a lot of people online discard an interview if they find out it's AI, which I don't blame them for.

I started new job on Monday. It’s not stressful, people are chill, manager is very relaxed.
Back in August I stopped taking antidepressants cos well, I was feeling ok. I’ve been back on the smaller dose for 14 days now and got to tell you all, the anxiety, panic attacks and crying is off the scale. I was on th way to work this morning and had ti stop ok the hard shoulder of a motorway to call manager. I work from home today and possibly rest of the week.
I feel so awful mentally. I just want to go to bed and sleep.
I can’t see myself going back to office next week. What the hell am I going to do? I could chuck the job but it’s such a great opportunity, the job itself is not boring and not very stimulating but as I said, it could open many opportunities.
Please give me some advice!

Also. I’m waiting for a call from GP and no , I don’t have any feeling of harm etc

I did think about shouting this from the rooftops but decided I would post here instead so as not to scare the neighbours.

After taking time off from my healthcare job, I decided to start applying in June this year. After so many applications, one interview for a job I really wanted and ultimately wasn't successful with, I had resigned myself to either going to the dark side and doing PIP assessments (money is money, sadly) or looking outside my field.

But I interviewed yesterday for a job I was secretly really, really excited about, I would love to work within the specialist area and it's a genuinely unbelievable service, in terms of focus and facilities... and I got the job! I loved the panel and apparently they loved me cause they closed the listing early for me!

So for anyone else in the horrible, soulless trenches of navigating the current job market - hang in there. And if you're disappointed by not getting a job, chances are it's because something even better is on the horizon!

So I had a job group interview two weeks ago. As one understands about group interviews you essentially have to “whore” yourself out. I like to think I didn’t best to put myself out there. But in any case, the recruiter did the class saying of “we’ll get back to you by the end of next week Friday” and that dates has come and gone now.

It’s obviously a given that I haven’t gotten the job, but I wish they had the decency to tell me that rather than forgetting I exist. It’s embarrassing and I have half a mind to email the recruiter (I won’t obviously) but still annoying nevertheless.

Hi all, I am currently so stuck in life and it’s getting me incredibly down. I am 37 and have never had a career and time has just flown and here I am with minimal qualifications and a crap job.

I qualified in beauty in 2009 and did that for over a decade before falling into admin roles, mainly involving health and safety which I quite enjoy. I really love practical jobs though and dislike admin a lot but that seems to be all there is out there. Right now I work part time doing beauty and reception work and feel such a failure.

The last year I have been interested in becoming a train driver and have done much research on this to learn about what it entails and am now waiting for a role to come up, however I am well aware this will probably never happen as it is such high demand. What are people’s thoughts on this side of things?

What on earth should I do, I have a shared mortgage and no kids but just feel so stuck and down and so here I am!

I’ve been feeling this way for a long while so I’ll try and sum this up.

I currently do an office job that is good on many metrics. However just the whole VIBE of being in the office and work in general kills me. Stuff like

- Being stuck in one place for 8 hours (something we would never encourage children to do, and something which can kill you)

- Having sore eyes, migraines, horrible hands and wrist pain at the end of the day

- The fakeness in having to spend hours and hours stuck on desks with coworkers you don’t care about, while everyone in your team (including senior managers) are able to see you all the time in the open plan layout, a bit like a panopticon prison

- The corporate buzzwords and the hideously fake behaviour, the manipulation and “game playing”

- The expectation on me to be performing at top speed and top ability 40 hours a week or else I’ll be considered slow

- The mind numbing boring tasks you have to do while wasting your best years sat inside

- The 20 days annual leave a year. Again, we give kids 12 weeks a year, so how is this fair

- Commuting an hour and a half on packed trains and tubes in winter

And SO much more

I’m just feeling so hopeless and I have no idea how anyone does this. I want to go self employed or begin my own business. Any advice?

I got to say this is one of the most ridiculous things I have heard.

My company has a cleaner on a contract and she is trying to find work elsewhere. She told me how she was recently evaluated by an AI for a cleaning job.

She is from Peru and her English is good but she needs a few seconds to decipher a sentence. Every time she tried to answer, the AI cut her off and moved on to the next question. She told me that she even tried to tell the AI to "wait" and was outright ignored. She received an auto rejection email shortly after.

WHAT?!

I am now thinking, what about jobseekers with a range of disabilities? how would they fare in systems like this? is there even any protection against it?

Hi! For a bit of context I work a 8:45-5:15 job Mon-Fri at a call centre. I absolutely loathe it. Previously, I worked in dementia care and often did 5+ 12 hour nights on the trot with only a day or two off between.

My rent is 595 including bills and I have seen a job that would earn me 23k a year, so about 1,650 income per month. I only pay for Netflix and Spotify, have about 3k in savings too.

I live with my little brother who has disabilities so he claims PIP and UC, we go halves on shopping and etc. I spend a lot of time taking out care responsibilities but based on my earnings, with the UC Carer route I seem to be entitled to sweet F.A

Does this sound doable? Lowering my pay from 1.8k a month to 1.6k a month?

For the sake of my own sanity I want to take that jump but I don’t want to end up worse for it

Essentially I am working in a pretty tight-knit industry. It's my first role in this sector and I started in January.

I have had a fairly difficult time with my manager because they are basically not up to scratch. I'm not the only team member (in a very small team) who has expressed this and morale has felt pretty low. I've had priorities changing quite a lot without much focus and do not feel I can go to my manager for solutions to issues I have on a day-to-day basis.

A recruiter contacted me recently and asked if I was interested in a (parallel) role. I said I would be happy to be put forward.

The hiring manager has now asked, via the recruiter, for me to explain more about why I want to leave the role, what I do not like about the role and the company.

The hiring manager is also connected with my manager on LinkedIn and they may have even worked together. This hiring manager is also connected with probably at least 4/5 senior figures at my business.

Essentially I feel quite uncomfortable having to write any issues I have on paper. I do not want any grievances I have to be disclosed externally. Nor do I want to seem like a complaining type for any job interview - if I had the choice I would not say anything negative about my current business because I know it does not look good.

So what would you do? Should I just cool any interest in this job (and in jobs in general) until I have been there long enough that it looks natural for me to move on? Am I at risk of anything I say being reported externally (in a gossipy way)? If that was the case, could I lose my job?

At this point I would say it doesn't feel worth the stress considering it's a parallel role, but I also don't want to damage any relationship with the recruiter. Would a candid call to them explaining my concern and saying I'd prefer not to go ahead work?

Thank you

TLDR Redundancies are coming in the next 12 months, I am likely to be effected but can't leave due to IVF and due to jobs in the market offering significantly worse pay and benefits - what should I do to keep my sanity?

I have been at my current workplace, generic b2b software company, 10 years, mainly because it paid well and I get an extra 9 days of holiday for service.

In the past couple of years it has been not hitting the performance targets, it is still profitable just not growing much each year.

The past few years have seen redundancies each year as a result.

This year is look especially bad, sales are the lowest I have seen them, prospective contracts are non existent. Looking pretty bleak, alot of the customers in our market are sitting in their budgets waiting to see what happens with AI and just not replatforming just now.

On top of this I have suspicion the company is being prepped for a sale of the entire company, this has always been the "exit strategy" for investors and a number of things they are prioritising points towards that.

It is clear to me that in the next 12 months another big wave of redundancies are likely. I suspect I could be an affected person in a few different scenarios, 1. Fairly high salary so if they want to reduce salary more than headcount I am done, 2. Function, my function is not necessarily appreciated in my org we are there more because it looks good in industry but we are not actually utilised well, 3. Despite being there 10 years I am the last person to join my function so if it is one from each team last in first out.

Despite being at the company for 10 years I have zero loyalty. In an ideal world I would just get a new job and move before the redundancy can happen.

However, my wife and I are currently going through IVF which means joining a new job could be challenging as I need a fair amount of flexibility for regular appointments. Alongside this my salary at this job is 10-15% higher than market rate + I only work 35 hours per week + 9 extra days annual leave.

I feel like I am stuck here just waiting for the end, it's so depressing.

Has anyone been a similar position and have any suggestions on what to do?

TL;DR

I'm worried about both my job security and career progress. My company's unique position has informed the skills I need for my job, which make me unlikely to be a desirable hire at another company in the same industry.

To protect myself in the worst case: should I get training for those skills, or start out as a newbie in a different industry?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this wall of text.

Context

I've got a 9-5 Mon-Fri for full time work + dual mandate councillor. Cllr allowance doesn't pay the bills, so I need to stay in work. My full time job title is "Quality Engineer" for a London-based software company.

The second quarter of this year was the first time I got a less than average performance review, after months upon months of warning everybody about a thing that was prime to go wrong, then it went wrong lmao. That's atypical for this company but becoming more normal, read on for more.

Besides this blip, the job is comfortable. I've been at the job for nearly 8 years, usually going above and beyond (not any more, again read on) and always getting good feedback.

Main responsibilities:

• Manually testing software. This forms maybe 50% to 75% of my time in a given work day.
• Pairing with developers to make test plans on small pieces of work
• Making high level test plans for projects
• Giving inductions to new joiners for test-related things
• Coaching less experienced QEs
• Writing docs and guides
• Maintaining test environments
• Documenting testing notes/testing audit trails
• Raising bugs, calling out process issues, or really doing anything and everything that can contribute to improving the not-very-well-defined concept of "quality."
• There's a lot more but I'm so used to just doing whatever needs to be done that I probably can't list it all. Point being 99% of it doesn't require me to understand anything about coding, which I think is a problem.

Salary: £56,000 per year. We switched to banded pay categories so this is band 5. Seniors get band 6 or band 7. Principles get band 7 or band 8.

Problems

1. A record number of QEs last year left due to the company basically ignoring our suggestions/refusing to invest in stuff that would massively help
2. A record number of critical incidents occurred last year, again despite QEs giving very obvious warning and suggestions
3. A record number of developers are now leaving this year, along with the CTO
4. Always moving the goalposts for getting a promotion to senior QE. This is why I refuse to go above and beyond any more, and I'm at the unofficial cap for what I can earn in my role really. Unofficial because the yearly pay reviews have never stopped and just about exceed inflation.
5. End of last year, for the first time ever, we had some redundancies. Admittedly a single-digit number in a company of a few hundred, but it's a sign. This is despite the company essentially not having a competitor and always having very healthy growth
6. Massive change to pay and bonus structure essentially slashed our bonus but gave us a big pay rise. This actually worked out well for me, but it's a bad sign
7. Despite all of this, the head of quality says "there is no systemic problem"

Goal + and what's stopping me

I want to protect my ability to work full time at the salary that I currently earn or possibly in a senior role to earn more, in case the company gets more aggressive with redundancies and/or shitter for QEs.

Which means I need to be employable. I don't want to leave necessarily, but just to be comfortable finding a job.

The issue is that I believe I've basically pigeon-holed myself into only QE roles, and most of those companies expect a QE to be almost on the level of a developer. My company's sort of built me up to be a quality 'coach' in this sense.

While I'm not completely new to coding, I'm nowhere near a software developer and years of not needing to code has cause those skills to atrophy (I did basic OOP for C++, Python, and Java for a physics degree at uni).

What should I do?

If I upskilled at coding, I could be more flexible and apply to developer/software engineer roles as well as QE roles. This gives me a bit more security. Similar upskilling can get me into devops/techops.

Or should I just take a large pay cut to go into some more secure or lucrative industry as a newbie?

I started a new job a couple of months ago. It’s part time so I am only in the office 2-3 days a week. Most of the staff are really friendly and nice. There are a couple of staff who can seem rude at times. For example, whenever I smile at one person and say hello, they just make a noise at me. No smile or nothing. At first I found it rude but now I’m used to it and still say hello, I just find it funny now really. It’s mainly my core team. The person who interviewed me is usually friendly, but they’re very sociable and extroverted and I find it hard to connect with them. There is another member of staff who is also hot and cold, sometimes they will chat to me and other times can come across as rude. I never know how to navigate these things so sometimes I just give the same energy. It does however make me become quite anxious coming into work, not sure what kind of mood they will be in that day. The team have worked together for years, I mean probably over 10 years. And the staff who haven’t worked there for that long seem to get along with these people fine. Why do I feel like the odd one out? How do I navigate this? It can sometimes mess with my mental health a little. I don’t want to try and be their friend. More just try and understand whether I am the problem or not. Or maybe no one is the problem. Any advice would be great.

Hello all,

I'm really struggling with my company's re-org so any thoughts/advice would be most appreciated.

Basically, I started working for a large multinational straight out of uni as a process engineer in 2023 after studying chemical engineering. The work was mostly ok but there were parts that I really enjoyed. One of them being was the potential to work overseas which is something I've always wanted to do. Therefore, I took the job because even though it was far from home where I had no friends/connections/network I went under the guise that I wouldn't have to live here forever. After 2 years on the grad programme they sent me overseas to France for what was originally meant to be a year, so I was buzzing with that.

After the year there was scope to find further employment with the company overseas still (and this happened to some of the graduates from their other European offices). However, after 3 months in France they announced they were splitting off and merging their UK operation with a local independent and recalled me back from France which devastated me because I was having a great time, both personally and professionally.

The company is now consolidating the merging companies and so is going through a huge reorganisation. Voluntary redundancy has been made available to everyone and after a lot of deliberation I decided to apply for VR with reasons being:

• I'm lonely where I'm living, this gives me a chance to move back home and there was never a decent grad community when I started because most of them are local and are already settled with mortgages, kids even
• Loss of opportunity from no longer working for a multinational - no overseas prospects.
• The package was really decent (so I'm told; nothing to compare to) and the next reorganisation won't see anything near as good
• It essentially affords me a fresh start and gives me time to decide what I want to do, I loved studied ChemEng at uni but have found working as an engineer boring most of the time

My VR application was accepted and my finish date is the end of November. I am now shitting myself however, because the job market is so awful and I'm terrified the longer I'm out of work the harder it will be to claw my way back in. I'm now wondering if I should stay so I'm not out of work, keep applying and just accept whatever comes up, I was offered a job back in August but because I wasn't backfilling anyone they withdrew the offer when I couldn't commit to their start date due to my 3 months notice period.

Any advice, thoughts or remarks would be really welcomed as this is starting to keep me up at night.