Mastodawn

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈

It's time to throw the line out again.

I have been working in SRE for 13 years. I am a specialist in Observability, Incident Management, and DevEx. I have also managed teams and been certified in observability, agile, and unix operating systems.

In June of 2025, I was suddenly laid off. I'm still jobless in my seventh month of trying to find work.

I'll be completely honest, I don't know why I can't find a role, I'm either over- or under-qualified, I either give too much detail or not enough, I don't tell it like a story or I tell it too much like it's a story.

The people I used to work with have been shocked when I tell them I can't find work. One of them even said:

"you have such a great mix of talents that I wish more engineers had, and I still cite you as an example of the type of people I want to work with"

If you know of any leads in the SRE, DevEx, DevOps, InfoSec, or anything of the sort, I'm still searching as hard as I can.

Remote, I'm in Southern California.

My profile on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcookedavis

For direct help, please buy my music:

https://craque.bandcamp.com

Matt Davis - Craque | LinkedIn

Staff Site Reliability Engineer with over 20 years of experience. Expert in incident… · Experience: Craque · Location: Fullerton · 500+ connections on LinkedIn. View Matt Davis’ profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 billion members.

Daniel Howard 🌻Jan 8

... can you share a link to a resume or a LinkedIn profile?

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 8

@dannyman Updated the original post with a LI link, thank you for the reminder!

Daniel Howard 🌻Jan 9

@dtauvdiodr thank you; boosted

Good luck, sir!

ferricoxide Jan 8

@dtauvdiodr

I'd point you at my company's site, but the only currently open positions are hybrid and require clearances.

Drew Pickard Jan 8

@dtauvdiodr
if it makes you feel any better, 25 years of experience as a designer . . . took 12+ months to land a job

The market is BAD.

Travis F W Jan 9

@drewpickard @dtauvdiodr man all you hyper-qualified underemployed professionals are not good for my confidence. I've been searching for years, but my resume has always been a hard sell due to my work history being spotty and varied, to say the least.

Drew Pickard Jan 9

@travisfw @dtauvdiodr
It’s a tough market, my friend, and capitalism is uniformly cruel when it contracts.
I think some of the best options are to parlay skills into
- a different, insular specialized market
- freelance / contract work
- using your skills and network to make something that others find useful and will pay for (anythijg from art, goods, books, content, writing, software, etc)
- ???????
- small profit?

@dtauvdiodr please don’t use terms about people with mental health conditions in a pejorative or flippant way (eg schizophrenic). It is a slur and disrespectful of schizophrenics
Good luck with the job search

David W. Jones Jan 9

@dtauvdiodr My guess? With that much experience in the IT world, you're entering the land of age discrimination. I brushed up against that in my career. And it's probably made worse by some employers' silly idea that cheap LLM can do the work faster and better.

Good luck!

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 9

@dancingtreefrog Thanks. And yeah, age discrimination has crossed my mind. It has me feeling pretty used up and alone, but I go forward.

David W. Jones Jan 9

@dtauvdiodr Easiest way to deal with it. I think that those who can't see usefulness or value in anyone because of age - whether the "you're too young" and the "you're too old" ends of the spectrum - aren't good places to work for, anyway.

My genius IT son-in-law graduated from high school at 16 by passing the GDE, never went to university. I don't know what he dealt with getting work in the IT world back then, but he successfully landed in big IT companies.

He's 50 now. Wow!

Ra (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩 Jan 9

@dtauvdiodr I've been trying to get a job too, nothing doing. THen again, I do SOlaris, HP-UX and AIX, so.... probalby a lot less employable than you are

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 9

@freya Solaris is my favorite! Though I haven't touched it in a while. Most things these days in my world are linux containers.

Ra (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩 Jan 9

@dtauvdiodr I'm on Solaris 10 SPARC mostly

Matthew Malthouse Jan 9

@freya @dtauvdiodr

Try being a small-medium scale hardware specialist in an era of cloud computing.

I don't think jobs in my niche even exist any more. (5 years, still looking.)

Ra (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩 Jan 9

@calmeilles @dtauvdiodr gods, mood. big big big big mood

Taffer 🇨🇦

@dtauvdiodr @alice Did I already send you this collection of companies that do remote? Hope it’s helpful! https://taffer.ca/posts/2025/remote/

Remote Work, 2025 Edition

Chris Herborth's website - Projects, blogs, nonsense.

Taffer.ca

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 9

@Taffer @alice I don't think so but thank you!

@dtauvdiodr Knowing your location would be helpful.

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 9

@weizenspreu Updated, I am in Southern CA.

@dtauvdiodr Thx. 👍

Gabriele Svelto Jan 9

@dtauvdiodr we have quite a few remote positions open, some are specifically SRE such as this one: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/careers/position/gh/7500446/

Mozilla Careers — Senior Engineering Manager, Infrastructure — Open Positions

Mozilla is hiring a Senior Engineering Manager, Infrastructure in Remote US, Security, Security, Security, Firefox, Finance, Security, Security, Marketing, Firefox,…

Mozilla

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 9

@gabrielesvelto Thank you! I'll have a look!

Liberty and Justice For All Jan 9

@dtauvdiodr it's hard out there right now for everyone.

@dtauvdiodr Depending on how Southern in California you are, my employer - Rigetti Computing, based in Berkeley - is hiring an Infrastructure engineer. Lots of Terraform, Kubernetes, AWS, etc.

I admit I'm not sure the difference between this and an SRE role, but maybe it'll work out?

Job posting: https://jobs.lever.co/rigetti/951a71d3-2155-4e4b-8c7a-27060f45e87c

Rigetti Computing - Senior Software Engineer, Compute Infrastructure

Rigetti Computing is building the world’s most powerful computers to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. We believe this technology will fundamentally change the world for the better and will affect nearly every industry over the coming decades. As a Senior Software Engineer for Compute Infrastructure, you are responsible for helping to build and maintain Rigetti’s core cloud infrastructure. You will help own/implement and maintain the vital systems that power all aspects of our business and you’ll work cross functionally with world-class engineers and physicists to pioneer the most advanced Quantum Compute Platform in the world. This is a rare opportunity to combine onsite quantum infrastructure with modern cloud technology. Location Note: You'll keep a hybrid work schedule, present for at least 3 days a week in our Berkeley office. Your physical systems and your key customers are there, and you need to know them, spend time with them, understand them, and help them.

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 9

@shadow53 I'm outside of LA, nowhere near Berkeley. But thanks!

Tom Elliff-O'Shea Jan 9

@dtauvdiodr my team is currently hiring for a senior+ infra engineer.

https://jobs.lever.co/rigetti/951a71d3-2155-4e4b-8c7a-27060f45e87c

The catch is that we're specifically looking for someone who can be regularly in the office in Berkeley and occasionally Fremont to work very closely with our colleagues who are on-site to work with our fridges and fab (in Fremont) because the current infra team doesn't have enough coverage there (I'm in the UK) so we have a gap where people aren't supported well enough.

We're ideally looking for that to be someone who can be in the office 3 days a week but for a great candidate I think we'd be open to someone who can at least more regularly get across to the office and talk to people in person.

Feel free to DM me or email me at [email protected] if you want to chat about the role at all.

Rigetti Computing - Senior Software Engineer, Compute Infrastructure

Rigetti Computing is building the world’s most powerful computers to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. We believe this technology will fundamentally change the world for the better and will affect nearly every industry over the coming decades. As a Senior Software Engineer for Compute Infrastructure, you are responsible for helping to build and maintain Rigetti’s core cloud infrastructure. You will help own/implement and maintain the vital systems that power all aspects of our business and you’ll work cross functionally with world-class engineers and physicists to pioneer the most advanced Quantum Compute Platform in the world. This is a rare opportunity to combine onsite quantum infrastructure with modern cloud technology. Location Note: You'll keep a hybrid work schedule, present for at least 3 days a week in our Berkeley office. Your physical systems and your key customers are there, and you need to know them, spend time with them, understand them, and help them.

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 9

@tomelliff I'm outside of LA. :(

Steve has ☕️ for brains Jan 9

@dtauvdiodr Couple here at Nava that might be a good fit https://www.navapbc.com/open-roles

Nava Labs Demo Day 7: Piloting a Form-Filling Assistant

See what we’re learning as we pilot a Form-Filling Assistant that helps caseworkers complete application forms across multiple benefit programs.

Nava PBC

nickisnoble Jan 11

@dtauvdiodr it’s so rough out there, sorry you’re going through this.

I don’t have a job for your, but I highly recommend looking into @recursecenter (it’s free and has a fantastic recruiting service)

https://recurse.com

The Recurse Center

The Recurse Center is a self-directed, community-driven educational retreat for programmers in New York City.

Recurse Center

studio craque 54 🏳️‍🌈Jan 11

@nickisnoble @recursecenter TIL Recurse Center, followed! And thank you. It's like a neverending marathon.