In late 2017 I moved back to the USA to look for work. I was convinced by some friends of mine that the USA would be the best for a (relatively simple) career change.

Those people were dead wrong. In late 2019 I left the USA again, having failed in my intentions.

What I found there was a depressing series of attempts to find significant employment. Despite what qualifications I may have, this never panned out. What I did find was a series of pretty poor jobs that made me understand that all I was doing in the USA was treading water. That wasn’t what my goal ever was.

It is hard to isolate exactly what went wrong with my time in the US.  I do think that I hold some of the blame – partly because my qualifications are too niche for anyone’s good, and partly because I was first in a place with massive amounts of competition, and the second was place where jobs weren’t exactly growing on trees. Still, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that things in America weren’t working all that well, and there was something there that was just broken.

Collected in this entries are the impressions that led me to this conclusion.