the IT job-seeking advice I’d been getting was, someone with so much experience might be expected to be publishing code (e.g. on their own Github account), giving programming tips (on their own blog or on sites like Stack Overflow), making tutorials, having tech discussions with other experts on social media, etc.

The implication was, if you’ve been working in the field that long and you aren’t doing any of those things, well . . . you haven’t been investing in your own personal “brand,” so don’t be surprised if no one is buying.

I think I originally got into programming because, as an Aspie type — long before it was generally accepted that there was such a thing — I anticipated being no good with people and only being good with the machine / the software tools.

Nowadays, it’s not enough to be good with the machine, IT people have to market themselves and their ideas, be able to lead groups, communicate well in a team, etc. — in short, they must be good with people too.

for jobs on your behalf. So I'd go ahead and let her take me places. Partly as sort of a thank you for her time. But mostly so that she can see how these people act in person.

Good luck, maybe one of them will pleasantly surprise us!

doesn't matter to hiring managers anymore when they can get what they want, when they want, where they want.

In other words, hiring managers are spoiled. And the employment market is seriously glutted, If you're a participant at all, you need to be a buyer, not a seller.

In a genuinely balanced market, there'd be as many employers having to compromise to get the help they need (train on the job, accept real people rather than ideal ones, etc.) as workers having to compromise in order to get hired at all. As you correctly point out, Aspie, the former no longer exist. And it's been that way continuously for the past 40 years or so.

This is further proof that the Population Ponzi Scheme is collapsing, by the way.

Especially to those closest to me. They just won't hear it. "Your attitude sucks. That's why no one will hire you.", says my mother in law who has held the same job in the same school district for decades.

Oh Cat, it's theold beLIEf that "Attitude Matters!" again!

Grrrrr!!

It's more of that fucked up Prosperity Badspell crapola: "if your heart is right you will prevail". We both know that's pure bullshit. Facts are more importamt that attitude and always will be. And the only relevant fact here is that buyers of labor can get exactly what, when, and where they want it, while it is essentially impossible to anticipate and prepare for the exact nature of such demands. And it is also far too easy in this day and age to catch someone attempting to tailor the facts of his/her life to match the exact bullet points of the employer's demands, a process which always requires a nonzero amount of falsification (read: lying).

For your mother-in-law to admit to these facts would be to face the fact that her employer cannot hope to do for its charges what we need it to do for them -- render them eminently employable citizens of their locality. So she hides behind the never-ending river of sewage emitted by Chuck Swindoll and Company, and blames you, the victim, for what you are suffering. If faith plus effort ever fails -- and it fails often -- the whole "attitude" house of cards comes tumbling down like the fabled walls of Jericho.

(Suffice it to say that between you and your MIL, I'm to the wall with you here!)