25 years at Adobe, ghosted by the industry he served — now he drives a school bus, and Reddit is paying attention

A LinkedIn post that has gone viral on Reddit's r/recruitinghell, with over 5.1k upvotes and nearly 700 comments, recounting a story of a Senior Software Quality Engineer with 25 years and five months at Adobe (from April 2000 to August 2025), spent over a year trying to find another role in the industry he had dedicated his career to, and found nothing.

Soon, he starts as a school bus driver for his local Colorado school district.

The post, which garnered over 2,200 reactions on LinkedIn, was written with a clarity and grace that made it hit harder than a complaint would have. He thanked the former colleagues and connections who offered encouragement. He thanked his previous employer, with pointed irony, for showing him “the door to a better future.”

He also addressed the industry directly: “To the potential employers and recruiters who blindly filtered out my applications, ghosted me on direct inquiries, or never even bothered to show up for interviews: I hope this industry can find its way back to treating people better.”

The photograph shows him standing in front of a yellow school bus, smiling.

What the Reddit thread says

The thread reflected the same mix of responses that appears whenever a story like this surfaces: recognition, resentment, and resignation. Several commenters pointed to ageism as the obvious explanation, connecting it to the pattern discussed in other threads where experienced workers over 50 find themselves effectively invisible to hiring algorithms and managers who equate seniority with cost and inflexibility.

Several commenters connected the story to market despair that threads like this one highlight. “This is even more discouraging to the current market,” one wrote.

One commenter approached it with humour: “A lot less swearing than my ‘I found a new job’ post will have.”

One response offered a structural explanation for why this may have been happening: “I think there’s been a steep decline in the use of QA-specific roles. I work in software development, and the last few organisations I’ve worked at have no dedicated QA.”

Another commenter named the dual forces at work: “Ageism mixed with companies that won’t pay you.”

And then one comment that stopped the thread: “I knew a guy who ended his life because he had student loans and couldn’t find a job. He got offered to work at McDonald’s for the seven-year master’s degree he had.”

The original poster on LinkedIn closed with “Let’s raise a glass to new beginnings.” It is a gracious line. It is also the only line available to someone who has come out the other side of something genuinely difficult and chosen to frame it as a beginning rather than an ending.

The school district is lucky to have him. The industry that let him go has lost something it will not easily replace.

Read also: 1,098 applications. 9 interviews. 762 rejections. Welcome to the job market