«2 likes and I’ll start writing a daily blog for an unemployed Frontend Developer,» wrote Ivan Savytsky, an IT professional from Zhytomyr, on his LinkedIn about three weeks ago. He has been looking for a job since last fall after being fired from EPAM.
«2 likes and I’ll start writing a daily blog for an unemployed Frontend Developer,» wrote Ivan Savytsky, an IT professional from Zhytomyr, on his LinkedIn about three weeks ago. He has been looking for a job since last fall after being fired from EPAM.
Here he immediately applied the traditional blogger technique — to set a certain threshold of likes for his audience, stimulating them to react, and, at the same time, ironized this technique with these «two likes». Our text after a conversation with Ivan is published on the 19th day of his diary. Since the launch of the React Frontend Developer blog, he has been writing every day with humor about strange misunderstandings with HR, about what useful activities he has carried out during the day, indicating the number of applications sent and other details of his job search.
dev.ua asked Ivan Savytsky how seriously he takes such a blog as an aid in employment and why he started it, what he doesn’t like about communicating with recruiters, and what it’s like to fight for a place in the sun and a dream offer in 2026 «on the employer’s market.»
Ivan Savytskyi said that the reason for his dismissal from EPAM in September last year was a common occurrence — the closure of a project. He had been working at the largest outsourcing company in the Ukrainian market since 2022 in the positions of Magento Frontend Developer and React Developer.
So, between losing his job and launching the «blog of an unemployed Frontend Developer,» more than six months passed, during which Ivan persistently searched for a new position and also worked part-time freelance. He says that the blog is a bit of a desperate step after six months of searching, and a bit of a calculation to expand his audience on LinkedIn and the hope that recruiters would also pay attention to his page. Before losing his job, Ivan’s LinkedIn account only contained data on experience and employers; he did not write any posts there.
After a few weeks of blogging, he hasn’t yet attracted the attention of HR people globally, but according to Ivan, one HR person has already written to him — albeit regarding a position that is irrelevant to him in terms of the stack.
«At first I just went to some interviews, but it occurred to me — let’s write something on LinkedIn every day, in the same format. This idea didn’t come right away — it was just at some point, out of a certain desperation, to write about all this on LinkedIn with some irony. Because there are quite a few funny stories when you come to a call with HR and the job description changes right on the fly,» says the IT guy.
According to him, unfortunately, very often interviews with HR do not allow the job seeker to reveal their potential, and HR themselves «find out» during the conversation that they are looking for «the wrong developer» for the project.
«You’re preparing for an interview, applying, for example, for the position of Magento Frontend Developer, but after a few minutes of conversation, HR says, 'We’re looking for a backend developer.' But your description says Frontend! There are a lot of such stories. So I decided that I would describe them in my diary,» explained Ivan Savytsky.
As the IT expert says, almost immediately after being fired from EPAM, he started looking for a new job and deliberately didn’t take any big breaks, but so far during this rather long time he has only come across «local projects that helped to «support his pants.»
«Recently, there have been fewer and fewer such projects, so I’m starting to look more and more actively. By the way, last fall and now, when I send the same number of applications, I get a different number of responses. Now, in my opinion, their number has changed, there are at least more responses,» Ivan Savitsky sees some small optimism in the market.
In over six months of job searching, the IT professional only reached the technical interview stage once; the vast majority of contacts with potential employers ended with interviews with recruiters.
«The first technical one was relatively recently, in February-March. It was the first time we talked to HR and I didn’t get an immediate 'no,'» the IT worker shares.
At the same time, the reasons for the refusal, according to Ivan, were not far-fetched, but objective.
«The team was looking for a more skilled developer specifically in React. Because I have quite a lot of experience as a Magento Frontend developer — about 5-6 years. And only two years as a React developer. So, commercial experience with React was a bit lacking,» says Ivan Savytsky.
As the IT professional told dev.ua during a conversation, over the course of more than six months of job searching, he did not significantly lower his salary expectations, because this tactic, in his experience, is not effective.
«At some point, I realized that people pay even less attention to you when you reduce the price to the level of a conditional Jun or Jun+. Then HR generally looks at you like you have a headache — this tactic doesn’t work,» says the developer.
Ivan Savytsky admits that he sometimes finds it difficult to fight his so-called «impostor syndrome,» when a person tends to neglect his own merits and achievements. However, in his opinion, his own positioning depends a lot on the company you intend to work for — some small website development studio in the regional center or a large global player in the IT services market.
«I have a certain imposter syndrome. I can never say that I know something and am able to do it, but I say: „I need to search, think about it.“ Although many people said that I already need to position myself as a Senior. I have a story about how my friend from university, who studied in a parallel stream, became a team leader in a year. But you need to understand that he and his friends opened a small company, there were only five people there. Then they started expanding — they took on two more people in their team. And he is already a team leader — from June he immediately became a team leader,» Ivan ironically comments on this situation.
He said that after a long time of job searching, he got to the point where he received an unexpected offer to try himself as a… hookah smoker. And for the sake of interest, he even worked a few shifts, although he has no intention of changing his profession so radically yet — he simply has a love for hookah smoking himself.
«This is my bad habit, and I already know all the hookah bars in the city. Once I joked that I could take the shift myself. The joke turned out to be serious, so it worked. But when it was the first time, I felt a little dizzy, because you’re „talking to a monitor“ all day, and here you’re constantly in front of live people. However, it was still nothing more than an experiment. Instead of working as a hookah barman, I decided to pay more attention to self-education and my pet projects,» the IT worker shared his unusual experience.
The Frontend Developer says he worked like this for a total of five days, but he admits that he might open his own hookah bar, having earned the start-up capital for it in IT. But such work in the service sector has its own difficulties — he experienced this firsthand.
«At some point, a lot of people came, and since I have little experience and a large flow of people, I stand, my whole back is wet, and I already start swearing — „No, I’m everything“. In IT, I chose the right field — this is what I studied for, and this is what I want to do,» Ivan Savytsky commented on his experiment.
Among the activities that Ivan has for improving his own skills is a pet project, the idea of which he has not yet announced.
«Somehow I was given an idea, and I decided to finish it. But it so happened that at some point another person from another field appeared who was interested in such a product,» the IT expert shared, without «showing his cards» yet.
According to Ivan Savytsky, the implementation of such a project can also be a certain bonus in positioning yourself before potential employers.
«When I bring this idea to life, it will turn out that I will actually lead this project from scratch to release. It’s really a lot of work, so I hope that they will pay attention to me as a specialist who can independently implement all the stages of creating my own product,» he says.
Ivan has more hope for the success of the pet project than for his somewhat unexpected «blogging,» which is currently being implemented «more as a hobby.» However, even in the blog on LinkedIn, the IT guy sees a serious motivating benefit — after all, he promised to write about something useful every day, done for self-development and job search. Accordingly, such a blog became a motivator for him not to miss a single day.
«In addition to the „jokes“ with HR, I started to describe in the blog everything I did for self-education and self-development. I already realized that if I just slogged through the day, I wouldn’t have anything to write about. And this started to motivate me, that I had to do something every day. Even if it was not much, I had to do something,» he says about the motivating role of the blog.
Now that the «blog of an unemployed Frontend Developer» is only about three weeks old, Ivan claims that some of his former colleagues have appreciated his style of keeping a diary. But, of course, he would like the reason for keeping a «blog of an unemployed Frontend Developer» to finally disappear, and he would find a job. Whether he will have the strength and desire to continue filling such a blog in the future — he does not know yet. But Ivan Savitsky will definitely think about keeping a diary of an already employed developer in the future.
