From $500k/year to living in his car: veteran AI engineer says he can't find a job
theaymanarab · x · 2026-11-02
Veteran AI engineer Eric Elliott shared that three years ago he earned $500k/year in tech; today he is homeless and living in his car. With 28 years of experience, three technical books, and AI engineering work dating back to the 1990s, he says he still can't find a job — calling his story "a warning about the future of work."
In follow-up replies, a commenter told him the bottleneck is marketing and sales skills, not engineering. Elliott pushed back, citing that at Zumba he rescued $1m/month in abandoned shopping carts in a week, and at Adobe he turned an unsustainable prototype into a shared-component platform that became the cornerstone of $5b in AI-influenced ARR — crediting the team he managed.
Related event: Senior AI Engineer Once Earning $500K Now Jobless and Living in His Car(6 posts)→
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