AI Made Me Homeless

Three years ago, I was earning $500,000 a year in tech. Today, I’m homeless. I live in my car, where I keep most of my belongings and try to get enough sleep to function. I have a cheap gym membership so I can shower. I don’t have any meaningful income, and I don’t know when I’ll find work again.

I’ve written three books on software engineering. I’ve helped build products used by millions of people, including Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Firefly, Google Search, and YouTube. I’ve led engineering teams, built successful businesses, and helped startups hire and train their engineers.

And I can’t find a job.

I’m a Webby-nominated AI engineer who built my first neural network in the 1990s. I’ve spent decades learning, building, and adapting to new technologies. When people tell displaced workers to “just learn AI,” they’re missing the point.

I already know AI. I helped build the AI revolution that’s displacing us.

“Just learn AI” is not job security. I want to tell you how I got here, because I think what’s happening to me is about to happen to millions of other people. This isn’t just a personal story about falling on hard times. It’s a warning about the economic consequences of AI.

Before ChatGPT

For years, I ran a successful software consulting and developer mentorship business. My days were filled with mentoring developers, teaching them how to code, how to build great software, and how to run great software engineering organizations. We had individual developers who invested in weekly mentorship to advance their careers. We also had well-funded startups that hired us to train entire engineering teams, recruit engineering leaders, and help build their engineering organizations. One of our clients was Hopin, one of the fastest-growing startups during the pandemic. We helped recruit a key engineering leader for the company.

Some of the developers I mentored eventually became colleagues. I’d help them develop their skills, they’d graduate from the mentorship program, and sometimes I’d hire them to work on my teams. One developer I mentored ended up working with me at three different companies. I loved that work. We were helping people build careers and helping companies build better software. It was rewarding, meaningful work, and the business was doing well. A big part of our success came from my technical writing.

At its peak, my blog was getting approximately 700,000 reads per month. Those articles were our primary customer acquisition channel. Developers would discover my writing, learn from it, and some would eventually become mentorship or consulting clients. It was a business model that had worked for years.

Then ChatGPT happened.

The Collapse

I’d been using AI long before ChatGPT became popular. I understood what the technology could do, and I was excited about it. But before ChatGPT, relatively few developers were using AI tools regularly. They weren’t having a substantial impact on our business. Then ChatGPT launched, and suddenly millions of people had access to an AI tutor and coding assistant. Why pay someone to teach you how to code when you can ask an AI? Why hire a mentor when you can get answers to your questions instantly?

Human mentorship still has tremendous value, but the economics had changed. And something else happened that was even more devastating. Our blog traffic collapsed. We went from approximately 700,000 monthly reads to 70,000 within a few months. Then 7,000 a few months after that. We lost approximately 99% of our readership in a matter of months. Our primary customer acquisition channel had effectively disappeared. We still had happy customers. Some developers stayed in our mentorship programs for years. But eventually, people graduated. They learned what they came to learn, advanced their careers, and moved on.

That was always part of the business. The problem was that new customers weren’t coming in to replace them. I tried adapting. I experimented with different content formats, including video. I’d had successful videos before, and I thought maybe I could reproduce that success and build a new customer acquisition channel. But nothing worked reliably. I kept trying new things, hoping something would catch. Meanwhile, revenue kept falling. Eventually, I realized we weren’t bringing in enough new customers to sustain the business.

I needed a job.

A Year-Long Job Search

I started looking for engineering leadership positions. At first, I was just feeling out the market. I’d spent decades building software, leading teams, writing books, and teaching engineers. I thought finding a management position would be relatively straightforward. It wasn’t. As the search dragged on, I realized I was facing a much more difficult market than I’d anticipated. I went all in on the job search. In total, the process took roughly a year. During that time, the business continued to decline, and I was drawing more and more from my savings to keep us afloat.

I was scared. What we’d always done wasn’t working anymore. I didn’t know what to do next, and I didn’t know whether I could adapt quickly enough. Apparently, I couldn’t. Eventually, I landed an engineering management position at Adobe, working on Adobe Firefly. I was relieved. I’d worked at Adobe before, and I liked the company. I thought maybe this was my opportunity to rebuild some financial security. Maybe I could retire at Adobe.

Starting Over at Adobe

Taking the job meant relocating from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area. Finding housing was difficult and expensive. I spent a lot of time in hotels while trying to get settled, and the moving expenses consumed much of what remained of my savings. By the time I started at Adobe, my bank account was nearly empty. But I had a good job again. I could rebuild. At Adobe, my team and I took the initiative to establish Firefly Client Platform: a shared component system that made it easy to add AI features to any application surface.

It was meaningful work on one of Adobe’s most important AI products. My manager had me on track for a promotion, but he left the company. The new leadership had other plans before they’d even met me.

In October 2025, Adobe let me go.

I’d spent two years trying to rebuild the financial security I’d lost when my business collapsed. Now I was unemployed again, with almost no savings, facing the same brutal job market.

Trying to Rebuild a Business

I returned to consulting. The original mentorship business model was no longer working, so I started experimenting with new services and offers. I worked tirelessly to find clients. Then our lease ended, and our landlord wanted to move into the house. We had to find a new home, and the move was expensive at a time when we could barely afford it. Shortly afterward, I landed a substantial consulting engagement. For a moment, I thought I’d found my way out.

If I could land one client, I could land more. We worked hard to take good care of that client. I expected the engagement to continue through the third quarter. Instead, it ended near the beginning of the second quarter. We lost approximately 90% of our revenue overnight. We’d had about three months of good income before it disappeared again. In the meantime, I hadn’t been able to recruit enough additional clients to replace it.

I picked up smaller consulting projects here and there. Building prototypes, implementing features, helping startups solve technical problems. But the work wasn’t consistent. It was enough to occasionally put food on the table. It wasn’t enough to pay the rent. Without enough income to cover the rent on our new home, we fell behind.

By the summer of 2026, we were evicted.

Homeless

Being evicted with nowhere to go was terrifying. I grew up in a modest household. My dad was a great guy, but sometimes he worked two or three jobs just to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. Even then, we sometimes needed help. My family doesn’t have money. I have friends and professional acquaintances, but I don’t have a network of wealthy people who can afford to support me indefinitely.

There was no financial safety net waiting to catch me. We spent some time in cheap motels. Then the motel money ran out.

Now I live in my car.

It’s where I sleep. It’s where I keep my belongings. It’s where I try to get enough rest to continue searching for work. I have a gym membership primarily so I can take a shower. A friend has helped us by letting us keep some belongings at his place. We also have a storage unit several hours away. Everything is scattered. Every day is about figuring out how to survive while trying to find a way back into the workforce.

I’m still applying for engineering leadership positions. I’ve had promising interviews. I’ve made it through final rounds. But the offers aren’t coming. And I don’t know when they will. That’s a frightening place to be when you don’t have money for a hotel room, let alone an apartment.

This Isn’t Just Happening to Me

Here’s what I really want people to understand. This isn’t just a story about one successful engineer falling on hard times. It’s a systemic problem. I happen to be on the front lines because I work in software engineering, one of the first industries to experience widespread disruption from generative AI. But the same forces are coming for other industries. Companies are learning to do more with fewer people. They’re investing heavily in AI while reducing headcount.

And the labor market is becoming flooded with extraordinarily talented people competing for a shrinking pool of opportunities. These aren’t necessarily underperforming employees. They’re experienced engineers, architects, managers, and technical leaders who have built some of the most successful products in the world. They’re losing their jobs because companies believe they can operate with leaner teams. Consider the scale. In 2026 alone, US technology companies have announced roughly 170,000 job cuts. Microsoft recently offered voluntary buyouts to approximately 60,000 employees.

Those buyout offers aren’t confirmed layoffs, but think about what happens when your employer offers you a buyout. You take it and start looking for another job, as do many of your colleagues, because it’s a very clear signal: your job is at high risk. Suddenly, tens of thousands of additional experienced professionals are competing for the same shrinking pool of jobs. And the competition for remaining positions is intense. People are submitting hundreds of applications.

Experienced engineers are struggling to get interviews. Even people who make it through multiple rounds of interviews aren’t necessarily getting offers. I’ve spent nearly three decades working professionally in software engineering. I’ve written three technical books. I’ve contributed to products used by millions of people. I’ve managed engineering teams, built businesses, mentored developers, and helped companies ship successful software.

And I can’t find a job.

If someone with my experience is struggling this much, what happens to everyone else?

Just Start a Business?

One common response to job displacement is entrepreneurship. If companies aren’t hiring, build something yourself. And AI has made building software dramatically easier. People who have never written code before can now create working applications using AI coding tools. That’s extraordinary. It’s also creating another economic problem. The barriers to building software are collapsing. But the barriers to finding customers haven’t disappeared. App stores were already brutally competitive before generative AI. Most apps never become commercially successful.

Now we’re entering a world where millions of people can build applications with minimal technical experience. And those people are legitimate competition. I can build software. I’ve been doing it professionally for nearly three decades. But what should I build? What product will people pay for? How do I reach customers in a market flooded with new applications? And what happens when potential customers can simply ask an AI to build something for them? These are difficult questions even for experienced entrepreneurs.

For millions of newly unemployed workers trying to reinvent themselves as business owners, they’re going to be even harder. AI is making it easier than ever to create software, but that doesn’t mean it’s getting easier to make a living from software.

The Safety Net Isn’t There

When people lose their jobs, we tell them to apply for unemployment while they search for another position. But unemployment benefits were designed around a world where people could reasonably expect to find another job within a relatively short period. That’s not the world we’re entering. In California, unemployment benefits are capped at $450 per week. That’s $1,950 per month on average. Try renting a modest apartment in California, paying utilities, buying groceries, maintaining transportation, and covering basic living expenses on that income.

It doesn’t work. And that’s before considering how long people may remain unemployed. When hundreds of thousands of talented workers are competing for a limited number of jobs, unemployment isn’t necessarily a temporary inconvenience. It can become a long-term financial catastrophe. People exhaust their savings. They fall behind on rent. They lose their homes. They become homeless. I’m living that progression right now. And I don’t believe I’m going to be an isolated case.

The Next Financial Crisis

I believe we’re approaching an economic crisis that could be substantially worse than the 2008 financial collapse. Think about what happens when AI enables companies across entire industries to operate with dramatically smaller workforces. Millions of people could lose their primary source of income. Those people still have mortgages, rent, car payments, credit cards, and other financial obligations. When they can’t pay, the consequences spread. Landlords lose rental income. Homeowners default on mortgages. Banks absorb losses. Consumer spending declines. Businesses lose customers and cut more jobs.

The effects compound. The technology is advancing much faster than our economic institutions can adapt. And unlike previous waves of automation, AI isn’t limited to replacing specific kinds of physical labor or repetitive tasks. It’s increasingly capable of performing cognitive work across a wide range of professions. Software engineering is an early example. It won’t be the last. I believe a financial collapse is inevitable. Our economic and political systems simply aren’t designed to adapt quickly enough to the pace of AI disruption.

What we can do is soften the impact. We can prevent millions of people from losing their homes and livelihoods while the economy struggles to adapt. We need universal basic income. We need unemployment benefits that actually cover basic living expenses. We need support systems designed for people who may spend years transitioning between careers, not weeks. And we need those protections before the crisis reaches its full scale. Government needs to lead with policy changes, and those changes need to happen quickly.

But I’m concerned that governments won’t move fast enough. The private philanthropic sector needs to step up, too. We need organizations with resources to recognize the scale of this transition and start building solutions now. Because the alternative is to let millions of people fall through the cracks while we celebrate unprecedented gains in productivity.

I’m Still Building

I want to be clear about something. I’m not anti-AI. I’ve been working with AI since the 1990s. I believe it’s one of the most important technological developments in human history. I use it every day. I build with it. I teach it. I help companies adopt it. I believe AI can create extraordinary value for humanity. But that value isn’t automatically going to be distributed to the people whose livelihoods it disrupts. That’s a policy problem, an economic problem, and a human problem.

And right now, we’re not doing nearly enough to solve it. I’m still trying to rebuild my life. I’m still applying for jobs, consulting with companies, building software, and looking for opportunities to put my experience to work. I haven’t given up. But I also don’t know how long it will take to get back on my feet. Three years ago, I was earning $500,000 a year. Today, I sleep in my car.

My story is a warning from the front lines of the AI revolution.

If we don’t move quickly to establish meaningful economic safety nets, including universal basic income and adequate unemployment benefits, we risk a financial crisis that could dwarf 2008. Government and philanthropy need to act now. Not after millions more people lose their homes. Not after the banking system starts to buckle.

Now.

I’ve been building AI systems since the 1990s, long before generative AI became mainstream. At Adobe, I led the team that established Firefly Client Platform, making it easier to integrate AI capabilities across applications. I’ve spent nearly three decades building software used by millions, leading engineering teams, and helping companies solve complex technical challenges. I help organizations adopt AI, build scalable systems, and ship better software faster. I’m available for engineering leadership, consulting, and advisory engagements at EricElliott.me.

Connect with me on Threads or X.

Update:

I am homeless with my fiance and two cats. We found an apartment but I need about $2k – $1400 to pay the first month’s rent + move-in expenses (we need to rent a Uhaul to get our things out of storage).

Right now, $2k would end our homelessness and restore hope for a brighter future to our lives.

Any help would mean a lot. And thank you so much to those who have made sacrifices to help us.

Venmo: @grwxo

Cash App: $eejs

If you can’t help financially, please share this. 🙏