An IT specialist with 25 years at Adobe could not find a job and became a school bus driver

American engineer James Strawn found himself behind the wheel of a school bus after more than 25 years in the technology industry. In August 2025, he lost his job at Adobe and then spent more than a year unsuccessfully trying to find a new position in IT. According to him, his applications were screened out, recruiters ignored his messages, and some employers did not even show up for scheduled interviews.

In the end, Strawn decided to change careers and took a job as a school bus driver in his Colorado district. His story quickly spread across LinkedIn and prompted discussion about what is happening to experienced professionals in the labor market.

A quarter-century in the technology industry

Strawn’s career path is genuinely impressive. His LinkedIn profile shows that he worked at Adobe from April 2000 to August 2025 — approximately 25 years and five months. His last position was Senior Software Quality Engineer in Adobe Digital Video.

Strawn worked on software quality and was involved with Adobe products, including Premiere Pro and After Effects. An archived Adobe page also confirms his work on the Premiere Pro team: the company described him as a Quality Engineer responsible for Premiere Pro and working with other teams, including After Effects, Prelude and Photoshop.

Before Adobe, he had also worked at other technology companies, including Accolade. In a recent post, Strawn himself recalled his long career at Accolade and Adobe.

And then, after 25 years at Adobe, his career came to an abrupt end.

A year of searching and rejection

After being laid off in August 2025, Strawn began looking for a new job. Judging by his own post, the search lasted more than a year and proved extremely difficult.

He writes that he felt demoralized and, according to him, faced discrimination from the high-tech industry. Strawn specifically addressed recruiters and potential employers who, he claims, filtered out his applications «blindly,» ignored direct inquiries and sometimes did not even show up for scheduled interviews.

One point is important to clarify here: Strawn does not claim that his applications were specifically rejected by artificial intelligence algorithms. He speaks of automated or thoughtless application screening, but his post contains no evidence that the decisions were made by an AI system in particular.

Therefore, the wording that «his resume failed AI filters» is too categorical. It is more accurate to say that he encountered automated application screening and a lack of response from recruiters, without claiming that artificial intelligence itself was the cause.

«I’ll be driving a 40-foot bus instead of working at a computer»

At some point, Strawn decided to stop waiting.

In his post, he announced that he was beginning a new career — and, as he hoped, his final one — as a school bus driver in a local school district. The job pays significantly less than his previous one, but Strawn described it in unexpectedly positive terms: he likes the work, the children are mostly good, according to him, and he called his colleagues caring, kind and down-to-earth people.

His remark that he was now happy to drive a 40-foot bus instead of working at a computer attracted particular attention.

This is not so much a story of complete professional defeat as it is the story of a person who decided to change the direction of his life after a year of fruitless job hunting.

Strawn clearly does not view his new job as something shameful. On the contrary, he writes about it as a new beginning.

What happened to the job market?

This is precisely what made the story go viral.

Strawn’s post quickly attracted a large number of reactions and comments from people who shared their own experiences of prolonged job searches. One commenter, for example, wrote that after publishing 13 books and applying for thousands of jobs, he now earns about $20 an hour making Amazon Flex deliveries. Other users described their own transitions from technology and corporate fields into completely different professions.

The story began to be discussed as an example of a problem faced by experienced professionals: decades of career experience and an impressive resume no longer guarantee even an interview invitation.

At the same time, it would be wrong to conclude that the labor market in 2026 no longer needs experienced engineers at all.

Strawn’s story is primarily the personal experience of one professional, not proof that all experienced employees are automatically being replaced by AI or that companies are abandoning older workers en masse.

And yet age matters here

The issue of age discrimination in the technology industry does exist, although in Strawn’s case it cannot be claimed that age was specifically the reason for the rejections.

The longer a person works in one industry, the more likely it is that their resume will be viewed through the lens of age, salary expectations and fit with contemporary corporate culture.

At the same time, Strawn faced another paradoxical factor: his experience could be both his greatest advantage and an obstacle.

He had an enormous professional background, but was applying for jobs in an industry that had changed dramatically in recent years. Development tools, testing methods, cloud technologies and AI are advancing so quickly that employers are increasingly looking not simply for a certain number of years in the profession, but for a specific set of up-to-date skills.

But even that does not explain all the cases Strawn describes: if a candidate receives no response or their application is rejected by an automated system, they may never get the chance to demonstrate their qualifications.

The irony is that he did not leave technology behind completely

The most interesting part is that Strawn did not become someone who suddenly decided he wanted nothing more to do with IT.

His profile still describes him as a Software Quality Assurance specialist, and his professional skills include Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects and technologies related to generative AI.

In other words, the move behind the wheel of a school bus did not happen because the engineer completely gave up on his profession. It was the result of a long and, judging by his words, exhausting job search.

That is precisely what makes the story particularly revealing.

A person can spend a quarter-century building a professional reputation, work on products used by millions of people and possess experience that cannot be acquired in a few months. Yet after being laid off, they still have to start practically from scratch.

This is not a story about a «fall,» but about a new beginning

Strawn does not end his post with a complaint.

He thanks former colleagues and acquaintances who supported him during his job search. And to the employers and recruiters who rejected him, he delivers a tougher message: he hopes that the technology industry will one day learn to treat job seekers like human beings again.

And that contains the central paradox of his story.

After 25 years at Adobe, he did not get a new position at another technology company. He got a school bus.

But judging by his words, along with it he found what he had been unable to find during a year of searching in IT: decent colleagues, face-to-face interaction and the feeling that his work was genuinely needed by someone.

Strawn’s story therefore went viral not simply because of the contrast between «Adobe → school bus.» It shows a new reality of the labor market: experience, a prominent name on a resume and decades of professional work are no longer a guarantee that the door to the next company will open at all.

And sometimes a person has to choose another door themselves — even if there is a yellow school bus behind it instead of an office and a computer.