Cry til you laugh: Chris Pirillo vibe codes his job-search frustrations into brutally honest apps

At a time when finding a job in tech has turned into a frustrating cycle of rejections, ghostings or worse, Chris Pirillo‘s work speaks for itself — in that it makes a mockery of the whole process.

Pirillo, the longtime tech enthusiast and entrepreneur, has been showing off his skills by illustrating how hard it is to get anyone to pay attention to his skills. Two of his latest vibe-coded creations include a Resume Analyzer and a pre-rejection letter generator called Dear Applicant.

Each is sure to hit home with job seekers dealing with a seemingly hopeless process, and the recruiters and employers who are hopefully trying to fill roles with some shred of humanity.

The Resume Analyzer is exactly what it sounds like — and nothing like what you’d hope. Users are invited to paste in a job description and upload their CV for what’s billed as a “semantic scan” that generates a “personalized, actionable gap-analysis report.” The punchline, of course, is that no matter what you submit, the verdict is the same: “Nah, you’re f**ked, mate.”

Pirillo said the idea started as a half-joke on social media earlier this week. The response was immediate and resonant enough to convince him the joke was actually a mirror. A few hours later, the app was live.

The Dear Applicant generator arrived shortly after, born from a comment on Threads suggesting the logical next step: a rejection letter that arrives before you’ve even applied. “Imagine all the efficiency gains,” the commenter wrote. Pirillo obliged.

I tested both and left laughing both times, especially at the methodology fine print on the Resume Analyzer, which read, in part: “No resumes were analyzed in the production of this report. No data left your browser. The job market is, in fact, a burning dumpster. This tool confirms what you already suspected. Have you considered goat farming?”

“These apps are funny because they aren’t,” Pirillo told GeekWire via email.

The frustration Pirillo is spoofing is well-documented — and the timing is no coincidence. A report last month from pre-employment testing company Criteria found that more than half of job seekers had been ghosted by an employer in the past year, a three-year high. It comes at a time when tech layoffs have remained brutal: more than 178,000 tech workers were cut in 2025 alone, flooding an already strained job market with qualified candidates competing for fewer openings — and hearing nothing back.

The tension — between the gag and the genuine grievance underneath it — is what gives both tools their edge. Pirillo, who describes himself as more than qualified for positions he applies to, said he’s given up on the traditional job search in favor of fractional and contract work, not because he wants to, but because the alternative feels like shouting into a void.

“That behavior and expectation has been normalized,” he said of ghosting by employers. “The entire process that few of us are in control of teeters on abusive.”

Building the apps, he noted, took less than an hour each — a pointed contrast to the hours job seekers routinely sink into tailoring resumes and cover letters that often vanish without acknowledgment. Pirillo has now shipped more than 300 of these “mini-products” on his Vibe Arcade website and is actively teaching others, technical and non-technical alike, to do the same.

The question he’s asking, implicitly, is whether building things is now a better use of a job-seeker’s time than applying for jobs. For him, the answer is yes — and he’s leaning into what he calls an emerging archetype: the “product developer,” someone who shows their work rather than curates a resume.

“I believe I put more thought into making these apps than any company has in considering my application,” he said. “Probably more than all of them combined — even when someone made a personal referral to the hiring manager.”

He’s even considering attaching Dear Applicant’s pre-rejection letter to his own future applications — partly as an experiment, partly because he says he has nothing to lose.

“Worst that could happen is I get ignored differently,” he said.

Pirillo isn’t pretending the apps are activism — or that they’ll change anything. He knows HR won’t find it funny. But that’s not really who he’s talking to.

“If there was an intent behind these specific apps, it’s not just to evoke a sense of ‘you’re not alone’ but to laugh at the absurdity of the situation some of us find ourselves forced into,” he said.

Previously: Vibe-coding a new reality: Chris Pirillo on the rise of AI-powered apps, features, and founders