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Ask HN: MIT grad, junior dev layoffs – watching my daughter lose faith in merit

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Re: Ask HN: MIT grad, junior dev layoffs – watching my daughter lose faith in merit

#31

Post by rdiddly »

What makes you think platitudes are always dishonest, first of all? Your writing sounds like fuckin' AI, so I wouldn't complain if I were you. "Beggars can't be choosers." Also, "You can't always get what you want." I will respond in platitude format.

1) Effort still correlates with outcomes, it's just that there is some random noise in the signal. Maybe moreso in these noisy times.

2) DID any of what she did matter? If she enjoyed it or found it meaningful, then yes. If it was just being "sensible" a.k.a. grinding and bald careerism, then no, even if she weren't laid off.

3) She's young. My first layoff, I took it hard too. By the third or fourth one, I would laugh and look forward to a small vacation of coasting on unemployment.

4) Ordinarily a post-college-age kid with a job is living on her own and you wouldn't have access to her crying moments. And another primary emotion alongside despair would be anxiety about making rent. It's painful to watch your kids suffer, but suffer they will and suffer they must.

5) Continuing from point 2, does she have a meaningful hobby? She needs to start one. If only to provide a break from the unhealthy amount of grinding she sounds like she's doing. Try music, a lot of engineers are good at music. I'm good enough at it that I was once able to support myself on it, and now see my day job as something I can leave, something I tolerate but am too good for. My genius is not defined by it. It's only work.

6) Celebrate Christmas the way all half-assed unprepared people do: Big feast at the Chinese restaurant tonight. Or Thai, I guess is the new Chinese. Pretending everything is okay? Who fucking died? Everything IS okay. A little perspective would go a long way and you're the one who needs to provide it.

Re: Ask HN: MIT grad, junior dev layoffs – watching my daughter lose faith in merit

#32

Post by thisislife2 »

perfmode wrote: post #27

What your daughter is experiencing isn’t just disappointment. It’s the collapse of a worldview. She built her identity around a core belief: effort creates safety. That belief was scaffolding she stood on, and it just broke. This is grief. Specifically, it’s the grief of losing trust in a covenant she thought existed between her and the world. The isolation, the crying alone, the withdrawal — these aren’t character f…

Great insight. And she is clearly depressed (person shows signs of deep sadness and hopelessness, withdraws from social activities and isolates themselves; has significant changes to sleep, appetite, and energy levels) so it is difficult for her to think clearly and move on to acceptance. (I'd say you too show the signs). Please take this test - https://fspcares.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Burns-Checkl... (PDF) - and encourage your daughter to do so as a first step. If she has severe depression, get her a therapist ( https://cares.beckinstitute.org/get-treatment/clinician-dire... ). As others have advised, she needs to learn new coping skills to make her more resilient to failures like these, and this is the perfect opportunity to do so as she is still in her youth.

Re: Ask HN: MIT grad, junior dev layoffs – watching my daughter lose faith in merit

#33

Post by catlover76 »

fakedang wrote: post #23
dimrover wrote: post #20

What you should have been doing, instead of telling her the comforting lie that the world operates on merit and this is all that matters while nudging her towards tying all her feelings of self-worth to this, is helping her build resilience so that she doesn't end up wallowing in despair after a minor career setback. That you've cancelled Christmas to collectively endure some sort of misery spiral instead obviously i…

Easy on the fellow. OP doesn't feel great at the moment because of feeding the "lies" about merit to his daughter, the same "lies" they fed all of us back in our day that doing everything by the book pays (Lies in quotes because there's obviously a ton of substance in those statements still). You don't need to push him down further. While the lack of any celebration is not the best idea (assuming OP is still reasonab…

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Re: Ask HN: MIT grad, junior dev layoffs – watching my daughter lose faith in merit

#34

Post by rodrigodlu »

Hey, Merry Christmas!

I did invest my time on more specific technologies, not following the mainstream, I accepted a 35% cut, but on smaller and promising small company that smells like startup, but it's actually an small business sharply focused on some types of customers. No VC funding.

I'm also a father of a daughter and I'm "training" her to understand that she needs to sell something that is not abstract.

As a computer scientist, I still sell implementations in form of code, but I dearly assumed many years ago that this (abstract product X concrete product) could be the difference to put food on my table - and now on my daughter's table - or not.

I'm far from highly successful because I'm still fighting this urge to just focus on code, but luckily that understanding above make me talk to any kind of person that is not a coder as well. Understanding business in general, meet concrete needs on different types of industries and so on.

I'm not from the US, so take that into account. I was near shoring to the US, now I'm doing that, but to the EU. I moved to a different market.

Also I'm fully invested in using AI a lot. With that I feel as a senior dev that indeed I don't need as many juniors as before, and I dearly miss having some junior dev to ask the "dumb" questions that I forgot to ask myself sometimes. AI still does not fill that role.

What helped me with AI is not caring as much about the number of LOC as before, as long I met the product's needs.

I hope you can find some comfort, keep your temper cool, so your daughter can feel that as well. That she has at least someone to hold and float.

My best wishes and I hope that 2026 could bring better luck.

Re: Ask HN: MIT grad, junior dev layoffs – watching my daughter lose faith in merit

#36

Post by catlover76 »

clejack wrote: post #28

I can't speak to the current system because I have stepped out of it temporarily, but if you haven't done so; please tell your daughter that she is not her job nor is she the labels she places upon herself. It's tragic that she's placed so much weight on her job if she still has you supporting her. None of the things you listed are signs of merit, they are signs of pedigree. If people recommended them here, they did…

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Re: Ask HN: MIT grad, junior dev layoffs – watching my daughter lose faith in merit

#40

Post by jpster »

I agree there are associations between effort and outcomes, and merit and outcomes, and integrity and outcomes. But timeframe is never guaranteed. The Beatitudes have not yet happened, the just have not yet inherited the earth, a casual glance at world leaders and recent current events will tell you that much!

IMO the questions you pose are not important at all, and not worth your energy. What practical difference does it make to you and her if it’s due to bad timing or something else? Some junior devs are being hired somewhere and you both should focus your energy on making sure she’s part of that number. Have you shaken all the trees in your network? Does she do side projects that can get her noticed? What about the MIT alum network? That’s what LinkedIn messages and X dms are for? What abt throwing wide the aperture of industry sectors and locations she considers? Is she going to all the meetups? What abt pursuing her own startup idea? I agree with someone else here: AI and YouTube (and X, tbh) make this the very best time to learn or build or promote anything that has ever existed.

I went through an identical experience as your daughter when I graduated in 2000. The only solution is perseverance.

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