Ask HN: I am 30yrs and never had a full time job, now suicidal. Any life advice?

Hey Tevlon. I feel a bit the same. I just graduated (2.5 late). I have $27K USD in student debt. Spent a year working on my startup idea and it barely is generating revenue.

We've all been there. If you feel not a part of society, go out to some meetups of stuff you are interested in. There have to be some groups that meet weekly/monthly. Hang out and meet new people.

You are not a quitter. You are about to finish your masters! That's big achievement.

I say:

1) Find out something that will make you happy (job, traveling,etc) 2) Go out there and start working towards getting that.

Hope this helps. Hang in there!

http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/301754826304-0-1/s-l1000.jpg

I just got my masters a few years back, also close to 30, and had a similar experience. as in, I went through a period of applying for jobs for months. Hundreds. I got phone screens from maybe 15. Got second stage phone interviews from 10 or so.

Eventually I had 3 on-site interviews lined up, all with companies I loved in positions that matched my skills. Success seemed guaranteed!

I was rejected from all of them. Crushed. Scared. I had to ramp up applying again and go through the same 3 stage interview process all over. On top of that, I was running out of money. Actually, running out of credit cards was more accurate.

At this point I had been out of work for months. I had graduated school and immediately moved to a hot market, thinking I could land a good job right away. Now I had no money and a three month gap in work history, and no support system to fall back on within 1000 miles.

I started driving for Uber. The only job I could think of that wouldnt look bad. It sucked. I had a ton of student loan debt, a masters, and I was doing a job you can do without graduating highschool.

Eventually I got another round of three on site interviews setup.

In my second round of interviews I got an offer from all three. What changed? No clue. In the depressing down time I got some cool stuff on GitHub, spent an inordinate amount of time making my resume perfect, and studied lists of stupid cs interview questions for days. Going through so many interviews also taught me how to interview to some extent.

It was still a crap shoot and everybody goes through the same unless you've got something like Harvard on your resume.

It's gonna suck but you can do it. It will probably take 50-200 applications to land your first job. It's mostly a numbers game.

At my last company I was part of the hiring process occasionally. About 100 people would apply to one position. 15-20 would have the desired skills and experience listed on the resume. 5 of those would pass the phone screen questions. All of those would come in for an interview and we hired one.

It's a personal example but I feel like it's a pretty average hiring process. From there you can figure out your own odds average case. So on average to get a job: apply to 100 places, get 15 phone screens, around 5 on sites. At this point 50% of the average candidate would get hired.

Keep strong, once you land something this will be behind you

Suicide does not solve anything, it just transfers your pain to your family.

The problem is whether people like to admit or not is that it does work. And as someone who thinks about killing themselves often, ironically one of the only things that keeps me going is knowing suicide is always option if I can't fight anymore.

I'll also mention a lot of people don't have close family/friends and either way in my opinion it would be selfish of them to want me to continue living and suffering just so they don't feel bad.

If the main reason your not ending your suffering is because you don't want someone to feel bad then I'd argue you're dealing with depression in a completely unproductive way.

being rejected 4 times is not uncommon. How do you apply to jobs? Make sure you apply in massively parallel, statistically you increase your chances. contact a recruitment agency, they are can help you get in touch with a company. contact many recruitment agencies. increase your chances. go to interviews, you'll get practice doing interviews, you learn what to say and what to ask. //you must learn to speak the words recruiters wants to hear.

look outside your comfort zone, challenge yourself---consider relocating to a different country//EU made that simple for us.

school is nice, but heh, not super important. it helps to get your through your interviews.

your life experience is your greatest asset. you sound like a hard worker. keep trying and never give up.

life is a series of rejections, your job is to put those behind you always look forward. future is ahead. who knows what wonderful things you will achieve?

your life is precious. not just to you but also the people around you, strangers, families, old friends. you might not know it, see it or be aware of it, but be certain that you are important.

keep trying, but be ready for change.