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Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends

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Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends

#71
post #2

Truly sorry you feel this way. For what it’s worth, this was common for people graduating into the 2008 financial crisis, too. It’s actually unusual that we went for so long without another period of contraction. From last time around: The people who kept pushing and took any job, anywhere turned out okay. This translated to a lot of people taking jobs below what they expected to get or having to move when they didn’…

I don't think it was that bad. I graduated 12/2008 in aerospace engineering from a big state school. Not MIT. We all had at least 1 offer from big companies, even the middling students. I had 2 offers, and probably could have swung a third. It felt like the recession mostly affected the housing market and older career folks, but for us new grads things were mostly normal. This feels like a permanent shift due to AI i…

> It felt like the recession mostly affected the housing market and older career folks, but for us new grads things were mostly normal.

Yeah, they weren't. You were in a STEM bubble, which back in 2008 probably was the only bubble that could still get jobs "the old way", without going through application hell.

Also, the job market was way worse in 09-10 than it was in 2008, especially first half of 2008.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re early in your career. This current period of turmoil doesn’t mean that much Is that true? I seem to remember data showing that the 2008-2010 graduate cohorts never overall caught up to the ones that came immediately before or after them. Like sure sure OP has an engineering degree from MIT they're more like the ones that did catch up. But I'll bet there are a lot more people reading this who are about to gra…

I graduated in this time period and that makes sense. I definitely didn't start doing what I wanted until some time later. I guess in a sense that makes my career overall a few years behind resume wise but at this point, being in the industry 15 years instead of 17 probably isn't going to move the needle too much in terms of salary but who knows. Either way, at this point in time, I don't feel like I've missed out re…

Yeah fwiw I think the ones that managed to get and stay in the industry are doing ok now. I had in mind someone I knew who graduated in 2008 with a CS degree from a state school and needed work immediately, took a helpdesk job, then took the promotions into mid-management, now is a starbucks district manager making like 95k. Never did get to realize that dream of coding professionally.

I believe he finally gave up studying & interviewing for junior dev jobs in 2016. At that point why take a "stale" graduate when you can just get an actual 22 year old from the same school, seems to have been everyone's reasoning.

I saw a similar thing a bunch when teaching at a code school ca 2018 too. It was a great move if you had savings or support for 6-18 months of job search. The ones that got in are still doing ok. But a lot didn't, they had to keep working at what they did before "temporarily" while interviewing and most of them are still doing exactly that.

So idk, I'm not sure how you would even get numbers on this. How many people would have excelled in this work if they had graduated at a different time, or with more support, but they didn't and they simply aren't here.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends

#73
post #51

https://www.reddit.com/r/hiringcafe | https://hiring.cafe/ (not mine, but I've chatted with folks its worked for) Know when to rest, not to quit. Take whatever job you can now while continuing to look for your next role. > What helped you push through when it felt like the system failed you? Grit and nihilism. No one is coming to save us.

> Grit and nihilism. No one is coming to save us. What I'll say won't help you now, but: this will help you later. Don't assume you'll always be able to find a job. Work towards financial independence early. Avoid debt. Don't get some fancy car as a "treat" to yourself, counting on your future income to make payments... that income might not come. Sorry it sucks right now. Don't give up, don't let your skills dull. K…

Good advice. Save for future you, possessions are temporary.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re early in your career. This current period of turmoil doesn’t mean that much Is that true? I seem to remember data showing that the 2008-2010 graduate cohorts never overall caught up to the ones that came immediately before or after them. Like sure sure OP has an engineering degree from MIT they're more like the ones that did catch up. But I'll bet there are a lot more people reading this who are about to gra…

I suspect what really happens is you're set back a few years compared to someone with more fortunate timing. In a away, this is never catching up, but framing it as a setback gives a better picture of what happens.

My path into this career was completely different so I have no first hand experience either way. But my observation has been that you don't really get to just hang around for a couple years then pick up where you left off. When the job market picks back up the new grad jobs go to new grads, which you aren't, quite, anymore.

It's a more difficult path and people navigate it but I don't think everyone does if you see what I mean. I think some of who should be our colleagues are simply missing because they did what they had to to pay bills in 2010 and never made it in here.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends

#76

I find this seriously unlikely. Most MIT grads are getting into Jane Street or at minimum Google - they literally think working at Amazon is beneath them. Course 6 grads are not going unemployed. It is funny to hear that this person might have an unstable environment though - that isn't the profile of someone that gets into MIT. If OP is actually serious I'm more than willing to give resume advice - including in pers…

I was an undergrad and this is just wrong. Most are not going into HFT, and a bunch don't go into FAANG either. And not everyone who gets in was raised in a perfect upper middle class life. Do you really want to care about judgement from people who think not working at a trading firm is a failure? Those people are insufferable anyway

MIT EECS undergrad? I can believe not everyone is HFT out of the college, but there is a broader point being made.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends

#77

It's hard to face this when fresh out of school, but one piece of advice I can offer is to network as much as you can. Talk to folks you know that graduated before you and have a job. Talk to professors who might have industry ties in their history. Talk to folks in the career center. Try to be as visible as you can. Yes, I know that seems trivial considering you don't have job experience, but even building relations…

I agree with the emphasis on networking. At the risk of sounding like I am doing an advertisement, last month I gave away 5 free tickets to graduates of Fullstack Academy to come to my event, and one of those people found a part-time connection to a startup via the event. I'll do the same again, if you're in New York City, I offer 5 free tickets. Reach me at lawrence@krubner.com. Mention this Hacker News post. We will have entrepreneurs at this month's event who are hiring. Come join us. Details:

https://respectfulleadership.substack.com/p/april-28-the-inf...

Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends

#79
Feeling burned out is completely normal after college. In my experience, it's hard to work at an endeavor for more than about 3 years without burning out. As you move out into the world, you'll find find that time and energy management can be more important than the work. Because work just sort of happens when we create the right conditions, so emphasizing it too much tends to lead to failure anyway.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I feel that we are entering an era of great struggle. The social contract has been eroded to the point that it's crumbling. Not for any scientific reason, but because dark forces have coopted the goals of technology. Where once the internet was going to bring free access to information for humanity, now it's used to propagandize and subvert the population for the ego-based goals of a handful of wealthy and powerful men whose greed can never be satisfied. AI will mostly accelerate the decline.

What that means is, the promise of a better life which you sacrificed long years for is no longer guaranteed, if it ever was. Where once you could apply at a handful of agencies or institutions with a high likelihood of being hired, now you're up against potentially hundreds of similarly qualified candidates who get weeded out by algorithms. Nobody takes the broad view to see that most of them are overqualified, or to ask why we're doing it this way, or what gives certain people the right to decide and not others - why only they have the money.

I went through a similar situation when I graduated with my ECE degree in 1999 right into the Dot Bomb. I tasted a year of progress before the powers that be started taking it all away. The arrival of the iPhone and Facebook around 2007 replacing Waterfall with Agile, the funneling of R&D funds into outsourcing and the Housing Bubble popping in 2008, the racist backlash to Obama from 2009-2016 that led to the Citizens United case and billionaires buying elections, the COVID-19 pandemic, just on and on and on. I can't remember a good year in all of that, only melancholy, bittersweet. Maybe 2013 after the election when there was enough confidence for electric cars to get a foothold and music was getting good again like it was in the 90s hah.

Nobody told me that the average wage isn't an average. Rather than saying "the typical graduate earns $85,000 at this job", they should say "a dedicated worker can earn up to $85,000 with a little luck". Because nobody is fully employed, usually. A few good years get wiped out with a few months of unemployment. A stable job ends when the company goes out of business. The industry you're trained for gets disrupted with no replacement.

This will all hit the fan around 2030 when AI surpasses humans at all labor. We thought it was 2040 or 2050, but it's on our doorstep because unsupervised machine learning grows exponentially. Nobody has a clue what will happen next after the Singularity.

So I guess my best advice is that the cognitive dissonance you're feeling is very real, and I know it can be hard to endure. But it's also a warning from your subconscious. If you can't see any way through the challenge to the success, then it might be time to step back and take a bird's-eye view of the situation. I highly recommend meditation.

Another way of looking at it is from a holistic perspective. Your challenge isn't unique, meaning that others are facing it too. I can't say enough good things about finding like-minded peers. Together you can overcome adversity that can't be met alone. In fact, that may be the shift needed to take us into the New Age and UBI and an economy that actually works, meaning that the cost of living gets lower each year instead of higher. Maybe what you thought was the thing was the thing that gets us to the thing.

I'm finally finding meaning working at a startup like I thought I'd be in 2000 after a long odyssey. Or I should say, it found me when they saw my comments on a local tech Slack. What changed is my mindset, from ego to service. Where once I was looking for an angle, a hack that would let me get from point A to point B faster, now I seek peace. I stopped chasing money for survival and surrendered to heeding a calling, and letting creation handle the details that foster my existence. After enduring so much negative reinforcement, I've found that the answers can be easier than we ever expected, and that they're often right in front of us.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends

#80
post #41

No one has mentioned considering the military. An MIT grad could be an excellent candidate for an officer. Joining the military has been the way many young men and now women have got out on their own.

It’s less than ideal if you do want to be a technical IC later as it’s typically a multi-year technical career gap. I never saw another ex-(US-)officer SWE/SEM appear in the veterans@google ERG. And tbh I didn’t really count either because I had a post-service PhD.

But to be sure I served with two amazing MIT NROTC grads in my sea tour. You do what you have to do.

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