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

I'm desperately looking for a new job. I hate my current job, the constant stress is taking a real toll, and I'm more tired than I've been ever before.

I'm quite literally applying to all sorts of developer jobs that I'm well overqualified for, in any honest assessment, for a lot less than I make now. These roles are far from "premium" gigs. I've no diva expectations or hope at this point.

The only places I even get rejection emails from are places I've had a referral.

Things are bleak.

I'm in a similar place wrt job "security."

Current gig will end soon, one way or another, and the future doesn't look great.

To get employed:

1. Deck out your resume with a bunch of keyword nonsense. If it doesn't look like word salad when you are done its not competitive. Find a laundry list of tools, frameworks, run time engines, and other third party tools that you never wrote.

2. If you want to get hired and aren't already a senior principle don't be an expert. Experts are intimidating. Refer back to point 1.

3. Don't use AI during a job interview. People hate that. Instead just have a static script of key points as hints. The goal is to be at the center of a bell curve and know just enough to fit in.

4. Get really good at throw away leet code insanity. Go fast and memorize programming patterns by name. You will never use any of this at the job, but it looks impressive during interviews.

5. Answer all interview questions with confidence in 3 words or less. Be quick and ensure it does not look like you are reading or waiting for answers to materialize. Always remember the only thing most programmers fear more than writing original code is unoriginal job candidates.

Once you are hired:

1. Do all that is asked of you with as little as possible. Make it a game to see just how efficiently you can accomplish what is asked of you. The people that get promoted are the ones that shine at this and do as little work as possible. That screams to management that you don't produce regression, are not burdened with stressed, and have potential to do twice as much.

2. Automate the shit out of your job, but keep this a secret to yourself. Most of your peers cannot program. If they see that you are doing more than the copy/paste what is required they will be intimidated.

3. Save video calls with your peers for educational moments only. Video calls suck up a lot of time and your peers will want to do them only because they cannot write emails. When in doubt do as little work as possible, which includes being efficient and thorough with your communication. See point 1.

4. If you are in a toxic environment learn from the best and become a complete narcissistic asshole. Fair warning, though. This will randomly blow up in your face because you are likely surrounded by narcissists looking out for themselves. If you are in a healthy environment then be a complete team player and save all your disposable time for helping your teammates with testing and documentation. In a healthy environment take as little credit for accomplishments as possible and openly praise teammates who are worthy of praise.

Emphasis on the next actions to take.

Being in a graduating cohort affords you certain opportunities -- internships, career fairs, faculty-connected networking.

Post-graduation, and especially post-college, people don't have these same opportunities.

Fwiw, I'd lean very heavily into interning. Take an internship at the best company you can, that's likely to have solid financials and be hiring when you finish the internship.

Intern -> hire is a ridiculous cheat code for your first "in industry" job.

The employer decreases the risk of making a mistake on an unproven new grad. You get a job offer if you do enough solid work. Win/win.

Worst case (no job offer), you should push really hard for a solid recommendation letter from your direct or second level manager.

1) Why did you decide to become an engineer? Did you have some hobby or other background that you had a passion for, or was it because you thought you could do this degree and make good dollars?

2) If you became an engineer for the right reasons, can you maybe leverage that interest and start an enterprise of some kind? And I don't mean a start-up, I mean a business offering services and/or products to a market that needs them.

I don't see a single reply here at this stage that does not seem to take for granted that upon graduating you must work for someone else.

The idea that "I went to MIT/Stanford/Berkley/whatever, I deserve a job, and a good one that pays fuckloads" seems to permeate the whole thread.

Well I will tell you that College/University for engineering is just a very elaborate hazing ritual, it doesn't get you shit in reality, apart from a possible entry ticket into somewhere where the real learning and work start.

There is potentially fuckloads to learn that you would have never been taught, big differences between academia and industry.

I am in another country, but not that different, and 30 years out the engineers that I studied with that really made bank all basically went straight into starting their own business upon graduating.

As one example, the guy started a business designing mineral processing plant electrical and control systems, started out delivering very small parts of projects, just kept grinding and building capabilities, and now he owns breweries and wineries for fun and is delivering projects all over the world worth hundreds of millions of dollars. There are other examples from my cohort.

If you can't find employment otherwise, what have you to lose? And tbh, if you don't do something like this now, next thing you will look up and you will want to buy a house, or will have a pregnant wife and you just can't risk your job with the man, because the baby, etc etc etc.

So your situation isn't the engineers equivalent of Pretty Lady, or whatever fantasy script society peddles, maybe that could turn out to be a good thing, you never know.

Footnote: I have a four year degree in Electrical and Control Systems Engineering from a University in another country, in the top 100 of the world for Electrical but virtually no one would have ever heard of it outside my state. I graduated in early 90's and only 2 engineers had good "company" jobs to go to, they were both trades who had left their trade to study engineering and were preferred.

I had been working part time my last year and then went full time, after graduating, with the small local electronics design and manufacture company for crap cash. But significant parts of what I learned there in the 2.5 years, I still use today. But, in retrospect I regret not taking my own advice I gave you above, and I am not prone to regrets.