For other students reading this, here is how you can work as a software developer with no experience: start your own company (just make a website for it) and work as a freelancer on freelancer.com or fiverr.com. Take on clients but charge them lower rates so they will be patient with your mistakes.
Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends
241–247 of 247 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends
#242Just keep applying and don’t think too much of it. Once you have 4-5 years of experience, you will be telling recruiters to back off and not spam your LinkedIn. Yet as a new grad the tables are reversed (for now at least).
Also since you’re still in school, I recommend pivoting to AI. AI still has a very hot job market, even if rest of software development doesn’t. In fact I’d say, AI is an employees market right now.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends
#243There's some evidence that your career success depends heavily on the timing of your entry into the job market. That is, if you start working during an economic slump your career will suffer but if you wait and enter during a peak economic period you will always "ride the wave". I've seen this happen to individuals. So I suggest that you stay in school, take a Masters degree and try to enter the market at a better ti…
I think this (jokingly) assumes that PhDs become academics, which is not always true. Also, PhDs are generally free and if you leave early you get a Master's anyway. Terminal Master's you have to pay for.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends
#244This user is a fabulistic serial spammer, so most probably none of this is true.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends
#245I'm a MIT alumna who graduated in 2014 (Course 15) and now am a software engineer.
I suggest reverse-recruiting into a small startup - or if you're the entrepreneur-type, even starting your own.
Entry-level roles are often hard to come by, regardless of where you graduate from. If they see that you're willing to put in the work, smaller shops are sometimes willing to take a chance on you, when no one else will.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends
#246Partner with the others and build a product / company...
A startup of your own still looks fine on your resume.
Re: Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends
#247Truly 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’…
> 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’t want to, but it was ultimately temporary. I'm going to challenge this as you didn't give specific data to back it up. I read an article recently that did have data, and it made the argument that first jobs, an…
Recessions aside, it may be that because they were forced to choose a bad job, and stuck there too long because of insecurity... Their trajectory was changed.
Which may just mean that they need to stay focused on self-improvement and job hopping as possible.