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Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

nytimes.com

111–120 of 210 posts

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is illegal to hire an H1B if a qualified American is available. You should file a complaint with DoL.

If a law is literally never enforced, there's not much point in having the law.

You are wrong on that. A company I worked for was investigated after a complain about H1B process. I actually had an investigator call me asking all kinds of questions. They do take complaints about H1B abuse seriously.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I thought I was a really good programmer leaving university. Now I know I was useless the first 3 years. I only became someone I would consider hiring now after 5-7 years.

I don't think I'm a really good programmer. I just think I'm capable of CRUD. I have a friend who thought he was a really good programmer because he worked on clang and created LLVM extensions and stuff and knows a lot about C++. He came back from that a little, not much, but a little. I wonder how you were useless and why you couldn't see that beforehand. Because I would like to be capable of diagnosing whether I'd…

The things I didn't understand that I suspect are universal are

1. It's not about writing code that works. That's the bare minimum. The real game is writing readable and maintainable code.

2. I had no clue that the most important thing isn't writing the code, but to work well as a team.

Also, I was just plain inexperienced. I had written a fair amount of code, but nothing like what you learn from doing in 40h/week, year after year. Raw talent is good, but it can't beat raw talent + experience.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many apps did you submit? I'm curious on those numbers myself, not that I'm a Dutch CS grad (American epidemiology, actually), but it'd still be interesting to see that.

Sorry, submit where? I don't get what you mean by submitting, you mean on HN? Doodledocs is the only one. Apps I've made over my lifetime are a lot less than I'd wanted to but here they are: 1. an ios app called Wordpin (I made it for a person who really wanted it) 2. an ios app called SIVT (psychology research thingy, it was a lot of fun) 3. A computer graphics engine (2012, still one of my best memories, Doodledocs…

I think he meant job applications ;)

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#114

>say they cannot find jobs that provide a middle-class income and don’t come with an expiration date. Unemployment numbers don't measure quality. We have tons of available jobs, but low quality. And/or the people looking for jobs don't have the skills required for high quality jobs. Edit: Here's an income quintile graph from 2016 that shows quality of jobs (scroll down): https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55413

> And/or the people looking for jobs don't have the skills required for high quality jobs. I think that is key here. The NYT article assumes that if you have had a job in the past, you must be qualified for a similar job. However, that is just not the case. Some people are not a good fit for a job, and they move on (fired, laid off, quit, lateral transfer or role change within the same company, many ways this can hap…

The first person in the article worked for 10 years as a production manager at a small advertising agency, so I don't see how it would be likely that she was hard to work with.

On the other hand, the value of advertising might be less nowadays, or at least more of the value is captured by Google/FB and a few big advertising firms, so perhaps there is no more need for someone with her skills from advertising work.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#115
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An additional complication is availability of work may be concentrating in fewer geographic regions. There very well may be a shortage of engineers for engineering jobs, but not in the same place. And yet another complication is the perception of long term security of available jobs might be less than before, so moving for one is not an easy decision.

And what do you propose we do about that?

I have no idea. Wealth transfer? Training programs? Basic income?

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#116

Just remember that it gets harder to get a job as you get older. You probably don’t want to be the oldest in your place of employment. Sure you might be the lucky one. Your best bet if you’re younger than 40 is to get rid of all your debt and have a viable exit strategy from the workforce. If you’re younger and reading this just remember your replacement will be along shortly. Age discrimination is real and unstoppab…

Do you want to explain how one avoids being the oldest at their place of employment? Or how to accomplish early retirement at 40 for the average person?

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I'm a really good programmer. I just think I'm capable of CRUD. I have a friend who thought he was a really good programmer because he worked on clang and created LLVM extensions and stuff and knows a lot about C++. He came back from that a little, not much, but a little. I wonder how you were useless and why you couldn't see that beforehand. Because I would like to be capable of diagnosing whether I'd…

The things I didn't understand that I suspect are universal are 1. It's not about writing code that works. That's the bare minimum . The real game is writing readable and maintainable code. 2. I had no clue that the most important thing isn't writing the code, but to work well as a team. Also, I was just plain inexperienced. I had written a fair amount of code, but nothing like what you learn from doing in 40h/week,…

Ah, this makes sense. It makes sense in the way that in some interviews the conversations were quite candid and they said the exact same things. Except that it was spread over weeks or a long conversation as opposed to 2 simple bullet points in a HN comment ;-)

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#118
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work? "Oh, you have a high GPA, clearly you're too theoretical." I have no clue.

Yes. Also, you are a nerd with poor social skills. People are also intimidated and see you as a liability. I was actively told this while studying.

That is harsh.

I'm sorry you have to go through/perhaps still go through that. I hope you can spin it into something positive.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#119

Just remember that it gets harder to get a job as you get older. You probably don’t want to be the oldest in your place of employment. Sure you might be the lucky one. Your best bet if you’re younger than 40 is to get rid of all your debt and have a viable exit strategy from the workforce. If you’re younger and reading this just remember your replacement will be along shortly. Age discrimination is real and unstoppab…

> Age discrimination is real and unstoppable...

Hell yes it is! Throughout all of my life I've tended to look much younger than my age, and was actually somewhat treated disrespectfully. Often, i was treated like the bottom rung of interns even though i had years of experience in the workplace. I've heard people secretly refer to me as the "young punk kid", and get passed up for promotions, opportunities, etc. My youthful appearance has persisted even now as a 45-year old...But i was always brought up to respect EVERYONE no matter what, including my elders. But most recently the team that I work on (at my dayjob), they're all younger than me - all mid-to-late 30s (and one of them is 40). I guess i was never "the only old guy" on the team until recently. My boss in fact is 5 years younger than me. All was going ok with the team until it came out casually that I'm the oldest on the team - yikes even "older than the team's boss"! Well, after that, things changed. They're subtle things, but really messed up things; things that have lost me numerous opportunities within my current employer. So, in my youth i got discriminated because of assumptions that i could not possibly have the experience that i have had. And, now its discrimination on the other end - at least once my age is discovered. There's very little that i can do about this, that is, if i wish to remain at my role within the team (and I really like the job/role, but not this team because of their behavior here). So, my options are to leave to another team in this same company, or jump to another employer...either way, it sucks big time...So, age discrimination, yeah its real, raw, and awful. My heart goes out to all those affected - young and older.

Re: Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job, Despite Low Unemployment

#120
post #84

I'm honestly experiencing this as a CS grad in the Dutch job market. I find it weird and frustrating. I've noticed why: 1. Companies don't dare to value creativity [1]. University is so liberal and the job market is so the opposite. 2. Most companies can't value a CS degree. The exception is when enough people in the company did a CS degree and that's a lot more rare than I thought. 3. University didn't teach me to f…

You have a common misconception: College / university is not a place to directly learn how to do a job. In the US, we have the term "trade school" for institutions that instruct people in skills needed for a career. (Usually people go to trade school instead of college.) Going to college is about getting an education, it's not directly preparing you for a specific career. You're expected to learn enough about a subje…

I'm beginning to notice one cause on why it's tough to find a job. People have pretty strong opinions (and that includes me, and your particular comment also seems pretty strong in its opinion).

I'm not sure how it ties in yet, but I think the strong opinions differ a lot.

Thanks for the food for thought. I kind of know what you mean with the "smell" thing. It's also clearly visible when I go to a company that I have no culture fit with.

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