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A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

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Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#121

Post by carmen »

run4yourlives wrote: post #106
HolyHaddock wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, you really need to tailor your application to be suitable for the jobs. Be clear: You mean "you need to lie". When applying to a coffee shop, for example: The person with a 4 year degree will not get the job. They will leave as soon as something better comes up. The person with a 4 year gap on their CV will also not be getting the job, as it will be assumed that they're hiding something.

What are you talking about? 11 Years ago I moved from Toronto to Vancouver. I was a web programmer in Toronto and would eventually be looking for a position of similar capacity in Vancouver. The moment I hit the ground though, I didn't expect my dream job to land in my lap, but I still needed to pay rent. So, I walked into the local internet cafe with the help wanted sign. Here's how it went: Me: "Hey, I see you're l…

i had that happen in SF, sent an email, got a phone call about 7 mins later, they said they were downtown, i said i was at Van Ness, 10 mins later i found their subletted unlabeled space. we chatted a bit, then they said "hey a RedHat upgrade messed our custom perl install, wanna try fixing it? so about an hour of deciding i wanted a job i was getting paid doing something i'm decent at.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#122

Post by infinite8s »

drcube wrote: post #78
insaneirish wrote: post #47

I'm a bit confused. He says he got his undergrad degree around when Lehman collapsed, which was September of 2008. So if he's 29 now, why didn't he graduate until he was 25 or 26? And if it took that long to graduate, I'd like to think he was doing something worthwhile in those extra years that would have easily turned into a job. There is no secret sauce. Work begets work. I started working as a [very bad] programme…

Anecdote time: I was in the Army before I went to college, so I didn't graduate until I was 27. I got a 3.8 GPA in electrical engineering, but I was still unemployed for over a year before I got hired as an engineer. It was a pretty disheartening year, and I doubted whether I was worth anything to anybody. I finally got a job through a friend. All the cold calls, resumes and interviews were for naught, I got hired th…

That's not cronyism, that's networking (unless your friend was directly responsible for getting you hired).

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#123

Post by geebee »

Diederich wrote: post #77
JPKab wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At the age of 29, I've likely forever lost the following opportunities due to cost and probable inability to make up for lost wages and career potential: - Getting married. - Having children. - Studying any more, whether that means grad school, law school, or even just night classes at a random community college." So let's go through this step by step: 1) Getting married doesn't require money if you find the right w…

> 2) Having children: Interesting how white, middle class people think having kids is the most expensive thing ever. It's not. ... Exactly. Our child's clothing, toys and books come from: 1. Yard sales 2. Helping hands 3. Friends and neighbors 4. Craigslist and Freecycle Guess what? We give 100% of those things away in time. We've taught our son the concept of not holding onto physical things. All of his things came…

I think you've made some good observations around the expense of material goods, but as the parent of two kids, I already do this. It helps, but it doesn't address the really expensive things about life with kids.

For me, the big whoppers have been day care and the loss of income on scaling back on work. Full time day care is about 24K a year in San Francisco.

http://www.housing.berkeley.edu/child/facstaff/

This is the faculty/staff daycare that has a long, long waiting list at UC Berkeley - it is considered a very desirable program, so it's possible that you could get something much cheaper.

Another huge expense is housing. I fit a family of 4 in a fairly small (1200 sql ft) house with a garage and backyard (sweet!) in an unfashionable part of SF. Mortgage runs me about $3400 a month - sadly, if I'd waited to buy, I could probably have had this for $2600. Rent would probably be somewhere around that range.

Buying a stroller used is a great idea (I bought all cribs and beds used, and it saved me some money, but I'm really optimizing around something that takes at most 10% of the budget, if that).

I want to be sure to say I'm not complaining, I consider myself pretty lucky to have these things. 1200 sq ft with a garage and a yard is pretty excellent. Nice day care is a luxury. And I get to live in SF, which is where I grew up, and I really like it here.

I wouldn't say you "can't have kids" if you can't afford these things, so I agree with you there, but I just don't think you've identified the real heavy hitters where it comes to the expense of raising a family.

But I really don't think the problem with middle class people is that they are spending too much on strollers. It does take some serious $$$ to stay middle class in San Francisco.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#124

Post by randomdata »

aestetix wrote: post #39

My best advice to anyone in this situation: time management, and cool projects. Bottom line is, if you're spending 100% of your time trying to find a new job, then your time is not well managed. Set aside some of that time to contribute something positive to the world. A few suggestions: Volunteer at a local nonprofit. They are constantly overwhelmed with work, and will love the help, even if it's only 20% of your ti…

This may be more difficult as you move beyond jobs that directly create things, but I can safely say that I was chosen for every job I have held because of to the "cool" projects I was doing on my own time. One of my projects even had employers contacting me.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#125

Post by GFischer »

huggyface wrote: post #20
patio11 wrote: post #4

If you were my little brother, and you told me that you had applied to 100 jobs you were strongly qualified for and got zero offers, I would put on my big brother pants and make some fairly pointed observations about your skills, beginning with lead qualification. I would then advise working on skills like lead qualification over sending out 100 more resumes into a process which, as your big brother who loves you has…

Here's another columnists retort that you may enjoy - http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/17/matt-gurney-o...

Thanks! A few nice points he makes:

"(survey) on young Canadians’ expectations of what they would be earning 10 years after graduation, and what they were actually earning 10 years after graduation. The expectations: Totally in line with Carrick’s letter-writer — about $90,000 a year, with, one would assume, the tailored suits, fancy cars, power and prestige to match.

The reality: $31,648. Considerably less than the self-pitying letter-writer’s $36,000."

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#126

Post by drcube »

infinite8s wrote: post #122
drcube wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote time: I was in the Army before I went to college, so I didn't graduate until I was 27. I got a 3.8 GPA in electrical engineering, but I was still unemployed for over a year before I got hired as an engineer. It was a pretty disheartening year, and I doubted whether I was worth anything to anybody. I finally got a job through a friend. All the cold calls, resumes and interviews were for naught, I got hired th…

That's not cronyism, that's networking (unless your friend was directly responsible for getting you hired).

Well he told the boss to hire me. He didn't hire me personally.

I think there's a fine line between networking and cronyism. Someone off the street ought to be able to get a job without knowing any of the employees. In my experience, that's pretty much impossible these days, even for minimum wage jobs.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#127

Post by drcube »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #115
JPKab wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got me there. I wish I could think of a word to describe the group of people who have been brainwashed into thinking that if they don't spend shitloads of money on stuff, and buy a big house in the burbs, that they are bad parents...... But you are right, saying it's a "white" thing is racist of me. There are people of all colors who get trapped into this bullshit, as well as people of all colors who are not fool…

Bourgeois. Closest English term I can think of which conveys a similar notion is WASP. I believe they might have been called "city-folk" at some point... maybe the equivalent of suburbanites or gated-community-dwellers today. Maybe saying, "that's a gated-community mentality!" would convey a similar meaning in a succinct and relatively PC way.

What do you think the "W" stands for in WASP?

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#128

Post by WiseWeasel »

drcube wrote: post #127
WiseWeasel wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bourgeois. Closest English term I can think of which conveys a similar notion is WASP. I believe they might have been called "city-folk" at some point... maybe the equivalent of suburbanites or gated-community-dwellers today. Maybe saying, "that's a gated-community mentality!" would convey a similar meaning in a succinct and relatively PC way.

What do you think the "W" stands for in WASP?

I am fully aware of what it represents, hence the need to come up with a less divisive term. I was just observing that it's often used in that context.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#129

Post by jczhang »

DanI-S wrote: post #37

There are a shocking number of people here with no outward empathy, understanding nor willingness to see outside of their own limited experience. The world is not the tech industry. Not everybody has the same perspective as you. In fact, more people find themselves in this chap's shoes than in yours. You're likely posting on here because you're under some illusion that you're an entrepreneur. How can you build a succ…

"You're likely posting on here because you're under some illusion that you're an entrepreneur." Ouch. That's gotta sting for some people here haha.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#130

Post by pnathan »

stonemetal wrote: post #111
pnathan wrote: post #95

I recently reviewed a large number of resumes from CS majors from a wide variety of universities. They were collected through career fairs sort of things. Nearly all of them were crap. There was a constant and persistent inability to demonstrate what they had to offer my company. There was a massive focus on class projects and a complete "meh" in terms of work history. Now, some of these people might have been excell…

Danger signs included gaps in employment For the uninitiated why is this a danger sign?

It means that... something happened.

Did they get fired? Did they get a pile of money and go roll around on a beach somewhere? Did they have to take care of family? There can be insanely great reasons... just as easily... insanely bad reasons.

It's an unknown, which adds pure risk. For someone to be out of work for years indicates some sort of ... something. I can't tell with just a gap if that is a problem or just someone living life in a non-career fashion for a while.

I don't personally really view time under a year as significant, as that can simply be time spent in finding a new job. This might particularly be true for someone who doesn't have a faddish skillset.

So in my view, if you took off for a few years, allude to why you did so, along with an explanation of how you kept your skill current.

Example: "I was an early google employee and cashed out after a while, then travelled the world for a few years. I've kept myself current by working on a compiler for my own language with the latest theoretical contributions... you can find it at github/blah/blah. I'd like to resume work at your fine institution". Or that could be restructured into a a line in the resume: "worked on cutting edge compiler as personal project: Last Few Years. See Github Address".

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