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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

#131

Post by jarek »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #71
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…

I'm going to assume, since the newspaper is Canadian, that he's Canadian, like myself. He is also near to my age. There is ample work in our country, but you have to be mobile and willing to do labour. It sounds to me that this fellow's problem is this: > " I wanted the tailored suits, the chance at a high income, the BMW, the prestige, the respect, and the power." Yet he wants that opportunity to be given to him, ra…

If you're 29, your father would have most likely been born around 1955, reached adulthood in the 70s, and have middle class handed to him on a platter. Other than that, I have no concerns.

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

#132

Post by jarek »

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).

> That's not cronyism, that's networking

How would you define the difference?

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

#133

Post by galfarragem »

mistermann wrote: post #120
galfarragem wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel exactly as the author. In my country (Portugal) never was such an educated generation and never was such a problematic generation. There is more than 40% of young unemployment. Does that mean that 40% of young people don't worth a dime or are making it wrong?

> Does that mean that 40% of young people don't worth a dime or are making it wrong? Does Portugal have a minimum wage enforced by the government? Lots of people would hire workers for, let's say $8/hour, but if the law says you have to pay them $12/hr, then maybe there won't be any hiring going on.

Minimum wage is (in theory) 485€ month (around 20€/day) for a full time job.. but there is a work around where you get a job as an external employee and there is no minimal wage.

I also believe in Milton Friedman but not in a globalised world, unless we lower wages till meet India market to be able to compete. I can tell you where are US jobs nowadays. My girlfriend, in Poland works for HP for less then 8K dollars year. Master degree job, not as a cleaning lady..

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

#134

Post by galfarragem »

drcube wrote: post #81
pjmo wrote: post #30

I think what we are seeing over and over again as articles similar to this run in papers all over (HuffPo, NYT, WaPo) is this point: Most young people are bad at searching for jobs! Just like we're bad at dating, we're are bad at job searching. Obviously not everyone is bad, but a large majority of people who are unemployed or underemployed do not have a system in place that makes there job search efficient or effect…

How can this be true? When companies are hiring, do young people suddenly get better at finding work? Or is it more like the bottom X% of job seekers will be under- or unemployed, and sometimes X is 5%, sometimes it's 40%? A lot of people got jobs with these same tactics in previous eras, so there's something about "now" that's worse than before.

Globalization.

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

#135

Post by greedo »

drcube wrote: post #126
infinite8s wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not cronyism, that's getting a recommendation from someone who knows you. That's valuable information from for someone making a hiring decision.

Cronyism would be getting the job despite a lack of qualifications but due to your relationship with someone at the company.

Most of the jobs I've had have come from people knowing me, knowing my skill set, and keeping me apprised of openings.

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

#136

Post by greedo »

Can't say I have much sympathy for him. He's 29, and despite having reasonable writing skills seems to have expected a Beemer and a blonde upon graduation.

He also seems to signal that he's far more into what a job gives him than what he can bring to a job in terms of skill. This is something that is easily sniffed out, even just through his writing. Oh, he gives the usual "hard work, sacrifice, and a bit of luck," bit, but then goes on to blame HR, the economy, etc instead of applying any rigor to his own skills and experience.

It's never been easy to break into a job. The idea that a college degree is a Golden Wonka ticket to riches and Everlasting Gobstoppers needs to die.

If you don't have the entrepreneurial spirit to create your own job/startup/career, then you're going to be a piece of phytoplankton, carried by the vagaries of the ocean's currents. There are jobs for people lacking this motivation, but they're not the ones with "I wanted the tailored suits, the chance at a high income, the BMW, the prestige, the respect, and the power."

And I have to say that this isn't particularly credible from what I've witnessed:

"due to job-hunt and financial issues, my age group finds it extremely hard to go out and be in social settings, so the usual networking and schmoozing that previous generations indulged in isn't nearly as possible for us"

And finally, playing the blame game with the faceless and apparently evil minions of HR is just ridiculous. In my experience, HR tends to weed out people so as not to waste a hiring manager's time. And in 90% of the people I've seen hired, the manager took their resume to HR to have it vetted after already having received recommendations for the applicant. In other words, if you're trying to get to the hiring manager through HR, you're doing it wrong.

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

#137

Post by lotu »

zeefo08 wrote: post #46
spacemanaki wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wish someone could explain this to me. I'll try, although I don't have any special insights, I don't think it's mysterious. From goodside's comment: "I majored in CS." From yours: "CS and physics maajor". I probably don't have to tell you that there's tremendous demand for so-called STEM majors. I don't know about your friends' majors, but these are really both "isolated, non-representative examples". I th…

>I think there are plenty of people going through what this 29-yo is going through, and part of that might be because they have degrees in things like English, Art history, Philosophy This. I have friends who majored in the humanities and are now working retail and restaurants. I feel bad for my friend with an English degree stuck working at Barnes and Noble but I also understand the flipside, which is if you're a Ph…

I don't know how you could say the CS degree was winning the lottery. Everyone and their grandmother knew that a CS degree would result in high earning after graduation as far back as the late 90's. In fact many CS departments had the problem of too many unqualified students looking to get rich, most of whom failed out the first year.

Similarly the idea that a humanities degree would not lead to a wealthy lifestyle is not new either. The phase "starving artist" is not new at all. And US News and World Report and been publishing average starting salaries by degree for years.

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

#138

Post by lotu »

mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #58
GFischer wrote: post #22

"Owning a home that's bigger than 500 square feet. (hint: that's not big.) " That's U.S. entitlement for you. 500 square feet is perfectly reasonable, I live on about the same, and I rent it (and I'm 31 years old). A 500 square feet small apartment in Barcelona is about 200.000 euros right now, and 80.000 here in Uruguay. I agree that it's not ideal for raising kids, but it's not something to whine about. Edit: as ot…

I'm formerly of the US but I was going to say most of what you did. There is absolutely a sense of entitlement in North America that seems pretty odd if you've lived in other countries. My place is lot bigger than 500 sq feet but I've also been working since I was 14, left the US for Asia at 23 and have worked my ass off every day since college. Beyond getting laid being a foreigner isn't usually a net gain in my exp…

> As screwed up as the US economy might be I have many Asian friends who have emigrated there in the last decade and have done very well for themselves. Why? Because they were willing to work their assess off.

So much to this, their are so many dry-cleaners and Chinese food store owners who are millionaires because of this.

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

#139

Post by lotu »

ebiester wrote: post #66
moe wrote: post #19

Why am I not surprised he's not finding someone willing to hire a 29 year old with zero work experience. Others have a CV reaching back 5+ years at that age. Don't put that much time exclusively into uni unless you intend to stay in science or aim for a cushy cubicle job that hires on the premise of paper-planes.

The article I read said that he had short term contracts. That may mean one month, that may mean 6 months to a year. Those are still jobs.

So then the title is wrong and he isn't trying to find his first job.

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

#140

Post by mbenjaminsmith »

lotu wrote: post #138
mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm formerly of the US but I was going to say most of what you did. There is absolutely a sense of entitlement in North America that seems pretty odd if you've lived in other countries. My place is lot bigger than 500 sq feet but I've also been working since I was 14, left the US for Asia at 23 and have worked my ass off every day since college. Beyond getting laid being a foreigner isn't usually a net gain in my exp…

> As screwed up as the US economy might be I have many Asian friends who have emigrated there in the last decade and have done very well for themselves. Why? Because they were willing to work their assess off. So much to this, their are so many dry-cleaners and Chinese food store owners who are millionaires because of this.

Wow, I love racism.

My friends are: in art (on the business side), in beer (import), in tech (a couple of them) and one is a chef in NYC.

None of them are millionaires but they've done better in their careers than if they didn't go to fight it out in a different market.

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