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Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

urlahmed.com

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Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#241

Post by Den_VR »

calepayson wrote: post #137
windowshopping wrote: post #62

Two initial thoughts: 1. This author's writing is extremely, uncommonly good. Good enough to write a book and have it sell. "Competing with the past of the economy," "residual behaviour of a world that treated labour as sacred," "immigration without immigrants" -- there are many elegant turns of phrase here. This is a very skilled writer. 2. His resume is designed poorly. Have a look. I'm not surprised his job search…

> 1. This author’s writing is extremely, uncommonly good. > 2. His resume is designed poorly… This is the world of TikTok and Instagram reels Imo this is exactly the problem. We’ve constructed a system where brilliance doesn’t shine through. The idea that someone as thoughtful as OP needs to tiktokify their resume to even have a chance at getting hired is ridiculous. I’m young, so I have no clue, but surely the job m…

The way it used to work was you’d know somebody that’d know somebody and they’d vouch for you. But these days… it’s the same.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#242

Post by gkanai »

urlahmed wrote: post #175

Hey all, OP here (author of the blog post, someone else submitted it ). I wrote this a few days ago mostly out of frustration and honestly did not expect it to go anywhere. It is pretty surreal to wake up and see it on HN with so much discussion. Thank you for reading and for all the comments, messages, and thoughtful critiques. I am currently looking for roles that sit at the intersection of ML, product, and researc…

You have a gift for writing.

As for your job search, I would recommend that you look way beyond your home country if you haven't started doing that already. There are markets where there are jobs and while finding work overseas is not easy, there are markets where ML/product/research roles are still open.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#243

Post by LoganDark »

In my experience, the best way to get hired is not actually to apply traditionally, but to put yourself in places people are actually looking. For me that has been Hacker News. Both of my latest jobs I've gotten from posting in the HN jobseekers thread, and all of the applications I've made outside of HN have never even gotten a reply. I think employers looking for exceptional candidates are more likely to look in exceptional places rather than "normal" places.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#244

Post by deaux »

scorpioxy wrote: post #26
cube00 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company had an onshore hiring freeze, while still hiring offshore. C-suite had the nerve in an all hands to say they were expanding offshore because there was a "local talent shortage", all while an onshore hiring freeze was still in effect. This wasn't even a secret; in our stand ups our immediate manager said that they were blocked from hiring onshore and only had offshore quota available if they wanted any more…

They can. What are you going to do? Quit? That's exactly what they would want. Much cheaper to increase the squeeze than pay redundancies. By the way, it's very similar here in Australia. I don't think there's anything an individual can do in this case. This needs regulation. Even with better workplace protections, the forums are full of people describing what you described and worse.

It doesn't need regulation, it needs taxation. No more billionaires. The endgame is that there's simply not going to be nearly enough jobs. There already aren't, as described in the article, hence why there's all the artificial jobs.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#245

Post by deaux »

terminalshort wrote: post #216
lisbbb wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MBA pyschopaths have always had it in for the far more intelligent and ethics driven CS types. It's always been an envy situation where people lacking talent are envious of those with real talents and real brain power. CS people should not allow themselves to be managed by non-CS people, much like how physicians used to operate. Everyone thinks socialism or communism is going to fix things, but those were already…

Eng is no more intelligent or ethics driven. It's really easy to say you would be different when you aren't the one who has to manage the budget. Things are no different at companies where the founders are engineers.

It is more ethics driven, taking it as the likes of EE, CS and such since we'reon HN. That doesn't apply to every individual, but "more" is about the average. Of course it is. Like how people who study philosophy or veterinary medicine are on average gojng to be more ethics driven than those studying petrochemical engineering.

> Things are no different at companies where the founders are engineers.

Look at companies where engineer CEOs are replaced by MBA CEOs vs companies where the oppposite happens.

Pretty sure that when saying founders you're selecting for unicorn founders as well, sample bias going through the roof. Huge majority of engineer founders never seriously aims to reach that level, they end up with a small or medium-sized, product-driven company.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#246

Post by mikelitoris »

gruez wrote: post #152
alyxya wrote: post #42

To the people at the top, the job market is a statistic. They can't feel empathy on an issue they're so disconnected from, so they just think it's not their problem, or there isn't much they can do about it. Technological innovation is supposed to mean society can produce more with less work, so in theory everyone's lives could end up better off over time where we could all work less and get more, but in practice, I…

>To the people at the top, the job market is a statistic. They can't feel empathy on an issue they're so disconnected from, so they just think it's not their problem, or there isn't much they can do about it. Who are the "people at the top" you speak of? Are they just an amorphous blob of executives and politicians? >Technological innovation is supposed to mean society can produce more with less work, so in theory ev…

> Who are the "people at the top" you speak of? Are they just an amorphous blob of executives and politicians?

Look up Bilderberg group

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#247

Post by Animats »

tkgally wrote: post #86

Great essay. This part seems particularly astute: “Most work lives in the fat middle of a bell curve. ... Models feast on that part of the curve. ... The central question for future labour markets is not whether you are clever or diligent in some absolute sense. It is whether what you do is ordinary enough for a model to learn or strange enough to fall through the gaps. ... An out of distribution human, in my head, i…

That is indeed a good insight. What's being hollowed out are jobs for the middle of the bell curve, which, of course, is where most of the people are. The author says that in several different ways, pointing out that a quiet, reliable long-term job is no longer something that's even a likely possibility.

Then he says it's only a matter of time until the outliers are automated too. That's more speculative, but may not be wrong. It's only been three years since ChatGPT shipped. This is just getting started.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#248

Post by eduction »

In the boom times people get too cocky and in the retrenchment they get too pessimistic.

Bill Gates came to my university in 2001 or 2 urging people to major in computer science because the dot-com bust was bad and everyone was convinced coding was going to move mostly offshore. People who followed his advice did well.

Now everyone is convinced coding will be taken over by AI… and move offshore. It seems like ai will change things more than offshoring but once again not as much as everyone seems to think. We still have offshoring but it didn’t stop programmers ramping toward and beyond seven figure salaries.

To the author’s credit this doesn’t read like panic, it’s level headed, but it is inevitably quite dark. In the 90s recession people temped, worked in coffee shops, and made or listened to amazing music. Not to be flip but maybe for a college grad (no kids) getting sidetracked from a tech developer job for a while is a blessing in disguise.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#249

Post by ares623 »

gruez wrote: post #155
ares623 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. The tech to do this has been around for ages, and it still hasn't happened. So I'm thinking there's something else preventing companies from going this direction. My uneducated guess is that if a remote operator has a bad day, there is nothing stopping them from doing damage on potentially sensitive and expensive assets and then disappearing in a country with lax enforcement. Also, after a certain po…

>My uneducated guess is that if a remote operator has a bad day, there is nothing stopping them from doing damage on potentially sensitive and expensive assets and then disappearing in a country with lax enforcement. Can't people already do massive amounts of damage to a company truck/van by driving it into the water, or dumping gas on it and igniting it? Doing it remotely only makes marginally easier, but most peopl…

I'm saying if your remote operator in some southern hemisphere country causes damages, you might have less recourse for punishment than if the operator was local and under your jurisdiction.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#250

Post by tdb7893 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #229
tdb7893 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm employed as a research assistant as part of the Master's program currently. There are jobs in government, non-profits, and academia potentially after. I've never loved money (except for the flexibility having it gives me) so I have several hundred thousand saved up after a decade of engineering so while grad school is an 82% cut in pre-tax pay I can withdraw 1% a year from my investments and live fine. Even…

People I know in academia are also having a terrible time. Grant funding is in the toilet. The focus is on providing for current staff not hiring. No one is leaving because no one has anywhere to go.

My guess is I'll end up in government or an NGO but I'm probably going to do a PhD before that so getting a real job is at least 5 years away. The previous grad students for my advisor are all employed with decent jobs so I'm not worried, especially since I have a pretty unique skill set for the field and strong stats fundamentals.

Edit: engineers are always skeptical of my career change but my friends actually in the life sciences are more confident I'll be able to figure it out.

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