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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

#311

Post by lmpdev »

cube00 wrote: post #59
lmpdev wrote: post #10

(Australian not an American here) You’d very quickly rise to the top of the public sector My brother in law is only in his mid 20s and is in charge of half a dozen engineers No nepotism (we honestly know no one) just leaping from the right firm to the public sector at the right time Look for government consultant jobs or even better straight engineering roles

You must have gotten lucky that Accenture didn't infect your agency and shift large project engineering positions under them and then out to India.

Possibly at Federal

State and Local little chance they’re not that optimised

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

#312

Post by ernst_klim »

lisbbb wrote: post #179
chis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really agree. I mean you scroll 1 paragraph down and it says he worked a Google Deepmind, that's really all I'd need to see. I think the market is just super hard for new grads. I've heard from people that had to apply to hundreds of companies and do 20+ interviews to get something. Totally agree that this guy could write books though. On some level I always wonder if it'll be better for society if the next g…

I don't see the point of applying for "hundreds of jobs." I think use the time to network with real people and forget about Indeed or whatever because those jobs are mostly fake anyways.

> I think use the time to network with real people

It kinda doesn't work these days. One of the points of DEI was to eliminate the nepotism hiring (and it's kinda good if the hiring wasn't so broken), so these days referrals don't mean shit unless you're referred by someone high-ranked enough.

I've literally seen people being autorejected after being referred by team-leads these days.

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

#313

Post by Squarex »

IdiocyInAction wrote: post #58
margorczynski wrote: post #8

The most baffling thing is that even now the H1Bs, etc. are still pouring in. How can you say there is a shortage of IT talent and you need to import them where most grads can't find any work?

A new grad is not necessarily the same as a potential H1B hire. Tech workers are not fungible. A company might prefer to hire an Indian or Polish person who has won ICPC, has hard-to-acquire experience, etc. over a D-average new grad without internships from Georgia or something.

These people are exactly what H1B is for. The problem is that most h1b hires now are not that exceptional.

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

#314

Post by dbspin »

barrenko wrote: post #309
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…

With this in mind, I'd like to propose an alternative to OP. E.g. he may be extremely unlucky in the following 7 months in his job hunt, and tech is not what it used to be. If the uses these 7 months to focus on his writing on the other hand... We'll need people with a soul and technical chops to cover this apocalypse (using it in the original sense of the word).

As a writer myself... This comment is somewhat ironic, given that the 'job market' for writers is effectively non existent. Journalism has been whittled down to nothing. Quality fiction isn't read any more - and the remaining outlets are ideologically gatekept. Non fiction, outside of a few celebrity authors, or highly specialised topics, does not sell. The traditional unglamorous but well remunerated writing gigs - technical writing, specialist journals etc, have been GPT'd out of existence. A few legacy and celebrity authors are fine. Others are able to make a living through platforms like Substack - but these are primarily folks who managed to build a large following in traditional media or pre-oligarch twitter. Recommending a young person spend 7 months on their writing is to recommend they lose the guts of a year of their young life on a dead end.

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

#316

Post by tdiff »

muds wrote: post #151
crystal_revenge wrote: post #138

I always feel a bit conflicted when I read these experience from new grads: on the one hand, there's no question the job market today is not the one they signed up for; on the other, the expectation of recent grads is completely alien to me as someone who entered the job market in the shadow of the dotcom bust. The biggest thing that seems foreign to me is the expectation that "I'm a fit for the job, I should therefo…

Much of your argument rests on refuting the notion that the author feels "entitled" to a high-paying job. In that point, I agree with you. Any engineering undertaking is most productive when it is a meritocratic and competitive pursuit. People that feel "entitled" to an engineering job unfortunately need a reality check on their true competitiveness. However, that doesn't seem like the authors core point. The authors…

For the last decades being born in the western world has been an advantage. There is an irony in it beeing gradually reversed.

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

#317

Post by rvz »

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…

Great post. I think your situation would be a bit more different if you were in San Francisco in the US instead of anywhere in the UK where at least with your AI/ML background, there are lots of related roles there.

However the problem is for every role, you will be faced this 10,000+ other applicants, so you need to keep that in mind.

So instead of that your best bet is to build an AI startup in the US [0]. You have built AI systems for others, surely you can do it for yourself?

[0] Do not build a startup in the UK or Europe.

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

#318

Post by ehnto »

ghaff wrote: post #85
yesimahuman wrote: post #27

I really feel horrible for people who bet on CS and are hitting this job market right now. It's interesting, back when I was in elementary school in the 90's, parents of friends knew I had an interest in computers and would tell me becoming a programmer or IT person was a terrible job and I should avoid it. That was maybe true until it wasn't, and it ended up being highly lucrative. I can't tell if this is the same t…

AI may actually change everything but I suspect things are cyclical to at least some degree. The $400K jobs may dry up for most--and certainly having two or more those jobs at the same time will--especially for people without degrees or degrees from no-name colleges or boot camps. It may be reasonable to expect CS/programming jobs will become more like lots of other STEM degrees in terms of requirements and comp. Whi…

You can look out to other economies to see how software plays out in a "normal" market, not a VC and mega-corp backed one. Salaries in those economies for software are like you are predicting, in line with other skilled professions.

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

#319

Post by PeterStuer »

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…

I'd prefer an editor went over this post and condenced this by at least 50%, and then demanded factual references be added.

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

#320

Post by darkwater »

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…

> 2. His resume is designed poorly. Have a look. I'm not surprised his job search has been unsuccessful when his resume looks like an essay. OP, you gotta cut that text down by like 70% and put more highlights. This is the world of tiktok and instagram reels.

I disagree. He just needs some nicer-looking template and that would be a perfectly valid CV [1]. Perhaps reducing a bit some paragraph, but not by 70% at all (nor 50 or 40).

[1] https://urlahmed.com/assets/documents/am-cv.pdf

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