Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 210 posts

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

#81

Post by john_moscow »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #9

>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

There's actually a term for this called underemployment [0], that can google you up a lot of discussion.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underemployment

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

#82

Post by cletus »

melvinroest wrote: post #24

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…

It sounds like the company made the right decision based on your words alone.

The tone of your description of their "CRUD applications" comes across as dismissive. What the company wants is people who are happy to work there or at least not unhappy enough to leave (and, even better, will keep their unhappiness to themselves). The company wants this more than technical ability. You might be really talented but it seems like you'd be unhappy there. Perhaps that's not the case and you're just bitter about the rejection?

But don't make the mistake that the the sole purpose of recruiting is to find the most technically capable people. It's not. It never was and it never will be. It's to find people who will fit the company's goal of coming to work, doing their job, going home and doing the same thing day in and day out.

You may well be bored developing CRUD apps. If I was an interviewer for that company I'd certainly be worried about that. Isn't that a possibility here?

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

#83

Post by tyingq »

qaq wrote: post #77
tyingq wrote: post #44

Individual experiences are interesting, but not automatically indicative of a trend. Maybe she's just terrible in interviews? I've certainly interviewed people that were obviously intelligent, but paralyzed with nervousness. Tried compensating, but the situation was too far gone to salvage.

Hire them :) you'll have shorter meetings and they don't job hop as much

Good advice, and I've tried that where it's possible. I'm not the only person that gets to weigh in. Introvert myself and not great at interviews.

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

#84

Post by gwbas1c »

melvinroest wrote: post #24

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 subject matter that you "learn how to learn," and more specifically, that you learn how to adapt to what the job market in your chosen career wants.

So, you need to adapt! Some strategies are:

Talk to family members with similar career paths to what you want to take. My cousin gave me very valuable resume (CV) advice when I was in a similar situation to you. (Basically, half of what my school told me about resume writing was wrong.)

Talk about your situation with friends and find out what they did to get their jobs. In my case, a fraternity brother of mine told me that he posted his resume on a particular job site, and just got a call. I posted my resume on the same job site, and got my first job out of school.

It also doesn't hurt to get a "beer money" job. I started working at a local retail store so I wouldn't go broke. I was only there for a few weeks.

Some things that I haven't had to do, but you might need to do:

Be more entrepreneurial! If no one will hire you to work for their company, why not try to run your own business?

Consider a career change: I've interviewed A LOT of candidates, and some candidates just are in the wrong career. There's a certain "smell." They just misunderstand certain concepts, and appear to have a lot of trouble getting a job in software development. It's not my place to tell them they're in the wrong career as an interviewer.

(BTW, I suspect that Laura Ward, from the article, is in a similar situation. She just might be trying to follow the wrong career path.)

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

#85

Post by thisisnico »

api wrote: post #21
tootahe45 wrote: post #14

The moment colleges become even a little bit responsible for job prospects you will never see crap like 'project management' offered to the unemployed again.

The biggest offenders are those colleges (the majority) that offered people who could not afford them debt-financed liberal arts degrees that are essentially unemployable outside the absolutely tiny number who end up employed in academia or maybe think tanks and non-profits. I'm not saying such degrees or programs shouldn't exist. I'm saying that if colleges cared about students' life outcomes they would be up front…

I'm sure the professors are keeping things hush-hush because it's the future of their own career. It's in their best interest to bring people in. Everyone in the process has skin in the game and they all want more students in the program. I feel like the universities/colleges should have mandatory 3rd party career specialists consult with students, in the students best interests.

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

#86

Post by goatinaboat »

sharkweek wrote: post #4

In my early (okay... mid) thirties now. I have been laid off once and left on my own will from three jobs through the last 12 years of my career. Being laid off puts kind of a stink on you, even if slight, that requires a bit of interview time be spent clarifying WHY you got laid off instead of entirely being able to focus on experience, accomplishments etc. When I was moving from one place to another, there seemed t…

Being laid off puts kind of a stink on you

Not my experience. It’s just a fact of working life nowadays. Companies have financial disasters all the time, or take part in fads like outsourcing or offshoring.

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

#87

Post by BurningFrog »

lowercased wrote: post #17
sharkweek wrote: post #4

In my early (okay... mid) thirties now. I have been laid off once and left on my own will from three jobs through the last 12 years of my career. Being laid off puts kind of a stink on you, even if slight, that requires a bit of interview time be spent clarifying WHY you got laid off instead of entirely being able to focus on experience, accomplishments etc. When I was moving from one place to another, there seemed t…

I've always understood there to be a difference between "laid off" and "fired". "Fired" tends to be because of you, "laid off" is more on the company's side. I was "fired" once (well, twice, in the 90s) because I wasn't pulling my weight. I was 'laid off' once (in the 2000s) because the company was running out of money, and had to lay off around half the company. That wasn't really anything to do with my performance…

If everyone is laid off, everyone understands it was the company's fault, not yours.

Then there is a gradual added stink as your laid off cohort gets smaller. If it was just you, you got fired, and that's a problem.

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

#88

Post by lotsofpulp »

BurningFrog wrote: post #73
pjc50 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Service" roles have been put in a weird state where, because they involve relating to humans, they're difficult to automate. But because they involve doing what you're told, with low room for autonomy and creativity, they're low-status and therefore low paid.

> they're low-status and therefore low paid. Pretty sure it's mostly the other way: They're low status because they're low paid. Jobs are low paid when there is a big supply of people who can and want to do them. Which is pretty much equivalent to the jobs being low skilled. Since everyone can flip a burger, you don't have to pay much to find someone to do it.

Additionally, the demand may not be sufficient to support higher wages. Even if no one is willing to flip a burger for less than $50 per hour, who is willing to pay for a burger flipped by someone earning $50 per hour?

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

#89

Post by melvinroest »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #71
melvinroest wrote: post #24

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…

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 is a close second): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH6-dLvZEiA -- it was for a course but I spent a lot of time in it

4. Unfinished things like: https://melvinroest.github.io/Interactive-Neural-Networks/

5. Way too many scrapers (I like data), the most fun one was a scraper that scraped a website in order to get a restaurant reservation (it was really tough getting in and I knew a foodie who really wanted a reservation there and I wanted to try out Selenium for any excuse imaginable)

6. Some games: one in Unity3D, one in GameMaker (with the scripting engine obviously) and one in Game Salad

7. A lot of websites, small websites most of the time but they add up. I remember I made a CRUD app that tracked all hackathons in The Netherlands. I liked making the app more than tracking all the hackathons.

I suppose that's about it.

Oh, 8. Doodledocs.com

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

#90

Post by goatinaboat »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #49
lowercased wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always understood there to be a difference between "laid off" and "fired". "Fired" tends to be because of you, "laid off" is more on the company's side. I was "fired" once (well, twice, in the 90s) because I wasn't pulling my weight. I was 'laid off' once (in the 2000s) because the company was running out of money, and had to lay off around half the company. That wasn't really anything to do with my performance…

The reason it has a stigma, though, is that when layoffs happen, companies tend not to layoff their star performers, or they do at least some amount of stack ranking. Of course that is not always the case (sometimes entire departments are closed if a company exits a line of business, or the entire company itself folds), but if the company had a ~5-30% across-the-board layoff, it's generally assumed some level of pers…

when layoffs happen, companies tend not to layoff their star performers

Positions are made redundant, not people. It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are if the company no longer has work for someone who does the thing you do, or in the location you do it.

Some unethical companies do use layoffs as a cover for stack ranking but that’s an easy ruse to see through and reflects on them, not you.

Post reply on HN