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

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

#81

Post by platevoltage »

andy99 wrote: post #36
lacker wrote: post #28

What jumped out at me is that the author had three internships. Those are essentially "entry-level positions". If you do well at an internship, you typically get a job offer. If you don't do well, usually you can at least get some useful feedback. I'm not saying that everything is perfectly fine in the job market right now, it's just a lot more productive to focus on "what skill do I need to work on, that would have…

Yeah either he’s just really unlucky - it’s certainly possible to intern at a place that then implements a hiring freeze or something, or there is more too this.

This was my experience after I did an internship in 2024.

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

#82

Post by nhaehnle »

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 agree on the first point. I clicked through to the previous blog entry which I also found to be really good.

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

#83

Post by thefourthchime »

PlanksVariable wrote: post #38
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?

At the big tech company I work for, it’s been at least 5 years since I was asked to interview a US citizen. And I have younger relatives and family friends who are recent CS grads that are smart and desperate for jobs. I don’t know what’s going on anymore.

Same, we haven't hired in 5 years. I know bright young college grade who has been looking for a job for way too long.

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

#84

Post by rcruzeiro »

themanmaran wrote: post #77
rcruzeiro wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, I live in Europe where it is quite common to work remotely across countries within the EU or the UK. I have always wondered why so many US companies limit remote roles to people based in the US, and then mention a shortage of qualified talent. It feels like there is a large pool of people being overlooked.

In our position we're only hiring for in person roles, so location/authorization is a must have. But in regards to US/EU remote, I imagine the EU candidates come with slightly higher overhead (different payroll processing, employment regulations, time zones, etc). Which makes it easier to adopt a US only approach.

In Europe, what we do is usually: if the person lives in the same country as one of our business entities, they get hired directly as an employee. If they live in a country where the company does not have a business presence, they get hired through an EOR or as a contractor.

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

#85

Post by ghaff »

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.

Which is certainly a lot different than the expectations that were set since post dot-com.

Obviously (? I think) there will be jobs but they may well be more in line with middle-class professional jobs than some cadre has been in the last 10-20 years.

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

#86

Post by tkgally »

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, is someone whose job sits far enough in the tail of that curve that it does not currently compress into training data. ... [But T]hey are not safe; nothing is. They are simply late on the automation curve.”

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

#87

Post by clanky »

Buttons840 wrote: post #37
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?

I have more than my fair share of complaints about Trump, but I did like the idea of charging $100,000 per year for every H1B visa. It would have ultimately helped American workers by giving them more negotiating power and higher salaries. So, naturally, Trump was talked out of doing it yearly and it looks like it's legally questionable whether it will stand-up at all. It appears things worked out in a way that benef…

A lot of these things Trump doesn't want to actually do, and knows are totally infeasible, so he just throws them out there as a way to score points without actually spending any political capital. We just saw it today with the promise of $2,000 stimulus checks at the same time he's going out of his way to make sure people can't get SNAP benefits, even with state assistance.

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

#88

Post by ghaff »

tayo42 wrote: post #64
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…

Job markets are bad for everyone though

From what I've seen, CS/programming job growth is significantly worse than in other comparable fields. Though my guess is that's a retrenchment from overhiring and overpaying.

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

#89

Post by thefourthchime »

asdfman123 wrote: post #41
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?

At Google they're building parallel teams in India right now. I feel like 20 years ago the cultural gap between an American an an Indian was too great for offshoring to be successful. Now, what's really different between myself and my counterpart in Mumbai? Many managers here are Indian anyway, lessening the culture gap still.

Yeah, true. I worked for a big tech company when they were building a team in China so they could lay us all off in Palo Alto.

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

#90

Post by platevoltage »

mproud wrote: post #68

I’m not saying people should get jobs they are way overqualified for, but I believe there are many in these situations who choose to be unemployed rather than work in jobs that they could do in their industry.

Certainly there are new grads who think they are hot shit, but I have to believe that the vast majority would take whatever they could if it meant a foot in the door, especially right now.
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