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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

#91

Post by sureglymop »

rcruzeiro wrote: post #61
themanmaran wrote: post #22

Honestly I think "applying for jobs" is becoming a thing of the past. From the employer side, it's becoming incredibly difficult to find qualified inbound candidates. The main issues is AI + non-US spam. Every job listing we post attracts ~200 applicants, and maybe 5 US based humans. It's a full time job to wade through the spam to find the actual people, especially when a lot of people are lying about location / exp…

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.

Labor laws. They think it's less profitable to employ people that are protected by regulations that grant them time off etc.

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

#92

Post by adeptima »

> There are already public memos from large companies where leaders tell their staff that any request for headcount has to come with a justification for why an AI system cannot do the job

spot on! at my place - playwright + prompts instead of hiring QA. data analytic guy is gone ... noone is missing him

today's random quotes

- "AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is" ...

- "he job market in India has grown 9% in 2025, so far. 53 million in new jobs. I wonder, how many jobs came from U.S. companies being off shored?"

5 trilllion off the global IT bubble funded by VC money taken somewhere else poured into GPUs and data centers

look at number of linkedin profiles in US companies like Accenture in India .... 450 000 + ... feel really bad biggest transfer of head-counts from US, chatgpt just fuelled it

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

#93

Post by torben-friis »

trentnix wrote: post #67

Warning, rant ahead. Not sure if it’s the wisdom of a few decades of experience or if I’m just jaded in the latter half of my career. It’s probably some of both. My heart breaks for new grads. You’ve been dealt a raw deal by an industry that looked at you as an opportunity for financial and ideological exploitation and not a mind to guide and develop. They lowered expectations and made grander and grander promises. B…

C suites have social networks like everyone else, and their experience is tailored to engagement like everyone else’s.

They are constantly being fed FOMO and panic that due to AI the world will leave them behind.

So they desperately try to avoid that, pushing every lever they have to be part of the club without understanding what it even is. It used to be crypto, it will be something else next.

We'll keep heading towards societal collapse as long as we have all the population addicted to the feeds. If the adults are behaving this way I don’t want to think how those who were exposed from birth will turn out.

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

#94

Post by txrx0000 »

Large AI siloes, if allowed to exist, will bifurcate humanity. People who have a stake in those AI companies will no longer need the rest of the population to provide goods and services. We will split into two economies, where the lower economy is forever indebted to the upper economy for the bones they occasionally throw for free.

This is why we must break the siloes and give the tech to as many people as possible. Not access through an API, but the weights for the models and schematics for the robots.

I think we'll be fine on that front, though. AI and robotics R&D is open enough and people seem willing and capable enough to keep it that way, so the short-term job market issues will disappear. The remaining threat from AI is a long-term existential one.

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

#95

Post by asdfman123 »

thefourthchime wrote: post #89
asdfman123 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How long did it take?

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

#96

Post by ghostpepper »

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…

Agreed; uncommonly good writing, especially for someone with a CS degree.

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

#97

Post by bsder »

GianFabien wrote: post #2

When you look beyond office jobs, you see many real opportunities. For example, there is a housing crisis. Not enough trades persons, building supplies, capital to solve that problem. The unemployment statistics aren't detailed enough to show IBM, MS, Facebook, Amazon, etc laying off tens of thousands of employees a year, each. Last I read, over 500,000 staff have been laid off in the past couple of years.

> Not enough trades persons, building supplies, capital to solve that problem.

The salaries of most tradespeople are not increasing significantly. That would imply that the field doesn't see a shortage.

Given how damaging manual labor is to your body, that's not a good bet to make.

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

#98

Post by throwawayFanta »

cube00 wrote: post #9
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?

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…

As a counter point, at the bigTech i work at, since Trump's H1B visa fee announcement all H1B hiring requires approval from pretty high up in the management chain.

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

#99

Post by anonymous_343 »

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…

It's a good enough resume. But half as many words would make it better.

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

#100

Post by platevoltage »

accurrent wrote: post #25
GianFabien wrote: post #2

When you look beyond office jobs, you see many real opportunities. For example, there is a housing crisis. Not enough trades persons, building supplies, capital to solve that problem. The unemployment statistics aren't detailed enough to show IBM, MS, Facebook, Amazon, etc laying off tens of thousands of employees a year, each. Last I read, over 500,000 staff have been laid off in the past couple of years.

Im not American so can't comment on the US situation. However, where I live, CS grads are facing the same problem. However, switching to trades is not an option - the salaries of trade workers are not enough to pay for housing. I've been working for 5 solid years now at my current company, Im still the youngest hire. While my company continues to compensate me really well, I think that the new grad situation is terri…

Yeah, I came from the automotive repair industry. The only people who made money were the shop owners, and their family members. You really have to be running your own business to make ends meet.
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