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I cannot explain how much you have hit the nail on the head. I graduated from college in May and have been having the exact experience you describe. My genera

• randomtask 16y ago
  "My generation seems entitled because the reality we are now confronting does not match up with the fantasy world that adults have been preparing us for for our entire lives." I couldn't agree more. I can't help but feel the generation our generation spawns will be a really cynical bunch ;)
  • mediaman 16y ago
    I have seen people become cynical in the face of consistent joblessness despite many applications. It worries me because it could cause permanent negative attitudinal shift with bright people -- the early parts of a career can be very formative, and it's not good if, instead of a good, supportive and developmental manager at a stable company, people feel stuck with bad bosses or cannot escape the tyranny of unemployment. By the way, while we're talking about fixing unemployment, I'm hiring a system administrator just south of Seattle, for my manufacturing company in the green space. Smart folks who enjoy a happy working environment and solving interesting customer-facing problems are welcome to get in touch with me.
    • randomtask 16y ago
      > I'm hiring a system administrator just south of Seattle, for my manufacturing company in the green space. Smart folks who enjoy a happy working environment and solving interesting customer-facing problems are welcome to get in touch with me. Unfortunately you're in the wrong continent for me I'm afraid. Perhaps someone ought to create a HN job board? Something that would allow people like yourself who want good people to access a pool of hackers, and something that would make those periodic "who's hiring?" posts redundant? I'm not sure how it would distinguish itself from something like the 37 signals job board, but I think a lot of jobs mentioned in those job threads aren't advertised there anyway?
    • lotharbot 16y ago
      Once a month, HN posts a "who's hiring" thread. You should post this position in the one coming up on November 1.
    • LogicHoleFlaw 16y ago
      Perhaps I have missed something, but I don't see any contact info in your profile. The email field on the profile page is private to each user - only the about: field is public.
      • mediaman 16y ago
        Good catch, fixed.
• anamax 16y ago
  > For my entire life, I was told that if I work hard in school, bust my ass to go to a good university and graduate with quantitative degree, I should have no trouble finding work. At best, that means that you have a beef with folks who told you that. However, you might want to think about why you believed them. Also, consider that they were trying to get you to buy into something for their benefit.
  • pjscott 16y ago
    Do you really think that those people were giving that advice for selfish reasons? I'm guessing that they had good intentions, and honestly believed what they were saying.
    • anamax 16y ago
      > I'm guessing that they had good intentions Everyone has good intentions. > honestly believed what they were saying. So what? > Do you really think that those people were giving that advice for selfish reasons? In many cases, yes. Sure, they also honestly thought that things would work for you, but that's the nature of "win-win".
• phr 16y ago
  I have to agree that the higher-education bubble is just as cruel in its way as the real estate bubble was. Please don't let yourself rot away at your parents' house: work on open source projects, build a web app, do some on-your-own learning, etc.
  • cheald 16y ago
    A thousand times this. If you can't get someone to pay you to improve yourself, do it anyway. "I contributed significant patches to Major Open Source Project" sure as hell counts as experience to any hiring manager. Programmers have it damn easy compared to a lot of people - we don't have to be hired to get experience, and the barrier to entry to practicing our trade is non-existent. If you download a programming language installer and a text editor, you can get experience. Find something you're passionate about, and work on it. For example, in the WoW community, there are a lot of people writing addons for the game. They don't have any appreciable economic value, they aren't world-changers, they aren't the Next Great Instant Millionaire idea, but I've personally seen dozens of people hired out of the community because of their hobby work (and I've gotten probably 6-8 job offers as a result of my similar work). As it turns out, there are Real World Problems to solve behind the shiny game veneer, and that counts for a lot. It doesn't have to be a game. It can be a Javascript physics engine, or a database driver bugfix, or an experimental compression algorithm, or anything. Find something on GitHub you're interested in, take a look at the issues list, fork the repo, write tests, fix the issue, push your code, and issue a pull request back. Congrats, you're now a bit smarter and a bit more experienced. Repeat. In no time, you're going to have experience and perspective that will blow away the 98% of your hiring competition that you used to belong to.
• n8tron 16y ago
  My generation has been described as entitled. Quite frankly, I do feel as if I am owed something, and that society at large has failed to keep its end of the bargain. This quote also hits the nail on the head for many of the older generations posting here. The fact you feel entitled to anything is the source of much grief. I'm part of your generation, but through the professional experience I've gained in the past 8 years, and having been put in the position of hiring people from both Gen X and Y, I've realized that this entitlement hurts you much more than it helps. Success is newly defined for each generation. Our job, in wake of this economic disaster, is to find out just how that definition has changed and move forward.
  • Alex3917 16y ago
    "The fact you feel entitled to anything is the source of much grief." IMHO the younger generation isn't nearly entitled enough, and it's going to result in a lot of violence within our lifetime.
    • brianbreslin 16y ago
      what do you mean by violence? care to elaborate (and explain the correlation)?
      • Alex3917 16y ago
        The history taught in our schools is mostly a mix of propaganda and mythology, so there is nothing in our national identity that allows us to make sense of the 50 year decline that America is heading into. Consider that we now live in a society where: - It's basically impossible for most intelligent, hard working people to make a decent living. - Everyone is a criminal and is subject to arrest at any time. - The world has changed enormously but there have been basically zero major legislative changes in the 25+ years I've been alive. I think we're going to see a lot of frustration vented via everything from street violence to assassinations.
        • pjscott 16y ago
• codyrobbins 16y ago
  Ugh. I can’t wrap my head around the concept of expecting some mechanical path to success and subsequently being flabbergasted at the realization that, even if it ever did exist at one point, it doesn’t anymore. Who cares if anyone told you things are that easy? Everyone telling you that was wrong—get over it. For your own good, get off your ass and do something worthwhile to distinguish yourself. Instead of doing the old spray-and-pray with your résumé, find a job you want and then do absolutely anything it takes to get that job.
  • moron4hire 16y ago
    Exactly. Everyone told me that I should study art in college because I had an affinity for it. Luckily, I also had excellent math scores, saw the writing on the wall in terms of employability, and changed majors to Computer Science (yeah, bet you never saw that major switch before). I had an affinity for that, too, and I engaged in every extra curricular in the department that I could. Surprise, surprise, I've never had trouble finding work and I have former classmates who are still working at Radio Shack. If you're a programmer, you're a programmer regardless of whether you have a job doing it or not; it's a part of your identity. I have a friend working as an economic advisor for a major city government; he doesn't identify as an economist, he identifies as a writer. I have a friend who works as a mutual fund trader; he doesn't identify as a trader, he identifies as a beer brewer. My sister works in university fund raising; she identifies (somewhat ironically) as an economist. We were having a conversation one day, where they were lamenting the situation that I got to do what I loved and got paid very well for it and they were stuck in jobs they hated. I told them, "STOP ASKING PERMISSION TO DO WHAT YOU ARE. Start doing it now." Why do I get paid for what I do? Because I have experience and connections to network to find job. Why do I get paid well? Because I've had a lot of practice. Why do I have so much experience? Because I never asked permission to do it, I've been doing it all day, every day, whether I've had a job or not, for the last 10 years. My writer friend, I told him to start writing user-oriented documentation for open source software projects, and to write promotional materials for non-profit organizations. It had never occurred to him. He's looking in to it now, and he's finding a huge need for good writers everywhere. My brewer friend, I told him to quit spending time on the stool-side of the bar, spending money, and convince his friends who own these brewpubs he frequents to take him on as an unpaid, weekend intern. He won't be getting paid, but then he wasn't getting paid for the time he spent in the same exact building anyway. One of them immediately agreed. My sister, I told her to just do the research she wants to do. There is nothing preventing her from doing the types of number-crunching and paper-writing that she claims to love in her free time. There are tons of data sources that are published for free by the various governments of the world, and nobody to even look at them. Write a few papers and then see where you stand with job applications. Hell, I think the garage tinkerer is in a better position than a big-university researcher specifically because of the constraints of lack of funding. You'll probably make important cost-cutting innovations as a matter of necessity. Necessity: the mother of what now? The future eventually gets here. Make your career pay for your calling, and soon you will have the experience you need to make your calling your career.
• potatolicious 16y ago
  Society didn't lie to you, society never struck a bargain with you. Your parents may have lied to you, maybe your teachers too. Whoever it was that lied, it wasn't us. It probably wasn't malicious, some people are/were genuinely extremely misguided about how the world operates (protip: not as differently as before). Here's what happened: you abdicated your responsibility in one of the most important aspects of your life - your career. You placed in someone's hands other than your own, and now you got bit by it. Is it your fault? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps you were too trusting in believing every bullshit thing that came out of your career counselor's mouth. Either way, one thing's for sure: it isn't the fault of society either. If you had ever bothered to go talk to software companies (assuming that's your field) in high school, or shit, during college, you would've realized that it takes more than a fancy shiny piece of paper from a prestigious school to get a job. You failed to own this responsibility. So, it's either your fault for entrusting your career to the incompetence of others, or it's nobody's fault that you're unemployed. In either case, sitting around complaining about how society has failed you will get nothing done - your own action will. I'm a year out of college, FWIW, and I hate this aspect of my generation (which IMHO is one of the few notably different things about us) - when we encounter unfairness and injustice, we shut down and complain, expecting that the exposing of this unfair injustice will somehow fix everything. It won't. I was rather fortunate in the sense that I was forced to find jobs during college (degree requirement), and was exposed to how the infernal machinations of employment worked. I was 3 months out of high school, weeks into my very first semester of university when I had to find my first paid internship. It sucked. But here's are some lessons I learned from that: - don't just send resumes. Sending resumes is what every Tom, Dick, and Harry does. In this economy, being Tom, Dick, and Harry doesn't work. Besides, do you believe yourself to be strictly mediocre? If not, why are you doing only what strictly mediocre people do? - find a list of software companies in your area (and within, say, an hour's drive of your local area). Hell, expand this beyond software companies - anybody who can employ a person of your skills. It doesn't matter if they're hiring. - polish your resume, learn how to introduce yourself. Find a friend, practice if you must. - hit the road. Seriously, just walk into these places and ask to speak to a hiring manager. Don't ask if they have open positions - it doesn't actually matter. Make sure you get someone in charge out to shake your hand. Introduce yourself, explain that you are looking for a job, know something about what they do, and give them a paper copy of your resume. Learn about what they do. You do this right, your phone will start ringing. I've known several practitioners of this strategy, and not a single one is ever looking for a job for very long.
• throwaway28 16y ago
  For my entire life, I was told that if I work hard in school, bust my ass to go to a good university and graduate with quantitative degree, I should have no trouble finding work I agree that you were lied to. But I think you were a fool for believing that success could be prepackaged and so easily attained. You busted your ass, but did you bust your ass on the right things? There's a difference between working hard and doing work on your intelligence. You did what you were told but did you ever question whether what you were asked to do was the most optimal use of your time or talent? And if you did, why didn't you act on it? I'm sorry but you're absolutely not entitled to anything. I busted my ass in high school. I got semi-decent grades but more importantly I worked hard and learned and explored on my own. For me it was a gamble because even though what I was doing with my time felt like the right thing, I couldn't be sure. It's not fun having the same letter sent home to your parents: "Your son is not performing to his potential [subtext: he's lazy]" . Now I'm a freshman in college and I already have job offers for the summer at a few well known tech firms paying really good money and they're not just McJava jobs. It's feels amazing to finally have some sort of validation that all the time I spent learning on my own gave me real value. Tech companies are hiring like crazy. Don't blame society or the market, it's your fault.
• chubs 16y ago
  Go - find some friends in a similar situation, and start a business. It's what i bitterly regret not doing when i graduated, but the job market was too good to pass up. Your situation may be a blessing in disguise, when in 10 years time you may be a rich co-director at a flourishing IT company, whereas i'll still be stuck as a wage slave. It is much easier for you to start a business, as you presumably are young with no kids/mortgage/wife to support.