People complaining about the quality of college graduates is nothing new. Most of the people in my computer science classes didn't care about programming at all

People complaining about the quality of college graduates is nothing new. Most of the people in my computer science classes didn't care about programming at all. Only the people who were naturally very good at it seemed to care much. I recall complaining a lot about the quality of applicants from pretty much day one of my professional programming career. When I was younger I got a lot out of reading: http://www.ericsink.com/Career_Calculus.html http://www.ericsink.com/Career_Calculus.html. As someone who isn't naturally the best programmer this helped me put a lot of things to perspective. I'd imagine anyone starting out would be well served by following his advice. These days I try to spend at least some time every night trying to improve my skills in some tangible way (e.g. reading a book, writing code for a side project, etc.). If you're having trouble finding a job you like just spend as much time as possible learning and you'll do just fine.