It is cool that you snow-shoveled at 12 and held a "real" job in a pizza parlor at 14. However, this is simply not the experience of the vast majority of non-Am

It is cool that you snow-shoveled at 12 and held a "real" job in a pizza parlor at 14. However, this is simply not the experience of the vast majority of non-Americans, especially people from India, China & the like. The OP got an engg PhD and is trying to land a gig that matches up to his narrowly defined skillset, not just any random job. I could very much empathize with what he's going through. I got my very first job at 29, and my wife got her first job at 35, my best friend got his first gig at 42! So what did we all do for 30/40 years ? Well, we just studied our asses off. That handicaps us majorly - I don't know how to shovel snow or bake a pizza or any other random skill that most American kids would automatically know because this country prizes working, selling, marketing, labor, work ethic about all else. However, there are other countries where this is not the case. Most of my close friends and classmates are 30-40 year olds working on their vanilla-PhDs, MD-PhDs, MBA-PhDs and other combinatorial degree seeking parasites putting off work until the very last leg of their lives :) We do that because, well, its just the norm in our peer group. If you look at any immigrant graduate student pool especially in Uni towns, you'll find several 30-40 year old fuddy-duddies who have never held a job in their life and wouldn't want to either, until they've obtained every terminal degree possible and exhausted all other academic options!