6 ms·

I dropped out of school in 1999, and got laid off in 2001 at the start of that recession. I couldn't get a job in 2001 or 2002, so I went back to school and got

I dropped out of school in 1999, and got laid off in 2001 at the start of that recession. I couldn't get a job in 2001 or 2002, so I went back to school and got scholarships to live off of, and graduated in 2003. Recession was still ongoing but I got lucky and had a friend from the first job help me get a job, but other than that, I wasn't getting a lot of interviews. I had friends who were getting hired and then laid off just a few weeks later. One guy lucked out and got hired and fired with severance before his start date. Job searching during a recession isn't fun. Going back to school with scholarships, if you can get them, is a good stopgap. You'll get money to live as well as extra education to make a stronger application when the recession ends. Otherwise, work your network. Find friends who were lucky enough to get jobs and ask for referrals. Work on open source projects and try to make friends with the senior people on the project, who might like your work and get you a job.

30944836 4y ago
>had a friend from the first job help me get a job This is the part of the story that OP needs to key in on. OP: Network. Network Network Network. I've been at 2 FAANG in 7 years. I don't write code. I make good money. Friends got me jobs both times. Do whatever you have to do to make friends with people in the industry where you want to work. Go to the bars they hang out in. Go to meet-ups. Go to lectures open to the public. Network on HN.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  This can be hit and miss so needs some persistence. For me, not living in SF or even the USA, there is not really a tech culture to the point where the Pizza delivery person wants to talk about Monads (a story I read somewhere...). However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do. 1. Find stuff on Show HN or HN (or Reddit etc.) generally that you are super excited about. Genuinely. For example with me: I probably should be excited about self driving cars, but I am actually way more excited about that self-hosted wiki in a single HTML file, for example. 2. See how to connect to the people. You could send a cold email, but it is a bit sucky and desperate. It is better if you "do" something fun online with them. Maybe help them on the Github, submit or review PRs, join the chat server and talk, build something and let them know about it, use it for free (maybe using their thing, or complementary) etc. This should be effortless because remember you are super excited. 3. That's it. Be a human, see where it goes. You may or may not find out about jobs. You might get bored. But doing 1 and 2 enough a great job or opportunity will be found out. This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself. You still need to do interviews, and come across like a good worker and will add a lot of value and all that jazz. But this is about finding stuff that may not even be advertised. And also most advertised jobs are a bit shit. So it acts as a filter.
  - jsperson 4y ago
    > However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do. I live 40 miles north of Wichita Kansas USA. There's no tech - there's no city even. Here's what I did: I got to know a recruiter in Wichita. Turns out she's a rock star - one of the leaders in the region at recruting tech. Met a guy on an flight from Atlanta to Wichita. We got together and talked geek a few times. The three of us started a Meetup in Wichita where we talk geek every other month or so. We generally get 15-50 folks depending on the time of year and topic. Last meeting I got two off handed job offers (I'm not looking). I've gotten a previous position the same way. Tech is everywhere. The typical attendee to our Meetup is a developer or analyst at a regional bank, an airplane manufacturer, or farm credit agency. Nothing fancy, but great jobs for this area. I'm not a very social person, but I do like to talk geek. There are lots of folks like me everywhere. Folks want to learn. Get together and teach each other.
    - madengr 4y ago
    - jedberg 4y ago
      You wouldn't happen to live in Stubbville where the people train leaves from? But seriously, that's awesome what you did. You did the hard work so those other 20 people could benefit.
  - 30944836 4y ago
    >This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself. This is an excellent summary. I'll add: people like helping people. They like getting people jobs, they like seeing other people succeed, and they like mentoring people, even casually. Use that to your advantage, and don't forget to lend a hand to the next person on your way up the ladder.
- kabdib 4y ago
  All but one of the jobs I've had in my 4+ decades of mucking with computers have been through networking. (Even the gig I had as a dishwasher in high school was a referral through a friend). That one job that I got at a generic Silly Valley job fair? It was the place where I learned the term "Train Wreck". Network, network, network. Oh yeah.
  - HomeGear 4y ago
    It’s hard to say if your experience is isolated to a single job. No?
    - kabdib 4y ago
      Unclear what you're asking. Generally I've stayed 5-8 years at any one company (the most so far was 11). My time at a few startups were far shorter than that, for pretty guessable reasons.
indigodaddy 4y ago
Do yourself a favor though and don’t get any student loans. You’ll be setting yourself up for a future of pain.
- tomatowurst 4y ago
  Contrarian advice: This is the best time to take on student loans. We are entering a structural shift in how our global economy fueled by a credit bubble post 08. It is going to be much much worse than 2008 and 2000, combined. They are not going to be able to collect student loans for a very long time.
  - FabHK 4y ago
    Well, about half a year ago would have been the perfect time to get a loan, before rates went up.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  That’s really bad advice unless you’re going into a field where you can’t possibly ever pay it back. My sister wouldn’t be a pharmacist without student loans and she is about as far from living in pain as someone can get.
  - bobkazamakis 4y ago
    >That’s really bad advice unless you’re going into a field where you can’t possibly ever pay it back. This is really bad advice if a degree doesn't increase your salary enough to offset the cost. >My sister wouldn’t be a pharmacist without student loans She would if the degree didn't cost out of pocket in the first place.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      This is your advice for the first person on my mom’s side of the family to graduate from college, “don’t follow your dreams because education should be free”? That’s how they keep the dirty okies who moved to California during the dust bowl (aka my grandparents) as second class citizens. My parents sacrificed a lot to send her to college. I mean, a lot.
tomatowurst 4y ago
Unfortunately this will be a 3-sigma recession. Once every 100 year type of thing. The last one lasted 10 years followed by a major world war. If you want to look at what happened to advanced economies that got a taste of credit bubbles Japan is a very good example. 40 years later and still have not reached their ATH. So if that dot com bubble lasted 2 years, this recession will last a lot longer. In addition the door is closing on entry level junior SWE positions other than FANG. Many businesses do not want fresh grads or bootcamp coders. The tools have gotten so good that they have automated/replaced much of the grunt work. So it is down to experience. Generation Z is utterly screwed and its sad because they live in the product of the world created by our generation and the previous. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of small governments. The only path to stability is no longer the markets but a large government that struggles with growing wealth gap, aging population, healthcare. As in the past, 3-sigma recession was always followed by a global armed conflict. George Soros talk at Davos confirmed this.
- glouwbug 4y ago
  And yet everything will return to normal in 8 months time
  - rocgf 4y ago
    You are grossly misunderstanding the situation if you actually believe this to be the case.
    - glouwbug 4y ago
      The market is emotion driven. With rising stock everyone touts they won't sell during the hard times, but when the hard times hit everyone sings the tune of gloom. We literally have zero idea what the market will bring.
      - rocgf 4y ago
        Nobody really knows what will happen, but we are at an inflection point. It is very hard to believe that the market will reach new highs in 8 months.

30944836 4y ago

>had a friend from the first job help me get a job This is the part of the story that OP needs to key in on. OP: Network. Network Network Network. I've been at 2 FAANG in 7 years. I don't write code. I make good money. Friends got me jobs both times. Do whatever you have to do to make friends with people in the industry where you want to work. Go to the bars they hang out in. Go to meet-ups. Go to lectures open to the public. Network on HN.

quickthrower2 4y ago
This can be hit and miss so needs some persistence. For me, not living in SF or even the USA, there is not really a tech culture to the point where the Pizza delivery person wants to talk about Monads (a story I read somewhere...). However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do. 1. Find stuff on Show HN or HN (or Reddit etc.) generally that you are super excited about. Genuinely. For example with me: I probably should be excited about self driving cars, but I am actually way more excited about that self-hosted wiki in a single HTML file, for example. 2. See how to connect to the people. You could send a cold email, but it is a bit sucky and desperate. It is better if you "do" something fun online with them. Maybe help them on the Github, submit or review PRs, join the chat server and talk, build something and let them know about it, use it for free (maybe using their thing, or complementary) etc. This should be effortless because remember you are super excited. 3. That's it. Be a human, see where it goes. You may or may not find out about jobs. You might get bored. But doing 1 and 2 enough a great job or opportunity will be found out. This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself. You still need to do interviews, and come across like a good worker and will add a lot of value and all that jazz. But this is about finding stuff that may not even be advertised. And also most advertised jobs are a bit shit. So it acts as a filter.
- jsperson 4y ago
  > However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do. I live 40 miles north of Wichita Kansas USA. There's no tech - there's no city even. Here's what I did: I got to know a recruiter in Wichita. Turns out she's a rock star - one of the leaders in the region at recruting tech. Met a guy on an flight from Atlanta to Wichita. We got together and talked geek a few times. The three of us started a Meetup in Wichita where we talk geek every other month or so. We generally get 15-50 folks depending on the time of year and topic. Last meeting I got two off handed job offers (I'm not looking). I've gotten a previous position the same way. Tech is everywhere. The typical attendee to our Meetup is a developer or analyst at a regional bank, an airplane manufacturer, or farm credit agency. Nothing fancy, but great jobs for this area. I'm not a very social person, but I do like to talk geek. There are lots of folks like me everywhere. Folks want to learn. Get together and teach each other.
  - madengr 4y ago
  - jedberg 4y ago
    You wouldn't happen to live in Stubbville where the people train leaves from? But seriously, that's awesome what you did. You did the hard work so those other 20 people could benefit.
- 30944836 4y ago
  >This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself. This is an excellent summary. I'll add: people like helping people. They like getting people jobs, they like seeing other people succeed, and they like mentoring people, even casually. Use that to your advantage, and don't forget to lend a hand to the next person on your way up the ladder.
kabdib 4y ago
All but one of the jobs I've had in my 4+ decades of mucking with computers have been through networking. (Even the gig I had as a dishwasher in high school was a referral through a friend). That one job that I got at a generic Silly Valley job fair? It was the place where I learned the term "Train Wreck". Network, network, network. Oh yeah.
- HomeGear 4y ago
  It’s hard to say if your experience is isolated to a single job. No?
  - kabdib 4y ago
    Unclear what you're asking. Generally I've stayed 5-8 years at any one company (the most so far was 11). My time at a few startups were far shorter than that, for pretty guessable reasons.

indigodaddy 4y ago

Do yourself a favor though and don’t get any student loans. You’ll be setting yourself up for a future of pain.

tomatowurst 4y ago
Contrarian advice: This is the best time to take on student loans. We are entering a structural shift in how our global economy fueled by a credit bubble post 08. It is going to be much much worse than 2008 and 2000, combined. They are not going to be able to collect student loans for a very long time.
- FabHK 4y ago
  Well, about half a year ago would have been the perfect time to get a loan, before rates went up.
UncleEntity 4y ago
That’s really bad advice unless you’re going into a field where you can’t possibly ever pay it back. My sister wouldn’t be a pharmacist without student loans and she is about as far from living in pain as someone can get.
- bobkazamakis 4y ago
  >That’s really bad advice unless you’re going into a field where you can’t possibly ever pay it back. This is really bad advice if a degree doesn't increase your salary enough to offset the cost. >My sister wouldn’t be a pharmacist without student loans She would if the degree didn't cost out of pocket in the first place.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    This is your advice for the first person on my mom’s side of the family to graduate from college, “don’t follow your dreams because education should be free”? That’s how they keep the dirty okies who moved to California during the dust bowl (aka my grandparents) as second class citizens. My parents sacrificed a lot to send her to college. I mean, a lot.

tomatowurst 4y ago

Unfortunately this will be a 3-sigma recession. Once every 100 year type of thing. The last one lasted 10 years followed by a major world war. If you want to look at what happened to advanced economies that got a taste of credit bubbles Japan is a very good example. 40 years later and still have not reached their ATH. So if that dot com bubble lasted 2 years, this recession will last a lot longer. In addition the door is closing on entry level junior SWE positions other than FANG. Many businesses do not want fresh grads or bootcamp coders. The tools have gotten so good that they have automated/replaced much of the grunt work. So it is down to experience. Generation Z is utterly screwed and its sad because they live in the product of the world created by our generation and the previous. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of small governments. The only path to stability is no longer the markets but a large government that struggles with growing wealth gap, aging population, healthcare. As in the past, 3-sigma recession was always followed by a global armed conflict. George Soros talk at Davos confirmed this.

glouwbug 4y ago
And yet everything will return to normal in 8 months time
- rocgf 4y ago
  You are grossly misunderstanding the situation if you actually believe this to be the case.
  - glouwbug 4y ago
    The market is emotion driven. With rising stock everyone touts they won't sell during the hard times, but when the hard times hit everyone sings the tune of gloom. We literally have zero idea what the market will bring.
    - rocgf 4y ago
      Nobody really knows what will happen, but we are at an inflection point. It is very hard to believe that the market will reach new highs in 8 months.