It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees | Hacker News Reader

It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

nytimes.com

71 pointsdanso131 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11671933

"Even so, the economic recovery has progressed more slowly for young high school graduates than for those coming out of college."

I'd imagine this has something to do with the job pool coming out of the recession being heavily seeded with people who already have degrees or degrees plus working experience. Economy takes a nosedive, people get laid off- so when the economy is on the upswing, those with degrees and working experience will be the first to get hired again. I'd be curious about pre-recession numbers of high school grad employment vs. now, post-recession.

"He added that vocational schools should no longer be thought of as dead ends, since they can serve as steppingstones to associate degrees at community colleges or to enrollment at four-year institutions."

I also think it's a tremendous disadvantage to say "Oh yeah, vocational school can get to you an associate's or a college degree" because at some point we have GOT to stop acting like a college degree is the be-all-end-all. We cannot keep protesting against the tremendous student loan debt burden that's creeping ever bigger on the one hand while touting college degrees as being the ONLY way to get a high-paying "respectable" job. Not to mention there are a shitton of services out there that you don't need a college degree for that are for jobs which are highly skilled and that pay well. There's always going to be a need for welders, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, crane operators, etc etc etc. These are jobs that are absolutely necessary for society to function as a whole- and I think it's really dumb how at some point these jobs were downgraded to being for "dumb people" or people who weren't "rich or smart enough" to go to college.

> I'd be curious about pre-recession numbers of high school grad employment vs. now, post-recession.

Don't forget automation, which is behind a lot of the discrepancy between recovered business sales/overall production figures while the jobs numbers lag behind. Automation means fewer employees getting more work done.

> I also think it's a tremendous disadvantage to say "Oh yeah, vocational school can get to you an associate's or a college degree" because at some point we have GOT to stop acting like a college degree is the be-all-end-all.

This times a THOUSAND, I know plenty of people who make really good money and left their vocational schools with useful, in-demand skills and practically no debt. (I'm a little jealous TBH, though I still prefer my desk job.)

>we have GOT to stop acting like a college degree is the be-all-end-all. We cannot keep protesting against the tremendous student loan debt burden that's creeping ever bigger on the one hand while touting college degrees as being the ONLY way to get a high-paying "respectable" job.

It's not "us", it's politicians who service the wealthy that like to lay down those two contradictory pieces of advice ("why did you get a degree if you didn't want debt?" / "why did you not get a degree if you wanted a decent job?").

Oh c'mon. "Get a college degree" is the mantra of baby boomer parents at all levels. It's not the wealthy elite pushing that message.

College isn't the end-all, but the education helps, even if it's not purely technical or vocational. Spending a few years just learning how to think about various problems, discipline to study instead of drink (or if you're me, you didn't do well with this), etc.

I do think that we over-emphasize the school itself. What I mean by that, at least in my opinion, is that if it's not an Ivy and not the top school in the field that you are 150% sure you will absolutely do (and won't change majors 3x like I did), then take the reasonably priced state option.

Time has flown and I recently realized I'm 12 years out of college. My education was ~10k a year at a public school - a decent one, but not even the best one in the state. I would not be materially farther ahead in life if I'd spent 30k a year at UVA or 50k at Georgetown. And I'm not paying off undergraduate debt right now. I am paying off grad (law school) debt, but that's another story - I was a night student and by the time I graduated it didn't make sense to restart my career in law when I was pretty well along in my industry. And the mistake I made was not going to the cheaper, public state school (and I didn't attend an Ivy).

By all means, get your education, but control the costs. To an 18 year old graduating high school it might sound like a no brainer to spend 50k at the "good" private school over the state option, but the reality is, there are few circumstances where that's true. I did it the right way once, and the wrong way once, so just my two cents.

"I do think that we over-emphasize the school itself."

God yes. I remember an article I read earlier this year (can't remember the title or I'd link it) that followed students at Ivies and at State schools and found that (controlling for grades) it was the students' commitment to networking, extracurricular activities, volunteering, internships, etc. that made the most difference to their long-term success. I WISH SOMEONE HAD TAUGHT ME THAT! I graduated 10 years ago and oh my god I wish I had done more to network/intern/volunteer when I was in school.

I'll bet there's an untapped hiring pool that consists of 18 year olds newly admitted to good colleges (or rising sophomores who don't want more debt). They've been admitted, and outside of internships and technical majors the "college advantage" is largely selection bias.

Come to think of it, one recruiter at my school did offer bonuses to any student who dropped out to work for him instead of graduating. The department organizer didn't look thrilled.

I believe a lot in the value of undergraduate education in general as a time to learn how to think and even just grow up a bit and learn how to live independently and such. Even just exploring and figuring out what on earth you want to be when you grow up (at 34 I still struggle with that). Beyond that, internships really open doors. I think that some kind of post-secondary education is important - just do it reasonably in terms of course of study and cost. Take up a trade if you prefer, that's education as well. But do something to develop yourself - and I don't necessarily think going right into the corporate meat grinder is the best way to start since you'll get such a narrow view of the way to do things right out of the gate.

I do wish that we did gap years in the US like some countries do. If my daughter grows up and decides to take a year or two between high school and college, I'd be thrilled. Shit, I'd pay for it if she found something reasonably constructive to do. I'd have been way better off had I delayed my freshman year by 1-2 years - I had a great time, but I didn't go to class much.

It does come down to that, and it makes sense if you think about it. Fresh grads come in batches of thousands at a time, many of them took the same classes, similar majors, etc, even across schools. Grades sometimes matter, sometimes don't (I had a low GPA because I had a bad habit of picking and choosing what I wanted to learn about, and it didn't come in full course increments). So what's left is the network and internships - the demonstrated ability to act human enough that people will talk to you, and listen to your ideas and think enough of you to give you a shot at something. That's why I say Ivies still matter - there's access from there to a very different network, and it opens up a job market that people like me would have very little access to.

This will be very New England focused, since that's where I live, but if my daughter doesn't get into an Ivy, I'd really try to talk her out of Colby or Bates as a consolation prize. They're fine schools, but very expensive, and probably not a whole lot better than some of the state options like UNH, UMaine, UMass, UVM, etc. They're not 20-30k more per year better anyway.

The one that I never figured out, is who on God's great earth would go to a state university, in a state that you don't live in? Out of state tuition at UNH, to pick one of them that's close by and I have interns from, is not very much cheaper than going to Colby or Bates or BC/BU.

Depends on what degree you want. Plenty of state schools like Texas, Michigan, Berkeley, and Georgia Tech are in the top-20 for one field or another. Wanting to go to one of those for one of their specialties is reasonable.

Top 20 in a specialty is a stretch for me. I could see if something was the top school for something - otherwise, we get into the wishy-washy world of school rankings which really can be manipulated and start to mean less as you go down the list. However, let's hypothetically say that top 20 is a good cutoff - there is still the very real issue of a 17 year old kid (because that's when we apply to college) following through on that specialty. It doesn't matter how good a CS program CMU has if you decide two semesters in to pursue that BFA.

Now, for your specific examples, provided that you are in-state, they actually are reasonable options for any degree. Texas (10k), Michigan (14k), Cal Berkeley (14k) and GT (10k), all excluding room and board. On the other hand, I'd really not want to send my kid to those schools from out of state unless she had some pretty specific plans and seemed reasonably likely to follow through. And if that were the case, we'd probably pay that first year out of state while figuring out residency to try and bring that down.

I could have picked better examples, I suppose. I went to a state school as an out of state student because it was still reasonable (James Madison was 10k a year).

UNH is a bad example and I shouldn't have used it. It's expensive even for in-state because the state is not funding it as much as they used to. But my point was that I wouldn't spend Ivy money on Bates or Colby when going there is not clearly better than a state school as it would be with an Ivy.

It's an offensive joke to tout "vocational school will get you a college degree!" in an article like this. The wages quoted for electricians should make it pretty clear how unnecessary that is - $28/hour is an exceedingly livable salary, and that's just for a journeyman.

I think this piece just reveals how ingrained "college is necessary" is for the upper-middle class. Even when they tried to write a post about the power of vocational training the best the NYT could manage is "because maybe it'll send you to college".

The punchline is that 53% of recent college graduates are employed in jobs that don't require that degree: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/53-of-re....

You have an entire generation that's being pushed into getting their degree in journalism and putting together poverty wages with freelance gigs when they could have gotten into a real profession making decent money.

It's either a joke or a magic trick - you set up a generation by saying one thing, and then reveal that the world has been doing a completely different thing while they were distracted.

I grew up with adults suggesting journalism and law as careers for me. I'd have been richer and happier with a vocational education in forestry or advanced mechanical work, but I didn't even know those careers existed until late in high school. I just got damned lucky that software caught my attention instead.

Along the same lines, there's the ridiculous cultural meme that is recited to kids: "Follow your dreams" implying that it's a perfectly reasonable and even admirable idea to fixate on some particular career early on in life and pursue it despite any setbacks.

This is awful, because a young kid may only have heard of a handful of well-known "classic" careers like journalist, lawyer, athlete, nurse, and then they end up fixating on achieving one of those simply because they committed too early -- before they had a chance to hear about careers less likely to be in a Richard Scary book like forestry, mechanical work, system administration, helicopter piloting, whatever, even though one of those might be just as exciting or more.

As a result the "popular" careers that everyone's heard of by the age of ten are all oversubscribed, and all other careers are undersubscribed. Because "follow your dreams"

Also, any academic post-graduate role is oversubscribed because too many people go to college, and in college, hear a disproportionate amount from people who did well through the post-graduate route. (Though that's changing as the actual instructors are increasingly made of famished adjuncts and TAs.)

It's funny you mention journalism. As a software engineer, I'm often wishing I studied journalism -- I feel like a newspaper serves as a pretty decent model for how a software team should function.

If you want to solve this problem in one step, make it illegal for employers to make decisions based on educational background.

Maybe make exceptions for doctors or lawyers, just to keep that from distracting us.

People will go to college to learn things, not to credentialize. Right now, we are in the middle of a zero-sum credential race, which hurts the poorest the hardest, and bizarrely the only real discussion of helping the poor is how to force them to do better in the credential race.

Wow, the idea that you shouldn't ask about educational background is pretty fascinating.

If it were placed at the same level as, say, sexual orientation in interview questions (e.g. verboten)... it would be a very effective way to skip straight to your capabilities and make a self-taught homeschooler be on the same playing field as an Ivy Leaguer.

The only "problem" would be one of getting off the ground. Currently there's a reasonable ecosystem around interning and recruiting on campuses and so on, which would muddy that "I don't know where you came from" line. Further, when you're straight-out-of-college there's a fair expectation that you're nigh useless at virtually every complex job and will need to be trained, so there's a fall-back that education is essentially vetting-by-proxy and gets you "street cred".

e.g. "Hey, look, I managed these activities and was a member of these honor societies and still managed to get a 4.0 GPA, you should hire me because I've proven that whatever I'm in, I kick ass at."

If I'm not allowed to talk about school, what the hell do I tell you I've been doing?

Still... pretty cool thought experiment.

I've actually been convinced of this stance for some years, though everyone I've talked to seems to think it's nuts.

The thing is that education--and particularly choice of school--is tightly linked with class, which in turn is linked with race, etc. Add to that the bias of "I graduated from here, therefore I favor people who graduated from similar" and I'm pretty sure there's some bad stuff that comes out of it.

We already recognize a little bit of this in that there's often advice not to put the schooling dates on your resume because it implies age, but people somehow don't make the jump to the schooling itself implying other discriminatory factors.

Plus the emphasis on schooling filters non-traditional learners and autodidacts. The software industry exploded in part because we historically haven't done that, at least during the high-growth periods that corresponded to high-demand periods. There are obviously some sectors for which you absolutely want formal training (medicine, EIT/PE-type engineering, etc.) but I'd argue that's the exception and not the rule. In most jobs it just matters that you know what you're doing.

We should figure out a way to evaluate and select on actual competencies rather than trying to use school as a surrogate for them. For many professions this should be relatively straightforward. Competencies are not the be-all/end-all (as we know from programming interviews) but to the extent that we expect schools to represent them we should be able to evaluate with testing if they're truly anywhere near objective.

Unfortunately, that won't happen as long as the easy option is available.

> though everyone I've talked to seems to think it's nuts.

gee, I guess everyone else is just wrong.

A stance can be nuts and have value at the same time. Most anything resulting in a social change will be nutty at the outset since it challenges assumptions around status quo. Basic income was pretty nutty too when I became a vocal proponent ten-odd years ago, but the world seems to be catching up.

Yeah, it seems like they wouldn't be dead ends because they get you to a vocation.

Only 10 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds have a college or advanced degree

I get that they're trying to capture the demographic of recent high school grads, but pushing it to something like 21-27 would give more realistic figures, and avoid conflating the figure too much with current college students.

I agree. Lots of my friends have gotten degrees, but many spent five or six years in college for various reasons. So, they didn't graduate until 23 or 24.

Yeah, looks like a default demographic option they copy pasted from a different survey, but of course at least 50% of that number shouldn't be expected to have degrees yet, so it's a misleading statistic.

It is probably safe to assume that just about 0 percent of people under the age of 20 have a college degree (not including the few savants who graduate high school before turning 18), which essentially makes this statistic useless. It gets even worse when you take into account the commonly understood fact that it takes many students more than 4 years to complete a degree. This attempt at using a statistic that does not make sense in context really degrades the value of the entire article and makes it seem like the nations youth is worse off than it actually may be.

> not including the few savants who graduate high school before turning 18

I graduated high school before turning 18.

I never skipped a grade at any point.

My final year of high school consisted of taking four classes, of which three were taken only because they were graduation requirements: "English 12", "History 12", and "Acting 3". It may shock and surprise you to hear that the content of "English 12" and "History 12" was not appreciably different from any other "english" or history classes at the school. In particular, they were not different from "English 8" and "History 8", except in that they counted toward the UC "four years of high-school-level english and history classes" requirement and the "* 8" classes technically didn't.

It doesn't take a savant to graduate before turning 18. All it takes is realizing that staying in high school is stupid.

They do immediately follow that with "though many will graduate later", but it raises the question of why the author inserted a statistic that they obviously knew was irrelevant.

The article lost all credibility with me after reading that.

This statistic doesn't make any sense if it's an attempt to show how many people are getting college degrees, but I don't think that's what it's trying to demonstrate. It's trying to give some measure of how many young people are having trouble finding jobs because they lack college degrees.

This isn't the ideal measure, surely: percentage of job-seekers 17-24 would obviously be better. In the absence of that statistic, however, it doesn't make sense to try to factor out current students. Having a job while attending university is very common, and is one of the best ways to lessen the tuition burden.

Talking to relatives who can't find jobs, "How many jobs did you apply for today?" and the reply is inevitably "well, none".

How are you expecting to find a job when you don't apply? I applied for five to ten jobs a day when I got out of trade school. I was unemployed so I certainly had the time. It took almost six months to get someone to take a chance on me.

The trick to getting a good job without a degree is to get someone, anyone, to take a chance on you. You will be underpaid until you prove yourself but it will cost you less than a degree in the long run.

This is anecdotal advice to say the least...

I've learned first-hand that these days software teams don't seem to take a chance and do not use the probationary period to see if someone is a good fit. You go through four or 6 interviews and then one of the 8 or so people you've interviewed with has a bad feeling about you and that seals the deal. It's like they don't have a probationary period and want to hire you unlimited, full-time from day one. Even the most impressive psychological bullshitter can and will be revealed as a bad fit in the first month, so why not take a chance on someone who seems capable and socially compatible while being down to earth (aka no bullshit artist). What I've learned is to not be totally honest in interviews and keep my concerns to myself when asked.

> You go through four or 6 interviews and then one of the 8 or so people you've interviewed with has a bad feeling about you and that seals the deal.

Then they get on Hacker News later that day and complain about how hard it is to find people and how hot the job market is right now.

Yeah, I'm always amused when large corps complain about missing workforce and about needing 50.000 software developers in Germany. But if you went looking they either don't want developers but PhD's who've heard of C++ or much worse just cheap labor. The latest was Volkswagen making news right after the software scandal that they're planning to hire 38.000 developers. No idea what tasks they want to put that many developers on and I'm not sure if I should be scared or skeptical.

Modern cars often consist of millions of lines of programming. Especially electric cars.

Sure, but planning to hire 35k devs requires a better explanation than that. Even building a space station like DS9 wouldn't make use of 35k in any effective way. How would you coordinate and make use of the available workforce?

The last time I've read numbers a couple years ago, not even Microsoft had 35k software developers.

Speaking of, if you've watched last week's Silicon Valley episode and are in the valley, is it really true that recruiters send you gift baskets just to lure you to an interview?

I've never seen this, probably because recruiters aren't dumb and know that people will react just like Guilfoyle did.

I've certainly seen 'perks' for in-person interviews or acceptances, but I'd be shocked if people are opening with gifts before they get something in return.

Not a fruit basket, but I've been wined and dined by recruiters during the frothy 2011-2012 years. I did not take the job but the dinner was nice.

Contract to hire is a probationary period. The contracts usually last six months or so.

Do you mean as a contractor?

If so, how normal is it to go through an interview process for contracting? I got friends who told me they had to interview like for a regular position even though they're contracting, but I should say that those I've heard it from are contracting exclusively full-time for a single company. So how normal is it for 3 or 6 months contracting?

I am not sure. I've never interviewed for a contract to hire job. However among those I've worked with who were in such arrangements, the bar to hiring was lower.

Sure, and those of us that are decent and have fte with real benefits aren't going to take a 6 month contract in hopes that:

A. I'm a great fit for your after hours drinking club. B. The headcount still (or ever existed) for my fte position in 6 months.

If you want a lower threshold for being hired, you have to accept a higher risk of being fired. If are established in your career then by all means don't take a contract job. But they can be gateways to a first job for many people.

You're absolutely right about someone taking a chance. At 17 I basically walked into a woodworking shop, spoke with the owner and told him how passionate I was about working with my hands and showed him some things I had made. We talked hand-tools and he hired me to sweep the floors, deal with the scrap and sawdust and do the rough mill work.

I had no intention of going to college so I took my GED and quit school.

At 17 I was still living at home and, at that, age it was not odd or stressful to myself or my parents. I also didn't need much money so making minimum wage was not an issue. I didn't even own a car at first. I rode my bike everywhere and got rides with co-workers when the weather was really bad.

By the time I needed more money I had experience and was making more because of it. I was also attending community college at night because 2.5 years of working in a trade made me realize that college might be a good idea.

Another trick is to not waste too much time on school if you don't intend to go to college.

> How are you expecting to find a job when you don't apply?

How are you going to apply to a job if there aren't any to apply to ?

That really depends on the market location doesn't it? I've moved states to find jobs in the past.

So have I, but even then, I expanded my search radius in discrete steps:

  - 0-30 minute commute and remote for stable companies
  - 30-60 minute commute and remote for promising start-ups
  - less than 2 hour commute and remote for anybody
  - moving to a previously white-listed US metropolitan area
  - moving anywhere at all within the continental US
  - freelancing gigs
  - live on the government dole
  - emigrate to a Commonwealth country
  - emigrate to another Anglophone country
  - emigrate to a completely foreign culture
  - turn to a life of white-collar crime
  - "out, damned spot"
  - wage bloody revolution against the corporation whores
  - sell humanity out to the lizard people

So far, I haven't ever had to progress past step 5. I'd be a little worried about folks stuck on step 7, as that's just before the slippery slope starts.

Why would you prefer to live on government welfare instead of moving to another country?

I can see people not wanting to if they are "settled" in an area - either by property or family - but I would think doing something productive in another country would be better than doing nothing.

{S}He probably had to pay rent and or eat, or go to the doctor, or pay for internet to send out job applications. We don't stop being expensive because we are not working.

The standard of living/quality of live for the poor in the USA is better than being poor in other countries. People on the dole often have nicer shoes and accessories than I do (talk about financial priorities out of whack, but I digress)! Depending on the situation you're better off on the dole than working a low-wage job. However, In other countries being poor means no welfare, no shoes, no plumbing, no food, and no Louis Vuitton purses.

I wouldn't be "doing nothing". The dole isn't always about sitting on ass and cashing checks. It's just that the things I would be doing would probably not be sufficiently remunerative to maintain a lifestyle that includes clean beds and showers.

There's always jobs. For one, until the entire United States is a bulging mass of skyscrapers and hydroponics towers, there's always something you could buy, develop, and flip or hold.

This is true on an individual level, but I'm really wary about the sleight of hand where personal advice is used as a cure for societal problems.

Sure, your unemployed nephew could hustle hard enough to find a decent job, but that's not true for everyone's unemployed nephew all at once. Criticizing people for not finding jobs or starting companies doesn't fix structural issues - it's not going to solve Spain's 25% unemployment.

If your goal is a job, there is one. It might pay minimum wage but it's there. I'm a high school drop out from two drug addicted parents that both currently live with their parents. Last time I earned minimum wage I was 15, I got a job in a kitchen washing dishes and worked my way up to sous chef over 8 years and as many restaurants. Then I taught myself some networking and PC troubleshooting and got a job in IT, then another. Now I'm working on a portfolio together and I'm going to take a stab at becoming a web developer. It is exceedingly rare in a relatively populated area that there are 'no jobs', just ones you'd prefer not to do.

> but it will cost you less than a degree in the long run.

This isn't true, people with degrees definitely make a lot more on average.

I'm not pro-degree, since I don't think it's good for even half of the college grads, and the debt is an awful burden for many.

But the numbers are there regarding the salary. On average, it is worth it.

Do degrees cause higher earnings or are they merely correlated with higher earnings? The best students get into the best colleges. Do the best colleges add as much to the equation as the premium they charge, or are they riding the coattails of the best students?

The post (and overall numbers) don't depend on the best students or the best colleges. In general, having a college degree has been positive financially for most students, over the course of their careers.

Part of the key is that degrees pay off over long periods of time in promotions and other career opportunities, so the advantage is not always apparent at age 17.

Colleges (even the poor ones) employ selection processes to ensure that only the best and most willing students be able to achieve completion at all. What the parent is suggesting is that those who are selected via those processes might also just happen to be the best suited for the business world, irrespective of their education.

For example, someone who has innate determination to receive a degree might also be determined to finish projects in the workplace, leading to better job opportunities over someone who is less innately determined. While someone with high determination and no degree may do just as well as any college graduate, since they are lumped into the group of people with low determination, we pass them off as outliers instead of looking at the most important features.

The correlation is clear, but that does not mean there is causation.

Degrees cause higher earnings. Part of that effect is accumulated human capital in the form of the thing learned and new networks, but part of the degree is just signaling.

There's a drastic difference between earnings for unfinished and finished college degree and in general this effect is dubbed as sheepskin effect.

Here's a Wikipedia starter on the effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#Spence_...

> There's a drastic difference between earnings for unfinished and finished college degree

Is that really signalling, or is it that the reasons for not finishing a degree (not willing to put in the hard work, for instance) bleed into the workplace? The degree may play no part at all.

Interestingly, a GED does not statistically elevate ones earning position like a traditionally acquired high school diploma. It has been suggested by researchers that the reasons for not completing high school the traditional way are what lead to lower earnings, and receiving certification does not remove those existing traits. Why would college be different?

Additionally, the biggest statistical gains come from post-graduate studies. 49% of the top 1% of Americans have a post-graduate degrees. Further, there are more people with high school or less in the top 1% than there are with bachelor degree-only. This suggests to me that the gains from having a degree are skewed by supply managed professions (for example: doctors), where incomes are artificially high because the law prevents unconstrained competition. There, again, may be no advantage outside of those protected industries, and certainly not if you plan to stop at the bachelor level.

Pretty ridiculous to counter "Degree holders earn more" with "not in the 1%".

Care to elaborate? When they say college graduates earn more, at least for anything I've ever read, it is based on mean income. Due to the way mean is calculated, and incomes tending to follow the power law, the top 1% are going to be the ones who have the largest representation of that higher average income.

As such, degree holders may simply earn more because they are overly represented in supply managed industries with artificial incomes, like the aforementioned doctor.

From your link, the results section states, "Spence discovered that even if education did not contribute anything to an employee's productivity, it could still have value to both the employer and employee. If the appropriate cost/benefit structure exists (or is created), "good" employees will buy more education in order to signal their higher productivity."

The second sentence flips the causality you describe around. Employees who are already productive buy education to certify their productivity. The education does not necessarily lead to higher productivity. The employer wants productive employees, not certified employees. Certified employees are just a proxy for productive employees. Another proxy, such as aptitude tests or GitHub repositories, could function just as well. These "cost/benefit structures" may very well be more appropriate than formal education because they are less costly in time and money.

Applying to 5-10 jobs a day might be (partly) why it took you 6 months to get that job.

Unfortunately, tailoring your resume and cover letter to the job increases your chances of a response quite a bit, and that can easily take you two hours to research the position, the company, write a cover letter (or email), and adjust certain parts of your resume.

And if they insist on you manually entering your resume into their Taleo (or similar) software, that can easily take an hour.

And if they want code samples, finding (or making) something appropriate and cleaning it up could easily take 2-3 hours (or more).

And meanwhile, if you're lucky, recruiters could be calling to interrupt you at any time of day to have the 'getting to know you' conversation or pitch some new company they want to throw your resume at and probably not secure an interview for you.

And then at some point you need to actually find the series of jobs to apply to, and if you have any filter at all that can take a good solid 2-3 hours of browsing various job sites.

After doing 2, maybe 3 of those a day, I always got pretty drained and sick of doing it instead of going outside and enjoying the day, something you don't usually get to do when you're employed and working all day, so it's a rare opportunity to take advantage of it. Plus, job searching all day every day just drains the life force out of you (well, me at least).

I had four different resumes I sent out last time, each highlighting a different type of experience (I'm somewhat of a generalist, so I've got experience in many industries and with different tech), and I still made company-specific tweaks on top of that.

Not only do most applications take time, I've found that no-degree jobs take far longer to apply for than fancy "skilled" jobs like software work.

The full interview funnel is long in software, but the first step is something like "upload your resume to some sites". Decent low-education jobs, meanwhile, require proprietary sites and lengthy applications. It's not uncommon to be asked for 5-10 years of past residences and credit information. Verizon (for a floor job) put me through a 2 hour personality test (as an initial application), then never contacted me again.

I can't speak to people coming out of trade school, but the only no-degree jobs that you manage 5-10 applications per day for are the really crappy ones like fast food. Anything better than that has a swarm of applicants, so they're free to be as demanding and time-wasting as they want.

I can't really imagine doing 10 applications per day for the sort of job where many companies demand several hours work and none of it transfers to the next place.

I think the gist of the parent message was that: in order to get a job, one must apply for (at least) a job. So those people that complain about not being able to get one, but haven't applied for any seems like they just like complaining.

This may be true, but the advice does not necessarily mean it will take 6 months - I have a graduate degree from a prestigious school in STEM, and it took me 2 1/2 years to find a job, only after getting fed up with job searching and teaching myself programming. I treated job searching as a 9 to 5 job as well.

The market is very tough for those trying to enter in the first time in general.

Even though this is a dupe story, I was unable to find a decent answer to the following question in the original comments. I am a recent grad in a non-(CS/physics/math/eng) discipline, where I just got to discover enough coding to get hooked but not enough to actually acquire it as a marketable skill. I have carried enough interest through to take it up as a serious after work hobby and am learning by doing small projects in Python and a few other languages that I am trying out (I was advised Python as a good gateway drug). I would like to work in software development, but am realistically behind hordes of recent CS grads who look incomparably better on paper (and are for the most part better than me skills-wise at this point). As a result I had to take a job in another area, but still have my ambition to be a dev, probably a web dev.

My question is this: what course of action would you advise I take to get in? Is this even a sensible goal? I am continuously working on my skills going to meetups/dojos and working on projects alone and with other people, but at what point can I realistically try my luck in the job market, what sort of job could I realistically target and is this even a sensible thing to do with my 20s?

You probably have the skills now to get hired. You're not going to get hired at Google or Facebook or anyplace like that with their insane hiring practices...but there are a ton of other companies that would probably be glad to have you. Just be upfront about your experience, show them projects you've completed, be enthusiastic...find recruiters and start taking phone calls and see!

I think you are on the right path. If you enjoy playing with bits, and do so in your spare time, you will get better. I would guess that about 50% of the folks who took CS did so not out of interest, but because they thought it was the "right" career. You will surely have an edge on those folks. Come up with projects you can build for yourself. Soon you be so good, folks will want to hire you.

As a side note, I slid out of my first weekend in college,and ended up first getting an Electrical Journeyman's license at age 31. Then work dried up in FL, and I went back to school and picked up a computer engineering degree at 36. I missed the fast track, but I have had a lot of fun.

Definitely a sensible thing to do.

The best way to go about it is to do cool projects, and release them online. That way you have something to point to to demonstrate your ability.

Not all companies will take this as evidence of your ability, but the ones you want to work for will.

Good luck!

If you are young and cheap, you can get hired somewhere regardless of your actual skill level. After you prove yourself and acquire some experience, step up to a better paying gig elsewhere :)

Yes, this is a plausible goal. Ten years from now, only the most specialized of employers will care what your degree was in -- they should be looking at the experience you've obtained.

Python is an excellent gateway drug. Try contributing to a project written in it. For example, you could start a pelican blog and then extend pelican in some interesting direction.

Try some freelance projects for pay, too. Here's a freebie idea: lots of small businesses around you have complicated calculations to make that, right now, they do on paper. A local heating oil delivery company has a formula for when they need to schedule deliveries based on local temperatures, tank size, mostly-predictable seasonal adjustments and individual history. Go and talk to them about how they do this, and offer to write a tool for them that does the calculations. Then extend the basic idea: there are similar requirements for all sorts of service companies. Maybe you want to offer it as a service on the web.

Context: Someone who is currently about to graduate from their Maths & Philosophy degree, but got a job as a web developer before their degree.

Firstly, you absolutely don't need a CS degree to be a web developer (or similar). There are programming jobs where you do need a CS degree, but web development isn't one of them. What you do need is to be able to build websites/webapps to a high standard. I would suggest picking a technology (perhaps Wordpress (PHP) or Angular.js (JavaScript) would be good picks - simply because there is high demand for developer familiar with these technologies. Or go with Django if you want to stick with Python). You need to understand best practices for the framework you are using, and language level features such as closure and scope. Perhaps start following newsletters like JavaScript Weekly and HTML5 weekly. And blogs such as A List Apart.

Finally, apply to companies that are small enough that you can talk to them directly, rather than going through a formal recruitment process. There is high demand for developers, and consequently there are companies out there that are willing to train people up.

You haven't said what your field is, but keep your eyes open for opportunities to use Python on the job. There may be millions of developers out there, but how many of them can bring their programming skills to bear on your field?

My field was languages. I was always good at that, but turns out it's not a hugely practical degree subject. I got exposed to programming doing speech recognition/synthesis.

I think doing projects and posting on github is good. If you have a undergraduate degree, consider taking graduate courses in the field.

I had an undergraduate civil engineering degree. When I decided to change fields in my late 20s I looked into taking computer science classes at night while working, some friends who were history majors did the same. From there I got a coop job, I then went back full time for a masters in computer science. The database, data structures and operating system classes I took in grad school have been really valuable in my career.

The only thing about this route is the classes are pricy and you have to apply.

This is what I did a pace (Its different, its been over 10 years): http://pace.smartcatalogiq.com/2015-2016/Graduate-Catalog/Sc...

Northeastern is where some friends got certificates, I did my masters: http://www.ccis.northeastern.edu/academics/certificate/

I've taken some online edX classes to keep skills up

Look at your current job for opportunities to automate things. Step up and do it yourself. That will be "experience" rather than "education" and will impress other employers more.

If you're finding part-time study too slow, there are a number of non-academic contexts in which you can study code full time.

Despite the reputation, there are some web-dev bootcamps that have good placement rates.

A few in the US: 1) http://www.fullstackacademy.com/ 2) http://www.hackreactor.com/ 3) http://flatironschool.com/

If you're a woman, there's the deferred tuition (no charge until you have a job) option:

http://www.gracehopper.com/

Or if you're not interested in a bootcamp, but rather a self directed environment surrounded by a community of other developers (and want a free option) there's Recurse Center (https://www.recurse.com/)

I'm not a programmer, nor did I graduate from college (2009) with any technical skills.

However, one option you may consider is taking a non-technical job someplace and using your programming skills at your non-technical job to impress the hell out of your boss/company.

For example, a few years ago I joined a government human caiptal consulting firm. I basically learned Excel and al ittle VBA to automate some really tedious tasks, and also learned enough to do some interesting analysis.

I impressed a few clients with my work and I became an independent consultant making far more money just because I work in a field that doesn't have many "technical" people in it.

Being a big fish in a small pond that doesn't expect you to be a big fish could lead to some interesting opportunities. Analytical/technical types in non-analytical/technical fields is a good way to do that.

I don't think most developers realize how much average people can be impressed by a little Excel/VBA magic.

QA automation is the most realistic job you'll be able to get, either for web or mobile (or even both). It will be up to you to find a place that will allow (and hopefully encourage) you to progress towards a dev position.

QA automation is good for entry-level because you're still writing code full-time, but you're competing with way less people. Anything with "QA" or "Test" in the job title is very unappealing to most CS graduates, even when they've been unsuccessfully applying to positions for months after graduation.

Entry-level pay for these positions is competitive (I would say no less than 10% comparison to entry-level devs) and you'll be able to choose between part-time/hourly and full-time/salaried, since there are plenty of jobs for both. You will want to know basic Ruby, Python, and Bash going into interviews, as well as how to test JSON endpoints. Interviews for these positions are very, very easy in comparison to dev interviews.

I also really suggest looking for a position that integrates you into the dev team(s) you will be working with, as opposed to siloing you off as part of a separate QA team (of which you may be the sole member).

I would strongly recommend building up a portfolio of cool side projects and making them publicly available on github. I think more and more tech interviewers are starting to look at candidates' github accounts and taking it seriously. Even better if you can host your side projects somewhere so they can easily check it out.

    Among 17- to 24-year-olds, just over 10 percent have
    completed college or achieved an advanced degree.

assuming a student enters college right out of high school when they are between 18 and 19 and graduates when they are between 22 and 23, only the 24 year olds in that statistic are even slightly anomalous. The rest could be getting their degrees or not even entered college yet.

That statistic is beyond useless to the point of being misleading and disingenuous.

Of course a 17 year old has not completed an advanced degree.

It's like saying that only 5% of 10-year-olds are 6 feet or taller.

I have several nephews that are between 18-23 age. It's pretty surprising the amount of opportunity they have to get into the workplace and just are not motivated.

Getting into a skilled trade is a great career path. I have a co-worker whose son went to vo-tech for welding, got hired by one of the largest construction companies (they're building the USA Bank Stadium in Minneapolis) and is now making close to 50K, with no kids and he's not married, so he's pretty set.

When I talk with my nephews, they complain they're broke and can't move out from their families house, but don't want to go to a coding boot camp, or go to a Vo-Tech and learn a trade. They just don't see either as a very "glamorous" career, so they reject it out of hand - which is puzzling. So they work several part time jobs, live at home and have no "launch date" to either go to a 4 year school, or get into something that would give them a solid career path.

I'd also like to point out, its always been tough for young kids to get into the job market without college degrees. Even if you were learning a trade, it took years to go from apprentice to journeyman to master. Even when I was in college (mid aughts) I had many friends who didn't go to college and couldn't get a whiff of stable corporate gig. They would always go interview and the guy would say, "You have a great resume, you'd probably do well here, but you need a 4 year degree. Go get your degree and I'll hire you immediately." They were relegated to jumping around between small mom and pop shops that didn't have the stability of a larger corporation. Every couple of years they were on the move.

> I'd also like to point out, its always been tough for young kids to get into the job market without college degrees.

No it wasn't, you're just not going back far enough. The 2000s (when you said you went to school) isn't far back enough. We're talking 1950's, 60's, 70's, 80's it definitely wasn't tough for a young person to get a job without a degree. 90's is when that started to change.

My dad actually quit going to college in the late 70's because grocery store jobs (cashier, stocking) were easy to get and were paying better than what he could expect with what he was studying in college. That's definitely not true anymore.

I think Mike Rowe's foundation[1] is really a good idea towards solving this disconnect. He's putting scholarships together for the training necessary to do "blue collar" work. Heard about it on the Tim Ferriss podcast. Be nice if the government was doing this instead of supporting more degrees in subjects that don't allow the recipients to provide value to others.

[1]http://profoundlydisconnected.com/

I was never given the opportunity to try machine-shop, or woodworking in highschool, those classes were already removed from schooling around the time I got there. But it would have been a nice path for me to get a AWS certification in welding. I'm surprised that these have been removed from curriculum, there is a pretty high value in these classes in terms of exposure and training for skilled work... Hopefully it is brought back at some point with the explosion of interest DIY, it would be cool to see an engineering course that offers exposure to different fields (mechanical // chemical // fabrication // failure identification). Which in turn would really drive interest into engineering not as a "major" but as an ideological mindset.

I think I'm starting to ramble...

This greatly depends on the industry. I dropped out of high school after my freshman year and have never had any issue finding a job as a software engineer or project manager. I haven't even been asked about my education in 5 or 6 years. You just need to market yourself, be open to relocation and make your skill set seem like an asset to the companies you are applying too. This is an odd industry though.

It's a tough job market for the young with college degrees. A lot of large companies are displacing (firing) experienced talent in an effort to get cheaper, and it's putting a lot of experienced, talented people back in the market. Many companies are simply hiring experience for not a ton more money (since they're now unemployed) over entry level.

At my company (fortune 500, not a tech company), I've been very involved in internship and entry level hiring since I remember how hard it was for me to land my first post-college job in 2004. We've had layoffs, and I don't see the strength in our internship and entry level programs that I did even last year - and we're a healthy company.

Anyhow, first post, don't beat me to death :)

Issac Cordoso, who is graduating from Medford Vocational Technical High School in Massachusetts in June, already has a job lined up as an electrical apprentice, earning $12 an hour. He is also applying for a coveted spot as an apprentice with the local electrical union, where the starting pay is $18.25 an hour. As an apprentice, he could work while training to become a journeyman, a position with an hourly wage of $28. Most of Mr. Cordoso’s classmates also have jobs waiting for them, he said.

So whomever hired Cordoso on as an apprentice is saving $6.25 an hour in wages over a union apprentice. And they'll have to hire him on at $18-24 an hour once he's competent to keep him from jumping ship.

Assuming they can't get him to settle for even less. This is another unfortunate side effect of the situation; those with jobs on offer can drive wages even lower because there's so much competition for positions.

'Well, you're correct, normally we pay 18$ an hour, but the economy...'

Workforce demographics and employment data is one of the few US economic indicators that I consistently see ZeroHedge covering well and putting into context.

What I mean by this is their coverage of how the 55+ age group has been cannabalizing job openings from the youth is readily apparent in their routinely updated chart.

The following version was updated alongside their 5/6/16 article:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...

"10% of 17-24 year olds have a college degree..."

No shit! When you include 17-21 year olds who have not been in college long enough to get a 4 year degree (and barely a two year degree for 20-21 year olds) the numbers sure look a lot lower!

Great reporting New York Times... wonder why you're struggling with top notch number manipulation like that!

And they are in the "gold standard" tier of journalism...

How shameful, to be 17 without a college degree /s

What's even more alarming to me is that, in some industries, it is becoming tough get a job with just a Batchelor's degree. I work at a private high school where 70-80% of teachers have a Master's or PhD...most of whom couldn't get hired at a university.

This is definitely a concern, but depending on your state education is a distorted market. Where I grew up, 8-12 educators (even most private ones) had to have a teaching degree and a subject matter degree.

As a result, pretty much all of them had either a subject Bachelor's and an advanced degree in teaching, or a teaching BS and a subject Masters. A double major would have been fine, but that's rare. The regulatory landscape had basically enforced teaching as a two-degree profession.

I wonder if there's room for an entrepreneur program for young people that are suited to that sort of thing.

Something that would help boostrap lower cost / lower risk businesses they could start, training, bookkeeping, mentors, access to small loans, etc.

There are some small businesses that are fairly immune to failure provided the owner has some amount of hustle. Things like becoming an in-home daycare provider, cleaning windows at small businesses, mobile pet grooming, power washing, etc. If there were some way to vet specific skills of the applicant, you could a few more to that list as well.

I suppose it wouldn't make a huge dent, as only some fraction of the kids would be suitable for that sort of thing. But, it seems worthwhile to me.

High school grad is the new dropout. Even factory assembly work requires post-high school education.

IMO, this is more reflective of the shift of high school towards 4-year college prep than rather than changes in the marketplace.

It's easy, continually study what interests you. Start this while you are young.

Work for smaller businesses that pay less, get the experience, and move on up.

You could always try to start your own business too.

I think what matters is how much value you can make. If you can explain you would make 2X of your employment cost, and your reasons are sound, it won't matter who you are any more.

This was posted yesterday..

I'm surprised the uncollege hasn't had more success tackling this. It started out as a mass movement and has now morphed into a gap-year program.

College as it was perhaps even 50 or 75 years ago is necessary. What passes for college today is not all that helpful.

To many jobs, to little qualified candidates but nothing a hacker can't fix.

After reading PG's Submarine[0], I wonder if this is going to be a recurring PR push, backed by some association of US colleges.

[0] http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

It's a tough job market for anyone who can't differentiate their skills from the pack. That's not a big, it's the feature that incentivizes people to skill up.

meh - this applies only to people who are looking to do things that they think require a degree. Plumbers and Electricians don't need degrees. There also persists (for various reasons) that the 'younger generations' don't want to put their dues in, that they want to start at the top. (holding out for a management position).

You want to code? Great! take a job doing something else while you code on the side. You want to help people learn 4th Century Prussian Interpretive Dance? fine, take a different job as a step-stone to that.

the point being, you don't need some bloated, under-educated piece of paper to get a job - or even the job you want. You just have to work harder to get there, something that people just don't want to do anymore. No one wants to start 'in the mail room' anymore.

> No one wants to start 'in the mail room' anymore.

I think part of the problem is that jobs are tighter and tighter these days and the proverbial mail room may not be open for work.

People either don't know about or really don't want to do a lot of jobs. Example, good friend of mine started mopping blood in a hospital, working his way up (making good money too!), he has been able to pay for school and live a good life.. The jobs are out there, they just require you to find them ( and sometimes also require that you have the stomach for it ).

not true - there are PLENTY of low-level or entry level 'jobs out there', but people today are SO spoiled that they don't want to take those jobs because they are seen as beneath them.

Why can't someone have a job at McDonald's while you take a non-paid internship at a BioTech company? or study for Chemical Engineering? or code at night?

Are you honestly telling me that there is a shortage of burger-flippers, janitors and building engineers out there? A "Job" is not hard to find - you just have to be willing to swallow your pride and take it, and use it as a stepping stone to get to the next position. Knowledge comes from books. Wisdom comes from experience.

"WORK" is a four-letter word, both literally and figuratively.

AWS has a free tier specifically to play on, to learn. MIT and other universities have FREE online classes. an education is not hard to get.

> a non-paid internship at a BioTech company

Would almost certainly be a labor law violation.

are you trying to miss the point?

https://www.propublica.org/article/when-interns-should-be-pa...

And how will I keep my non-paid internship? I can't show up reliably, because my McDonald's job has variable hours and I only get a day's notice.

And how will I afford my studies for chemical engineering? I can't even afford community college on minimum wage, and no one will hire a Chem E without an accredited degree (for good reason). I can take EdX courses (not free if I want certification), but they can't ever equate to in-person courses and real college students are holding protests to ensure that doesn't change.

And how will I set aside time for nightly coding? My McDonald's job is a zero-hour contract, so I'm not guaranteed any work on a given day and can't budget. Meanwhile they'll fire me if I turn down a shift, so I'm on TaskRabbit and Mechanical Turk trying to make quick cash at $3/hour because I can't accommodate a second real job.

In the meantime, my job isn't a stepping stone to shit except nightshift manager, because the post above that requires a college degree and doesn't privilege current employees.

Sure, there are jobs out there to get, and there are ways to self-study and get ahead. Granted. So yeah, lecture your unemployed cousin about playing Call of Duty instead of getting a night job. He's a lazy slob and he ought to do better.

But it's the height of condescension to say that structural unemployment and negative real wage growth are happening because people suddenly got lazier. Don't come and tell me that "work is a four letter word" when we have the same 13% poverty rate we've had for forty years. That's not lazy teens, that's the world you live in.

you're cute. wrong, but cute.

as the article cited 17-24y/o i'm guessing the 'poverty rate' is a little lower. please try to keep up. If you want to extrapolate the 17-24y/o demographic to include everyone, please do so when it actually applies - not to this conversation re: this article. Strawman arguments are universally known as bullshit.

So, since you're using you're extensive knowledge of McDonald's shift work, You'd already know that the corporation behind it offers college assistance and flex scheduling, right? of course you would because you're a smart guy.

also, in actuality, my cousin does work for McDonald's. He worked there for 10 years before buying his first (of 3 so far) franchise at the age of 28.

and while i never said self-study would absolutely get you the job you want, taking a 'lesser' job would get you to the next step and so on and so forth to GET the job you want. Its called WORK for a reason. Most people today work harder to get out of work than it would take to actually DO to the work itself.

> you're cute. wrong, but cute [...] please try to keep up

We've asked you before to stop being uncivil in comments here. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

I obviously don't speak for everyone's experience but...

I was always taught that if you had a college degree, you don't really have to pay your dues. One of the points of a degree was that you could skip a lot of that.

Of course, it never was true, but that's what I was told.

>>> One of the points of a degree was that you could skip a lot of that.

I was told the same thing but was warned you exchange paying one set of dues for another in the corporate world. I stayed away from corporate gigs for years because of this. In reality, it wasn't dues per se, it just navigating all the corporate politics I never had to deal with in smaller companies.

I took the opposite route. I started in the corporate world, and moved into smaller companies. There were 'dues' for sure, but they were pretty easy, albeit tedious

Shades of Old Economy Steve. I think the 'traditional' model has you starting out on the bottom and working your way up with any old college degree, but that particular bottom was z white collar bottom, not cashiering at a grocery store.

No one wants to start in the mail room, because no one favors internal promotions to substantially different jobs over hiring someone with credentials from the outside anymore. So, starting in the mail room means staying in the mail room, and it means pay and working conditions which make it much harder to get better jobs than if you'd done what was necessary to qualify for higher-status work without bothering with the mail room.

There's some exceptions, sure, but the working culture where starting in the mail room worked (to the extent it did: note that it was, even when most viable, already a notable exception, not a norm) basically no longer exists.

Those entry-level jobs have largely been automated by people like you and me.

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