CUNY Graduates with Tech Degrees Struggle to Land Tech Jobs | Hacker News Reader

CUNY Graduates with Tech Degrees Struggle to Land Tech Jobs

nytimes.com

1 pointsizzle4 comments

At the end of the day CUNY is just another community college albeit with a large number campuses(25). Why does the article make it seem like CUNY should be held responsible for making sure the people who graduate with an undergraduate degree from them can land a job in their chosen career field regardless of prior work experience, much less a job specifically in the extremely competitive job market of NYC? Companies in NYC can pull from a global pool of talent so how are undergraduates from a community college supposed to be competitive with people with PHDs from foreign countries that are willing to work extremely cheaply just to get into the US?

I personally waited until I had enough experience in tech for companies to start inviting me to work in NYC before I gave it a try(happened to have co-workers from Chandigarh and Hyderabad although one was a UK citizen) and it's not an experience I would repeat. Personally I think working in NYC is a lot like Alaska in that it can be an extreme environment and I think people need to experience it at least once to truly appreciate not working in extreme environments.

You do realize CUNY is more than just community colleges. They have 4 year colleges that offer PhD's!

There's always this talk about NYC being brutal in some way or the other. I haven't experienced such in my 14 years living here.

Edit:// Then again I always had the frame of mind that this country on a whole was unforgiving.

I wouldn't want to live in NYC again because of the extremely high cost of living, pollution(air, light, noise and the perpetual stench of garbage, open sewers and body odor in the warmer months) and the taxes. Sure I could have lived in cheaper places but I didn't want to commute via the subway for hours everyday so instead I lived within 15 minutes walking distance of the office in Midtown. As a result my time in NYC was basically a paid working vacation and despite the significantly higher salary I left without much to show for it.

Other than paying what I feel was too much damn taxes my only "bad" experiences in NYC were related to some very questionable food purchases in the wee hours of the morning and the fact that I got sick way more often than I have ever before. The only other times that I got even close to getting as sick and as often was when visiting places that you couldn't even trust the tap water for making coffee.

I'm glad I experienced NYC first hand to remove that perpetual "what if" but having experienced it I know that sort of place isn't for me.

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