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Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

From time to time I head over to cscareerquestions at Reddit - a place predominantly populated by college students and fresh junior candidates. I see users there applying for hundreds of positions - I don't think I've ever applied for more than 15 positions in my life. Since 2014 I've applied for 8 positions, as I've documented those in a spreadsheet I still have.

So while failing "only" 3 job applications may seem comically low for many people, it's on par with my experience (should be mentioned that I, like the OP, am also from Scandinavia. Maybe a different culture from the US?).

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1: The US is different. Way more applicants and traffic than the remainder of the world. This also affects selection mechanisms (low accuracy, high filtering, little feedback) and application strategies (various levels of effort, shotgun approach).

2: The first job is by far the hardest. Everything else is peanuts comparatively (unless you're an outlier).

Clue is this piece:

>I can’t recall the reference but I read in a book that it’s 10x easier to find a job while you’re already employed. My experience complies. Don’t waste that multiplier.

When company A thinks someone is worthy of picking, companies B-F suddenly believe that individual is worthy of picking too. One door opens, suddenly they all open.

Combine both and it starts to make sense why application numbers are so ridiculously high.

CSCQ is a funny place. I think it’s sort of a community of squeaky wheels, people with a problem or a bone to pick, so reading the posts one would think CS is a much more stressful career than it is in reality.

/r/Overemployed is even stranger, that’s a level of gamification and min-maxing being applied to your career even us in tech find queasy.

It makes sense when you realize that, just like a relationships or beginner workout forum, the people who stick around are the ones that have been least successful: if you've gotten a job, a relationship, or in shape, you're less likely to be in a forum dedicated to asking for advice.

Yeah, this is what I landed on. It does make one feel some respect for the experienced devs who stick around and bestow wisdom on the younger crowd.

Obviously, the US has a vastly different job market than Sweden.

The US has a really tight job market for Jr engineers - there's a massive supply of new grads, my Jr engineer job posting for a small company outside of a major city get hundreds of responses.

How many of those responses are actually new grads though. I also get hundreds of responses but it’s probably closer to 1/20 who have recently graduated from a 4 year CS program.

Even ignoring CS degrees most of the applicants are clearly unqualified and are just applying to every job they can. A very quick resume screen will filter our applicants down to a handful.

Pretty much all of them because HR filters out anyone who doesn't have a four year degree before I see the resumes. Sometimes I see people with non-CS degrees.

We don’t get anywhere near that many applications for junior positions.

Hundreds of new grads for one job is getting close to 1% of all new CS grads in the US for a year. There must be something particularly attractive about it.

Between on-campus interviews and just sending out a ton of generic cover letters and resumes, I applied (for some level of "apply") to a lot of places out of my two stints at grad school (pre-Web)--and had three offers in one case and one in the other. However, since then, I've applied to three jobs (in the sense of calling up someone I knew) and got all three.

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