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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

Truly sorry you feel this way. For what it’s worth, this was common for people graduating into the 2008 financial crisis, too. It’s actually unusual that we went for so long without another period of contraction.

From last time around: The people who kept pushing and took any job, anywhere turned out okay. This translated to a lot of people taking jobs below what they expected to get or having to move when they didn’t want to, but it was ultimately temporary.

The people I knew who turned cynical, let negativity take the wheel, and checked out of the job market struggled much harder to get back in.

You’re early in your career. This current period of turmoil doesn’t mean that much, even though it feels like everything right now. Keep at it, work a little harder than your competition, and put a little more care into your applications and it will work out. Stay away from the doom spirals on Reddit or Blind. Uninstall those apps (and others) if they’re making you worse.

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Anecdata to try and level expectations. As someone who *eventually* came out of that era fine, it wasn’t without hardship. Expect to graduate without a job. Expect to continue the grind for many many months. Expect to get rejected not for not meeting the bar, but for not exceeding everyone else who also passed that bar. Expect to very likely settle for a job that doesn’t meet the expectations that college (and the previous 10+ years of history) sold you on. Expect that financially, you will end up years behind the curve and that many life plans (ex: home ownership if that’s one of your goals) will be delayed. Expect that you will meet many people younger than you who will be at your financial level because they graduated post-recovery.

If you can accept that you just happen to be born at the wrong time, you will be in a better place mentally than where I was at for a long time. I won’t say it’s easy; it will suck. But it is possible to make it out ok. I luckily had some financial and emotional support from my family to keep me going. I don’t know your situation but hopefully you are able to find support too. I wish you the best of luck.

"Expect that you will meet many people younger than you who will be at your financial level because they graduated post-recovery."

Yep, the people who graduated about 3-4 years ago are all making more than I do after more than a decade. It seems like that's just how it works.

Huh. This is making me realize that perhaps my situation is more bizarre and unstable than I realize...

How uncommon is it for someone with no highschool diploma (GED), or college diploma to get a job as a software engineer at a Fortune 500 company? Am I completely fucked if I ever lose this job? It's my second SE job...

Like OP may have been hinting at, I had a really fucked up family situation and this path was the only one that I could take- should I plan on going back to school just for future job market security?

I'm in a similar boat. I dropped out of uni for reasons (a bit of a story, I can tell it if you buy me a beer) and ended up making a career out of software engineering.

The main thing to do IMO is spend time building a network. A recommendation in the right place at the right time can open doors that would otherwise be closed to you.

School is an option, but the opportunity cost has been too high so far for me. Though doing a freelance PhD thesis probably wouldn't hurt.

I wouldn't worry too much, 20 years ago when I entered the industry (with a philosophy degree), the adverts which emphasised degree pedigree over experience were common.

I have watched that diminish over the last 20 years.

The unspoken secret in programming is that a CS degree basically signals absolutely nothing about programming skill. You can get a 1st in CS and be a rubbish programmer, you can get a chemistry degree and be an amazing one. A lot of CS is utterly irrelevant to programming, and the vast majority of programming skills are not covered by CS degree.

Once you're past 2-3 years experience it stops being relevant, before that it's a way to filter CVs by managers who want to pretend their CS degree wasn't a complete waste of time.

If they're asking for a CS degree for a senior role it's basically advertising they're a clueless company.

I'm in the market now and I honestly don't think anyone even looks at the education section of the resume if there is applicable work experience following it. After 10+ interviews in the past couple of months, education hasn't been mentioned once in an interview, and my unofficial transcripts have been requested one time prior to and interview.

Yeah it sucks, but for many even in a good economy, you will struggle like that coming from a small college that isn’t well known or just not looking the right way. Life isn’t fair, just do what you have to, to get by

> From last time around: The people who kept pushing and took any job, anywhere turned out okay. This translated to a lot of people taking jobs below what they expected to get or having to move when they didn’t want to, but it was ultimately temporary.

I'm going to challenge this as you didn't give specific data to back it up. I read an article recently that did have data, and it made the argument that first jobs, and first salaries, tend to be remarkably "sticky". That is, if you are desperate for a job out of college so take one that causes you to be underemployed and underpaid, that doesn't just stick with you for your first job, but data showed that people were underemployed and underpaid for at least a decade after college.

The advice in this article was to hold out as long as possible for a desirable job, which meant a ton of networking, taking internships if possible, and also possibly additional schooling.

Apologies for not having the article on hand, but here's another one I found in 30 seconds of googling that makes the same argument, with research:

https://www.highereddive.com/news/half-of-graduates-end-up-u...

This sounds correct? I think I’m living evidence of it. The sad reality is that sometimes you can’t hold out long enough and you just gotta take what puts a roof over your head and food on the table. Everyone graduating now just got unlucky with when they were born.

Edit: that said, I think the majority of what the parent wrote is good. Esp the part about negativity. That hits hard and is good to be aware of.

well anecdotes are anecdotes. But tech tends to be much less sticky in this regard. And west coast much less sticky than east coast. My first job was 28/hr and the next roll almost tripled to 120k base 3 years later. It does partially mean hustling in some regards (be it on portfolio or leetcode), but when tech needs workers, they care a lot less about your piece of paper.

But then again, we are definietly not in times of normalcy. If nothing changes quick we may all be losing our spending power.

Joke's on them - I didn't have much to spend in the first place.

The stats bear this out, but you can usually pivot to something better, especially if you have the skillset and drive to continuously up your skillset and find parts of industry that are in demand. It’s the companies where you learn nothing where you stagnate.

I doubt there’ll be a shortage of ML jobs in the next few years, unless somehow the AI industry completely collapses somehow.

This makes a lot of sense to me. The stats basically say that "if you start out underemployed, you stay underemployed for a long time", but my guess is the causation isn't necessarily as it's implied (or, indeed, as I implied it in my first comment).

That is, I think it's likely that a lot of people who start out unemployed are just comparatively less motivated, less aggressive, "go-with-the-flow"-type people. These folks do better when the market is good and worse when it's bad. But, as you put it, someone with a lot of drive and the skillset is not necessarily doomed to be held back for years if their first job sucks, as long as they set their sights on getting ahead quickly and don't let their stagnant environment rub off on them.

> The advice in this article was to hold out as long as possible for a desirable job, which meant a ton of networking, taking internships if possible, and also possibly additional schooling.

Emphasis on the next actions to take.

Being in a graduating cohort affords you certain opportunities -- internships, career fairs, faculty-connected networking.

Post-graduation, and especially post-college, people don't have these same opportunities.

Fwiw, I'd lean very heavily into interning. Take an internship at the best company you can, that's likely to have solid financials and be hiring when you finish the internship.

Intern -> hire is a ridiculous cheat code for your first "in industry" job.

The employer decreases the risk of making a mistake on an unproven new grad. You get a job offer if you do enough solid work. Win/win.

Worst case (no job offer), you should push really hard for a solid recommendation letter from your direct or second level manager.

Completely agree on internships. I really think universities that have an integrated co-op program, like Northeastern or Drexel, are much better for the significant majority of students than just a "standard" liberal arts or even an engineering degree.

I agree. I'm still feeling the effects of lowballing myself to get any job.

Recessions aside, it may be that because they were forced to choose a bad job, and stuck there too long because of insecurity... Their trajectory was changed.

Which may just mean that they need to stay focused on self-improvement and job hopping as possible.

Indeed. I found myself unemployed and having a very hard time finding work after the '08 crash. My newly minted degree turned out to be worthless in that environment. It worked out for the best as I took a low paying job as a technician that at least let me make enough money to pay the rent and buy food while I continued building up skills. It's a raw deal and it's not fair, but the only thing you can control is yourself. Try to keep a positive attitude and understand that it won't be this way forever.

+1 to this. If I go look at social media the job market is ending. But if I look at the signals around me there's plenty of opportunities.

Also consider taking something below (or even much below) expectations. It's much easier to work your way up with connections than it is to get in the door with no references.

MIT students expect (not unfairly) to work at Jane Street/HRT/Jump/Citadel Securities/OpenAI/Anthropic and then "settle" for Google or Facebook. They're not going to work for Fidelity or Raytheon.

That's a bit of a charcacture of Course 6 at MIT. Course 10 is chemical engineering and plenty of them go into industry at all the major oil companies. Lots of MIT students go into aerospace and defense (Lincoln Labs is directly federally funded) and MIT holds a yearly Soldier Design Competition that also helps students go for SBIRs. Raytheon is a big hirer of course 2 (MechE) MIT grads.

As someone who's worked at Lincoln Labs, I do wonder if the poster here has considered this. Although, it is worth noting that LL requires citizenship for many/most of its divisions.

That's only true of the ones on ROTC or similar military related programs, everyone else goes straight to Wall Street, big tech, or MBB or med school.

At the annual Fall job fair, 80% of students queue up to less than 10% of employers. Most companies never show up because it's simply not worth the cost and time to try to recruit spoiled brats of MIT

Most MIT Mech E grads work at Boeing. Most Chem Es work at Exxon, Merck and Intel. Most Aero Astros are at Boeing. Etc. Etc. You just aren't accurate.

I find this specious - why would they do that when this is basically the composition of the MechE, AeroE, and ChemE (except no Intel for ChemE, we send our EEs to intel) at my public school undergrad?

Why would they work with people that they perceive to be beneath them and have worked far less hard than them?

>Why would they work with people that they perceive to be beneath them and have worked far less hard than them?

Because you aren't actually modeling their thinking correctly?

Perhaps I don't. I don't know why someone would expend 100x the effort and be labeled at minimum 10x the person by MIT admissions to end up at the same place that people with 1350 SATs from Auburn or 1450's from NC State or 1420 from Binghamton would go to after graduating MechE.

So I was accepted to MIT long, long ago and couldn’t afford to go and ended up at an (excellent) state school. If I’d gone to MIT I would be the same person right? Stereotypes don’t work, and never have — see people, not labels.

It's about being able to get in, not going. You're a superior human to people like me despite going to a state school.

MIT kids get part time jobs waiting tables or working retail while in school, just like other college kids. My first job out of college was non-elite aircraft manufacturer... guy on my left was MIT, on my right was CalTech.

> MIT kids get part time jobs waiting tables or working retail while in school

I seriously doubt that. This doesn't fit the class they come from. Maybe it would have in 1985 but not today.

I absolutely second that - MIT students of 70's, 80's and even early 90's were from different social class, demographics and personality types, than todays students.

Today, MIT is nothing but a shadow of its better known academic cartel up the Mass ave. Those who hire MIT students know that and plan accordingly. The only reason to hire MIT students is for branding propaganda, you get nothing more from them.

I get why they might have a certain expectation. It kinda depends on the job market. The guy in the cube next to me at Fidelity had a degree from MIT.

As an MIT reject (technically waitlisted), my very first post-graduation job was at Raytheon and much later in life, I ended up at Facebook, where I managed a team that had several engineers that joined directly from MIT. While I can't speak to the entire MIT grad cohort, fFacebook was the first-choice for everyone in this particular group.

Facebook is still much higher status than Amazon or IBM or any other company the people from my undergrad join after college

> But if I look at the signals around me there's plenty of opportunities.

The signals around me in LA are pretty damn bad. several friends laid off, many others worried about layoffs, and a very weak pulse on the market in terms of roles. I still have part time work but who knows for how much longer at this rate?

At this point I'm fine taking up anything that pays and doesn't potentially sent my 8 YO car into retirement even faster.

What signals are you seeing?

The ones I've seen aren't good. I see some jobs in companies with shitty pay or shitty culture (my bar is not high). It dies look like the past 6 months have been better than the previous year or so. But overall, it looks pretty dim. I'm getting PIP'd soon. I am expecting that I will likely lose my job. If that happens, I'm expecting that I will end up as a Walmart greeter. As someone with a disability, I expect my application will go right in the trash if I answer yes or blank on the disability question. Or get fired if I mark no and then do need accommodations.

Exactly this.

I'm desperately looking for a new job. I hate my current job, the constant stress is taking a real toll, and I'm more tired than I've been ever before.

I'm quite literally applying to all sorts of developer jobs that I'm well overqualified for, in any honest assessment, for a lot less than I make now. These roles are far from "premium" gigs. I've no diva expectations or hope at this point.

The only places I even get rejection emails from are places I've had a referral.

Things are bleak.

I'm in a similar place wrt job "security."

Current gig will end soon, one way or another, and the future doesn't look great.

> As someone with a disability, I expect my application will go right in the trash if I answer yes or blank on the disability question

That's an interesting hypothesis.

I've seen many people suggest just the opposite- pretending to have a mild disability when filling in the form so that they get the boost from companies which use recruiting software that prioritizes diversity and inclusiveness in candidate pool.

Federal contractors are explicitly required to "take affirmative action to recruit, hire, promote and retain" people with disabilities, with a target of at least 7% of their employees be from that group. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/employers/fe...

> You’re early in your career. This current period of turmoil doesn’t mean that much

Is that true? I seem to remember data showing that the 2008-2010 graduate cohorts never overall caught up to the ones that came immediately before or after them.

Like sure sure OP has an engineering degree from MIT they're more like the ones that did catch up. But I'll bet there are a lot more people reading this who are about to graduate with degrees from perfectly adequate state schools and I'm not sure this unalloyed optimism is exactly correct for them. I don't think it turned out to be for their 2008 predecessors.

It doesn’t mean much in the course of an entire career.

Comparing to other cohorts isn’t useful because you can’t pick your cohort. You are born into one timeline and you play the hand you’re dealt.

There’s a lot of research that people who graduate into bad job markets are more cautious and less risk taking which can make them look like they’re behind peers who are more risk hungry when the market is up. I wouldn’t be surprised if it also makes them come out ahead in periods where the market is down.

I suspect what really happens is you're set back a few years compared to someone with more fortunate timing. In a away, this is never catching up, but framing it as a setback gives a better picture of what happens.

My path into this career was completely different so I have no first hand experience either way. But my observation has been that you don't really get to just hang around for a couple years then pick up where you left off. When the job market picks back up the new grad jobs go to new grads, which you aren't, quite, anymore.

It's a more difficult path and people navigate it but I don't think everyone does if you see what I mean. I think some of who should be our colleagues are simply missing because they did what they had to to pay bills in 2010 and never made it in here.

I graduated in this time period and that makes sense. I definitely didn't start doing what I wanted until some time later. I guess in a sense that makes my career overall a few years behind resume wise but at this point, being in the industry 15 years instead of 17 probably isn't going to move the needle too much in terms of salary but who knows. Either way, at this point in time, I don't feel like I've missed out really.

Also, I graduated from a pretty mediocre state school. I'm by no means starving.

Yeah fwiw I think the ones that managed to get and stay in the industry are doing ok now. I had in mind someone I knew who graduated in 2008 with a CS degree from a state school and needed work immediately, took a helpdesk job, then took the promotions into mid-management, now is a starbucks district manager making like 95k. Never did get to realize that dream of coding professionally.

I believe he finally gave up studying & interviewing for junior dev jobs in 2016. At that point why take a "stale" graduate when you can just get an actual 22 year old from the same school, seems to have been everyone's reasoning.

I saw a similar thing a bunch when teaching at a code school ca 2018 too. It was a great move if you had savings or support for 6-18 months of job search. The ones that got in are still doing ok. But a lot didn't, they had to keep working at what they did before "temporarily" while interviewing and most of them are still doing exactly that.

So idk, I'm not sure how you would even get numbers on this. How many people would have excelled in this work if they had graduated at a different time, or with more support, but they didn't and they simply aren't here.

This was true even a few years after 08/09. I applied to about 250 positions and lowballed my salary. I did get a job after 5 or so months of looking. I will say, that lowball salary is still impacting me today. If you do lowball yourself, you have to do a bit of job hopping when the market gets good to boost it.

It was the same for me in the 2001 dotcom crash. It was incredibly hard to find work.

Same boat here, was before all the headhunter sites

I don't think it was that bad. I graduated 12/2008 in aerospace engineering from a big state school. Not MIT. We all had at least 1 offer from big companies, even the middling students. I had 2 offers, and probably could have swung a third. It felt like the recession mostly affected the housing market and older career folks, but for us new grads things were mostly normal. This feels like a permanent shift due to AI in part, and interest rates going back up since pandemic.

2008 wasn't that bad for tech, but 2001 was and might be better comparison.

Yeah, I agree with you here. Most of the people I know in tech got laid off in 2001 due to startups failing. I think the only person I knew that made it through worked for Yahoo.

> It felt like the recession mostly affected the housing market and older career folks, but for us new grads things were mostly normal.

Yeah, they weren't. You were in a STEM bubble, which back in 2008 probably was the only bubble that could still get jobs "the old way", without going through application hell.

Also, the job market was way worse in 09-10 than it was in 2008, especially first half of 2008.

Same in 2001. Took 8 months to get my first job. I started the hunt after graduation to avoid job interviews interfering with study (an 1 hr interview would be a 1 day affair with commuting).

Had I got a job before I graduated that company may well have gone bust or laid people off anyway.

Had some bad interviews including being beaten by a other candidate on a job writing access databases for a 1 person business, and a job where they said they interview girls to see what they look like (not a girl but was disgusted... I carried on the process anyway because need $)

its different this time. the work isnt coming back because the market is now saturated by an oligopoly. IP law and anti competitive practices have effectively stopped upstarts. thats why old tech corps like IBM, Oracle gave trump money and align with their politics.

There are as many startups now as ever before. It's probably pointless to compete directly against an established company in a mature market like relational databases but there is unlimited opportunity for new stuff.

devs dont understand IP law or business. it doesnt matter if youre “innovative”. the concept of your techn was already R&D by someone else. you are beholden to them and they may license it but you will never own it. innovation is over.

Bullshit. That's not how IP law or business works at all. You're just making things up. I see more technology innovation all around then ever before.

Also keep talking to people, since you never know when and where opportunities will come from.

This environment reminds me of the one I faced graduating into the 2001-2003 post-Dotcom Bust market.

I kept hearing about 2008 crisis. It is overrated. Just a market up and down ?

Are we calling current times overrated too? If so I'd love to know how you are fairing with work and overall finances.

I can't speak for other places but graduating into the Icelandic market at the time was brutal. The state was effectively bankrupt at the time.

It was probably the worst economic crisis of the last fifty years. It went on forever, particularly in Europe and the UK (mostly because of a bunch of bone-headed moves by politicians).

Even the US basically didn't get back to where it was pre-2008 till 2019.

Tech was fine because mobile was happening, but it was incredibly grim everywhere else.

"Even the US basically didn't get back to where it was pre-2008 till 2019."

Hard disagree. Things went back to almost normal around 2013. Lots of money going around, new startups, and plenty of jobs.

Yeah fair enough. The numbers suggest otherwise but I only visited back then.

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