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Comment by RicoElectrico | Hacker News Reader

The most frustrating thing about this whole junior position drought is how it simultaneously affects those who are passionate and get it, not only the opportunist bootcamp alumni who were lured by the prospect of high earnings.

If I were to graduate today, I'd be royally screwed.

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/r/cscareerquestions the horror eg. applied to 2000 jobs got 1 offer

Honestly, with the AI slop of resumes, I applied to dozens of jobs, and only got a callback to ones I had either a recruiter for or direct connections to, after 20 years of experience. Because I didn't have a big fat "worked at google for 10 years" on my resume. And I'd like to think of myself as someone who can take a very bad situation and make it look smooth.

Other than Indeed/Hired all my other roles were from recruiters, I don't have a degree so it's harder for me to get a job application wise, at least now I have the 6 yrs+ experience which isn't a lot but better than 0

Will say what's gotten me hired are my projects eg. robotics or getting published online for hardware stuff, I work in the web-cloud space primarily though, hardware would be cool but hard to make that jump

Even with 10 years of google on my resume I got absolutely zero non-automated responses for all the jobs I applied to after being laid off a few months back (I'm working again). Connections from my network and recruiter reach-outs were the only real leads.

But looking back on my 30 years of working (including in high school), every job I've ever had I got through personal referrals or recruiter reach-outs. I've gotten to interviews before but never actually taken a job without a personal connection.

> If I were to graduate today, I'd be royally screwed.

I feel that too. I am a self-taught dev. Got a degree, but not in CS. I don't know if I could get hired today.

Not sure how to fix it; feels like the entire industry is eating the seed corn.

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