Your parents may have lied to you, maybe your teachers too. Whoever it was that lied, it wasn't us. It probably wasn't malicious, some people are/were genuinely extremely misguided about how the world operates (protip: not as differently as before).

Here's what happened: you abdicated your responsibility in one of the most important aspects of your life - your career. You placed in someone's hands other than your own, and now you got bit by it.

Is it your fault? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps you were too trusting in believing every bullshit thing that came out of your career counselor's mouth. Either way, one thing's for sure: it isn't the fault of society either. If you had ever bothered to go talk to software companies (assuming that's your field) in high school, or shit, during college, you would've realized that it takes more than a fancy shiny piece of paper from a prestigious school to get a job. You failed to own this responsibility.

So, it's either your fault for entrusting your career to the incompetence of others, or it's nobody's fault that you're unemployed. In either case, sitting around complaining about how society has failed you will get nothing done - your own action will.

I'm a year out of college, FWIW, and I hate this aspect of my generation (which IMHO is one of the few notably different things about us) - when we encounter unfairness and injustice, we shut down and complain, expecting that the exposing of this unfair injustice will somehow fix everything. It won't.

I was rather fortunate in the sense that I was forced to find jobs during college (degree requirement), and was exposed to how the infernal machinations of employment worked. I was 3 months out of high school, weeks into my very first semester of university when I had to find my first paid internship.

It sucked. But here's are some lessons I learned from that:

- don't just send resumes. Sending resumes is what every Tom, Dick, and Harry does. In this economy, being Tom, Dick, and Harry doesn't work. Besides, do you believe yourself to be strictly mediocre? If not, why are you doing only what strictly mediocre people do?

- find a list of software companies in your area (and within, say, an hour's drive of your local area). Hell, expand this beyond software companies - anybody who can employ a person of your skills. It doesn't matter if they're hiring.

- polish your resume, learn how to introduce yourself. Find a friend, practice if you must.

- hit the road. Seriously, just walk into these places and ask to speak to a hiring manager. Don't ask if they have open positions - it doesn't actually matter. Make sure you get someone in charge out to shake your hand. Introduce yourself, explain that you are looking for a job, know something about what they do, and give them a paper copy of your resume. Learn about what they do.

You do this right, your phone will start ringing. I've known several practitioners of this strategy, and not a single one is ever looking for a job for very long.

I'm not saying this as a way to gloat. I've met plenty of students who are as good, if not better, developers than I am in my department. I've met plenty of them who have better GPAs, more letters of rec, do more extra-curricular activities, have won more awards, etc., yet I basically landed a job because it's the job I wanted, and they're sending resumes to basically anyone that could potentially offer them a job and are getting no where. There has to be a disconnect here. They have to be "doing it wrong."

Build something, freelance, work on a few open source projects (or start your own), found a non-profit, start a club. The barrier to entry for all of those is shockingly low. Hell, if you're living at home, start a company. Chances are it will fail, but it will be something that makes you stand out from the crowd. I would imagine that most startups would be much more willing to hire a fellow entrepreneur, even if that business didn't pan out. And if you get really lucky, you'll never have to find another job again because you'll be your own boss.

I've suggested this to several of my peers that are having trouble even getting someone to call them back, and hardly anyone ever takes the advice. I think the simple reason people don't actually go out there and do something, even if it's just physically walking into somewhere they want to work, is that's a lot harder. It's easy to write a cover letter, stick it on your resume, and send it [email protected]. You never face outright rejection or failure; you simply never get contacted. By the time you realize that company isn't going to respond, you've already sent off another 20 resumes.

From your mom to Mr. T to the President of the United States, the school-is-cool, just stay in school and you'll get a job meme has been pretty prevalent since I was a child, and I'm old.

There's this continuous drumbeating that we need to produce more scientists and engineers. So I went and got a PhD in Physics.

By the time I got my PhD, the American Physical Society announces that they estimate that 3% of my graduating class would get permanent jobs in their field.

So, the physics PhD mill encourages a few thousand of our brightest young people every year to spend 5-9 years of their youth getting a credential that's worth less than a roll of toilet paper. (At least you can wipe your ass w/ a roll of toilet paper)

At least I got an all-expenses-paid vacation in Europe for a year (a postdoc,) but I drifted for another three or four years afterwards before settling on a somewhat remunerative and satisfying career.

This sort of experience, where you're set up to fail, but made to feel like it was your own fault, can have a devastating effect on a person. I've mostly healed from it now, but so often I have to answer questions like "Why aren't you teaching?" and "Aren't you too smart to be a computer programmer".

The older generation does owe the younger generation realistic guidance and training to start careers and keep society running. When it sets up machines to chew up young people and spit them out, it wrongs them.

What was that percentage at the time you started your PhD?

I know a few that suck up physics and math PhD's dissuaded by dwindling academia/research. Perhaps it's a soul-draining job, but the pay is good. Most likely you will have to program, but since you're here I don't think that will be a problem.

Hedge funds are pretty cool and pretty lucrative, but the only thing I really want to do now is information extraction, semantic databases, stuff like that. Finish the job that Doug Lenat started. And if you think that's crazy, you're one less competitor that I have.

College may generally be a requirement for a good job, but college alone does not entail a good job.

I'm not the normal person without a degree, but the time I didn't spend in college/university was spent learning about computer security. I didn't blame anyone for things not turning out how I wanted, I did something about it.

Someone once told me that there are only two ways to change a situation: you can change the conversation you are having with people or you can change the people you are having the conversation with. You have to be in the conversation though.

Sending you to school was not bad advice. Are you saying that you wouldn't tell that to your kids? What would you say to your kids? How do you want to approach this? At some point, you need to take responsibility for your actions. I'm not happy where I am now, but I don't blame anyone else for it. I made choices, and I will continue to improve myself, because after all what is the alternative? Give up?

To be honest, this is huge - looking at his resume, the only thing that makes it look like he did something significant is his sweet dreams/soundscapes project. Everything else under "experience" - which stands for "work experience," which is what he's applying for - discusses learnings.

What did he do during that time? He spent 6 months working in his university's computer vision lab, which sounds awesome - and he "learned how to take several ideas and combine them into a single result that highlights their strengths while nullifying their weaknesses."

That's incredibly vague - I'm glad he learned, but it's a cliche by now that you should be using "action verbs" in your resume ("built," "designed," "debugged," etc.)

Launch and iterate, right? That works for this process as well - send out your resume, and if you don't get the responses you want, tweak your resume and send out another wave.

http://www.toastmasters.org/

edit: It is also good for networking.

I also sat at the table with the adults (there never really was a separate kiddie table) and I learned to behave myself and talk like an adult.

That is how I got my very first job in the industry. It was a small ISP, do you need anyone who knows Unix? My "interview" with the IT manager was in front of a terminal (no spare chairs, so I sat on a DEC server), showing each other stuff on the command line. Started the next morning.

It works.

Add to that don't stop building things and perfecting your craft, much more valuable than just sending out resumes and you might just find a way to produce a bit of income in the process making your situation less dire.

If you're a programmer, you're a programmer regardless of whether you have a job doing it or not; it's a part of your identity. I have a friend working as an economic advisor for a major city government; he doesn't identify as an economist, he identifies as a writer. I have a friend who works as a mutual fund trader; he doesn't identify as a trader, he identifies as a beer brewer. My sister works in university fund raising; she identifies (somewhat ironically) as an economist. We were having a conversation one day, where they were lamenting the situation that I got to do what I loved and got paid very well for it and they were stuck in jobs they hated. I told them, "STOP ASKING PERMISSION TO DO WHAT YOU ARE. Start doing it now." Why do I get paid for what I do? Because I have experience and connections to network to find job. Why do I get paid well? Because I've had a lot of practice. Why do I have so much experience? Because I never asked permission to do it, I've been doing it all day, every day, whether I've had a job or not, for the last 10 years.

My writer friend, I told him to start writing user-oriented documentation for open source software projects, and to write promotional materials for non-profit organizations. It had never occurred to him. He's looking in to it now, and he's finding a huge need for good writers everywhere.

My brewer friend, I told him to quit spending time on the stool-side of the bar, spending money, and convince his friends who own these brewpubs he frequents to take him on as an unpaid, weekend intern. He won't be getting paid, but then he wasn't getting paid for the time he spent in the same exact building anyway. One of them immediately agreed.

My sister, I told her to just do the research she wants to do. There is nothing preventing her from doing the types of number-crunching and paper-writing that she claims to love in her free time. There are tons of data sources that are published for free by the various governments of the world, and nobody to even look at them. Write a few papers and then see where you stand with job applications.

Hell, I think the garage tinkerer is in a better position than a big-university researcher specifically because of the constraints of lack of funding. You'll probably make important cost-cutting innovations as a matter of necessity. Necessity: the mother of what now?

The future eventually gets here. Make your career pay for your calling, and soon you will have the experience you need to make your calling your career.

I'm glad she switched because a CPA gets paid a lot more than most artists. Her long term goal is to do the books for a museum or art institute. It would let her be near the "art world" but using the analytical side of her brain.

This quote also hits the nail on the head for many of the older generations posting here. The fact you feel entitled to anything is the source of much grief. I'm part of your generation, but through the professional experience I've gained in the past 8 years, and having been put in the position of hiring people from both Gen X and Y, I've realized that this entitlement hurts you much more than it helps.

Success is newly defined for each generation. Our job, in wake of this economic disaster, is to find out just how that definition has changed and move forward.

I think this is the biggest problem with entitlement. Not that it's annoying and presumptuous, not that it's A Sympton Of Everything That's Wrong In Our Society (TM), but simply that it hurts the entitled.

A lot of what we interpret as entitlement is just a focal inaccuracy. In school, we're judged, more or less, on the quality of our own work. A teacher or other official who makes a decision based on his personal preference is viewed to be unfair. With the job market, however, as with dating, it's never about the applicant, only about the decision-maker.

We come out of school thinking we'll be judged on our merits, but we won't. Interestingly, that realization not only helps people ignore rejection, but also prompts them to take initiative to stand apart from the crowd, thereby making rejection less frequent.

IMHO the younger generation isn't nearly entitled enough, and it's going to result in a lot of violence within our lifetime.

- It's basically impossible for most intelligent, hard working people to make a decent living.

- Everyone is a criminal and is subject to arrest at any time.

- The world has changed enormously but there have been basically zero major legislative changes in the 25+ years I've been alive.

I think we're going to see a lot of frustration vented via everything from street violence to assassinations.

That's hardly new. Remember when everyone from union organizers to groups of civil rights protesters could be arrested and charged with vagrancy? Probably not, because that was before you were born; the US courts cracked down on that sort of thing in the 60s and 70s. It may seem like America is getting crazy dystopian, but people in your parents' and grandparents' generations saw things that would make your hair curl.

I agree that you were lied to.

But I think you were a fool for believing that success could be prepackaged and so easily attained. You busted your ass, but did you bust your ass on the right things? There's a difference between working hard and doing work on your intelligence. You did what you were told but did you ever question whether what you were asked to do was the most optimal use of your time or talent? And if you did, why didn't you act on it?

I'm sorry but you're absolutely not entitled to anything.

I busted my ass in high school. I got semi-decent grades but more importantly I worked hard and learned and explored on my own. For me it was a gamble because even though what I was doing with my time felt like the right thing, I couldn't be sure. It's not fun having the same letter sent home to your parents: "Your son is not performing to his potential [subtext: he's lazy]" .

Now I'm a freshman in college and I already have job offers for the summer at a few well known tech firms paying really good money and they're not just McJava jobs. It's feels amazing to finally have some sort of validation that all the time I spent learning on my own gave me real value. Tech companies are hiring like crazy. Don't blame society or the market, it's your fault.

Find something you're passionate about, and work on it. For example, in the WoW community, there are a lot of people writing addons for the game. They don't have any appreciable economic value, they aren't world-changers, they aren't the Next Great Instant Millionaire idea, but I've personally seen dozens of people hired out of the community because of their hobby work (and I've gotten probably 6-8 job offers as a result of my similar work). As it turns out, there are Real World Problems to solve behind the shiny game veneer, and that counts for a lot.

It doesn't have to be a game. It can be a Javascript physics engine, or a database driver bugfix, or an experimental compression algorithm, or anything. Find something on GitHub you're interested in, take a look at the issues list, fork the repo, write tests, fix the issue, push your code, and issue a pull request back. Congrats, you're now a bit smarter and a bit more experienced. Repeat. In no time, you're going to have experience and perspective that will blow away the 98% of your hiring competition that you used to belong to.

At best, that means that you have a beef with folks who told you that. However, you might want to think about why you believed them. Also, consider that they were trying to get you to buy into something for their benefit.

Everyone has good intentions.

> honestly believed what they were saying.

So what?

> Do you really think that those people were giving that advice for selfish reasons?

In many cases, yes. Sure, they also honestly thought that things would work for you, but that's the nature of "win-win".

I couldn't agree more. I can't help but feel the generation our generation spawns will be a really cynical bunch ;)

By the way, while we're talking about fixing unemployment, I'm hiring a system administrator just south of Seattle, for my manufacturing company in the green space. Smart folks who enjoy a happy working environment and solving interesting customer-facing problems are welcome to get in touch with me.

Unfortunately you're in the wrong continent for me I'm afraid. Perhaps someone ought to create a HN job board? Something that would allow people like yourself who want good people to access a pool of hackers, and something that would make those periodic "who's hiring?" posts redundant?

I'm not sure how it would distinguish itself from something like the 37 signals job board, but I think a lot of jobs mentioned in those job threads aren't advertised there anyway?