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Comment by rpiguy | Hacker News Reader

If you can’t read a hopeful, personal story without screaming “Survivorship Bias” and plunging headfirst into self-victimhood, good luck with the rest of your life!

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I completely agree. There are alot of new graduates looking at the world saying "I'm screwed". No you're not! I've survived the dot com bust as a DBA, and both recent oil busts while working in energy. You too, will be great if you're reading this. We need more hope, more love, more encouragement right now. Be a part of the solution instead of more doom and gloom (and criticism).

I read the article expecting there to be some inspirational story and the sour grapes were wrong, or some self-congratulatory mess not widely applicable to anyone and the sour grapes have a point...

I don’t really know what that was.

Right where you think the story described by the title would start, it just ends.

The title is pretty inspirational in a “everything will be ok.” sort of way, but then instead of “here’s why” or “here’s my hopeful story” it’s: “I got a job and 9/11 happened.”

And if it wasn’t for the dot com boom I don’t see why any part of that would be different.

I've coworkers who were fresh grads, have been great to work with, and graduated into an excellent job market, but still mirrored the short exposition at the start about struggling to get a job 3 months before graduation

Not everyone goes to an excellent school, and ends up being courted by Google...

Things got better, of course. We were doing pretty well until 2008, when we weren’t doing so well. Then we did pretty well again. That’s the nature of life, isn’t it? It oscillates, like a sine wave, like the rise and fall of your chest as you breathe in and out.

Call it intentional vagueness if you want, but I think the author's point is: this too shall pass. The particulars of the author's story are likely so specific as to be useless.

There are ups, there are downs. Keep calm, and carry on.

I think that’s kind of my point though.

> There are ups, there are downs. Keep calm, and carry on.

That’s pretty much the title and subheading

The author’s story ends up not really adding any meat to that statement though.

They delve into their own story and I wouldn’t say there were any ultra specific Hail Mary moments that make it inapplicable to others (like people who’s stories are “I was sad then I won the lottery so that could be you”)

But it’s just, you go in expecting the author’s point to be expanded upon, and it just isn’t.

I actually read it like 3 times imagining I was missing something honestly

The author’s story ends up not really adding any meat to that statement though.

Yeah, but it sure helps their SEO rankings. XD

Yeah, actually I think that’s what was so weird

It’s like high-effort clickbait, which is an oxymoron of sorts

That's fine, but the title of the post literally contains "you will too". The author isn't only presenting an anecdote, they're making a claim that it applies to other's situations too. So I think it's fair game to call it out for being a single data point and not really relevant to anything that's happening right now.

Is it really that hard to distinguish reassuring rhetoric from a scientific claim?

Like, if you got laid off and your friend said "Hey man, it'll be ok" do you demand a peer reviewed study proving it?

You know, at this point, I probably would. But I'm a depressed person about to graduate into the middle of what looks an awful lot like the end of the world as we know it, so...

It'll probably be fine in another couple of months. It's just difficult to know for sure and payroll obligations are tough to roll back.

> Is it really that hard to distinguish reassuring rhetoric from a scientific claim?

Nope.

For instance, if you can differentiate survivorship bias (which this fails to even reach up to) from a valid statement supported by objective evidence, you have, in fact, literally distinguished mere reassuring rhetoric from a scientific claim.

Still missing the point.

Some statements are intended to inspire you to influence the future for the better, not to provide "valid statements supported by objective evidence" to describe the present. Further, there are no valid statements that can be guaranteed to accurately describe the future because it hasn't happened yet. The choices you make and the attitude you embrace will in some part determine what that is.

Saying nonsense such as "textbook survivorship bias" whenever anyone succeeds at anything is a tragic coping mechanism for some small subset of HN commenters.

(Although I'm surprised you weren't downvoted into oblivion.)

"and you will too" is a big part of why this is the accurate TLDR.

I looked at the job market a few months ago and Carona aside, the market is in a terrible state. Companies are looking for unicorns that agree with them on style, chose all the right techs four years ago, are young or otherwise willing to accept abuse, and write like someone with 10 years experience teaching TDD style programming. On top of that they want you to agree that they have chosen a profitable business that will save the world.

One advantage of an economy like this is that in another year or two, companies will have been humbled a bit and will not be looking so far up the corporate equivalent of Maslow's hierarchy, and will either be more focused on things that actually matter, or will be dead.

Unfortunately, we have to get through this bit first....

I hope you are right. OTOH, with an actual over abundance of labor instead of always on hiring barely finding enough employees, they can either go even farther in the direction of pointless hoops or even shorter on wages relative to output.

My advice to everyone who is thinking about tech is to find a domain that needs tech assistance and consider that domain your career future. Street smart engineers I know have mostly dropped out by 40, so tech is not a career.

And remember, the sour apples posting all that with their personal anecdotes are biased as well.

It's hard to get a job. Make all the excuses you like. But Somebody is working, and it could be you.

I can read a hopeful, personal story without screaming survivorship bias.

OTOH, I can't read a generalization about the fate of others supported only by a a hopeful, personal story without screaming...“unwarranted generalization from personal experience”. To even rise to the level of survivorship bias, it’d have to be based on others experiences, but distorted by the relative visibility of the successful examples.

None of this has anything to do with self-victimhood, as I'm not in the graduating-into-the-current-situation group at whom the unwarranted generalization is directed.

Seems cruel to say that to a young person who is struggling with a serious issue. Lots of people graduate from college without coping mechanisms tuned to the realities of adult life ... including you perhaps? Maybe it would be better to just say that things are rarely as bad as they seem and the world will continue to need young, enthusiastic programmers despite any economic downturn.

Can't both you and GP be right?

He's not wrong, he's just being mean about it.

Definitely could have been worded with less derision. Apologies.

I am the child of a “mixed marriage” from a poor family that faced a lot of real adversity. The worst thing anyone could have done for me was to encourage the idea that I was a victim of circumstances. You don’t develop coping mechanisms without adversity. Adversity is a good thing so long as it’s not perpetual.

You're absolutely right. But you don't need to add anything extra to the adversity by being mean. People are perfectly capable of generating enough suffering for themselves to grow as a person without help from someone else.

Guilty. That is, in fact, exactly what I screamed--but in my head, so as to not disturb anybody.

Thanks for the good luck wishes. I could really use some.

HA! This made me smile.

Not a useful comment on my part, but it's nice to know when you're appreciated. :)

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