Ask HN: How much should one grind in early career? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How much should one grind in early career?

As we all know, there are no jobs for juniors or new graduates. These categories of people are deemed as a waste of money (in context of current market.) Hence, it is not worth hiring them.

This means there is no experience to show to others straight out of the university. Now, there is one way which is to be lucky. The other unlucky ones have to grind and work hard. How much grind is necessary to enter the niche fields in computer science?

How can these new graduates enter difficult fields like Compilers, OS, DBs, Graphics, and Networks?

How much grind is necessary before it is considered enough?

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Go get a Masters and hope to get an internship that converts into full time. Otherwise you are going to grind yourself into dust.

A masters + internship isn't enough for employers in this market.

There are thousands of candidates who have the very same thing nowadays, employers and recruiters will just sift you out, they are tuned this way.

To the OP:

The trick is you need to bulk up your network and do something extraordinary, that way (at best) you get referrals and employers will take notice and come to you.

What makes something extraordinary?

in no particular order:

public speaking (giving talks on programming projects)

starting (and selling) a startup (even better)

made a side project that's used by lots people (open source maybe?)

winning hackathons or competitions (if you can)

etc.

If you focus on one or have done all of these (even better) then that is more than extraordinary for employers not to ignore you.

if someone misses any of these, does it mean the person is worthless?

The easiest one to focus on is public speaking as most people are more afraid of this than death (National Social Anxiety Center (NSAC)).

Especially if you've built a project.

All of these take practice, but doing this is better than grinding leetcode days on end with no results.

What if the person is graduating from Masters and had a decent internship but couldn't convert that?

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