Being a new CS grad in this economy sucks | Hacker News Reader

Being a new CS grad in this economy sucks

blog.fairsoftware.net

17 pointsalain9404016 comments

Title is horrible, as I personally think the market is great for new grads. Heck, especially for new grads. Megacorps with good names and good positions are looking to hire low cost, high output college grads to bootstrap the next generation workforce. The article has some great advice though. I think the best thing to remember is to never underestimate the power of selling yourself. You have to know what you're good at, what you're lacking, and how you think you can improve.

When I graduated in '07 I had a job offer before I graduated. I started a month after I got out of college, and it was awesome. I've moved on since then, but that job has helped me in ways I cannot explain.

Megacorps with good names and good positions are looking to hire low cost, high output college grads to bootstrap the next generation workforce.

I'm really not sure why you're getting downvoted, but this is absolutely correct. A few of these megacorps are facing potential retirement of 60-70% of their workforce within the next 10 years, and it's not just on the order of a few hundred retirees, it's tens of thousands.

November 2008 onwards has been a different job market than 2007 was, so the comment here is not valid. While in Oct 08 one could find a job, many companies started hiring freezes or limited hiring last November.

The job I have now, which is at said megacorp, I got in May 2008. It's still valid. I will say that there were hiring freezes here, but that has come and gone in under 2 months. I think it really depends on what industry you are looking to work in and your skill set coming out of college.

Includes this at the end (in case you missed it):

I’ll be happy to provide free feedback on the first 100 students who e-mail me their resume (PDF please). I won’t find you a job, but I’ll tell you how you fare on the side-project-o-meter. Contact me ‘Alain’ at SoftwareBillofRights (dot org).

Yeah, I totally took you up on that.

Try being a liberal arts grad in this economy. CS grads are still in a comparatively very strong position.

Yeah, I had three offers within two weeks of beginning my job search in January. This is NOT a bad time to be a CS graduate.

Pfff, try being a new CS grad at the bottom of the .COM 1.0 crash. Kids these days!

-EDIT-

The article has valuable advice for new CS grads.

I was in a fairly similar position (graduated in 03).. after a few months of frustration, I just started my own business. Was making less than my friends that got jobs the first year, but quickly out-paced them.

As a programmer in this day in age, you might as well be a free mason from the middle ages. You can move virtually anywhere in the world and make at least enough money to comfortably cover for your human conditions barring a complete collapse of the information economy/society as we now know it.

I'm 24. No college degree. And I haven't been out of work since I was twelve. Buck up. You picked the right sort of degree/profession.

The state of the economy isn't the only sadenning factor, but also as a CS/IT graduate you are competing on a worldwide scale against people who are willing to receive much less monetary compensation for their work.

Reminds me of that news article I read a few months ago about IBM asking their current U.S. employees to move to India/Nigeria/Russia in order to keep their jobs...

Here's the article, since I mentioned it... http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/05/news/companies/ibm_jobs/

This just in: actually developing as a student makes you look better than Just Going to Class. Article doesn't really have anything to add beyond what you get by Googling computer science student advice (to use the first query I dreamt up).

Not really. Tons of web dev jobs in Los Angeles. Sure, I just got laid off, but I found another job paying even more than my last job in less than two weeks.

That's the thing. If you are good and have some social skills you can get a job. Even when the job market is down companies still need people to function.

pretty good advice for me as a CS major hoping to gradaute in 4 years

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