Ask HN: I can't find a job. Why? Should I go to grad school? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I can't find a job. Why? Should I go to grad school?

13 pointszackattack4 comments

Hello HN!

I just graduated from college, and I'm having trouble finding employment. I always thought I was pretty employable: I'm a smart guy, with a degree in Psychology and Math (though not CS), and I've been programming as a hobbyist for over ten years.

I used to do BASIC, then dabbled in some C++/Java, got serious about perl in high school... but then after graduating high school, I got an internship, and they wanted me to learn PHP. Since then, I've essentially been doing PHP/MySQL (LAMP) exclusively, with a healthy dose of JavaScript.

I had an app on the Facebook platform which took off, and then I sold it, and the exposure got me a bunch of freelance consulting work -- but I haven't been working lately, as I shut down the consulting biz to focus on wrapping up my degree.

I'm entrepreneurial by nature, and though I do not have a great idea to work on right now, I do love the tech sector. What should I do? Should I go back to grad school, to get a Master's in CS, and learn the theory from the ground up? (I took Discrete Math and Information Theory as electives in college).

I appreciate your advice.

Whatever you do, don't pay tuition. Not so long as your money is better spent on ramen and a handful of textbooks. (If you haven't gone through SICP yet, I'd start there. And there's a lot of suggested-book threads to be found via SearchYC.)

If you don't have a great idea for a project you can do while living on beans and rice, why not work on one of the crappy ideas? I'd rather interview a person with a running, bug-tracked, version-controlled implementation of a hopelessly naive idea than someone who had sat through some extra courses in elementary CS.

+1 to the guy who suggested studying stats. Go back to your psych department and ask them to refer you to some graduates who crunch numbers for a living. Go interview them -- not to ask them for a job, but to ask whether there's something you should study in order to be useful (e.g.: SAS programming).

My immediate advice is to include links to some of your best work in this thread or better yet in your HN profile. Where better to show off your skills than on the leading online community of entrepreneurs? Finding a job, especially one that doesn't suck, is a full-time job in and of itself.

In the longer term, if you have the money for it, a Masters in CS is likely a worthwhile financial investment, but spending two (or more) years of your life doing something you aren't excited about is a poor use of your most valuable resource.

You seem (I stalked your other posts) like you have the skills and the desire to start your own business. Is your only hold-up the lack of a good idea? If so, email me. I found myself in a similar situation this spring, minus any programming knowledge, and I still decided to take the leap.

I doubt your problem in finding a programming job is due to your lack of a CS degree. Your experience should be enough for entry to mid range jobs, its the market that is lacking at the moment. That is not to say you should not get a CS Master's if you are really into it. Just don't do it because you think its the route to a job.

Given the U.S. economy, you may need to widen your horizons for job type. Try doing something with your psych/math background. I've heard stats jobs are on the rise.

I'd assume that you're picky about the jobs you apply to given your skill set. Take a look at the positions that you've applied to and see, if you may be missing something that the employer wants.

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