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You know nothing of his situation and yet are willing to cast aspersions on his character. Before you go tarring a whole generation with the "entitled" label pe

You know nothing of his situation and yet are willing to cast aspersions on his character. Before you go tarring a whole generation with the "entitled" label perhaps a little context from the generation that lacks humility might be in order. Friends of mine are in the same position as this guy. They recently graduated with good degrees from a decent university with no allusions that finding a job was going to be anything but difficult. Rather than feel like they're owed a job the ones I know have spent hours _every_ day applying for jobs for the past (up to) 2 years with no success. Most of the time they get no reply from these companies (fair enough), but the few times they do get an interview someone else with more experience gets the job. This is clearly a frustrating position to be in. They feel like they've done everything that was expected of them. They went to university and graduated with a good degree. Now they see their friends who left school and started working immediately progressing in their careers and can't help but feel like they should have done the same. All the while this goes on people from other generations who have jobs harp on about how it's a disgrace that there are so many people on social welfare and these people could find a job if they wanted. When my friends get asked what they do and they reply that they're unemployed they're treated like plague monkeys. They're villified by members of the media and politicians looking for votes. Still they perservere. Far from feel a sense of entitlement these people feel despair. You think they don't know that they're "not fucking special" as you so eloquently put it? If after two years of applying for jobs without an end in sight he feels like venting a little bit of frustration at the attitudes of recruiters towards people like him that's not the worst thing in the world. If his situation is even half as bad as some of my friends' I wouldn't dare condescend to him by calling him entitled, far from it. It's not often I get angry after reading a comment on HN.

danhak 16y ago
I cannot explain how much you have hit the nail on the head. I graduated from college in May and have been having the exact experience you describe. My generation has been described as entitled. Quite frankly, I do feel as if I am owed something, and that society at large has failed to keep its end of the bargain. For my entire life, I was told that if I work hard in school, bust my ass to go to a good university and graduate with quantitative degree, I should have no trouble finding work. Now, half a year out of school, I find myself rotting away at my parents house, sending applications to any organization that might conceivably hire me, with no prospects and with no illusions that I'll find work that is fulfilling or properly matches my skill set. The grandparent's post is condescending and presumptuous. My generation seems entitled because the reality we are now confronting does not match up with the fantasy world that adults have been preparing us for for our entire lives.
- randomtask 16y ago
  "My generation seems entitled because the reality we are now confronting does not match up with the fantasy world that adults have been preparing us for for our entire lives." I couldn't agree more. I can't help but feel the generation our generation spawns will be a really cynical bunch ;)
  - mediaman 16y ago
    I have seen people become cynical in the face of consistent joblessness despite many applications. It worries me because it could cause permanent negative attitudinal shift with bright people -- the early parts of a career can be very formative, and it's not good if, instead of a good, supportive and developmental manager at a stable company, people feel stuck with bad bosses or cannot escape the tyranny of unemployment. 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.
    - randomtask 16y ago
      > 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?
    - lotharbot 16y ago
      Once a month, HN posts a "who's hiring" thread. You should post this position in the one coming up on November 1.
    - 16y ago
moron4hire 16y ago
"They feel like they've done everything that was expected of them. They went to university and graduated with a good degree." This is the problem. Just showing up isn't enough. This fill-in-the-blanks approach to careers is why the university degree doesn't mean anything anymore. It's never about being the norm, it's about exceeding the norm. Yes, that means more than 50%, by definition, won't cut it. What did they do while they got their "good degrees from good universities"? If the answer is "the bare minimum to pass", as it seems most of my former classmates did, then it's no wonder they can't find work.
- alexyim 16y ago
  No, getting a job is about being the norm. Or, well, it used to.
  - moron4hire 16y ago
    There are plenty of jobs. Just not necessarily in what they want to do with their level of experience. If the goal is to "get a job", then I can show you tons of places to get one of those, and you didn't have to bother going in to debt with a degree. But these jobs that require a degree, they are looking for exceptional people. That's the point of the degree, to break away from the norm. But somewhere along the line, we allowed the notion that non-professional work was somehow "lesser" work, and that everyone should be given the opportunity to go to college. Bleh. Completely misses the point.
- randomtask 16y ago
  Perhaps I wasn't clear. By good degrees I meant not only was the subject they chose challenging and useful, but their grades were good too. As an example, a friend of mine has a Masters degree in Chemistry. He was unemployed up until about 5 months ago when he started participating in a "back to work" scheme. The deal was he continues to draw social welfare, is free labour for the company he works for, and clocks the same hours as a regular employee. He has a 40 minute commute to the job each way and is not reimbursed for fuel despite his income being less than minimum wage. He has been applying for jobs in his spare time too. In a month he will have to quit this job as the law here says he can only work in such a scheme for 6 months. Presumably so companies can't abuse schemes like this to pay below minimum wage. While at this company he applied for a job internally. His competition included some of his colleagues with many more years' experience. They fear their division is about to be shut down and want to get into a more secure part of the company. How do you compete with that? EDIT: I should add that prior to getting this position he was unemployed for nearly 2 years despite applying for hundreds of jobs. Given that in his industry it is already hard to find jobs this isn't doing him any favours.
lovskogen 16y ago
This begets the question: is it better to spend years learning then apply, or apply and learn ( no degree). Just curious..
alnayyir 16y ago
Are your friends who can't find work comp sci grads/aspiring programmers?
anthonyb 16y ago
Well, based on what I can see on the internet, it'd be a no-hire from me. His resume is pretty crappy: http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/ahorner.resume.pdf http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/ahorner.resume.pdf has nothing really concrete in terms of projects that he's worked on or code that he's written, libraries which he's used, just a bunch of HR waffle. He has one semi-completed project, http://www.andrewhorner.com/sds/ http://www.andrewhorner.com/sds/ which might be enough to find him work as a flash programmer, but he's stopped work on that in favour of a new project... with no progress in 12 months - no blog posts, nothing. And it gets worse - if I were looking for a Python developer, just his code on PyGAF would be enough to put me off. a) He doesn't seem to understand Object Oriented style at all (look at the __update_pos method in http://code.google.com/p/pygaf/source/browse/trunk/graphics_engine.py http://code.google.com/p/pygaf/source/browse/trunk/graphics_... for a good example). In fact, looking at that code a second time, I'm not sure he understands how to use functions properly. b) His code style is really nasty in lots of other ways - hard coded variables and lines smushed together so that you can't follow what's going on. Also, no docs - not even a blog post somewhere. Now I've written some bad code myself, particularly early on when I was learning, but at least I didn't stop - I've been writing more code and getting better and better over time. So this is I think the grandparent's point - if he was an awesome developer out of college and couldn't find a job, or was working on a side project, and still couldn't find a job then his griping might be justifiable. But if this is all he has to show for his "years of unemployment", and all he's doing is banging out resumes to anyone with a post box, then yeah, he's not likely to find much success.
- stevejohnson 16y ago
  Could you elaborate a little about his misuse of OO and functions? I ask as a CS student whose code doesn't get read very often. I want to be able to spot this sort of thing but don't see much wrong with his method of enqueuing function calls. However, two things do jump out at me as improvements: * Enqueue the function object and arguments rather than a lambda of the function (his version not actually being a "great hack as the comments claim"). Or perhaps use functools.partial(). * CONFORM TO PEP8 FOR THE LOVE OF JOHN CLEESE
  - 16y ago
mirkules 16y ago
In addition to all the comments to your post, I wanted to highlight this sentence: "Most of the time they get no reply from these companies (fair enough)" I don't agree that it's "fair enough". Rejection letters used to be actual letters in the mail -- it was someone's job to fill in the applicant's name, put their address on an envelope and stick it in the mailbox. The point being, these used to cost the worker's wage, and companies went out of their way to send them. (If anyone could find a reason why they did this other than courtesy, please fill me in) Now, in an era where communication is INFINITELY easier than it was even 20 years ago, companies suddenly don't have the decency to click "reply" and insert your name in a template. Why is that? I think that this lack of professionalism translates into posts like "reverse job application," because, yes, it IS very frustrating looking for a job as a new grad and being rejected without apparent reason or the common courtesy of an answer, watching your peers climb through the ranks, while you slip further and further into unemployable territory because you've been out of a job for so long. If the "reverse application" seems unprofessional, it is only because all he has seen is unprofessionalism in return. I would have done things a little differently (i.e. included my skills and a resume), but applaud his decision to do something different. EDIT: Just to be clear, I do agree that my generation is too entitled; I just wanted to also point out that the hiring process would be a lot easier for both sides if we had the same professional courtesy that we witnessed 20 years ago.
- zszabo 16y ago
  The short answer to your question: liability. In an age where anti-discrimination laws give people ample ammunition to sue for not being hired, it's financially prudent for companies to be rude. And yes, I too find it frustrating, given that I'm currently looking for a job as well.
- mrj 16y ago
  I don't think it's being rude. It's that 20 - 30 years ago, all executives had secretaries who would be tasked with responding to resumes. Now, communication is so easy that nobody needs their own secretary, but the executive is less likely to respond to every resume. Also, the number of applicants has greatly increased because communication is so much easier, which greatly increases the pain factor trying to respond.
sga 16y ago
I think this is the key: "They feel like they've done everything that was expected of them." I understand this feeling but it is misguided. The reason is that their understanding of what's actually expected is not correct, because the expectation they follow has not been provided by the people who will ultimately hire them. The understanding of expectations is often provided by councillors or teachers/professors at high schools and universities (or parents). These people in general are horribly out of touch with the true expectations of an employer or requirements of entry level positions in the particular industry of interest. As a result students misguidedly follow these expectations and are suddenly struck with reality when they are done. The reality is that universities do not train students for the work place. They are money making operations whose goal it is to provide an education as a service (note: that an education from a university does not equate to workplace readiness). This means that if they think that they can attract students with a new buzzwordy program, they'll create that program and tell the students about all of the great opportunities that exist in industry (e.g. nanoscience or nanotechnology), when in fact no such opportunities exist. Universities are completely out of touch with the needs and desires of industry (one counter would be some eng. disciplines) or at the least their primary focus is not on those students who exit the program but rather almost entirely those students entering the program (more fuel for the machine). The same goes for more traditional programs (e.g. physics or CS), I've spoken to many professors over the years about job opportunities and they always talk about academia (which they know well) and the nebulous industry. My advice to students is to clarify what it actually takes to enter an industry early in the academic process. Perform market research and actually talk to people about their experiences (look at early resumes and CVs if you can). At the same time think about building up your CV with projects/initiatives/etc. that strengthen your softer skills (communication, leadership, project management, etc.). I didn't do the former very well but I did do the latter and it has helped me immensely (you must be able to distinguish yourself from the pack). Also work at building your network, this is key. Then once you get that job, look at the next rung up and "rinse, lather and repeat" the above process. Even if you want to go the startup route I would still recommend the above unsolicited advice.
aboodman 16y ago
This thread hit close to home, so I wrote a blog post I've been meaning to write for awhile, and framed it as a response: http://www.aaronboodman.com/2010/10/wherein-i-help-you-get-good-job.html http://www.aaronboodman.com/2010/10/wherein-i-help-you-get-g...

danhak 16y ago

I cannot explain how much you have hit the nail on the head. I graduated from college in May and have been having the exact experience you describe. My generation has been described as entitled. Quite frankly, I do feel as if I am owed something, and that society at large has failed to keep its end of the bargain. For my entire life, I was told that if I work hard in school, bust my ass to go to a good university and graduate with quantitative degree, I should have no trouble finding work. Now, half a year out of school, I find myself rotting away at my parents house, sending applications to any organization that might conceivably hire me, with no prospects and with no illusions that I'll find work that is fulfilling or properly matches my skill set. The grandparent's post is condescending and presumptuous. My generation seems entitled because the reality we are now confronting does not match up with the fantasy world that adults have been preparing us for for our entire lives.

randomtask 16y ago
"My generation seems entitled because the reality we are now confronting does not match up with the fantasy world that adults have been preparing us for for our entire lives." I couldn't agree more. I can't help but feel the generation our generation spawns will be a really cynical bunch ;)
- mediaman 16y ago
  I have seen people become cynical in the face of consistent joblessness despite many applications. It worries me because it could cause permanent negative attitudinal shift with bright people -- the early parts of a career can be very formative, and it's not good if, instead of a good, supportive and developmental manager at a stable company, people feel stuck with bad bosses or cannot escape the tyranny of unemployment. 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.
  - randomtask 16y ago
    > 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?
  - lotharbot 16y ago
    Once a month, HN posts a "who's hiring" thread. You should post this position in the one coming up on November 1.
  - 16y ago

moron4hire 16y ago

"They feel like they've done everything that was expected of them. They went to university and graduated with a good degree." This is the problem. Just showing up isn't enough. This fill-in-the-blanks approach to careers is why the university degree doesn't mean anything anymore. It's never about being the norm, it's about exceeding the norm. Yes, that means more than 50%, by definition, won't cut it. What did they do while they got their "good degrees from good universities"? If the answer is "the bare minimum to pass", as it seems most of my former classmates did, then it's no wonder they can't find work.

alexyim 16y ago
No, getting a job is about being the norm. Or, well, it used to.
- moron4hire 16y ago
  There are plenty of jobs. Just not necessarily in what they want to do with their level of experience. If the goal is to "get a job", then I can show you tons of places to get one of those, and you didn't have to bother going in to debt with a degree. But these jobs that require a degree, they are looking for exceptional people. That's the point of the degree, to break away from the norm. But somewhere along the line, we allowed the notion that non-professional work was somehow "lesser" work, and that everyone should be given the opportunity to go to college. Bleh. Completely misses the point.
randomtask 16y ago
Perhaps I wasn't clear. By good degrees I meant not only was the subject they chose challenging and useful, but their grades were good too. As an example, a friend of mine has a Masters degree in Chemistry. He was unemployed up until about 5 months ago when he started participating in a "back to work" scheme. The deal was he continues to draw social welfare, is free labour for the company he works for, and clocks the same hours as a regular employee. He has a 40 minute commute to the job each way and is not reimbursed for fuel despite his income being less than minimum wage. He has been applying for jobs in his spare time too. In a month he will have to quit this job as the law here says he can only work in such a scheme for 6 months. Presumably so companies can't abuse schemes like this to pay below minimum wage. While at this company he applied for a job internally. His competition included some of his colleagues with many more years' experience. They fear their division is about to be shut down and want to get into a more secure part of the company. How do you compete with that? EDIT: I should add that prior to getting this position he was unemployed for nearly 2 years despite applying for hundreds of jobs. Given that in his industry it is already hard to find jobs this isn't doing him any favours.

lovskogen 16y ago

This begets the question: is it better to spend years learning then apply, or apply and learn ( no degree). Just curious..

alnayyir 16y ago

Are your friends who can't find work comp sci grads/aspiring programmers?

anthonyb 16y ago

Well, based on what I can see on the internet, it'd be a no-hire from me. His resume is pretty crappy: http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/ahorner.resume.pdf http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/ahorner.resume.pdf has nothing really concrete in terms of projects that he's worked on or code that he's written, libraries which he's used, just a bunch of HR waffle. He has one semi-completed project, http://www.andrewhorner.com/sds/ http://www.andrewhorner.com/sds/ which might be enough to find him work as a flash programmer, but he's stopped work on that in favour of a new project... with no progress in 12 months - no blog posts, nothing. And it gets worse - if I were looking for a Python developer, just his code on PyGAF would be enough to put me off. a) He doesn't seem to understand Object Oriented style at all (look at the __update_pos method in http://code.google.com/p/pygaf/source/browse/trunk/graphics_engine.py http://code.google.com/p/pygaf/source/browse/trunk/graphics_... for a good example). In fact, looking at that code a second time, I'm not sure he understands how to use functions properly. b) His code style is really nasty in lots of other ways - hard coded variables and lines smushed together so that you can't follow what's going on. Also, no docs - not even a blog post somewhere. Now I've written some bad code myself, particularly early on when I was learning, but at least I didn't stop - I've been writing more code and getting better and better over time. So this is I think the grandparent's point - if he was an awesome developer out of college and couldn't find a job, or was working on a side project, and still couldn't find a job then his griping might be justifiable. But if this is all he has to show for his "years of unemployment", and all he's doing is banging out resumes to anyone with a post box, then yeah, he's not likely to find much success.

stevejohnson 16y ago
Could you elaborate a little about his misuse of OO and functions? I ask as a CS student whose code doesn't get read very often. I want to be able to spot this sort of thing but don't see much wrong with his method of enqueuing function calls. However, two things do jump out at me as improvements: * Enqueue the function object and arguments rather than a lambda of the function (his version not actually being a "great hack as the comments claim"). Or perhaps use functools.partial(). * CONFORM TO PEP8 FOR THE LOVE OF JOHN CLEESE
- 16y ago

mirkules 16y ago

In addition to all the comments to your post, I wanted to highlight this sentence: "Most of the time they get no reply from these companies (fair enough)" I don't agree that it's "fair enough". Rejection letters used to be actual letters in the mail -- it was someone's job to fill in the applicant's name, put their address on an envelope and stick it in the mailbox. The point being, these used to cost the worker's wage, and companies went out of their way to send them. (If anyone could find a reason why they did this other than courtesy, please fill me in) Now, in an era where communication is INFINITELY easier than it was even 20 years ago, companies suddenly don't have the decency to click "reply" and insert your name in a template. Why is that? I think that this lack of professionalism translates into posts like "reverse job application," because, yes, it IS very frustrating looking for a job as a new grad and being rejected without apparent reason or the common courtesy of an answer, watching your peers climb through the ranks, while you slip further and further into unemployable territory because you've been out of a job for so long. If the "reverse application" seems unprofessional, it is only because all he has seen is unprofessionalism in return. I would have done things a little differently (i.e. included my skills and a resume), but applaud his decision to do something different. EDIT: Just to be clear, I do agree that my generation is too entitled; I just wanted to also point out that the hiring process would be a lot easier for both sides if we had the same professional courtesy that we witnessed 20 years ago.

zszabo 16y ago
The short answer to your question: liability. In an age where anti-discrimination laws give people ample ammunition to sue for not being hired, it's financially prudent for companies to be rude. And yes, I too find it frustrating, given that I'm currently looking for a job as well.
mrj 16y ago
I don't think it's being rude. It's that 20 - 30 years ago, all executives had secretaries who would be tasked with responding to resumes. Now, communication is so easy that nobody needs their own secretary, but the executive is less likely to respond to every resume. Also, the number of applicants has greatly increased because communication is so much easier, which greatly increases the pain factor trying to respond.

sga 16y ago

I think this is the key: "They feel like they've done everything that was expected of them." I understand this feeling but it is misguided. The reason is that their understanding of what's actually expected is not correct, because the expectation they follow has not been provided by the people who will ultimately hire them. The understanding of expectations is often provided by councillors or teachers/professors at high schools and universities (or parents). These people in general are horribly out of touch with the true expectations of an employer or requirements of entry level positions in the particular industry of interest. As a result students misguidedly follow these expectations and are suddenly struck with reality when they are done. The reality is that universities do not train students for the work place. They are money making operations whose goal it is to provide an education as a service (note: that an education from a university does not equate to workplace readiness). This means that if they think that they can attract students with a new buzzwordy program, they'll create that program and tell the students about all of the great opportunities that exist in industry (e.g. nanoscience or nanotechnology), when in fact no such opportunities exist. Universities are completely out of touch with the needs and desires of industry (one counter would be some eng. disciplines) or at the least their primary focus is not on those students who exit the program but rather almost entirely those students entering the program (more fuel for the machine). The same goes for more traditional programs (e.g. physics or CS), I've spoken to many professors over the years about job opportunities and they always talk about academia (which they know well) and the nebulous industry. My advice to students is to clarify what it actually takes to enter an industry early in the academic process. Perform market research and actually talk to people about their experiences (look at early resumes and CVs if you can). At the same time think about building up your CV with projects/initiatives/etc. that strengthen your softer skills (communication, leadership, project management, etc.). I didn't do the former very well but I did do the latter and it has helped me immensely (you must be able to distinguish yourself from the pack). Also work at building your network, this is key. Then once you get that job, look at the next rung up and "rinse, lather and repeat" the above process. Even if you want to go the startup route I would still recommend the above unsolicited advice.

aboodman 16y ago

This thread hit close to home, so I wrote a blog post I've been meaning to write for awhile, and framed it as a response: http://www.aaronboodman.com/2010/10/wherein-i-help-you-get-good-job.html http://www.aaronboodman.com/2010/10/wherein-i-help-you-get-g...