

An email from a very confused guy who can’t find a job - oscardelben
http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/confused-career-decision/

======
knightinblue
_Build skills before you need them_

Oh ok, then I'll win the lottery, trip over a cure for cancer and land inside
a supermodel.

That has to be one of the most vapid pieces of advice I've ever heard. It
reeks of quintessential motivational-self-help-guru-dom. It _sounds_ like
great advice, but when you break it down, it brings absolutely nothing
concrete to the table. He might as well add 'Water is wet, so take off your
clothes _before_ you jump into the beach'.

Everyone, including 'Ryan', already knows this.

I would usually ignore something like this, but doling out buzzword laden one-
liners like 'Networking is not a dirty word' seems to have become a trend
these days. Restating the obvious in memorable sentences doesn't help
anything. What _does_ help is taking his resume, deciding if he can hook him
up, and directing him towards a contact he knows, since he's in the same field
as Ryan. You know, actual _concrete_ help.

Or maybe it's the smug 'see how well I condense my ideas into 2 lines? that's
just too cool to ignore' attitude dripping all over this self-promotional
article.

P.S. You know what's even shorter - 'Sorry. I have no clue how to help you.'
It's just _one_ line!

~~~
ramit
(I'm the author of the article.)

I actually know exactly what you mean -- if I had just stumbled upon this
post, I would probably think the same thing.

I wrote this for my community, who know exactly what I mean: Don't try to
charge $ too early, focus on the long term, invest in yourself and be
entrepreneurial, etc. Many of them have read my articles from years ago that
go into detail on this.

But for people that just clicked through and are seeing this for the first
time, I can understand the skepticism.

Hopefully this doesn't make you think of my site as just another guru-blah-
blah-blah site, because my readers have really done some amazing things --
saving millions, starting companies, automating their money, etc -- over the
years.

~~~
raheemm
If you had replied to Ryan with the thoughtfulness you display here, your post
would have come across far better. You are giving very banal advice in a rude
way to a guy who is temporarily down on his luck for very understandable
reasons. Sorry but I called you a douchebag in your comments section (You can
take it off)

------
delano
_One of the most important differences between rich people and non-rich
people: Rich people plan for things before they need them, while others are
caught treading water when something bad happens. Think about how to apply
this to your life._

If I'm being really optimistic, I can take this to mean, _rich people become
rich because they plan ahead and non-rich people stay non-rich because they
don't_. I have to be _really_ optimistic to read it that way and it's dubious
advice anyhow.

So let's take the analogy a bit further. We have a person treading water. They
know they need to figure something out because they can't tread water
indefinitely. Then something bad happens. Crap, maybe a shark shows up or a
lightning storm rolls in, whatever it is, it's not cool. Ramit Sethi leans in
to give this poor person some advice. "Let me tell you something. You could be
rich right now if you had just planned ahead."

Useless!

~~~
JabavuAdams
This reminds me of the guy at work whose proposed solution to any problem is
"well, this would never have happened if we'd done X." You know the guy.

O Rly? Well okay, we'll just invent a time-machine, go back in time to when
this stupid decision was made, convince those in charge not to make it, and
then make some other stupid mistake.

I think it's very valuable to analyze and to learn from mistakes, but in the
middle of a crisis, you need to first get out of the crisis.

The real problem is that financially speaking, most of the US is in crisis-
mode all the time, without even realizing it.

Most USians won't get rich (by US standards), but many more might be able to
get out of the living month-to-month quagmire.

------
nihilocrat
If that's the full text, those reply emails aren't very long at all. Yeah,
they get into details that aren't very important, but they are pretty
reasonable, especially considering he's unemployed in a dry spell. Maybe
everyone else just has less patience.

------
ckinnan
A reminder of how brutal unemployment is at the margin. A 1 percent increase
in the unemployment rate is not a huge jump statistically but when you are
looking for work on the ground it is thousands more people chasing the same
job as you.

------
JabavuAdams
Well that was useless. P.S. I wonder whether Amit asked "Ryan's" permission
before posting this e-mail exchange.

------
edw519
"And stop depending on recruiters."

Bravo!

I'd like to apologize in advance to the 7 respectable recruiters left in the
United States before I say:

Most headhunters are slime.

They are low level bottom feeders who are rarely capable of producing value
for anyone else and can only produce income for themselves by engineering a
scarcity situation where none would otherwise exist. They don't give a flying
fuck about you or the companies except to "not bite the hand that feeds them".
Now that times are tougher, they will resort to anything to make a buck,
because they think they have to. Ethics and value mean nothing to those who
have no ethics and produce no value.

Just a few of the "tricks" they are pulling these days:

They will list a job on the internet that doesn't exist just to collect your
resume. They will lie about it until they are caught.

They will change critical details about a job to make it difficult to identify
the company so that no one "goes around them" (when they don't have an
exclusive).

They will edit your resume to suit _their_ needs, not yours.

They will use you to show an example of an overpriced person so that they can
easily place someone else.

They will make up total bullshit in order to protect "their turf", hoping that
you're an idiot and will buy in to it. (I recently had a headhunter tell me I
MUST go through them with a vendor referral to one of their clients. Huh?)

If you're lucky enough to find a good recruiter that can actually make
something happen for you, hang on to them for dear life (that is until they
switch careers). Otherwise, stay clear. Don't waste your time with job board
entries placed by recruiters (I know, most of them are).

You're much better off getting up off your butt and going out and meeting
people on your own. Do this without restriction. You never know when the
person you met at a party, breakfast, or BBQ may be the one to send you your
next job or contract. YOU are always your best recruiter.

~~~
randallsquared
_You're much better off getting up off your butt and going out and meeting
people on your own._

Since I've been in the recent job market (about a year now), I've found
similar numbers of (apparently) helpful recruiters and sleazy ones. Even if
the ratio were 1-in-20, it would still be better for me and people like me to
use recruiters. To be clear, "people like me" here refers to those of us who
strongly dislike networking, gladhanding, and basically pretending to be
interested in people we know nothing about except that they might be able to
help us get a job at some point. While it's not nearly so strong as my dislike
of meeting new people, my aversion even to interacting with people I already
know is strong enough that I regularly fail to keep in touch with family and
close friends for months or years at a time. Fortunately, I have very
understanding friends. :)

~~~
edw519
"basically pretending to be interested in people we know nothing about except
that they might be able to help us get a job"

No! No! No!

This is not what I meant and I apologize if I inferred it.

Pretending's got nothing to do with it. On this or any other subject.

You do not "network" (or whatever you want to call it) to "get a job" or to
"get" anything for that matter. You network because you are a human being.

If you are extremely introverted or dislike being among others, fine. Many of
us here are either like that or once were. I understand. I suggest you give it
a try. You may be the best assembly programmer in the western hemisphere, but
you are still a human being. You are already hard wired to interact with the
rest of us. It's not really that big a deal.

Getting business referals is a natural byproduct, not the purpose, of normal
human interaction. The more you interact, the better your chances. The better
for everyone.

(As an aside, if you "pretend" at anything, prepared to get clocked, sooner or
later. Pretending is an investment in nothing.)

~~~
randallsquared
Oh, I don't dislike being among others, all the time. I dislike meeting _new_
people a bit, and since "networking" involves meeting as many new people as
possible, it's basically a shorthand for the part of social interaction I
dislike. :) I'm not "extremely" introverted or anything; it's just that going
through recruiters has seemed to be a more pleasant avenue than meeting dozens
or hundreds of new people over the same period.

We disagree about pretending, too. Pretending is the quickest way to changing
your personality, distasteful as it is in the short term. Want to be more
optimistic, happier, more outgoing? Start acting as though you are right now,
and you'll move in that direction. Pretending is 80% of social interaction,
too, as far as I can see. "Hey, how are you, today?" is, in the vast majority
of cases, a pretense of being actually interested in my day. If you want to
find out how many people are pretending, answer in detail rather than just
saying "Great!" or some such answer. I sometimes answer in detail, anyway,
because I forget that virtually everyone else is pretending (or because I'm
not paying enough attention to consciously respond correctly), rather than
interested, and this almost always ends awkwardly. :)

~~~
Chocobean
Do you also do this :

You: "Hello! How are you?"

Someone: "Good! How about you?"

You: "Good! How about you?"

Someone: "...?"

You: "..."

~~~
randallsquared
Of course. It's another awkward failure mode, since it becomes unavoidably
clear that we're just saying stock phrases. :)

~~~
Chocobean
Indeed. I think I only learned how to small-talk and "network" as a parlour
trick (like Fry).

Fortunately I am able to form deep and meaningful friendships; anything above
an acquaintance level is possible, but requires hard work. Yay introverts. =P

------
dkarl
My group is trying to fill several software engineer positions and at least
one DB engineer position.

Don't get excited; we were recently told we can now only hire internally to
our technology megacorp. That pretty much makes the task hopeless, but we
didn't have much success hiring externally, either. It just means a bigger
pile of internal resume spam from people who don't even claim to have the
skills we need. Yes, this is the classic "we're hiring and can't find good
candidates" counterpost to the classic "I've got mad skills and experience and
can't get a job" post.

Or rather, it's an offer. Does anyone want to hear why we're having trouble
finding candidates and my advice for people wondering how to get this kind of
job?

~~~
Chocobean
Yea, actually I would like to hear. I'm looking for a job myself.

------
mrbgty
I don't understand the point of this article or why I'm seeing it here.

As far as I could tell, the author got an email from a friend looking for help
and instead of helping him, he decided to humiliate him on the internet.

~~~
Chocobean
The author is not a friend; the piece's point of view is from that of a
"celebrity" writing about how he dealt with a "fan".

------
woodsier
Don't depend on someone else to score you a job.

Network.

Verbose resume's bore, simple resume's score.

There, same advice, but far less writing (and far less self-congratulatory,
please-read-my-article-while-I-masturbate-over-how-superior-I-feel-compared-
to-this-poor-dude bullshit).

------
jonathanberger
Hmm... if I had to choose a personal motto, maybe it'd be "it’s almost time to
become desperate" right now. I like Ramit's style of writing.

Also thinking about "I'm not hearing you" and "big company"... :)

