

Being a new CS grad in this economy sucks - alain94040
http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/05/13/being-a-new-cs-grad-in-this-economy-sucks/

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abyssknight
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.

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bea_auger
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.

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abyssknight
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.

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alain94040
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)._

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zackattack
Yeah, I totally took you up on that.

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biohacker42
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.

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jdrock
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.

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

~~~
evilneanderthal
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.

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kleevr
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.

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8-bit_Blaster
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/>

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swolchok
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).

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JereCoh
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.

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weaksauce
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.

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

