
Ask HN: Are good jobs a myth? - rustyfe
Does anyone actually have a job they don&#x27;t hate? And how did you get it?<p>I am about to start the last year of my degree in Computer Engineering. A lot of the career advice I see on HN seems to be about avoiding getting scammed by some MBA type working for a destined to fail startup. Which seems like good advice. But my experience in internships with large, generously compensating corporations has largely been one of soul crushing bureaucracy and mind numbing boredom. Is there a sane middle ground? With comfortable living quality and interesting work?<p>Who has a &quot;good&quot; job, and how did you get it? @patio11 talks about most good jobs not being advertised. But that&#x27;s kind of a chicken&#x2F;egg situation for new grads without networks. Especially those of us from cities with less dynamic hiring situations.<p>School seems like a clear system. I get a syllabus, I know how I&#x27;m being scored and get constant feedback.  My internship hunt was a total black box. Cast resumes out into the void, and hope you at least get a rejection letter.<p>I don&#x27;t want to sound like some entitled millennial, but I&#x27;ve worked hard in school. I&#x27;ve maintained a good GPA at a tough engineering school. Sometimes I juggled full time classes and part time internships. Comparing against the only metric I have (my peers), I&#x27;m a good candidate.<p>I managed to scrounge up a single offer. I accepted this internship by default, and I absolutely hate it. I&#x27;m terrified the same thing will happen when it&#x27;s time for full time career hunting.<p>This is the first time in my short life I&#x27;ve been more scared than excited for the future. I could use some words of wisdom.
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nostrademons
I actually really enjoyed my job at Google. Stayed there for 5+ years. I got
it through really knowing Javascript well right when it was becoming hot in
2008, really knowing my CS algorithms and being able to think on my feet, and
through having a friend that could refer me. Mostly the Javascript and
algorithms though, I think.

If I were to give some advice, it would probably be to focus on the _craft_
rather than on the _job_. Work to become the best engineer you can, and treat
each job as an opportunity to gain more experience doing that. The jobs will
come naturally, once you've gotten the first couple to take a chance on you.

~~~
vius
Hello Jonathan , I am trying for job at google but I haven't received any
response. Would it be possible for you to refer me if I send you my resume ?
Although , I haven't worked for very high profile companies like FB, Twitter ,
I am good at what I do. I would really appreciate your help if you can.

~~~
nostrademons
I don't work at Google anymore, so no, it's not possible for me to refer you.

~~~
vius
thanks for replying.

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tptacek
To the good advice on this thread, let me add:

You need to think about your objectives for the jobs you're considering.

The idea that you're going to leave school and fall into the perfect job is,
if you think about it for a moment, kind of silly.

For most of us, it takes several jobs --- each eating as many as a couple
years of our lives --- to figure out exactly where our careers are taking us,
and what kinds of roles we should be occupying.

What is it you want to learn to do? What career problem do you want to start
on first? Think about it like a role playing game character sheet, but instead
of "Charisma" and "Constitution", you have "Earning Potential" and
"Responsibility" and "Technical Skills" and "Business Skills" and the like.
You get a certain number of points to spend each (serious) job you take. Have
you thought about which stats you want to boost?

------
JSeymourATL
College students are almost never taught the art of marketing themselves and
finding good work.

You'll have to hack your own path. Here's a good read on getting your Elevator
Pitch right, Prospecting, Networking, and Over-coming Objections >
[http://www.amazon.com/Little-Red-Book-Selling-
Principles/pro...](http://www.amazon.com/Little-Red-Book-Selling-
Principles/product-
reviews/1885167601/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_five?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFiveStar&showViewpoints=0)

~~~
rustyfe
I've thought about that. That getting hired is basically just a sales problem.

They don't just not teach it, they teach engineers to be actively hostile to
it.

~~~
JSeymourATL
The inability sell/market/present yourself to potential buyers (employers)
will undermine your talents & skills every time. It's a shame more techies
don't get that.

------
PaulHoule
"Good" means two different things:

(1) secure, with good pay and benefits and (2) something you enjoy doing or at
least not hate

My wife has a "good" job in the sense of (2). She's self employed teaching
children to ride horses. In terms of (1) she could certainly get better
benefits but not better security or pay doing anything she is qualified to do.

The economy is fundamentally opposed to (1), particularly the security part.
The only realistic retirement plans today are to be a government worker or to
start a corporation that goes public or otherwise gets sold. As time goes by
voters are going to taste the blood of both of those populations.

As for (2) it is a challenge too that you're going to have to work hard at.

------
chrisbennet
Finally, something I can answer!

Credentials: I've had a multi-decade unbroken streak of jobs where I looked
forward to going to work every morning. I've also never worked on anything but
new products.

Here are my "Secrets to Developer Job Happiness":

 _Work for a small or tiny company that makes money with the software you
create._ If you can't work for a tiny company, work for a tiny team.

 _Don 't work for asshats._ Ask around. If it's a big company, look on
Glassdoor. A job interview is a date - remember to interview the company right
back. Try to talk to the people you'll be working with. Are they trying to see
if you're a good fit or are they more interested in trying to prove that they
are smarter than you are?

 _Don 't be afraid to ask (seemingly) stupid questions._ A lot of your
colleagues will be afraid to admit they don't understand something (esp. in
meetings). Don't think that just because no one else asks the "stupid"
question, that you are the only one who doesn't understand. Fear of looking
stupid interferes with communication and forward progress. Once you say: "I
hope I don't sound like an idiot, but could you explain that part about the
chromatic aberration but slower this time?" You _are_ stupid. Get used to it.
;-)

------
jerven
I have a job I really enjoy, and yes a lot of luck was involved. I have a
bachelor in bioinformatics, and in my 3rd year I organised the first meetup
for all such students in the Netherlands. At the same time with NBIC days (a
bigger bioinformatics conference in the Netherlands), to which we got free
access. I was very lucky to see a presentation about using data-mining to
predict protein functions by my future internship supervisor, who was only
there because her boss could not make it.

I then wrote an e-mail to her and that data-mining team, after reading all
public papers, and figuring out where I could try to help. In this case I a)
complimented them on their work b) showed I was enthusiastic and c) came with
ideas on what I could contribute. So they offered an internship, which I
loved. They where cutting edge with large scale data-mining over complicated
data using the then just new java 1.5 on varied hardware and infrastructure.
i.e. hibernate when it was still cool, K/V stores and lucene together with
lots of classical datamining algo's such as C4.5 and SVMs on large clusters.
(Sure my final report could have been better)

Came back to finish my Uni, graduated while working for a year on GPU
computing (using BrookGPU) to get protein domain detecting working for some
comparative potato genomics work. Which I loved as well.

Then I joined a large IT firm as a trainee for 1 month and then 9 months on
one of the more interesting government IT projects dealing with tracking
health of children. Funnily enough I went to industry to learn how to run a
project, and ended up on one which looked like the ObamaCare roll out in the
small :( So I quickly started looking around.

My internship group offered me a position but could not get the paperwork done
in time for me to be snapped up by their collaborators.

Now I am lead developer for the uniprot.org website and sparql services. Which
I love, because I have so much freedom and responsibility and great bosses who
are a pleasure to work for and are absolutely dependable, as well as a very
diverse team who respects each other talents and quirks.

So to summarise. Luck and networking got me the job, but those where only
effective because I had the knowledge and applied it.

So join a professional club (IEEE or Rotary or something) network and learn to
find interesting people, because interesting people often have the interesting
jobs.

~~~
rustyfe
See, you created a job you wanted instead of begging for one someone had.
Clearly a better position. But how did you demonstrate the capability to be
useful without a track record?

------
brandon272
You are conflating not being able to find a job with there being no good jobs.

Working hard in school doesn't entitle you to a "good job" right away. I
assume that very few people get the perfect job out of the gate. It takes time
to learn what kind of environment you like, what kind of company you want to
work for and what kind of people you want to work with. Do a good job with
your current position and use it as a stepping stone to something better. You
will cultivate relationships with people and build a reputation over time.

------
malyk
2001 - Post college I got a job working for a company that did federal
contracting. They had recently started a commercial contract and I was put on
the team with 6 other guys in their 20s. We worked like crazy and had a great
time for 14+ months. I was moved around to a few other contracts after that
and none was every as good, but they weren't bad, until the last one which was
soul sucking, and I left.

2004 - Got a new job at another federal contractor and it was a good job for
what it was. 9-5ish, no dress code (big deal for east coast .gov contractor),
good benefits, vacation, salary, etc. The work was moderately interesting, but
the people were good and while the environment wasn't conducive to shipping a
lot of product quickly we did get to do some interesting work. Moved to SF in
2008, saw what I was missing, and in

2011 - Joined a small startup that was great for most of 2 years. There were
ups and downs, but the work was fun, the team was small and mostly in sync, I
got to learn a whole lot and was responsible for basically everything. At the
end it kind of went bad, but it was 20ish months of a good place to work. And
with the exception of about 3 months in the middle it was a pretty reasonable
work/life balance.

2013 - Got a job at another startup. Good people, interesting space, good work
environment, decent benefits. I like getting up and coming into the office. I
generally work 9-630ish and things look good for the foreseeable future.

TLDR - Yeah, there are plenty of good jobs out there. You aren't guaranteed to
find them, so some due diligence will be required, but they are definitely out
there.

------
kasey_junk
In the ~15 years I've been a software developer I've only spent 2 years in a
job I hated.*

The first thing you need to understand, is that you are not a "new grad
without a network". From now until the day you retire your main job is
cultivating, maintaining and growing your network. This needn't be seen as
some sort of soulless MBA exercise in ass kissing. Spending all night figuring
out how to write a Scheme compiler for lego robots, getting in a screaming
fight about Scala implicits, and figuring out how to make Flash programmable
before it was supported by Adobe are all ways I've done this.

If you've really been at a tough engineering school you already have a
phenomenal network to exploit. Think professors you've impressed, grad
students you've done favors for, and other students you've worked on group
projects with.

You mention that you have an internship you hate. Is there not a single person
there who seems to have interesting habits or hobbies?

If you are thinking to yourself, "no, I don't have a network that sounds like
that". Your very first duty to your career is to build it. Find a professor
who is doing something weird and interesting to work with. Do some favors for
grad students and work your ass off at your internship. If you can't find
something interesting to work on when you are young and studying engineering
you aren't trying hard enough (or maybe you should do something else).

My biggest piece of advice is to always work on new and interesting things.
The money/career will come from that. __

I can 't think of another career I would rather have.

* It was right after 9/11 a brutal job market, and even then, I learned a ton and met friends for life so I don't regret it at all.

 __At least they did for me. Luck could have been a factor as well.

~~~
thenomad
_My biggest piece of advice is to always work on new and interesting things.
The money /career will come from that._

This is absolutely true and excellent advice.

It applies, often, even if the thing you're working on has no immediate
practical application.

I've spent 18 years making drama films in computer games.

As a result, I built a reasonably successful .com which I then sold, I've
traveled all over the world, and I have both a primary and ancilliary skillset
which people are interested in spending significant chunks of money to gain
access to.

The only addition I'd make to the advice is this:

Tell People About It.

Doing fascinating work and never talking about it works significantly less
well. Work with people, post your creations on HN, start a blog, and generally
talk to people about what you've done.

------
caw
I'd just like to point out that this

> But that's kind of a chicken/egg situation for new grads without networks.

Is fundamentally false since you are in school. There's a lot of alumni and
classmates. Your peers have internships, potentially with companies they like.
They may not want to join on full-time afterwards for any number of reasons,
but those companies may still be hiring for graduation. Those companies may
also be hiring more than one person. The Alumni network can also help in
identifying positions available with good companies.

You may also have peers that recently graduated, and have internship
positions. It's your last year so this probably isn't applicable to you, but
they're also a good source of info and jobs. Don't restrict yourself to your
graduating class.

------
LeoSolaris
Seek out local tech conventions. Open source cons, if your an enthusiast, are
usually pretty inexpensive and have a broad exposure to companies large and
small.

Another good networking idea is to start going to meetups and the like for
tech people. We have a regional one called Tech After 5 that meets in a fairly
upscale bar. They hands out nametags so you get names and usually places they
work.

Talking to really high level people, and just asking them about the state of
the industry, general pointers as a new person, and such are great ways to
grow your network. Try to meet a couple of new people a week who are in better
positions than you are. A cup of coffee landed me more than a couple jobs.

------
greenyoda
I'm not sure that having an internship you hate is an indication of what you
can expect in your post-internship experiences. Interns frequently get
assigned the work nobody else wants to do, and frequently get less respect
than regular employees. It's important, however, that you create a favorable
impression of yourself as an intern, since the recommendations and contacts
you get from that experience can improve your prospects when looking for a
permanent job.

~~~
rustyfe
That's true. I mean, I'm very respectful about the work I am assigned, when I
manage to beg someone into giving me something to do. Everyone is very nice to
me, I'm just... Bored. But good advice on building networks. Who you know not
what you know and all that.

~~~
NickWarner775
Currently in an internship at a software company in San Diego. Like was
mentioned before, having the internship itself as an occupation is not fun.
That being said, you really have to put your best foot forward when doing the
bitch work. It's a lot like pledging a fraternity, except the tasks you're
assigned usher you into a career _hopefully_ in a field you genuinely have
interest. It's worth it, but it sucks initially.

------
rootzoomlars
There are a lot of high stress/low satisfaction shops out there. Keep looking.

I found one this January that I absolutely love, with the smartest team I've
ever worked with. One of the reasons - the company wants every employee to
think like an owner with the ability to make some decisions, plus profit
sharing; they walk the walk.

There are great places to work out there. Don't settle.

------
karlkatzke
There are distinct requirements, goals, and levels in careers. You're just not
in it yet, so you can't see it. Let me see if I can draw some analogies.

I have found that everyone feels differently about different types of jobs.
Much like some people are cat people, some people are dog people, and some
people are fine with cats and dogs living together, some people feel great
working for start-ups where you are constantly burning it at both ends, some
people are happiest working for a big established company with lots of
policies and procedures, and some people like working for companies that are
changing from being startups to being enterprises and have projects that fall
into both camps. If you figure out what kind of person you are and you target
companies that are of that type, you will probably be happy.

Your first job or two is probably going to suck. Much like the first couple of
100-series lecture courses at university, you will wonder why you are there,
you will struggle to find meaning or joy in the material, and you will work
hard simply to get through it. Your main goal here is to not screw up while
you're figuring out what kind of person you are and where you fit in the
management/technical tracks and in various teams. You should make sure that
you stick your neck out as much as possible in these jobs without totally
screwing the pooch. It's anxiety inducing and the sole purpose is to build
your resume a little so you can level up. It's ok, it gets better.

Your third or fourth job, which you will get by finding out how to sell the
experience and skills you gained in your first job or two and by networking
with peers and generally being (or at least appearing to be) a smart person,
will probably be joyful. Your focus here should be finding your boundaries and
pushing them. You should try all kinds of weird new technologies and push the
envelope. You should bend your brain until it breaks, have a beer, and bend it
some more. You will probably create some amazing things, and you should keep
track of them by frequently updating your resume. My only advice in this
period is to take some time off frequently. It's exhilarating to be in this
phase, but you can break yourself permanently. This is a marathon, even if
you're sprinting all the time.

At your fifth job (or by about 35 years old) you might find your opinion about
certain kinds of places and certain kinds of tasks and certain technologies
solidifying. This is comparable to your third and fourth year of college. You
know where you are, you know who you want to be, and now it's time to focus.
This is where you will probably make your most important contributions... Even
if you're me, working Ops, and your most important contribution is "Ah
wouldn't do tha if ah wuz you."

After that period, you might find yourself in one or two places. But
generally, at about age 40, you'll start to slow a little and might lose your
ability to hop between companies. This is part of the focusing trend. Some
people end up in management because they're technologically burnt out a bit.
Some people double down on the technical track and go on to become graybeards.
Some people quit and become hermits or police officers or consultants or
bricklayers. This phase is comparable to grad school: instead of spending most
of your time working with peers, you're spending most of your time teaching to
those junior to you... And at the same time, you're still expected to be
productive on your own. But you should have developed a plan for when you hit
this phase, because grad school is not for everyone.

Hopefully that clears up a few things for you. It's not so much enjoying a job
as it is enjoying what you get up and do every day, and changing what you do
if you find you don't enjoy it.

~~~
rustyfe
I don't have a meaningful response to this, I just wanted to say this is both
good actionable advice and really inspiring. Thanks for this.

