
New College Graduates Increasingly Forced to Settle for Internships-Many Unpaid - hachiya
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/opinion/31herbert.html?em
======
patio11
I know much of HN is younger folk. If you find yourself without "traditional"
employment, I'd suggest busying yourself creating lasting value for yourself
rather than just doing passive search for a job.

The typical send-letters-and-wait-by-the-phone game is for suckers. For one,
it doesn't really let you differentiate from the other 20% of your age group
who don't have jobs. (Your resume theoretically lets you, but no one really
cares what is written on it.) For another, everything that doesn't result in
at least an interview is just wasted time. If you spend 6 months writing and
then get a job interview, you've now got an interview and _six months you will
never get back_ which did not add to your personal capital at all.

Instead, built something you can keep. If you're a techy, write software.
(Heck, build an entire business. You've got more than enough time.) If you're
not a techy, you have my sympathies, but at least get yourself a blog going
and start writing like it is going out of style. Set yourself up as the expert
on your little patch of whatever and own the daylights out of it. Then, use it
to network. Even if you can't get a job directly related to your niche, you
can use the blog as an example of writing skill, communication skill, ability
to carry tasks to completion, etc etc.

[Edited to add: It kills me that a sizable fraction of the best writing I've
done in my life was a) on subjects I didn't really care about and b) will
never be seen by anyone again, because I graduated from college many years
before I heard of Dropbox. Most intellectually engaged students produce vast,
vast quantities of great writing on subjects of perhaps less-than-great
importance because they're told to... and then stop writing after college.
Don't be most people -- most people's competitive situation sucks, because
they have to compete with most people.]

~~~
davidw
I agree completely with the spirit of what you write, but I wonder about
something:

> If you're not a techy, you have my sympathies, but at least get yourself a
> blog going and start writing like it is going out of style

That's really night and day from the techy option of hacking on stuff. I got
my first job because while I was unemployed, I spent my time learning my way
around Linux and Perl (this was in 1997) until I had enough experience to be
employable at the relatively low rate I was more than happy to accept (and
which subsequently went up pretty quickly when I proved myself).

My wife, on the other hand, has a doctorate in biochemistry. While she might
get a little mileage out of writing a blog were she unemployed, the advantages
would probably be minor compared to the disadvantage of being out of touch
with a laboratory and not able to read expensive scientific publications.

Point being, I think that sometimes we forget just how easy it is to get
involved with stuff in the tech world. With an internet connection, a $500
laptop, free tools and mostly free documentation, you can do world-class work,
and communicate with pretty much anyone you want to about most anything. How
many other fields are like that? Hopefully, the world will head in that
direction, because it really is a wonderful thing.

~~~
fabjan
> the disadvantage of being out of touch with a laboratory and not able to
> read expensive scientific publications.

Not everyone can have a lab of their own, but is access to publications really
that expensive? Here in Sweden, I just had to register for a course at the
local university (which was free), and then get a computer account to have
access to all the publications everyone else at the university have access to.

~~~
liamk
Registering for a single course in Canada will likely cost ~$800 for a single
term. That's a lot to pay for access to publications. The other option is
subscribe to publications directly, but that can cost much much more than 800.

~~~
davidw
I think liamk's experience is more typical. I think most countries charge
money to attend the university in some way, and/or have a fair amount of
bureaucracy associated with signing up.

------
eserorg
If you are young, energetic, and college-educated with a solid background in
an engineering discipline, there are jobs for the taking in the oil business.

The average age of an employee at an oil and gas E&P (exploration and
production) company in 2009 is 55 years old. These are highly prized employees
with experience and knowledge that is in short supply in the industry.

Over the next 25 years (through 2035), the global hydrocarbons industry is
estimated to invest 22 TRILLION dollars of capital (2009 USD) to meet what is
expected to be a doubling of world energy demand.

Do the math.

Computer scientists, chemical engineers, geophysicists, mechanical engineers,
biologists, petroleum engineers, etc... It doesn't matter. You would be
surprised at the voracious appetite of the global hydrocarbons industry for
new technology and talent.

I'm obviously biased, being in the business myself. But, the next time you're
at a college engineering job fair, spend a few minutes at the booths of the
E&P companies. You may be intrigued.

There's no business like the oil business.

~~~
barry-cotter
How do you think they'd react to (a) Economics (b) Econometrics? I'm going to
guess (a) would be laughed at but that a quasi-statistician can always find
work in a field with lots of data.

~~~
eserorg
I can speak to the value of multivariate optimization in the oil and gas
business.

Specifically, the U.S. onshore natural gas business is currently focused on
what are called shale gas "resource plays". These are large contiguous blocks
of acreage -- hundreds of thousands of acres -- over which thousands of wells
are drilled one-after-another, in a manufacturing process. What makes this
possible is a large, contiguous, underlying resource of natural gas reserves,
trapped in tight rocks.

The key to profitably exploiting these resource plays is finding the right
"formula" that can be repetitively applied to drilling and completing each
well. There is no time to individually sit down and engineer each well. All
you can do is analyze the data after the fact.

The profitability of each gas well is influenced by hundreds of variables. For
instance, you have to "fracture stimulate" a gas well using a variable
combination of hundreds of chemicals, each in a varying volume, with a
variable pressure, to a variable depth. The well itself may have a variable
number of frac stages, with a variable number of horizontal lateral wells
connecting it to the reservoir, with a variable length for each lateral.

The question you have to answer is: given thousands of data points over
thousands of individual wells, what is the most profitable "formula" for
drilling a well in a particular resource play? Profitability is defined as the
present value of the discounted future cash flow of the well using a discount
rate of 10% -- you'll hear people talk about "the PV10". You know how each
well has performed after it was drilled, you know what its profitability was,
and you know what formula was applied to drill and to complete it. And you
have this data for hundreds of wells -- each using a different combination of
variables. And there's new data added every day.

There is a _lot_ of money riding on the right answer to this question.

There is a _massive_ amount of data in the oil and gas business. And every
year there are entirely new classes of data being generated. 2D seismic, then
3D seismic, then microseismic, completion data, well logs, magnetic, gravity,
surface linears, etc...

It's not surprising that one of the largest customers to the supercomputing
industry -- after defense -- is the oil and gas business.

One trick here is that this data is usually locked up inside proprietary
databases shared amongst companies in different industry consortia. So, you
really have to be a player in the business to have access to the data -- that
doesn't mean that you have any clue how to analyze it, however.

And there are big QA problems with this data, too. So, you have to deal with
that as well.

------
yardie
My last internship I was miserable in. Because I was working for free I had to
take a second "real" job to make ends meet. In the end it worked out. I busted
my ass, networked and after a few months, found a real job.

The dearth of unemployed college students means it's a race to the bottom. If
companies could pay less than minimum wage they would. So the next down is to
relist the job as an unpaid internship.

~~~
rg
Need to look up what "dearth" means.

~~~
maukdaddy
Our education system is failing =(

------
tseabrooks
I didn't see mention of what the degrees these young people's degrees are in.
Are these degrees in areas with little to no demand, "I'm majoring in Latin
American Art history", or are these people getting degrees in highly in demand
areas? My software shop is hiring developers and recent grads all the time -
we hired 5 people in the last 2 months.

~~~
gaius
The kind of person who does Art History in the first place is the kind of
person whose family has the money to support them to essentially pursue their
hobby full-time for 4 years. So the internship thing is not actually a big
deal in the grand scheme of things - their families can afford to continue
supporting them, until they can find a lifestyle job.

People do science and engineering for the love of it, sure, but these kinds of
people don't forget that someday they'll need to support themselves. It's not
only the skills but the down-to-earth attitude that makes these people such
prized commodities in the job market.

~~~
unalone
Sometimes people care more about what they love than they do about whether
they can support themselves with it. Please don't assume every person
passionate about the arts is spoiled and rich.

~~~
gaius
Depends what you mean. There's work around for graphic designers and
musicians. The only job in art history is, umm, teaching art history.

~~~
unalone
As I said: Some people care more about the learning than they do about the
job. I've got art history major friends. They know there's not much work to be
found there, but they're in it anyway, finances be damned, because they love
art history and that's what they want to learn.

College isn't about getting jobs. That's how it's used now, and that sorta
sucks. College is about learning things you couldn't learn better elsewhere.
So they're going to learn art history because they really want to know about
art history, not because they're trying to make shitloads of money.

~~~
gaius
So what are these kids complaining about? They didn't want to make money, now
they're not making money! By their own definition, they've got successful
careers already!

~~~
unalone
The point the OP was making was: You can't lump together all college students
when writing an article like this, because not all college students are going
to college to get high-powered jobs. College has never been about merely
finding employment. It would therefore be more interesting to look at only
business-inclined majors when studying something like this, because art
history majors, say, haven't ever had a long tradition of finding employment
after college.

~~~
gaius
I wouldn't call science and engineering "high powered jobs", but the truth is
there are only two choices at college: learn to do something people will pay
you for, or pursue your hobby full-time for a few years. Some people are able
to combine the two successfully and of course that's the ideal. But the
hobbyists have no grounds for complaining that they're unemployable. It was
never a _secret_ that people without useful skills aren't in great demand.

~~~
unalone
You're missing what I'm saying, and what the point of the original post you
replied to was saying. We know what you're saying right now, but that's why
this article wasn't as interesting as it _could_ have been if it only surveyed
people who were learning profitable trades.

I also dislike the snarky tone you take when referring to "people without
useful skills", but that's secondary to the main argument.

------
pmjordan
Interesting to see that this is now starting to happen in the US too. In the
German speaking parts of Europe the age group of ~20 to ~30-year-olds is now
often referred to as "Generation Praktikum" ("generation internship"). There
seems to be an endless demand for programmers though.

------
TheElder
This is why I worked full-time through undergrad and graduate school. By the
time I finished grad school (in computer science), I already had years of
experience on my resume from full time employees and short term contracts.
It's my solid work experience that got me my current position after
graduation, not my MS in CS.

I don't expect the entitled American youth to sacrifice like that though. Now
I understand why H1's are so popular, they have experience, work them to death
for less pay, and the joy of not dealing with entitled American youth.

Even outside of tech, for example in the medical field, hospitals are paying
for massive amounts of SE Asians to move here for nursing positions. The
hospitals can't find people for these good paying jobs, so they have to go
outside of the US for people to fill these positions.

------
holdenc
For as long as I can remember kids with college degrees have always felt
entitled to a job. And I have never understood why.

------
wookiehangover
As a college dropout and business owner at 23, I believe that its the personal
responsibility of every American to have a marketable skill that they can get
paid for. American Universities no longer provide this--they're playpens for
the 18-22 year old set, most of whom are there simply out of obligation to
their parents wishes.

If college in American isn't dead, it's certainly dying.

I didn't land a dream job in the tech community immediately after dropping
out. I worked in retail for 2 years, while freelancing on the side and keeping
a blog which I updated daily. When I did finally get hired, all of those
things were evidence that I had a work ethic outside the context of a
classroom.

Anyone can be smart in high school, anyone can do well in college, but if
you're unable to hustle to get your foot in the door, don't expect me to feel
bad for you.

------
zackattack
Oh this is so true. And all I can say is: ha-ha-ha, sucks to be them. I
graduated from college this June with a degree in PSYCHOLOGY, and I have a
lucrative job. My secret? I started applying for jobs in the October _before I
graduated_. I targeted three metro areas, and posted my resume every few weeks
on the respective craigslist; I repeatedly sent in resumes for every position
on craigslist/monster that I was remotely qualified for; I networked. And
eventually, someone emailed me from one of my craigslist postings and I landed
a job.

I don't pity anybody in my graduating class who doesn't have a job. Obviously
they aren't smart enough to deserve one.

~~~
abalashov
I think your indictment of your peers is neither realistic nor fair, if for no
other reason than from a bare quantitative perspective.

For every person who is "not smart enough" to get a job, there are several for
whom jobs are not available, but whom you can rationalise as "not smart
enough" in order to make yourself feel better about your own luck.

~~~
zackattack
I explicitly described how I made my own luck. I doubt any of my whiny
unemployed peers undertook similar efforts, applying for 300+ jobs. I would
mention my gpa but I don't want to add insult to injury.

