I'm sorry you're going through this! But also a little suspicious because a nearly word-for-word message was posted four days ago on Reddit with some of the details different, including the major and presence of a master's degree, but most of the same phrasing (https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1q9gdff/unemployed_alm...). If these rants are somehow from the same person (maybe you did both majors and only discussed one in each post?), fair enough and I really am sorry, but I do wonder if we're being experimented upon. :-(

Yeah this is what 2008 was like. It is not your fault.

Here's what you do:

1. Quit doomscrolling. Quit all social media. It's like anti-therapy where it just makes everything worse. Timebox your job-hunting every day, there's diminishing marginal returns on time spent here.

2. Your instincts are good! Volunteering and side projects are great. I did a ton of side projects and freelance work. This means you'll be able to account for your time unemployed and gives you something cool to show in interviews. I had a nice little portfolio to run with.

3. Go outside. Read a book in a park. Clear your head. Shit like "the longer I go without work, the worse it gets in the eyes of employers" isn't useful. You will solve that by having a good story to tell via #2, and everyone knows this is a terrible market.

4. Apply to weird stuff involving technology but not "in tech." IT for schools, web stuff for nonprofits, museums, tiny businesses that can't afford market rate. A lot of these are really fun.

I can tell you from 2008-2011, this era passed. Even my most desperate, lost-seeming friends, some of which had prestigious degrees etc etc, found something to do. Many of them wound up quite well off in the end. The hard part isn't even interviewing, its keeping yourself sane in the meantime.

You are not a failure. You are being dealt a bad hand, and that has happened to entire generations before you.

When external structure disappears, you must replace it with internal structure. Keep a fixed daily routine. Get up at the same time every day and go to bed at the same time every night, regardless of mood or circumstances. Plan for eight hours of sleep. Treat this as non-negotiable.

Take care of your body. Exercise regularly, even if it feels pointless at first. Eat properly. These are not self-help platitudes; they are basic maintenance requirements for keeping your mind functional under prolonged stress.

Be very strict with digital consumption. Doomscrolling and sulking are forms of digital procrastination and they actively worsen the situation. Before switching on the TV, unlocking your smartphone, or engaging with any social media, do 20 push-ups. Every time. If you cannot do push-ups, replace them with squats or another short physical exercise. The goal is to insert friction and break the automatic habit loop.

Do not lie to your friends about your situation. That usually makes things worse over time, not better. People talk, and they already know more than you think anyway.

If you cannot find a job in tech right now, apply to other jobs you can realistically get. Any job. Then become very good at it. Be dependable, knowledgeable, and reliable.

At the same time, actively look for better opportunities. Treat this as an ongoing process, not something that passively happens to you. Apply, network, learn, and reposition yourself continuously. Your loyalty is first to yourself, second to your family, and then to the people you care about, never to an employer. When you find a better opportunity, take it. Change jobs if needed. Repeat.

This is not a judgment on your abilities. It is a rational response to current conditions.

When I graduated in 2009 it was like this and I eventually took a job clerking in a warehouse to make ends meet. It turned out they had various IT needs but nobody to really fill them and so I eventually worked my way into a role doing application support stuff. It's a really good idea to stop thinking of yourself as the thing you learned to do in school and start thinking in terms of what your options really are. If you're looking at job boards and they're hiring people to ride a desk in a warehouse or work as a service technician or anything tech-adjacent for a small company, apply to those jobs too. Don't shy away from taking or asking for jobs that you might be overqualified for. Especially for small companies with flat management structures. Many of the trees in the forest wait years for an opening. The bigleaf maple will live small under the canopy until something falls and then sprint for the first opportunity. That's what you have to do.

Sorry to hear that you're going through this. I work with other students/recent grads going through the same thing. A few suggestions:

1) To echo some of the other comments here, getting a regular routine will help you get into better habits. Good sleep, regular exercise, and limited social media etc will help with your mood.

2) The setbacks are situational, not dispositional. It really is a shit job market and you likely don't know how to properly signal yet (ie. sell yourself to others). And to make things even worse, brute force ATS grinding is now even less effective since everyone can now game the systems and generate a plausibly good-looking coherent resume using AI.

3) IMO, one mistake I see often is that students think jobs are the only way to gain experience. This is not true. You really have to be constantly learning new things on your own. Your university education is not enough. This means working on projects specifically for learning purposes. I'd suggest you alternate between learning-mode and applying-mode, where you spend 2-3 months just working on shipping a complete project, then focusing on applying to jobs for another 2-3 months, get feedback and rinse and repeat. You can use the learn-mode time to adapt to feedback. I think this will yield better results than applying over and over again hoping for different results.

Anyways, feel free to reach out. As others have said, you're beating yourself up too much. You'll figure it out and find a way through these setbacks. The important thing atm is not to spiral into a vicious cycle. I applaud you even airing this on HN, as it's much much better than sulking alone.

I graduated right after the 2008 crisis, took 3 years and many temp jobs to get one where I would be paid to write software. Those 3 years were terrible and I estimate it set me back by around 5-6 real years.

Looking back, what would I have done differently ?

(0) mental health is the most important at this stage. Stay close to people who are with you in this difficult time. Never forget their contributions. For me it was my grandma.

(1) have unshakable belief in myself and my worth, never letting my employability be a measure of my worth and identity. Deep down you would question yourself and think its a lie. It isn't.

(2) I should have absolutely used that extra time to master the interview stuff (algorithms, data structures, OS and networking concepts, etc). Sooner or later I would interview at a FAANG which measure solely on these factors, so could have used that extra time to master interview skills. I wasted time on side projects, resume padding and niche upcoming tech stuff.

(3) tech surfing. Ride the latest wave with some side projects. Don't go deep. Just surf.

(4) All things, good and bad, will end. "This too shall pass"

Here's some actionable ideas: 1. try tech positions at non-tech companies, 2. be more flexible with location, maybe consider also overseas/across the border, 3. consider tech-adjacent positions that play to your strengths, 4. leverage your MIT prestige by applying to lower-ranked postgrad programs (assuming your profile isn't good enough for a top-tier program), 5. irrespective of what you did at MIT, maybe strengthen your tech fundamentals, especially if you feel insecure about your abilities

You have a resume or website I could take a look at?

My suggestion is to look at networking events and see if you can get involved in startups. You will be talking to people on the team and it's a good way to make connections.

I'd also look into the Education sector (i.e. colleges, universities, school districts) It's how I managed to get my start in tech. https://www.higheredjobs.com

And don't feel bad about it taking a while to find a job. I graduated a few years ago and it took me 6 months to get something lined up. The market is weird right now.

I've been there and struggled with depression. You know what has been amazing for my mental health? Lifting weights and getting some movement in. Try taking a long walk and see if that helps clear your head. You're far from a failure, Op. Much love.

I know you didn't ask to problem solve, but... Email your resume to me at vakhmechet@microsoft.com, mention this HN thread. We're hiring for Azure MySQL and sister Postgres team, lots of interesting problems to solve!

EDIT:

"I feel like a firework that exploded in bursts of color (everyone ooed and ah-ed), and then... nothing" ~~> that's a beautiful sentence. Welcome to adulthood!

You're not a failure. I graduated 2009 with a computer engineering degree (not quite as prestigious as MIT but a decent school) and basically did odd jobs and freelance for several years until I finally got my foot in the door at a tech company and my career took off from there.

1. Stop doomscrolling - this is imperative. Almost nothing good will come from it and ends up being a vicious cycle for any depression you are experiencing.

2. Even if it's embarrassing, keep talking to your old classmates. Ask about job openings or anything. The easiest way to get a job is through an internal reference, otherwise your application may never even be seen by the hiring manager.

3. Exercise, do some sort of physical activity - even going for a short walk outside every day will help improve your mental health.

4. Find a personal project to work on and commit time to it that would have otherwise spent doomscrolling. It is good mental exercise and it's also good for job hunting - you may not have prior job experience but a personal Git portfolio showcasing your skills is definitely something good employers will look at.

Just build a startup.

EDIT: Building a startup gets you experience, connections and the grit that comes with actually building something. Being employee #440,670 does not; the end game is promotion or getting laid off. Just telling you how it is.

Unless you want to be in research (which the school does matter) instead of applying for jobs, just build a startup instead which gets you the experience you are looking for.

I'm also a recent Course 6 grad ('24), and I want you to know you aren't the only one feeling this way and going through the same process. I have fortunately been lucky with the hiring process but have seen the real brutality of it through my friends. You aren't a failure and a job/money isn't what defines one.

I know you are just venting, but please feel free to reach out to me. I'm happy to chat, share what I'm seeing, or ping a few friends I know who might be looking for engineers.

I'm sorry that you are going through this.

I haven't gone through something similar, but I think something that helped me out the 2nd time I looked for a job was how valued work experience is.

As a new grad, personal projects are useful because it adds to the pile of things for an employer to look at (along with internships). After that though, personal projects matter less and less compared to real world experience.

(There are exceptions to this though. Personal projects matter less because you don't face real world problems with them. If you have a personal project that gets users, that is definitely something worth talking about).

I recommend just applying to smaller, lesser-known companies just to get some experience. My 1st job was at a small financial tech company that no one ever heard of, and they hired in a lower-cost, non-competitive area. We used a very old tech stack, and had custom everything - that didn't stop me from getting hired at other places.

You should check out: universities, banks, insurance companies, and marketing firms. Applying to companies that are tech companies is pretty rough right now, but you can find non-tech companies that are hiring.

(There's no such thing as a "non-tech" company, but I really just mean companies that don't advertise themselves as tech).

You could also do something like use Indeed, pick a smaller town, and then minimize the miles.

Sharing my experience if it helps. I graduated in 2006 from Princeton CS, cum laude, with no job offers from any tech company. This was even before the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, so I didn't really have an excuse. I was lucky enough to be hired in the CS lab where I did my senior thesis work, as a research assistant, to continue some of the work I did for my senior thesis.

At the time it felt like a humbling experience to still be hanging around campus after already having graduated, but now I look back on those times fondly. The work I did then was on an open source research project that ended up being a cornerstone of my future career, that people still bring up when I meet folks at conferences or other industry events. Eventually I picked up an internship in San Francisco, and from there the job opportunities poured in. I've had a rich and colorful career since, and am currently the CTO of a small-ish tech company in the music space.

Your best bet is to continue investing in work that is in public that you can point to for employers and friends. Its easier said than done to frame a perceived failure as an opportunity, but thats the only constructive way to get through it; looking back, thats exactly been my experience.

Look, sadly this is not gonna be an easy problem (not only for you but for anybody losing a job this days). Our industry has decided the productivity can be increased with less human force an it creates a bottleneck to join a company. Also, creating something by yourself to live from will be hard because SaaS is quickly dying. I have no solution for this problem, this is something new for all of us. You'll dedicate your time watching youtube videos about people surfing your same situation but no one has a real answer. Do not try to solve your own problems applying the same solutions than others, get out of your home look at your local community find a problem and find a solution that requires some real hands-on work (other colleague in this conversation talked about searching a trade, it's a good idea) Eveybody will tell you to not abandon your dreams but lets be practical, a dream without a way to take some food to the plate is just a nice idea in your mind. Be real, crude and honest with the world that we're all living. This is the new reality and sadly it's not your fault. Keep learning, training your technical skills (obviously) but be realistic about the chances. You can do it, do not lose your faith.

Lots of good advice here. Other than (hopefully) an hour or two of job hunting every day, what are you doing with your time?

I understand if you're working a non-tech job to pay the bills, that's hard. But if you have family or other support keeping you going, you have access to a precious resource: time.

You didn't say what field you want to be in, but assuming it's something software related: Pick a software community and get involved. It almost doesn't matter what, just make sure it's something you enjoy working on and there are companies in the space.

Your first "job" is to bootstrap the contact network that most people already have via coworkers. Submit some meaningful PRs, people will learn your name, and eventually you can leverage this into some form of employment. It could take a year. Better to start sooner rather than later.

The "disconnect from social media" advice might or might not be good; it's a way of keeping up with friends. Social support has value. But social media can eat up a lot of time that would be better spent on your new "job". Use your time wisely.

is grad school an option?

not a solution to the problem as you presented it... but a solution none the less: You'll spend your time learning more, developing more skills, more opportunities for internships, networking, growth, etc. and hopefully when your done in a year or two the job market is better and you're entering at a high compensation level.

You might consider taking this opportunity to travel. You don't need a ton of money to do this, a few thousand dollars goes really far in South America and Southeast Asia. It's also a really exciting time to be building software solo, it's just harder to get paid for it. I never would have been able to bite off the projects I'm working on right now without Claude code. If there's something you want to exist in the world you can really just will it into existence, I assume that will also mean money eventually. TBH it was nice to get the big tech pay a couple years ago, but they weren't as amazing places for actually building software as you might think.

I went through it.

- Have a plan. Set yourself a time limit for unemployment, after which you can opt to re-train (even part-time, if you need to work immediately). Explore the options and pick the best ones for you.

- build a portfolio, actively work on your interviewing skills, CV, and leetcode ahead of interviews

- schedule time outside and for activity, stop moping and overconsuming social media

Actions determine your identity, not the other way around. If you persevere and adapt, you aren't a failure. If you indulge in self-pity and do nothing, then you are letting that define you.

Anyone who doesn't fail is not being challenged enough. Failure is part of learning and improvement. Notwithstanding that, some factors are out of your hands.

Don't let this situation define who you are, there is more to life than one particular career path (or even payed work in general, to be honest). Just because things haven't worked out the way you wanted at this time, does not make you "a failure" by any means, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Others have (and will) given specific career advice, meanwhile I'd like to emphasise this: you absolutely can, and should, do hobbies, preferably including such that involve physical activity cause that's good for your health. Doomscrolling is not a good one. You have every right to have free time and to enjoy it, everyone does.

One option is to apply to a Phd program that pays a stipend. If you drop out after you pass your quals (approximately 2 years in) you automatically get a Masters, plus the cred associated with a higher degree

You are not a failure. Don’t blame yourself for the circumstances in the industry. You accomplished a lot by completing your degree. Perhaps you could consider looking for work outside the US. Have you tried searching for a job in Europe?

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My advice, don't be fixated on the MIT part. graduating from MIT doesn't mean anything for 95% of jobs.

First time sucks but it will be better. Been there done that.

Tim - I feel sorry for you. I might be able to provide some help. If you want reply to this comment and we will figure a way to coordinate.

join AI Vibe Coding Hackathon! https://vibe.devpost.com/

Here’s the hard truth: if you’ve applied to so many jobs and no employer wants to hire you then you don’t have skills or work experience to be hired.

Doesn’t matter if you studied at MIT.

You can make up a bunch of excuses about how the market is bad or AI will replace humans but it’s fake excuse you come up with to protect yourself from having to do the hard decision: Get a job in anything.

You need to develop your skills and work ethic. Work. In anything that you can get.

If you have to be a janitor, or a barista at Starbucks, or volunteer, or whatever, force yourself to do that. Make minimum wage. It will teach you true hardship. There’s people who don’t have the privilege and opportunity to study at the literal best engineering university in the world and still become extremely successful, and you will get a different perspective on life.

You’re obviously very bright and privileged since you studied at MIT, but for whatever reason you’re lacking skills to secure a job offer, so the best decision you can do is just get any job to learn those skills you lack. Probably soft skills or self confidence.

Shower, put on some nice clothes, and go around your neighborhood retail stores, restaurants, anywhere and ask if they’re hiring. You’ll get a job. Do that and it will light a fire inside of you.

Meanwhile continue networking and improving your skills. Take some classes. Do side projects. Continue applying to jobs.

The job market is 90% who you know, 10% what you can do.

The world is for the resilient. Good luck.

If money is not an issue, would you consider an open-source project to contribute to, which could look attractive when the hiring begins?

ignore all FUD on LLM; the professional products would need developers now and in the future.

don't want to sound patronizing, but if you could use this 'real-world' scenario (as tough as it is) to build robust coping skills, it might benefit you personally.

good luck!

I didnt start my career in tech until I was 28, that was 4 years after graduating, and not from MIT. Ended up homeless for 1 of those years... Dont give up! Try to replace the doom scrolling and sulking with hobbies, I know it's hard, but try to move those hobbies into communities. Join an OSS project or something like that. It will continue to build experience and open doors. Im now 15 years into working nearly uninterrupted and have recouped any dignity, money, etc. My new fear is that Im a Principal and fuck me applying for those roles! No advanced degree... Im basically a junior again XD

You will survive. Don't give up. Unless... you honestly find an alternative career in your journey.

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Might be worth getting a service job at e.g. a coffee shop just to keep you sane until the economy crashes and the tech job market becomes a bit more normal

Dude, working for other people basically sucks.

If you're really hard up and have zero ideas, you can freelance as a software developer on Fiverr or something. (Lots of web app & SAAS work there.) You'd need to undercut the Indians and Pakistanis who are all over the platform, but at least it's honest work in the field of your choice.

In the meantime, and as your main gig, found a startup. There's so much going on right now, so many opportunities just waiting for somebody to grab them, that with some initiative and resolve you really can't go wrong. I'd be happy to help, if you're interested.

White collar immigration, outsourcing, lots of layoffs. Terrible time to be in the job market.

keep ya head up & high. thinking slow and straight is key at this time.

expand ya thinking - your options are not exclusionary i.e XOR but AND and don't define yourself in terms of your current state.

hell the friends you envy - if a nuke fell tomorrow - would they still have jobs ? if they're laid off would they still have jobs ?

go out there create IP / something outlasting - i.e a company or product

and frankly no one cares if you went to MIT or some no state school - you can either wait and be left behind

or determine your own destiny - choice is yours.

don’t feel bad. working sucks and it isn’t the purpose of your life

try networking with people online. go as far as writing vcs and asking them for business ideas. every shot you dont take is wasted.

To be clear: Times are fucking hard, this isn't an easy feat and I wish you best of success

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this is all too common from friends I know who graduated in 23,24,25 trying to work in tech.

honestly a shame companies are bag holding tens of millions of dollars in the bank and not taking a bet on young, hungry talent.

this will definitely backfire.

a good time to be an entrepreneur though

Anyone giving you sincere advice will get downvoted and that will keep in ignorance, so I'll bite the bullet because it is more important you understand what can be happening.

There are a lot of cheap immigrants (mostly from India) that are super-motivated and more aggressive than you to find a job. This happens because of the open doors policy of previous years and now they are on a bad visa situation, likely got fired from other large companies and now need to send money back home or get settled. So competition is fierce, has more experience and cheaper than you.

Most women like yourself never went beyond the minimum curriculum at MIT. Never applied for mentorship from professors and specialization on relevant tech topics.

I'm also guessing you have never developed open source projects on your own and the CV has literally zero practical experience. You had a year, and yet remain without practical experience on open source projects. Guys have an advantage over you because they tend to write tools and tech even (and mostly) whenever they have free time. Maybe software just isn't the thing for you, especially when times are hard and engineers are more needed than managers.

Does this mean you'll never get out of there?

Nope. Join the weekly/monthly meetups in the bigger cities next to you. The key thing is networking when the CV/experience doesn't do the talking for you. As others mentioned here: either create a startup or join one that exists. You need to show initiative, energy and if possible, passion, for topics that you choose in tech.

As others also said: maybe tech isn't the thing for you. Try to ask yourself what is really in deep of your heart that you want to do. Just note that there are computers and tech everywhere, so even on the topics you love best might be a good chance that you find an area where your tech knowledge can be useful. What matters is that you do it motivated. Even if there is no salary involved, do it as a volunteer, offer to be there for two months so they see how it goes. Other here also volunteered to see your CV and provide honest advice, they will also help.

Depression on this situation needs to be kept at distance. You need to remember yourself through actions that you have value, that you know how to do things. Good luck, and all the best.

Software engineering is a great skill to have and can help you in your own business. But it is a terrible career in its own.

Look into a trade. Technically-inclined like electricity, industrial automation, and so on.

I've seen people have success with a more legit version of the Circuit City scam.

For the uninitiated / younger generations, Circuit City was the Best Buy of the early 2000's. In 2009 they went out of business and laid off ~60,000 employees. It was a rough time to be looking for work; lots of people had been affected by the financial crisis and a lot of people had gaps on their resume of 1 to 3 years. And then all of a sudden, nobody had a gap. And there were a sudden influx of people who had been managers at Circuit City. And you couldn't confirm it, because Circuit City had just closed.

Nowadays the scam is to find any recently closed, large firm and claim you worked there with whatever BS title you want. A LinkedIn profile can actually be your downfall here, so don't have one. The over-employeed community does this, claiming that they had to take it down because of a stalker. But I wouldn't advocate this. If your company finds out then there are probably legal repercussions.

But it doesn't have to be a scam. Form an LLC, spend some time up-leveling skills, and put that on your resume. It explains the gap, and gives you an excuse for why it looks like you weren't doing anything.