(This is not a problem-solving rant this is a I need to release my thoughts cuz no one in my life understands rant)
Not sure where else to turn to but I'm extremely embarrassed to say we're nearing the 1 year anniversary of my Feb graduation (*course 6*) and I'm still unemployed, to...
Not sure where else to turn to but I'm extremely embarrassed to say we're nearing the 1 year anniversary of my Feb graduation (*course 6*) and I'm still unemployed, to the dismay of me and my family. I've applied to hundreds of jobs, tailored my resume with tech folks who regularly hire, tailored cover letters, gotten referrals, spoken to relevant connections in my network, done really well in interviews, all to no avail. The feedback I've received from asking employers who rejected me is never something wrong about me, just that they found someone else with pre-existing experience in that particular industry or tech stack. How am I supposed to compete with that at an entry level? And the longer I go without work, the worse it gets in the eyes of employers. I have two internships from back in undergrad as my "work experience" but that's it, one at a known company and one at a startup. My personal projects were not super intensive unfortunately, but I'm not sure how much that's affecting me at this point. Given the way things are going in the world, I remove certain tech sectors from consideration, but I really don't think that should be a handicap.
I knew the job market was bad going into it, but recently, I've genuinely fallen into depression. It feels like I was sold this lie that the MIT name would open doors previously inaccessible to me, but nothing seems to be helping me land a job. Sucks more when I run into old friends who can't even hide their shock that I'm still unemployed. So I have to pretend this is just a gap year and all part of the plan. I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that I might never work in industry as a *software engineer or in tech*, and that sucks! Maybe it's already time for a career change, I don't know to what. I never felt too good about myself at MIT compared to others and so this all feels like proof that I'm not skilled enough to work in my chosen field.
I can't even do my hobbies with all this free time because I spend a lot of it applying to jobs, doomscrolling, and sulking. I am really grateful that I was able to move back home with my parents. I think they were happy to have me back for a bit. But now I'm starting to feel like a drag and burden, especially as the *middle child sister* who’s just… there. I feel like a firework that exploded in bursts of color (everyone ooed and ah-ed), and then... nothing. I'm considering starting some volunteer/side projects, but persistently, in the back of my mind, is this voice telling me I'm worthless because I can't make any money. I am a failure.
Comments
By keithwinstein 2026-01-1420:447 reply 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. :-(
By windowshopping 2026-01-1420:50 Wow, good catch. It is exactly the same post but listing mechanical engineering against instead of software engineering. And this is from a new account.
Genuine question: Is this karma farming? Why would one try to karma farm on a site where karma brings no value (other than a low one-time threshold where you gain an unimportant power)?
There is more value for having karma on this site than Reddit. You unlock new HackerNews abilities (flag, report, vouch) as you hit certain point thresholds. Reddit has no such feature.
> other than a low one-time threshold where you gain an unimportant power
What power is "important" in your opinion? Is being able to flag or vouch for flagged links unimportant?
By ImprovedSilence 2026-01-152:28 It could be that. It could be AI farming. Ask questions you want AI to be able to answer, get a bunch of reasonable comments for the models to gobble up. Next time you ask google, gemeni might even post links to this very post! I'd say it's 50/50 if it's for AI or astroturfing.
By hysan 2026-01-1421:56 I think hitting the flagging threshold is probably the most tangible power as having enough accounts with that power will let you “suppress” certain topics. At least until a mod intervenes.
(Unless I’m misremembering. I think flagging required some level of karma. Or was that vouching?)
By irthomasthomas 2026-01-1510:48 Those who replied earnestly are going on a list. You will be added to a different list for spoiling the experiment.
By schmookeeg 2026-01-1423:371 reply This bums me out so much. It means that we need the concept of "late-stage internet" to join capitalism describing things that were awesome and now they're much worse and getting worse-rer. :/
By red-iron-pine 2026-01-1614:18 20-50% of the responses in every topic in HN are probably bots.
this one is just obvious.
note: this may also be an automated response
By Windchaser 2026-01-1421:03 Note that if you're looking for the differences between the two comments, look at the bits in asterisks ("course 6").
Might be other differences; I haven't run it through a diff
By cyrialize 2026-01-1420:52 Dang, and I felt like I wrote up a good response lol
The Reddit post says course 2 and this one says course 6 !!! Definitely not the same person.
/s
By coffeefirst 2026-01-1418:273 reply 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.
Similar around 2000-2001 or so. It sucked, a lot.
I'd add that there really wasn't much detail from OP in terms if the types of study/work or social aspects that may be at play. For better or worse, things like "nose ring theory" exists and depending on a given environment may or may not be an issue even if it isn't mentioned.
As to specific technology, as others have suggested, side projects, freelance, personal projects and even volunteer work can help.
I had to deal with community service for a ticket about a decade ago, since I'm not really phyxically able to do a lot of what was available, I spent a fair amount of time just searching/asking different orgs if they needed any software developed... I found one, did the project they needed and it was all good.... Of course with the search, I only had a week to do the project in, on top of my regular job I worked 90+ hours that week (that sucked, a lot).
The point is, it doesn't hurt to ask/volunteer. Even on your own, make something cool if you're able to do so.
By bayarearefugee 2026-01-1420:411 reply > Similar around 2000-2001 or so. It sucked, a lot.
Was in the industry then and in 2008 and can confirm the suckage.
That said, I'd probably be a lot more concerned about the current situation than those previous times if I were an entry-level tech worker now, like the OP is.
While I don't think "AI" is likely to replace us all in the next couple of years, I do think it is playing a significant part in the near universal industry hiring freeze among employees with limited/no experience and I think its very difficult to try to predict when and if this might change regardless of other economic factors.
And to be clear, I don't think this situation is a rational long-term collective decision for companies (especially the many who are sitting on piles of cash) to make. Eventually a lack of hiring at the entry level will cause problems for everyone, but considering we now live in a world where market caps are pretty divorced from rationality and we have a labor market (in the US anyway) where both sides expect jobs to be relatively short term arrangements its easy to understand how we could have arrived here.
By tracker1 2026-01-1420:54 Absolutely, and I didn't mean to even imply that this circumstance isn't worse than then. Even being employed is kind of crappy, at least for me... beyond seeing positions expired and literally opening the same jobs at half the pay, to a lot of low-balling all around, I wound up taking a roughly 40% pay cut just to keep working... though making ends meet is much more difficult right now.
With the AI uncertainties, it's even harder still. I finally broke down and got a claude code account this past weekend to give it a try... On a few of my personal TODO items, I'd managed to do in a couple days what would have taken me literally weeks to accomplish, and I'm babysitting and reviewing everything far more than a vibe coder. There were issues, most of which I expected... but it was a far better experience than a couple years ago, and I can't even imagine how things will shake out in the end. It's still a tool, and even more so, I think you absolutely need to have experienced devs/architects at the helm of these things...
For better or worse, the org I work for has verboden AI, which is fine, but being able to scaffold something out in an hour after a couple hours of planning is pretty damned nice. ex: 2.5 hours into planning template (CLAUDE.md planning phase), then a first pass in about an hour, then 3 revisions over 2 hours with some manual tweaks. But overall a lot done in a short amount of time.
Of course, I also ran against something else that was library specific where AI didn't quite "get" what I wanted to do, implementing with a specific library/framework and kept doing goofy things. Hence comments on babysitting and experienced handlers.
By rconti 2026-01-1420:29 For submitter, I sympathize hugely even though I've never gone through it myself. I know myself, and I know if I was unemployed, I'd spend all of my waking minutes either applying for jobs, fretting about applying for jobs, and counting my savings as they dwindle. I would have an extremely hard time enjoying unemployment. I'm sure your situation is much harder, mentally, because you'd have existing successful work history to fall back on.
But +1 to all of these points. Learning to time-box your job hunting and recognizing the declining marginal utility of each extra minute is a useful job skill in and of itself.
Any time you can redirect away from doomscrolling to productive/fun/values-based activities (hobbies, volunteer work (especially if job-relevant, but even if not) is time well-spent. Importantly, it has to matter to you and be enjoyable. If you're timeboxing 3 hours per day job-hunting, and then the remaining hours of your day are grinding away on personal projects because you hope they'll pay off in the job hunt, you're really spending all day on the job hunt.
By Symmetry 2026-01-1420:45 I feel lucky that in 2008 I could go into the Military Industrial Complex and work in places where I could be confident the results wouldn't be things I'd find objectionable. That seems like a much tougher prospect in 2026.
By Cheiree 2026-01-1413:02 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.
