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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31988 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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Experienced Tech Bro checking in.

Leet code grinding and blind resume application have been losing propositions for years. This isn't new info. The career / job strategy median is:

  • Recruit hard out of undergrad. The good news is you're cheap and a degree from a "good" program will probably get you an offer. Your whole job is to learn how XYZ corp does their development / product roadmapping etc.
  • 2 - 4 years in, you lateral. You DO NOT do this with blind resume flinging. You use your network of friends (you've been making those, haven't you) to figure out who is hiring and which one of your friends has the relative clout to get your resume in front of a decision maker.
  • (Option B after undergrad) Do the startup thing. Whole other world, but it's an option, at least.
  • (Option C) Pivot to a tech adjacent role; solutions architect, tech sales / sales engineering, technical PM. The good news here is that networking is built into your job. If you're good at your job, you're good at networking and the inertia supports itself for a while. This isn't a guarantee to wealth, but you'll never be jobless.
  • If you want to stay hard on the engineering track, you job hop as much as you want to build a big salary / options. Really, however, you need to start creating some sort of public portfolio. This used to mean just having a good GitHub profiler with some pet projects. No longer. You need to be involved in some sort of ongoing and pretty large scale open source project etc. The idea is that you're creating true "subject matter expertise" in some niche.
  • Now you're getting headhunted for that expertise. Well funded startups, big time roles at FFANGs etc.

The keen eyed among you will detect something here; a tech career is now much like any other professional career; you have to network and you have to develop some sort of specific edge, usually born of genuine interest and passion in a niche area. The era of "Yes, I can sling code pretty good" is over. That was 2005 - 2015, give or take a two years in either direction.

I simply don't believe the Gen-Z has it worse story. I can remember when I was in High School and everyone wanted a job at the local hardware store because it paid really well and wasn't that difficult if you had some level of real interest in, well, hardware stores. This being commonly known, kids from all over the county would stop by to drop off their resumes everyday. How many do you think were called back and interviewed?

Luckily for me, the owner's son happened to be in my grade and we were in the same Geometry class.

I had a really good summer working at the hardware store.

Don't have much commentary on the rest of the bullets at the moment, but I'd like to reemphasize the first bullet point for any young person, whether out of undergrad, masters, MBA, or PhD, and regardless of industry beyond tech.

There's a zero'th bullet point, potentially negative n'th bullet point. If you're an undergrad, you already should be grinding for (summer) internships. Within tech or tech-adjacent, this could mean leetcode-maxing.

All the better if you can secure an internship between your junior and senior year, or sophomore and junior year, at a prestigious firm. Jobs are like women: It's much easier to get another one when you already have, or demonstratively have had, an attractive one or more.

I simply don't believe the Gen-Z has it worse story. I can remember when I was in High School and everyone wanted a job at the local hardware store because it paid really well and wasn't that difficult if you had some level of real interest in, well, hardware stores

And now there are no kids working at the local hardware store, because the local hardware store ran out of business and got outcompeted by a big box that employs illegal immigrants for below-minimum wage. If you don't think the current generation has it worse I simply do not believe you have an accurate understanding of the world as it currently exists. I'm not Gen Z and while I could tell that I had fewer opportunities and conditions were worse compared to my parents, the employment market they're graduating into is fucking dire. Every single public-facing job I interact with that was previously done by a highschool kid is now done by an Indian adult.

I think the problem is just elite (or aspirant-upper-middle-class) overproduction. Gen Z'ers could actually have a material life better than their past equivalents by working a menial or unskilled job, the problem is that such a high proportion of the youth would find that insultingly low-status. That's not to assign blame, the decline of towns and cultural messaging has produced this state of affairs, but it's also worth noting that the internet makes discontent more visible and self-sustaining.

I'd expect big box stores to be much less likely to employ illegal immigrants. Home Depot has an HR department and a legal department. Bob's Hardware has neither.

I see plenty of zoomers working cash registers in my area. Fully one third of people in my county are Asian or Indian.

I'd expect big box stores to be much less likely to employ illegal immigrants.

I freely admit to ignorance on this front - I'd heard multiple stories about the employment of illegal immigrants by larger companies, especially in hardware and convenience stores. I was under the impression that a HR department would actively encourage the employment of illegals given the policies of the Biden/Obama/Bush regimes, but if I'm wrong I'll accept that.

I see plenty of zoomers working cash registers in my area.

I don't - but this is just an anecdote, and I don't think this sort of thing would be evenly distributed. There's a decent chance that my area is just low in children and high in Indians, but I just can't accept that the vast increase in the number of Indians working low-paid jobs hasn't had an impact on the hiring market for the young people who used to work those positions.

I haven't heard about any overabundance of Indian illegal immigrants-- I'd wager they're legal (at least, relatively speaking) working on student visas or brought over as dependents/relatives of indians that went from h1bs to green cards.

Big businesses pay for illegal immigrants, but my understanding is that it's indirect-- they'll hire a contractor that uses illegal labor rather than hiring them directly.

  • a tech career is now much like any other professional career; you have to network and you have to develop some sort of specific edge, usually born of genuine interest and passion in a niche area. The era of "Yes, I can sling code pretty good" is over. That was 2005 - 2015, give or take a two years in either direction.

  • I simply don't believe the Gen-Z has it worse story

I'd say there's a contradiction here.

Yes, that's the tech BRO track. If you're in tech and not a bro, you won't be pivoting to a tech-adjacent role, you won't be schmoozing with people to get a job, and it will be VERY unlikely to do the startup thing because you probably won't know the right people (some do, by accident). But it's always been easy for the bro types.

Me: "Here's my experience in the field"

You: "I'm not you, so this doesn't help me"

.... I don't know what I can do for you? I'm trying to relate my experience and perspective. I'm not trying to craft a career strategy for randos on the internet.

I've got plenty of experience in the field. Advice like yours is evergreen. It's not wrong. But it only works for a certain type of person (who are somewhat rare among tech people, though less so than they used to be). Consider it the other way -- if the best way to get ahead as a sales bro involved writing code, and most sales bros couldn't write a line of code to save their life, would advice to follow that best way be useful, in general?

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