Ask HN: How to "make it" as a newlygrad/junior?
Over the past couple months I've made dozens of job applications and it's not turned into much, and from talking to some of my coevals I'm not alone. It really feels like me and my friends have been dropped onto an industry that has just shut the doors to anyone in our 0-2 yr. experience range. Needless to say, I'm pretty worried that it's going to be a year out from my graduation without being employed doing the thing I spent the past >4 years of my life studying.
So I'm stuck, wondering what do I do from here.
A bit about me if context is useful (although generally-applicable responses are preferred because I know I'm not alone):
- Graduated December last year - Had a 3 month full-time internship for my capstone - Feedback on my work was super positive - Wasn't in the plan to get full employment right after (didn't fit in budget, and I have reasons to believe that that I won't get into) - I'm mildly worried that not turning into full employment is a bad look - Have many years of hobbyist experience preceding college/university - The projects I did don't feel very portfolio-able, i.e. hard to explicitly show what I learned or how it's useful - I can go either way on AI usage for code, but I know I have a strong distaste for "vibe" coding - I'm "detail-oriented" in resume-speak and vibe coding exists in contempt for detail - I've tried making use of my network, but the most common response has been "we really want to hire you but we'd need more funding to do so"
Currently the main thing I've been doing right now is a blog where I talk about mostly tech-related things and want to make a section where I talk about past projects, but don't know if that's the best thing to be doing with my time. I'd link the website here but I don't know the HN policy on links in posts; it's in my bio if you're curious.