New Yorkers consider relocating post coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/new-yorkers-relocate-post-coronavirus/ <comment><USER4> I think the aftermath of coronavirus is really going to be larger that most people are anticipating when it comes to work and migration patterns:

1\. In the past 25 years there has been a huge re-migration back to cores of major cities. I think that is going to stop.

2\. Suburbs and exurbs I think will become way more popular. The normal limiting factor on those locations is the commute, but I think so many more companies will be used to remote work after this (even if they don't necessarily prefer it) that you'll see a _lot_ more "come into the office once or twice a week" type things that make living in the exurbs a lot more bearable.

3\. I don't foresee migration away from the major metros. People will still go where the jobs are, and if anything I see the pandemic making strong companies stronger and smaller, weaker companies weaker. Definitely would not be willing to put a lot of money down on this 3rd point, though, could see a trend toward 2nd/3rd tier cities.

<comment><USER5> Disagreement on #2 and #3:

#2: Suburbs/exurbs are completely unsustainable. I'd predict that after this is over, local food sources will figure prominently on people's minds. We _might_ see a return to smaller satellite cities if zoning changes to a saner mixed zoning approach. (You don't want big box stores. You do want smaller stores embedded in the local community. I'm not sure there's the political will to go there, because small stores can't afford making lots of campaign donations)

#3 depends highly on how long we'll be distancing. At some point, habits will be formed, and cities will be less appealing. Combine that with likely increased WFH, and way too high rent in cities, and migration might be tempting. I'd hope the satellite cities are smart enough to densify accordingly (because urban sprawl is unsustainable, but again, many interests aligned against that).

Independent point #4 - the importance of communities you're actually part of is currently driven home. I think the desire to be close to family/friends/social groups might increase. (There's the counter argument of our new habits of video socializing, but it's fundamentally less appealing than knowing people who have your back are living close to you)

A _lot_ of these patterns hinges ultimately on how willing companies will be to continue WFH. There's also the interesting question what happens with lots of useless office space if we _do_ move to large-scale WFH on a persistent basis.

In general, I'd expect lots of higher-order effects ricocheting through society for a long time to come :)

<comment><USER6> _"...and way too high rent in cities..."_

Rental cost merely reflect the supply and demand. A significant drop in demand should put pressure on rental costs. However, I'm skeptic that such a drop will come from "the desire to be close to family/friends/social groups". People moved against that before and I don't see that changing. I also don't see any time soon people getting less interested in the opportunity that comes with city life.

<comment><USER5> We've currently got an extended period of time ahead, where we'll have to learn to do without a lot of the cultural opportunities that come with city life.

A lot will depend on how much and how rapidly lockdown can be eased. If we spend 18-24 months without many of the benefits/opportunities of city life, or at least with those opportunities significantly diminished, culture will rapidly shift to different models - and those are likely more location independent.

And yes, of course rent is a supply/demand question, but the current experience is "the rent is too damn high", and that puts a certain amount of pressure on city living. Take away enough upsides, and it's not worth it any more.

Rent might drop as a result, but it will be a lagging indicator of cities becoming unpopular.

At the same time, closeness to social groups is being valued higher, because we're currently learning that a lonely/isolated life is not a good life. And, like any traumatic event, we're also learning that a supportive community matters, a lot.

You seem to assume that current forces and values hold, despite a global traumatic event. I think that we're in for a complete change of the landscape. The future will tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Long-term NYC resident here (I haven't hit my decade yet, so I'll avoid calling myself a New Yorker to dodge any ire).

I've heard rumblings from a lot of people about moving out, mostly from people who haven't really set down roots here - which makes sense. The appeal of New York is largely all the stuff to do, and without being able to do stuff you're just stuck in a very small space that you pay a lot of money for.

Most of the people I hear this from expect social-distancing type measures to continue for quite some time, so especially those with small children/etc. are really thinking about whether they can do this for another year.

Interestingly I haven't really met anyone considering leaving the city because of the virus itself (i.e. because of concern due to population density), only those really feeling the lifestyle restrictions. They're responsible and social distancing, etc. so the thought of continuing that lifestyle without significantly more living space is getting to them.

<comment><USER8> I left when Day Care closed and am not sure how I feel about ever returning while social distancing is still common sense. Because Day Care is essentially exposing yourself to the germs carried by twenty other children, their families, the caregivers, and their families.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, quite a few people with small children I know have left to be close to parents/in-laws (somewhat I assume to get some help with the additional childcare burden), and I'm curious to see if they come back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the aftermath of 9/11, nobody wanted to live in skyscrapers. But that fear soon faded and prices went back up.

It's probably too early to tell if this is a lasting trend.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, the double-wammy of 9/11/01 and the post-tech-bubble recession drove people out of NYC for a while. Vacancies went up and re prices went down. But it didn't last forever, obviously. It is hard to say if this will be different --we're going to be living with this for some time at some level, and it's still hard to say how much for how long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a native New Yorker there's so much about this that bugs me.

One, talk is cheap.

Two, what happened in NYC was not destined to be, and it's an easy lie leaders and those who look down on New Yorkers love to spread. Lots of big dense cities have handled this crisis well, just like some rural areas have not. Epidemics have been devastating throughout human history.

Three, to the people who live here and see this as inevitable and would rather flee than work together and fix the issue and protect our communities - <USER2> riddance.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm considering relocating from Seattle purely based on the fact that we can make WFH commonplace. Why pay insane rents to physically be in a location I can work remotely?

<comment><USER13> Because Seattle's a pretty great city to live in? You can still easily find rent below $1500/month for a 1 bedroom on Capitol Hill, it isn't too insane.

Editing to add Seattle has world-class rock climbing, mountaineering, and hiking under an hour's drive from downtown, and if you aren't doing that you're probably missing out on half the joy of living here.

<comment><USER14> > "Because Seattle's a pretty great city to live in?"

I feel like thats a minority opinion. The weather is terrible, the food is terrible, service at restaurants (or pretty much service in general) is terrible. A huge portion of the city shuts down at night. Where NYC is a city that doesn't sleep, Seattle sleeps. There are drug needles in the streets, and I routinely see homeless people defecating on sidewalks. I even saw a bus stop turned into a homeless person's 'house'.

The only thing I see that Seattle has going for it is low taxes.

<comment><USER13> * World-class rock climbing, mountaineering, and hiking less than an hour's drive from downtown

* I moved here from Canada, the weather really isn't that bad; it's been a beautiful spring here while all my Canadian friends are still dealing with snow

* Seattle has a huge number of sakura and so the city has beautiful pink cherry blossom clouds everywhere for the entire month of April

* The entire environment is so incredibly lush & green; it's called the Emerald City for a reason!

* The food is quite good, actually

It's funny that the thing you think Seattle has going for it - low taxes - directly contributes to the issue of homelessness and half of your complaints.

<comment><USER15> > low taxes - directly contributes to the issue of homelessness and half of > your complaints.

I've lived here for 40 years. It's always had low taxes, but the problems you're talking about are very recent.

<comment><USER13> Yes, the rise in rent has been quite dramatic recently - and our social services have been utterly ill-prepared to handle the fallout, because of low taxes.

<comment><USER16> So you're saying that we should raise taxes to spend on the homeless problem? That hasn't worked for San Francisco, which spends a crazy amount per person and the only thing they have to show for it is more homelessness. Perhaps your heuristic is wrong. Perhaps, when you pay for something, you tend to get more of it, not less.

I can't think of a single place that spends money on homelessness that doesn't get more of it.

Furthermore, if a city is expensive and getting more expensive like SF and Seattle, it means that city is becoming harder for people without decent earning power to stick around. It's like a video game being changed from easy mode to hard mode. Seattle and SF are hard mode, which means most people at the bottom will fail to ever succeed there. By spending the money in Seattle and San Francisco, you're throwing good money after bad money because you're helping many people stay in a place in which they likely won't ever succeed. The money would be better spent in locales around the country where it's easy mode for someone to get back on their feet.

Trying to solve homelessness in Seattle and San Francisco is one of the most egregious wastes of money I've ever seen. It's practically a homelessness industrial complex in San Francisco already and starting to become one in Seattle. Everyone advocating most ardently for it are people whose salary is paid from these tax dollars. It's the Shirky Principle in action.

[https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/](https://kk.org/thetechnium/the- shirky-prin/)

<comment><USER13> The only viable long-term solution to homelessness is building socialized housing with integrated mental health services. The patchwork of shelters and social programs will never work. Building socialized housing requires a lot of money, and this is what the Tax Amazon movement is trying to accomplish: [https://www.taxamazon.net/sign](https://www.taxamazon.net/sign)

I ardently advocate for this and my salary isn't paid by it, because I want to live in a strong society where shelter is provided for everyone who needs it. Your vision of society is, what, to ship people off somewhere else? Out of sight out of mind, right?

<comment><USER16> > The only viable long-term solution to homelessness is building socialized > housing with integrated mental health services.

Back up that assertion with evidence. Also include evidence showing that places like Seattle and San Francisco are the best places to implement such solutions.

> and this is what the Tax Amazon movement is trying to accomplish: > [https://www.taxamazon.net/sign](https://www.taxamazon.net/sign)

Why should Amazon pay for this? If you think this is so important and the right solution, how much money have you donated towards this? If you're expecting Amazon to pay for this then you've got no skin in the game and risk nothing by being wrong.

> I ardently advocate for this and my salary isn't paid by it

And as an ardent advocate, how much have you spent on this?

> Your vision of society is, what, to ship people off somewhere else? Out of > sight out of mind, right?

I have no vision. I'm a utilitarian and care purely about successful outcomes, optics be damned. I'm just not so naive as to think that the best place to try and get people back on their feet are places where they stand the least chance of doing so because even competent, educated people that have no vices like drug addiction have to work hard to succeed in a place like Seattle and San Francisco.

Your approach just puts people in the middle of the ocean, but gives them a life jackets. They are almost certainly still going to drown under those conditions. My proposal is to find a kiddy pool or at least someplace shallow with calm waters and give them a life jacket.

You have to have more heart than brains to think some of the most expensive, competitive markets like Seattle and San Francisco are good places to try and get people back on their feet again. And if you genuinely think that such an approach is a good one, you should be the first to spend your hard-earned money to prove it.

<comment><USER13> I donated $12.5k to Plymouth Housing (housing-first org in Seattle) last year, which was matched by Microsoft to $25k. It barely matters, voluntary individual charity won't solve structural problems. Given that half your post is now an utterly wrong & irrelevant personal attack, I have license to tell you your mode of interaction here (and in other comments, from a brief perusal of your profile) comes off as incredibly smug and not nearly so clever as you clearly believe. We've all read Taleb, you don't have intellectual superpowers from knowing what skin in the game is.

The Tax Amazon movement would also levy a tax on Microsoft, because it's a tax on all big businesses which operate within Seattle, which I'm perfectly happy about, but I'm sure you're very used to being wrong about everything so this matters not.

I have no idea how you can care about "successful outcomes" without vision since success is not a value-free metric. That should suffice to make you think a bit, I'm going to cut short the gish-gallop here because interacting with you is generally unpleasant. Goodbye.

<comment><USER16> So you work for Microsoft, which explains why you're interested in taxing Amazon. Good to know that your conflict of interest is now laid bare. Your salary may not be paid by the homelessness industrial complex, but it is paid by a direct competitor to the entity you want to see taxed to pay for this. Let's tax Microsoft instead.

<comment><USER13> You're really stuck on this desire to expose my fraudulent underlying motivations for not wanting homeless people to die in the streets. You'll be happy to learn far smarter people than you have taken a crack at this problem! Go read the first few sections of _Industrial Society and its Future_ and you'll have all the ammo you need to attack leftist motivations. Its analysis is quite a bit more robust than your (frankly, extremely basic) idea that everyone must have a financial stake in policy to desire its realization. Happy to help.

<comment><USER16> > You're really stuck on this desire to expose my fraudulent underlying > motivations for not wanting homeless people to die in the streets

What's fraudulent is your shameless promotion of taxing a direct competitor of your employer.

Many of your comments on this HN story have included a plug for the tax amazon pac, making all those comments basically political spam and spam has no place on HN.

> You'll be happy to learn far smarter people than you have taken a crack at > this problem! Go read the first few sections of Industrial Society and its > Future

Referencing the Unabomber? Really? Someone sending mail bombs and killing innocent people is your idea of "far smarter people than you have taken a crack at this problem"? In one breathe you say you don't want people dying in the street, and in the next you're quoting a serial murderer.

> your (frankly, extremely basic) idea that everyone must have a financial > stake in policy to desire its realization.

People can desire the realization of whatever policy they want. However, if they have no skin in the game, that desire can be summarily dismissed by others, especially by those that do have skin in the game.

<comment><USER13> The Tax Amazon movement also would tax Microsoft, because it's a tax on all big businesses which operate in Seattle. You struck out yet?

<comment><USER16> This is a payroll tax for employees that work in Seattle. The overwhelming majority of Microsoft employees are in Redmond, Bellevue and Issaquah and the overwhelming majority of Amazon employees are in Seattle. I can't even find an address for a Microsoft office in Seattle. All I can find is a single Microsoft retail store. This initiative would cost Microsoft peanuts and Amazon tons. It's now clear that you're willfully misrepresenting this initiative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Browsing of real estate ads probably isn't a strong indicator. It's something people can do while home and frustrated, but it's not action.

<comment><USER18> ...or at least provide a better constant? Due to WFH, free time, and general discontent I'm sure site traffic for any location is up. How does the increase in suburb searches compare to the (likely) increase in urban searches?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I saw a statistic that 0.25% of NYC's population has already died from Coronavirus (15k/6m). It seems worse there due to the density, and similarly dense cities like London are in the same boat.

<comment><USER20> citation please?

<comment><USER21> As of today, 10,344 confirmed deaths [0] from COVID-19, of a population of 8.4m [1] is 0.12% [2].

This is less than the original parent states, but only by 2x.

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=coronav...](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=coronavirus+deaths+in+NYC&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=nyc+pop...](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=nyc+population&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

[2] Elementary math?

<comment><USER22> Not all the deaths are tested for COVID. Those that aren't don't make it into the stats. [1]

Overall mortality, compared to the baseline, has skyrocketed in the past few weeks. For the March 4 - April 4 time period, it was double the usual rate. [2]

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/04/08/829506542/after-deaths-at-home-in-nyc-officials-plan-to- count-many-as-covid-19)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/corona...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/coronavirus- deaths-new-york-city.html)

<comment><USER21> Yes, this is a very obvious and severe underestimate for sure. But the point is that the death rate must be at least 0.12%!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Non-New Yorkers love to speculate about the end of New York with a passion which fascinates me as someone who has lived here for two decades. I love it here. Not for everyone. If you dig your exurb keep at it and enjoy.

NYC always has a transient crowd and a permanent crowd. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of the people who would have moved to the burbs within 1-5 years are accelerating that timeline. For us permanent residents we can't imagine living anywhere else. All of this was said after 9/11\. I don't find that my rent today is lower than it was in 2002.

Let me also add that people today are fleeing dense areas under the belief that they can escape Coronavirus. Newsflash - everyone is probably going to get this. Flatten the curve was never about escaping the virus altogether - <USER3> is about smoothing out the burden on the healthcare system.

<comment><USER24> > Non-New Yorkers love to speculate about the end of New York with a passion > which fascinates me

What makes you say this? Looks like it's pretty much only "New-Yorkers" commenting on this submission...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not just New Yorkers, and not just 'post' Coronavirus. I've seen a fairly large number of people that had moved within the EU to other countries move back to their original home country because they don't want to be cut off from their family.

</comment><comment><USER26> The scale of the search interest is hard to understand because no numbers are provided, just percentages.

Searches are up 250%. Percent of what? 1000 searches? 1 million searches? I understand that this post is content marketing for the company, but I haven't heard of it before, so I don't know if they can simply toss out a YOY % and claim that it's a trend. Reading the article, it's also not clear that the queries were coming from users based in NYC.

I think looking at something like Google Trends might be more representative of interest, as you can filter the data by State, try different search terms and see the % change by day, week, year or 5 years.

</comment><comment> wombat-man I've entertained the idea, but then again, if I stick around I might get a sweet deal on a condo.

<comment><USER27> Property prices are definitely already declining in the city, so this could be a smart move as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Seoul is sounding pretty appealing right now.

<comment><USER29> Seoul is very close to the North Korean border, I doubt you would sleep much easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Every time there's an earthquake in California a bunch of people consider relocating. Very few actually do.

</comment><comment><USER27> This isn't any surprise, we will see a swelling of growth in Westchester, Long Island, Southern Connecticut, and Northern New Jersey, especially if partial remote work stays normalised as well. I don't see a massive exodus out of the metro area, but the suburban share will likely grow.

<comment><USER31> Growth in those areas is supply-constrained, though. There aren't a ton of available homes; construction lags demand; there isn't all that much undeveloped land left in those counties; and they'll all be resistant to denser zoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Note that NYC has seen net outmigration for a few years now [1], so this could be just an acceleration of that trend.

[1] [https://nypost.com/2019/12/30/new-york-is-losing- residents-a...](https://nypost.com/2019/12/30/new-york-is-losing-residents-at- an-alarming-rate-report/)

</comment><comment><USER33> In recent weeks I've been getting different ads from usual, particularly ones for luxury NYC apartments, such as in Brooklyn, e.g. $4K/month. I'm roughly 3 hours away. People will tell you that the ad algorithm knows all, but I can't imagine why this makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER34> America is devolving into a Margaret Atwood dystopia so quickly that the frog may already be boiling in the pot at this point

</comment><comment><USER35> Densely urban ... obese[1][2] and sedentary ... contagion free.

Choose two.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States)

[2] [https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health- topics/obesity.p...](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health- topics/obesity.page)

<comment><USER36> Alright -- I choose densely urban and contagion free

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> 'Location location location'

Doesn't hurt to test proverbs. I personally wouldn't bet against it.

</comment><comment><USER38> WFH will become norm and folks can move around easily.

<comment><USER39> I love WFH and work for a large company which shifted to WFH early and in which in theory remote work should be very doable.

My hope for this experience was that people would realize how productive WFH is and this would be great because it would normalize it and everyone would realize how well it works and... my perception of the reaction to it is unfortunately that most people at the company are wildly negative about it right now. Across the board. So much so that it's kind of shocked me. I had to stop talking about how much I liked it because it was upsetting people.

I wish people wouldn't judge the productivity of WFH from doing so under a duress during a pandemic but I'm actually really worried this whole experience is pushing people to be more convinced that WFH is unproductive than they were before the pandemic :(

<comment><USER38> Right now WFH has a negative public perception because kids are at home and nobody can leave their home. So there is a lot of frustration that I can understand. But once it is all over, imagine folks working remotely and able to move around the world with freedom and bring more creativity because of their newfound happiness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Talk is cheap.</comment>


There are no projects like side projects - <AUTHOR> http://crastina.se/theres-no-projects-like-side-projects/ <comment><USER2> >> John Carmack and John Romero had a lot of freedom in their work at a company. Yet, they decided to moonlight on their

>> own projects (working all weekends without sleep, on a "borrowed" computer equipment) to accomplish their goals

Which didn't work out well for Softdisk, their employer. Since they were employed as developers, they were obligated to offer the technology (2D EGA side-scroller for Commander Keen), but Softdisk turned them down since they still wanted to do CGA games. Off then went to form ID, and you know the story from there.

Also similar to how Woz had to get HP to sign off on the Apple I. They didn't want anything to do with it as they saw the original Apple computer as a toy device, which freed Woz to go start a computer company with Steve Jobs...

<comment><USER3> I'm not super familiar with the ID story (I haven't read the book), but that seems awfully simplistic. Certainly many companies have been short-sighted and missed opportunities (your second example is one of the most obvious ones, although HP may have just screwed that up), but a game company not wanting to use newer technology for games doesn't jive with my understanding of the game industry at any point (and I've been programming since the early 80's.)

That said, you might be right, it just seems weird.

<comment><USER2> >> I'm not super familiar with the ID story (I haven't read the book), but that seems awfully simplistic.

Softdisk (SoftDisk?) was a company who sold subscriptions similar to companies like MicroZine. Each month or two you'd receive a disk in the mail with games, utilities, and other software. The ID guys had recently moved from writing Apple ][ software to the IBM PC.

When they did a demo called 'Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement', which consisted of a clone of the first level of the NES game Super Mario 3, they sent it off to Nintendo, who of course responded that they weren't interested in doing PC games. ID ended up partnering with Apogee to do their sales and distribution, when SoftDisk found out, the guys ended up having to do a handful more games for SoftDisk.

To make it even worse, they took their PC's home on the nights and weekends from their desks at SoftDisk!

<comment><USER4> Softdisk created a lot of stuff for the IBM Big Blue Disk, a software magazine like you mention. I've scoured the web, and am now polluting Google even further perhaps with this comment, but I'd love to find some of that old stuff. Lots of great memories from those demos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I often think, it would be cool to have a 50% job as developer. I would make enough money to live and had plenty of time to do what I want.

But somehow those 50% jobs are only available in industries where 50% don't pay for a living...

I tried it with freelancing once, but I felt the overhead eradicated the benefits :\

<comment><AUTHOR> (Author here.) It's a thing I am trying to do right now: 50% for data science freelancing (which I enjoy a lot nonetheless), and 50% for my own musings and self-development, without any restrictions (whether technical, scientific or educational).

It's clearly better financially than academic jobs _and_ I am not restricted by grant topics & timelines or a place.

I am just curious what can go wrong? (I.e. I don't know personally anyone living this way.)

<comment><USER6> The biggest dangers are going to be non-paying clients, and leads drying up. If you can't find any leads, you'll end up spending all your "self time" eaten up with business development.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for clarifying something I've been struggling with for years. I have a couple hundred project ideas and inventions written down but always have this sense that I can't work on them because they are seemingly not the best use of my time. Instead, I spend nearly the entirety of my time either immersed in the logistics of wrapping up a contract, or working to find another.

If someone could solve the business development end of freelancing, that would be more valuable to me than matchmaking. The work was never the problem for me, but the angst surrounding it.

<comment><USER8> Tools like [https://freelanceinbox.com/](https://freelanceinbox.com/) and 10xmanagement.com are trying to solve the leadgen problem for developers. Haven't used them, but might be worth a look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This phenomenon is a symptom of the Relevance Paradox [1]: people trying to solve a problem try to minimize how much information they get (seeing most of it as irrelevant), when a seemingly-inconsequential piece of information may be the solution. It's also a major factor of Hierarchical Incompetence [2] and part of why one really needs to think about the costs and benefits of establishing a hierarchy to achieve a goal. Hierarchies can be efficient for solving some problems and devastating for others.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevance_Paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevance_Paradox)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_incompetence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_incompetence)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true that certain top-down structures are great at coordination and increasing efficiency for small changes, but at the same time are creativity killers (because ideas need to go past a few layers, because most new things are not beneficial from the first second thus can be "optimized" by elimination).

Or putting things in a different way - we need "noise" to get further of a local optimum, so we can explore more distant (and perhaps: better) optima.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The benefits of side projects can also be demonstrated by "in company" side projects I guess? 20% time etc. (gmail, post-it notes)

I'm trying to attempt to introduce 20% time in my department, trying to convince the management that it is worthwhile is going to be hard I think.

Some of the benefits I can see, learning for staff, fulfilment for staff both of which aid retention, and potential products or product improvements that would otherwise not see the light of day.

Anyone got any suggestions of ways of introducing 20% time, other than listing benefits and crossing fingers?

</comment><comment><USER11> I agree w/ the premise. However, for those working for big corps, don't the company have a legal right to go after employer's side projects (IP laws etc). Wonder how feasible it would be to produce worthwhile projects while working fulltime for an employer</comment>


The sea was never blue - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/can-we-hope-to-understand-how-the-greeks-saw-their-world <comment><USER2> I have studied Ancient Hebrew and Classical Greek in Under Grad and Grad School. I really always struggle with this idea that they didn't see blue. They just described different aspects of things based on their world view. For instance the sky was a solid object that was made of a highly reflexive bronze. That bronze isn't blue wasn't the issue it was the so called shine.

The people were much more physical in their writing styles. Take "Apple of my eye." That was an ancient terms. It means that when you look closely at an apple you see your own eyes' reflections. It meant that they keep their eyes close to you.

<comment><USER3> The best explanation I've heard is that words for colors come to exist after the invention of artificially produced pigments and dyes.

<comment><USER2> I heard that but WE have blue sky, and yellow flowers. We can't say we didn't have yellow till we transferred the dye from a yellow flower to a fabric? We have documentation of dye millennium before Homer and Cave paintings nearly forty thousands years before them. [https://zady.com/features/the-history-of- fabric-dye](https://zady.com/features/the-history-of-fabric-dye)

<comment><USER4> We still have a huge number of colors that don't have names.

Blue is not a color that used to appear often on daily objects, and naming the sky's color is quite a useless act.

<comment><USER5> I discovered that there were roughly three times as many colo[u]rs in the USA vs the UK when I moved 20 years ago. But thanks to globalization I bet they have Aqua and Taupe in Blighty now...

<comment><USER6> Move to Finland, there are far fewer colour-names there!

(UK definitely has taupe these days, "aqua" sounds like the kind of name a paint-salesperson we use!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >The common view today is that white light is colourless and arises from the sum of all the hues of the spectrum, whereas black is its absence.

Pet peeve: white is itself a color experience. It's not colorless.

The infinite basis that forms the spectrum is different from the basis of three cones (receptive to bands of long, medium, and short wavelengths respectively), which itself is different from the basis formed by color opponencies (white/black, red/green, blue/yellow). Since the projections that go from one of these spaces to the next are not 1:1, to speak precisely we should not identify a spectrum with a color experience. (And, of course, because of other complications that this skips over like lateral inhibition and habituation.)

Physics talks about spectra and wavelengths. Retinas talk certain bands of wavelengths. Only brains talk color. The spectra that usually make brains experience white can be separated into spectra that make brains experience other color experiences.

<comment><USER8> > Pet peeve: white is itself a color experience. It's not colorless.

The way that I thought about color before being educated in the properties of light _was_ to think of white as colorless. It's the thing that's easiest to _add_ color to in a subtractive color model (e.g. using crayons paints as a child). It doesn't represent my science-based understanding, but I wouldn't be surprised to observe someone looking at something white and saying "Huh, it needs some color".

<comment><USER9> How much of this is just an artifact of the fact that all our writing surfaces tend to be shades of white?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would also recommend Caroline Alexander's A Winelike Sea [http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/sea/winelike- sea](http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/sea/winelike-sea) and the ensuing discussion at MetaFilter "Achilles sat on the shore and looked out to the wine-dark sea" [https://www.metafilter.com/130875/Achilles-sat-on-the- shore-...](https://www.metafilter.com/130875/Achilles-sat-on-the-shore-and- looked-out-to-the-wine-dark-sea)

<comment><USER11> Why would it look "wine dark", whatever that means, and not green? If other cultures describe blues as just different shades of green, why would Homer describe it as red - or maybe black?

Also, if the literal translation is actually "wine face sea", not "wine dark sea" [1], are we really sure we have any idea what this means?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_dark_sea_(Homer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_dark_sea_\(Homer\))

<comment><USER12> You're all overthinking it. When you are on a boat and you enter deep water in the Aegean, the color does become very dark like thick red wine, different to the blue waters you see from the coast.

<comment><USER13> I once had a similar discussion about a phrase that was something like "smooth soft stone," describing a surface someone was walking on. It's a straightforward description of a sensation: if you're walking on a stone surface in bare feet, smooth stone feels much softer than rough stone. If you know how it feels, the phrase sounds perfectly smooth and natural, but if you've never experienced it, or don't remember experiencing it as a child, you might think the phrase is meant to sound jarring paradoxical, instead of gently referencing a paradox doesn't even feel paradoxical to us because it agrees with how we perceive the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So basically the greeks didn't cleanly separate hue from the other aspects of the surface appearance of things. So that if something was glimmering, or dark, that was considered to be as important or more important than the hue, for the purposes of description.

</comment><comment><USER15> In Chinese, the character for green, "绿" (lǜ), also means light blue. Apparently, this is a more linguistic coincidence ([https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/6832/what-is- the...](https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/6832/what-is-the- difference-between-%E7%BB%BF-and-%E9%9D%92)).

<comment><USER8> In Japanese, "青" (ao) traditionally covered certain shades of both blue and green (blue sky, blue traffic lights, blue apples and many other plants).

"緑" (midori) is more solidly green, coming from a root word used to describe flourishing trees. I think that it's still considered a shade of ao. They'll sometimes use a phonetic rendering of English "green", and I'm not really clear on the difference in meaning there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If this interests you, Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World by Guy Deutscher is a must read.

<comment><USER17> Yes, that was an entertaining book. Some of the interesting things I remember (and I might not remember them exactly correctly):

\- Most languages developed a word for the color red before any other colors. Probably because blood is red and uniquely present at the most dramatic times of life.

\- Blue is rarely seen in nature, and so many cultures wouldn't feel the need to distinguish between purple and blue, because neither was seen very often. There is one obvious exception though, the blue sky. Although anecdotal, the author used some precious scientific equipment, his daughter, to perform an experiment. He purposely avoiding telling his daughter the color of the sky, yet taught her the color of many physical objects. Once he was sure she knew all the colors he finally popped the question on a clear day: "What color is the sky?" His daughter seemed confused and eventually decided that the sky was white.

<comment><USER18>
      > Most languages developed a word for the color red before
      > any other colors. Probably because blood is red and
      > uniquely present at the most dramatic times of life.

Red has high contrast against the backgrounds of natural scenes (greens, blues, browns, etc) and is distinguishable in a variety of lighting conditions. For this reason it is one of the standard "warning" colors used by the natural world. Moreover, plants have co-opted red for positive signaling, too: many fruits and berries are red. If that weren't enough, many mammals (including humans) use red hues for signaling emotional and sexual states. Discriminating red hues was apparently important enough that primates "re- evolved" a red-detecting cone in the retina, despite ancestral mammals losing a similar one earlier in evolutionary history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This submitter mines a lot karma by re-posting articles featured on Arts and Letters Daily (aldaily.com). I find that site far more valuable than HN for informing me in ways that make me a better programmer, businessperson—and person. As a bonus: no comments!

</comment><comment><USER20> Try [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate) instead

</comment><comment><USER21> There's a Radiolab on this as well: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky- isnt-blue/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/)

</comment><comment><USER22> The greek language is not dead, it is still spoken by about 15 mil. people worldwide. "Porfyro" is the deep red color that can be frequently experienced in esp. greek orthodox churches (even in apparell dating many hundreds of years), and "Glauco" is the shiny blue of the aegean sea that made the greek islands famous worldwide.

The words that the greeks used (and still use) have the purpose of describing the natural world, not of scientificaly defining colors according to a theory of vision.

Even the modern theory of color vision acknowledges the principles of color constancy and color adaptation.

</comment><comment><USER23> If the Greeks saw colors completely differently than we modern Westerners do, then their artistic representations of color, like in frescos and painted pottery, would look quite bizarre to us. Is that the case?

<comment><USER24> _No_ , since they produced representative art (not abstract art as far as we can tell) they tried to make water watery and the sky sky-y.

 _Yes_ , since language reflects which paints we pick up, and you can see this from greek sculpture (the victorians didn't manage to get _all_ the color off _all_ the sculpture): their color choices were more garish than we would use today. In fact their color choices are closer to those of hound sculpture. And note that the bronze-age aryan invaders to India and Persia also invaded Greece at the same time...

In other words, "yes, but not as much as you might think"

<comment><USER23> >their color choices were more garish than we would use today.

Maybe that was just an artistic choice.

The reason I am pushing on this is that there is a widespread idea, especially in academia, that people in different cultures see the world completely differently than we modern Westerners do. But that is simply not true. On most basic things, like the fact that human beings live in space, have to eat, and so on, different cultures agree.

<comment><USER24> Do you read Classical Greek? Have you read Gladstone's book? In my case the answer to both is yes. And, with a Hindu Indian parent and much time spent there through my life I am quite aware of the ancient cultural ties between those two cultures.

There is plenty of work in cultural anthropology, biology, and casting that people are incredibly alike in most ways even in regards to things that appear to be learned, and yet also have elements that are strongly dissimilar despite seemingly being innate. What about people with innate absolute orientation and no concept of right/left. That's not a "historical" phenomenon but a contemporary one.

Sometimes things can be scientific and not ideological you know.

Why was an oxe the color of wine?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Text really isn't the best medium to discuss color perception. This Vox video summarizing the research of linguistic anthropologists is much more clear: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg)</comment>


A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/rob-carrick/a-29-year-old-on-the-difficulties-of-landing-a-first-job/article2434807/singlepage/#articlecontent <comment><USER2> If you were my little brother, and you told me that you had applied to 100 jobs you were strongly qualified for and got zero offers, I would put on my big brother pants and make some fairly pointed observations about your skills, beginning with lead qualification. I would then advise working on skills like lead qualification over sending out 100 more resumes into a process which, as your big brother who loves you has to point out, you must have _designed_ to fail. It should not be difficult to get radically better at it, because a) you've got nothing but free time and b) the place where you're starting from is not terribly advanced.

Also coming from the place of big-brotherly-introvert love: if you are aware that networking is important and networking takes place at events that you don't go to, this suggests a _fairly obvious strategy that actually works_.

<comment><USER3> "At the age of 29, I've likely forever lost the following opportunities due to cost and probable inability to make up for lost wages and career potential:

\- Getting married. \- Having children. \- Studying any more, whether that means grad school, law school, or even just night classes at a random community college."

So let's go through this step by step:

1) Getting married doesn't require money if you find the right wife, the kind you REALLY want. My wife and I were married by a justice of the peace in a living room with nobody watching. Why? Because we didn't have money, and post 2008, our families didn't either. We "eloped" so that we could be the bad guys, and eliminate the guilt from our families about not being able to pay for a wedding. It worked great. Her parents and mine felt zero guilt, although there was temporary anger towards us. Having zero guests made sure there was no envy between relatives, and all is well now.

2) Having children: Interesting how white, middle class people think having kids is the most expensive thing ever. It's not. My wife was considered to be so infertile that the Dr. wouldn't even prescribe her birth control. She wasn't even having periods. She got pregnant through some crazy and awesome quirk, and we became parents when we hadn't planned on it at all. At first we freaked, but then when I met neighborhood kids (El Salvadoran) in the barrio (very safe by the way) we were living in, and realized how well they were doing in school, life, and health, I realized you don't have to be rich to have kids. You just have to be smart enough to realize that kids need love, patience, shelter, and food. They DON'T need $800 strollers, $400 cribs, a nursery, NEW clothes. NEW anything. You can get all of it at the thrift shop. I make decent money now, but I didn't then. LEARN from immigrants. You live in fucking Canada, and like the U.S. your nation is filled with people who know how to stretch a buck and be happy. Your parents didn't know how to do either thing nearly as well, IMHO. (I'm speaking generically about the baby boomer generation, who I think as a whole were shitty savers and rather shitty parents. I exclude my Dad from this, because he taught me to live on the cheap my whole life.)

3)Studying any more: If you think that law school, or grad school are what it takes to get ahead from your situation, you are a fucking fool. Both are rip offs even IF you HAVE the money and time. You are much better served by going to night classes at community college (provided you have access to one that works with the private sector business community to train in valuable, marketable skills). Or you can go online and educate yourself in the arcane technological arts which are guaranteed to get "your foot in the door" of a business. I got into my field as a lowly programmer. Now I do IT strategy, data governance, business analysis, as well as the fun techy stuff that I choose to focus on. Point is this: if i wanted to, I could just be the business guy that most people want to be. But I got my foot in the door on a weird skill that universities suck at teaching in a time and cost efficient manner. Where did I learn said skills? Online classes that cost me $300 a pop. A total of 4 over the course of a year. I attended a major university. I loved it, but compared to the new generation of online education, it was a fucking rip off.

Stop whining, and start learning from others who have made a life for themselves. We are not the baby boomers. The house in the suburbs doesn't really make sense. Kids don't need their own yard if they can go to a park that's the size of a 100 yards and filled with 100 kids for them to play with, instead of 1 yard where they play by themselves.

<comment><USER4> > 2) Having children: Interesting how white, middle class people think having > kids is the most expensive thing ever. It's not. ...

Exactly.

Our child's clothing, toys and books come from:

1\. Yard sales 2\. Helping hands 3\. Friends and neighbors 4\. Craigslist and Freecycle

Guess what? We give 100% of those things away in time. We've taught our son the concept of not holding onto physical things. All of his things came from someone else, and he gives all of his things to someone else.

He's completely good with that; at 9 years of age, he'll bring a bag of toys and books to the car and say that he'd like to give these away.

Our biggest child related expense is where we're living. We wanted an excellent public school, so we're living in Mountain View, where it's CRAZY expensive, instead of somewhere else that's cheaper.

We are fortunate that we have very solid and affordable health care through my company, though he has needed very little of it.

Thanks, JPKab, for pointing this out.

<comment><USER5> How "white"? How odd. I didn't know attitudes and ideas had colors.

<comment><USER3> You got me there. I wish I could think of a word to describe the group of people who have been brainwashed into thinking that if they don't spend shitloads of money on stuff, and buy a big house in the burbs, that they are bad parents......

But you are right, saying it's a "white" thing is racist of me. There are people of all colors who get trapped into this bullshit, as well as people of all colors who are not fooled by it.

<comment><USER6> Bourgeois. Closest English term I can think of which conveys a similar notion is WASP.

I believe they might have been called "city-folk" at some point... maybe the equivalent of suburbanites or gated-community-dwellers today. Maybe saying, "that's a gated-community mentality!" would convey a similar meaning in a succinct and relatively PC way.

<comment><USER7> What do you think the "W" stands for in WASP?

<comment><USER6> I am fully aware of what it represents, hence the need to come up with a less divisive term. I was just observing that it's often used in that context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> DanI-S There are a shocking number of people here with no outward empathy, understanding nor willingness to see outside of their own limited experience.

The world is not the tech industry. Not everybody has the same perspective as you. In fact, more people find themselves in this chap's shoes than in yours.

You're likely posting on here because you're under some illusion that you're an entrepreneur. How can you build a successful product if you can't put yourself in another's position?

<comment><USER8> I'm going to assume, since the newspaper is Canadian, that he's Canadian, like myself. He is also near to my age. There is ample work in our country, but you have to be mobile and willing to do labour.

It sounds to me that this fellow's problem is this:

> _" I wanted the tailored suits, the chance at a high income, the BMW, the > prestige, the respect, and the power."_

Yet he wants that opportunity to be given to him, rather than going out and making it happen. He seems entitled, after graduating from University, to these opportunities. That ship has sailed. Our (my generation) father's worked in labour and helped create the middle class of North America. Why are we so against it?

<comment><USER9> If you're 29, your father would have most likely been born around 1955, reached adulthood in the 70s, and have middle class handed to him on a platter. Other than that, I have no concerns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel his pain. We just got done interviewing someone who had studied "web page" design. It's sad because whatever he was taught for those 4 years (while getting a 3.96 GPA) amounted to a very limited skill set. His designs were half there but his ability to actually apply or use them to a problem weren't.

This is a recurring theme in many applicants that walk through our doors. There's tons of degrees I've never heard of that make me think "There's a degree in that!?" Most have no applicable skills. Most don't even know what they need to know. Finally, most don't have a way to learn it without a mentor to guide them.

<comment><USER11> So he's an excellent learner and has a background in the field, and you're not willing to train him or let him learn on the job? "his ability to actually apply or use them to a problem weren't" probably describes 95% of college graduates.

<comment><USER10> A high GPA is not caused by a massive intelligence, it is caused by the ability to study effectively. Intelligence and GPA are often correlated but not always. Don't make that assumption.

There's a ton of people I know who did poorly in their coursework but their design skills and ability are bar none. I don't look at GPA as much of an indicator anymore. It shows potential, only.

<comment><USER11> _Don't make that assumption._ I didn't. _It shows potential, only._ That's what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Owning a home that's bigger than 500 square feet. (hint: that's not big.) "

That's U.S. entitlement for you. 500 square feet is perfectly reasonable, I live on about the same, and I rent it (and I'm 31 years old).

A 500 square feet small apartment in Barcelona is about 200.000 euros right now, and 80.000 here in Uruguay.

I agree that it's not ideal for raising kids, but it's not something to whine about.

Edit: as others pointed out, most have a lot of work experience by 29 years old. I had 8 years' experience at the time and I expect people in the U.S. to have even more since they graduate earlier and have summer jobs and all that.

Also, he says he can make 36.000 dollars/year?, well you can save a bit and try your hand overseas. During hard times, people emigrated in the past. My grandparents did, and endured hardships. In the U.S., you might have read about pilgrims. I doubt they complained about not being able to afford a dog. And being a foreigner has a charm that will make you popular with girls (not to mention the U.S. passport if it comes to that).

<comment><USER13> I'm formerly of the US but I was going to say most of what you did.

There is absolutely a sense of entitlement in North America that seems pretty odd if you've lived in other countries.

My place is lot bigger than 500 sq feet but I've also been working since I was 14, left the US for Asia at 23 and have worked my ass off every day since college.

Beyond getting laid being a foreigner isn't usually a net gain in my experience. For every door is might open it closes one or more. My first company had heavy staff requirements (which meant lots of salaries, lots of HR time and lots of rent) but no bank would even talk to me (and my partners) because we were foreigners. We had to bootstrap the company with will alone.

Where the advantage lies is the perspective emigrating gives you. It allows you to better see how things truly are and focus on what's important. As screwed up as the US economy might be I have many Asian friends who have emigrated there in the last decade and have done very well for themselves. Why? Because they were willing to work their assess off.

<comment><USER14> > As screwed up as the US economy might be I have many Asian friends who have > emigrated there in the last decade and have done very well for themselves. > Why? Because they were willing to work their assess off.

So much to this, their are so many dry-cleaners and Chinese food store owners who are millionaires because of this.

<comment><USER13> Wow, I love racism.

My friends are: in art (on the business side), in beer (import), in tech (a couple of them) and one is a chef in NYC.

None of them are millionaires but they've done better in their careers than if they didn't go to fight it out in a different market.

<comment><USER12> I didn't read the gp comment as racist. He was just pointing out that there are dry cleaners and food store owners that are doing well.

(I haven't been to the U.S., are all dry cleaners foreign?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please tell me when it was ever easy. Rumors of the job market being easy in the past are vastly overstated. Before the Internet, before entry to IT was as easy as it later became, I graduated high school as valedictorian and took the highest paying job I could find based on my skills: factory labor in a box factory. I got married a year after high school, we had a son, and THEN I started junior college. Before I got my associate degree in IT 3.5 years later, we had two more children. I worked the factory job for 5.5 years. When laid off, I worked in convenience stores, chem labs, other factories, whatever I could find (and finding short-term work was not easy--sometimes spent weeks finding a job, only to be called back to the factory.) In my last semester, I worked an unpaid internship in a bank IT department while still working the factory job at night. The bank hired me. I have worked on the same software, following it from owner to owner, ever since. I have done extremely well. But I was in no way prosperous until I hit my mid-30's. We lived in apartments for years, then a mobile home, and finally a house when I was 31. So from age 19 through about 35, you might say it was a struggle. It's not that I don't sympathize with 20-somethings who think they have it rough, but I would like to tell you that for most people, getting along is NOT easy and NOT guaranteed. This whole business of getting the right degree and then networking your way to fun and glory--if you can pull it off, cool. If not, perhaps you ought to start grinding at whatever you can, save up some money, and keep grinding for the chance you want. Oh, and get off my lawn (kidding--I know I sound like that guy.) Good luck, but more than that I wish you the benefits of every second of your own efforts--eventually.

<comment><USER16> I feel like there's this huge disconnect and I'm not sure who to believe. Some people say it wasn't easy back in the day and that the younger generation are simply too entitled. The younger generation would then say that even the lowliest jobs don't exist.

Imagine if you were laid off and no convenience stores, chem labs, or whatever you could find simply didn't exist. Instead of weeks to get back to you, it took months, and the factory never called you back. Then, someone from an older generation started with the same rhetoric you're on now.

I'm not saying that's the case, but just as you want 20-somethings to have some perspective, accept the possibility that it could just be worse now even compared to the struggles you had.

<comment><USER15> The disconnect is probably because the OP, and many other 20-somethings, look for some macroeconomic cause for their plight. Some people think too much in terms of generations, demographics, better or worse economic stats, etc. I, on the other hand, tend to focus on my own behavior on my own behalf. My reply did not describe the wider economic conditions in which I grew up, because I thought my own choices (early marriage and kids, delayed college, etc.) were more important than any set of economic indicators you can name. I dug a very deep hole for myself. I learned to look very hard at my own decisions.

I won't go into exhaustive detail, but if you wanted to compare economic conditions, consider this: 1) My first job (paperboy at age 12) was during the Nixon years. Price and waged controls, going off the gold standard, etc. Didn't affect me--I was working locally, delivering the freaking paper, not existing in some statistical milieu. 2) My next job (dishwasher, age 15) was during Ford years. Whip Inflation Now buttons, anyone? Irrelevant--I had my head in a sink. 3) My next job (cashier, age 18) was during Carter years. Insane levels of inflation, stagflation, and a president lecturing us that we were all in a national malaise. Screw you, Carter, I was working and finishing high school, regardless of wider economic conditions. 4) Next job (factory, age 19-24) was during Carter and then Reagan years. End of stagflation, let the Stockman budget battles begin. Irrelevant--I was working my butt off, multiple jobs if I had time, and going to school. 5) Next jobs (IT, age 25-now) I have worked through all the ups and downs of the economy, including the current supposedly impossible economy. I am competing against the 20-somethings and the offshore developers. I don't think it's easy for anyone (myself included) and I don't take my current hourly contract for granted. Yes, hourly contract. I am one manager's decision away from not having a paycheck. I could either a) panic or b) make sure I deliver value, all the time. And of course hope for the best:-)

So the perspective I suggest is one of perhaps being aware of larger economic conditions as a point of interest, but not telling yourself that the unemployment rate, the dearth of new jobs, the shift to overseas labor, etc. is going to control your destiny. YOU control it. Nothing but crappy jobs out there? Fine, take two, they're small. What's that, I'm an insensitive clod and there are not even any crappy jobs to be had? Oh, then I assume you have broadened your search out to 50 miles, then 100, then 150. And I don't mean emailing resumes. Nothing like showing up in person to demonstrate seriousness. Oh, and now new jobs? Well, why not go take an existing job from some sad sack who is just marking time? Every company has them. Don't ask for openings--make openings.

As long as this is, it is incomplete. I'm sure a determined complainer could pick holes in it easily, and trump me with some difficulty that I haven't included. But that's the difference in perspective. I accept difficulties as part of life, and set out to survive at the very least, prosper if possible, and triumph (even if in only small ways, and only in my mind where I keep score in a game no one else knows we are playing).

So yes, there's the disconnect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While we're providing isolated, non-representative examples: I graduated in 2009 from a crappy Podunk school whose average SAT was 980 (on the old 1600 scale). It only costs about two grand a semester. I majored in CS. I had an internship at a credit union, then a job in insurance lined up before graduating, and then two years later I was hired by OkCupid. I have sent out exactly three resumes in my life, and never been rejected. I don't have any extraordinary accomplishments that I'm omitting.

As far as I can see, the economy is fine. Your mileage will almost certainly vary.

<comment><USER18> I really wish someone could explain this to me. My local observations are the same as parent. I have no unemployed, graduated friends, in fact, I have still-in-school but employed friends. They're all making great salaries and living in fun cities like San Fran, New York, and Boston.

I practically have a job offer at a firm in New Tork and I'm a year from graduating and I've a decent shot at graduate programs too.

I must be doing something fundamentally different, or there's some systemic bias in my favor. I am lower middle class, white, male, nerd, not particularly socially apt, average university, ~100k loans, American, CS and physics maajor, living in the northeast.

<comment><USER19> CS field in America is about as easy as it gets, in terms of finding a job. Demand is absurdly high. That's not the case for every field. That's not even true for CS, as soon as you get out of the country.

The column is about someone in (apparently) Canada, who doesn't seem like he's in tech.

<comment><USER20> Even in CS in the US it varies a lot by specialty and region. I know some sysadmins in the Midwest who've been having trouble finding work lately. It seems that even if you _can_ do other things, having an N-year CV of doing Unix sysadmin work (and an age >M, for some N,M) puts you into a ghetto which doesn't currently have a lot of jobs. Especially true if you don't have a degree. CS has a reputation of caring less about degrees than many other fields, but the combination of a sysadmin CV and no degree seems to raise the odds that you'll get typecast as "computer janitor".

<comment><USER21> EC2, Google Apps for business come immediately to mind :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Am I bitter about all of this? Not entirely, because it all just sort of > works itself out. If I can't get married (dating is tough when you're broke) > and have kids, I don't need a home bigger than 500 square feet, nor is more > study to obtain employment that I'm not only happier with and better at than > what I already do but also more lucrative really necessary, since I'll only > be supporting myself. As for the issues revolving around savings, > investments, and retirement, you may be surprised to find out how much > happier one can be if you simply accept that you'll be working until very > close to your death

He has a hard time applying for jobs which he may or may not be qualified for and he's resigned himself to living alone in a 500 square foot apartment until he dies... Yikes. With an attitude like that I'm sure he interviews really well.

</comment><comment><USER23> My best advice to anyone in this situation: time management, and cool projects.

Bottom line is, if you're spending 100% of your time trying to find a new job, then your time is not well managed. Set aside some of that time to contribute something positive to the world.

A few suggestions:

Volunteer at a local nonprofit. They are constantly overwhelmed with work, and will love the help, even if it's only 20% of your time. It will be great for networking, and you'll have a good feeling about it, not to mention something to pad the resume with. Also, you'd be surprised how many places you think are official are nonprofits who could use the free help.

Go to meetup groups. Spending money on a conference for networking is not useful when you can get the same thing for free. If you're technical, there are LUGs, programming language groups, database stuff, etc. Consider book clubs of people with similar interests.

Start a blog and actively maintain it. Rather than brooding on why the system is keeping you down, study up on things and write articles to teach others. Once you get a flow going, people will start linking to your articles and you'll have some recognition.

Just a few starting points. You can easily spend 1 day a week (20% of your time) working on a cool project like that, and still have plenty of time to search for work. And the next interview you get, you'll be a lot more confident.

<comment><USER24> This may be more difficult as you move beyond jobs that directly create things, but I can safely say that I was chosen for every job I have held because of to the "cool" projects I was doing on my own time. One of my projects even had employers contacting me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was hesitant to criticize this person because I know how shitty the job search can be for recent grads (or anyone for that matter), but a few things bug me about the letter.

\- It is written with a tone that lacks accountability and instead seeks to blame the situation on outside factors. To a certain degree this is true, but the bit about nepotism bothered me. There are plenty of people who are able to get jobs without being related to the CEO.

\- Does it mention what industry or city/region the author is looking in (I admit I skimmed some of the article because it's really long and was making me depressed)? I know I'm somewhat insulated because I live in New York and I'm a developer, but I am trying to be unbiased. I went to a good (not top 10) state school, had a really bad GPA, and graduated right in the heart of the recession. I still had many good opportunities and a job within 3 months. The same goes for almost all of my friends, many of whom are not engineers or programmers. Maybe the author should consider looking in a different geographic region.

\- The part about probably never being able to get married and have kids because of money seemed a bit melodramatic to me. People who aren't rich have been getting married and having kids for thousands of years.

\- Is moving in with his parents an option while he looks for a suitable job? I got the impression that he has parents with at least some means because of the bit about sending him cash if they felt bad. This would seem like a good idea rather than spending everything you make on rent.

The moral of the story is that I understand the job market sucks, but if he is really as qualified and hard-working as he claims, it shouldn't be _that_ hard to find something.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm a bit confused. He says he got his undergrad degree around when Lehman collapsed, which was September of 2008. So if he's 29 now, why didn't he graduate until he was 25 or 26?

And if it took that long to graduate, I'd like to think he was doing something worthwhile in those extra years that would have easily turned into a job.

There is no secret sauce. Work begets work. I started working as a [very bad] programmer and [mediocre] sys admin when I was 13. That job got me the job I had throughout college. The job in college got me the job I have now. Six years later and things are good.

My anecdotal observations are that the longer people I know waited to get their first job, the longer they've remained unemployed or stuck in dead end jobs.

<comment><USER7> Anecdote time:

I was in the Army before I went to college, so I didn't graduate until I was 27. I got a 3.8 GPA in electrical engineering, but I was still unemployed for over a year before I got hired as an engineer. It was a pretty disheartening year, and I doubted whether I was worth anything to anybody. I finally got a job through a friend. All the cold calls, resumes and interviews were for naught, I got hired through cronyism.

I have a friend who got a degree in sociology, at the age of 28, by working at a hotel and paying out of pocket for a class or two per semester for a decade. She still works at that hotel, two years later, making just above minimum wage. I thought I had it bad being unemployed for a year, but I had military experience and technical skills that were at least somewhat in demand. She's was looking in the social work field, but now she's just looking for any job with benefits and growth, paycheck or industry be damned.

You could argue that sociology is not a degree you should get if you actually want to work. But this woman was written off as "not college material" by teachers and family alike, mostly because she was socially awkward in high school. She worked her ass off for a decade to put herself through school and I'm proud of her. She's shown more grit and determination than I have, certainly. And yet she's unemployable. Hell, she probably couldn't get that hotel job if she started now, because she's got a degree.

"My anecdotal observations are that the longer people I know waited to get their first job, the longer they've remained unemployed or stuck in dead end jobs."

Who is waiting?? We're talking about people who've been trying to get decent jobs for a long time, and have come up empty. So saying "They should have gotten jobs before" is begging the question. They've been trying all along.

<comment><USER27> That's not cronyism, that's networking (unless your friend was directly responsible for getting you hired).

<comment><USER7> Well he told the boss to hire me. He didn't hire me personally.

I think there's a fine line between networking and cronyism. Someone off the street ought to be able to get a job without knowing any of the employees. In my experience, that's pretty much impossible these days, even for minimum wage jobs.

<comment><USER28> That's not cronyism, that's getting a recommendation from someone who knows you. That's valuable information from for someone making a hiring decision.

Cronyism would be getting the job despite a lack of qualifications but due to your relationship with someone at the company.

Most of the jobs I've had have come from people knowing me, knowing my skill set, and keeping me apprised of openings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can empathize with his frustration as my wife, early 30s,is going through similar issues searching for jobs. Most people, wife included, don't realize that job search is not about blasting a 100 uninspiring resumes on Monster.com and hoping they get noticed. I've tried to explain to her the concept of networking her way through companies to reach individuals in decision making position and also to keep tweaking her resume to align her existing skills with the job description she's applying for, but hey, it's always easier to get frustrated and vent.

</comment><comment><USER30> Rubbish. It certainly sounds like he has made an effort to at least bring money in, and has had jobs.

However, this tells me it is not hard to find a job, just hard to find a nice job. This is different. Having a nice job is an incredible luxury nobody has an inherent right to...

This opinion is compounded by various complaints about immigrants "taking" jobs. The truth is everybody feels they are entitled to do something amazing - regardless of if they are good enough. Some of us have to suck it up and stack shelves or staff factories...

Aspiring to more is great and everyone should do that imo. But reality might mean working a lot of crap jobs in the meantime to survive.

Survival is shockingly easy in today's world. Not surviving requires a concerted effort in fact...

To sum up. I think this complaint is valid when worded properly - its just completely unimportant.

</comment><comment><USER31> > these places assume I'll leave as soon as something "corporate" pops up.

This sentence struck me as a little odd. Is the USA at a point where McDonald's expect a burger flipper to commit to a career with them?

Maybe I'm biased because all the non-skilled jobs I worked were before/during university, but I never got the feeling that anyone believed I'd retire from there.

Yes, we had the whole rigmarole at the interview "I want to work here because you do great customer service blah blah", but I was never asked about spending my entire career there.

I even know a guy who was begged by the McDonald's staff to work weekends there (after he left for a corporate job), because he was better than all the other staff.

<comment><USER32> They want people who at least aren't actively looking to leave before they've even started.

<comment><USER31> That's almost certainly the case. I just find it a little odd. For most jobs like this, training costs are negligible - usually a day of watching videos. Food services probably have an extra day for health and hygiene regs, but it's not a massive burden.

As long as the guy has half a brain and is reasonably personable, I'd rather have someone like that for 3-6 months than the standard buffoon who will last just as long before getting fired/bored of working, and do some damage in the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While this may not be the case with everyone of this age, it seems to me that a lot of people purchased a crappy education, and are now surprised to find themselves in debt with a worthless degree. As a 25 year old, I'm finding this is true of about half the people I left High School with.

Like buying almost anything, it's possible to pay a lot of money but still end up with something crap.

The real shame is that kids are not taught to think about education in the same way they they would consider the value of any other purchase.

</comment><comment><USER34> He's 29 and can't get married because the job market sucks and now he's a 21st century spinster? Jesus help this precious snowflake.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why am I not surprised he's not finding someone willing to hire a _29 year old_ with zero work experience.

Others have a CV reaching back 5+ years at that age.

Don't put that much time exclusively into uni unless you intend to stay in science or aim for a cushy cubicle job that hires on the premise of paper- planes.

<comment><USER36> The article I read said that he had short term contracts. That may mean one month, that may mean 6 months to a year. Those are still jobs.

<comment><USER14> So then the title is wrong and he isn't trying to find his first job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think the thing that concerns me most about the authors post is the implicit assumption that selling ones labor to a company and being managed, coddled and generally told what to do and how to do it is the only way to make money.

It seems like the author has never thought of creating their own job. It's pretty humbling to walk around the neighborhood offering to cut lawns or paint fences and building up business that way but sometimes it needs to be done. The author must have _some_ skill worth selling after all those years of schooling. Even if they make less than minimum wage initially they can do something.

The fact that the author isn't running their own business isn't what concerns me, it's that it's something that doesn't seem to have even been considered. To me, this seems like a societal problem as well as one for the author.

In terms of advice, I can only offer my own experience: I quit my first job at 18 (worked full time through college) to work for less than minimum wage at an ISP because I valued experience.

I moved. Twice. First to London, then to the US. If you are in a town where you have seriously gone after all the jobs you can and still can't get anywhere, it's time to look at places that ARE hiring and move there.

I was willing to make atrociously bad amounts of money (I was living in a country with no minimum wage law) for five years in order to get the experience and proof of ability to execute that I needed to move and get a "real" job.

In my mind, the 29 year old author's only real hope is to create their own job - they have nothing to show an employer that they have any kind of tenacity or desire to work in a specific industry and so they will need to get their experience elsewhere.

This sucks for the author. I get that but I see no other feasible way for them to explain why they are 29 with no relevant work experience in their field. More generally, this sucks for society - we seem to have convinced a large amount of the population that the only way to make money is to sell ones labor to someone else and have that person tell you what to do and how to do it. In short: there is a dearth of autonomy in the world.

</comment><comment><USER38> Boy does this hit close to home. I was almost exactly in the same place 2 years back. Dropped out of PhD, start looking around for a gig, then promptly rejected by almost every top IT/telco related Japanese companies. My solution was similar to @patio11's advice: a) iterate and refine your process, b) hack something on something, anything, on the side, and c) go to the events where networking actually takes place. All of these will give you both tangible and social proof to bring to table once you eventually get through to the interview round.

</comment><comment><USER39> He missed one step: MOVE. If you're where jobs aren't, don't be there.

The unemployment rate in North Dakota is 3%.

</comment><comment><USER40> I recently reviewed a _large_ number of resumes from CS majors from a wide variety of universities. They were collected through career fairs sort of things.

Nearly all of them were crap. There was a constant and persistent inability to demonstrate what they had to offer my company. There was a massive focus on class projects and a complete "meh" in terms of work history.

Now, some of these people might have been excellent hires. But they could _not_ demonstrate their aptitude. The people I did contact did have a differentiating factor: it was that they did something... almost anything... out of the ordinary in their life and put it on their resume.

People I contacted included a YC company intern, someone who liked Haskell, and someone who had gone from total programming novice to real-time operating system coder in 4 years.

Danger signs included gaps in employment (why does $applicant's resume stop in 2008?), inability to spell correctly, and lack of knowledge of the tech world.

It's not hard to apply Sturgeon's law and lift yourself out of the drek that I saw. If you want help resume building, feel free to email me. I can help you tune your resume to demonstrate your awesome (at least to another CS geek! :-) I can't say anything about what other fields look for ).

<comment><USER41> _Danger signs included gaps in employment_

For the uninitiated why is this a danger sign?

<comment><USER40> It means that... something happened.

Did they get fired? Did they get a pile of money and go roll around on a beach somewhere? Did they have to take care of family? There can be insanely great reasons... just as easily... insanely bad reasons.

It's an unknown, which adds pure risk. For someone to be out of work for years indicates some sort of ... something. I can't tell with just a gap if that is a problem or just someone living life in a non-career fashion for a while.

I don't personally really view time under a year as significant, as that can simply be time spent in finding a new job. This might particularly be true for someone who doesn't have a faddish skillset.

So in _my_ view, if you took off for a few years, allude to why you did so, along with an explanation of how you kept your skill current.

Example: "I was an early google employee and cashed out after a while, then travelled the world for a few years. I've kept myself current by working on a compiler for my own language with the latest theoretical contributions... you can find it at github/blah/blah. I'd like to resume work at your fine institution". Or that could be restructured into a a line in the resume: "worked on cutting edge compiler as personal project: Last Few Years. See Github Address".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I feel the pain, but I also don't think there's much else someone in an HR department can do for you. There are no jobs and especially no entry-level jobs since they are the lowest priority to fill/create. What do you propose they do for you?

It's frustrating and wrong but it's not HR that put everyone in this mess. Edit: and it's definitely not HR that's going to get everyone out.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you send out 100-200 resumes a week and it's not working, the obviously thing to do is to send out more right? I can't tell you how much this article rubs me the wrong way as I'm a firm believer of working smarter over working harder (although both would be pretty awesome). Yes, the system is kind of jacked at the moment especially with the way that jobs get posted, but you can't just bang your head against it all day long while complaining...

IMO, the easiest thing to do is actually volunteering some time (crazy right?) for a non-profit organization to:

1) Build up skill sets with real experience 2) Network with people of influence 3) Give back to the community

Paying it forward has always worked well for me and it makes a positive impact. Who doesn't love a win-win situation?

</comment><comment><USER44> The general tone of what this person says just screams "you're doing it wrong." It lacks optimism, and the attitude is, as has been said, one of entitlement.

> _"Those 14 steps assume everything goes well and roughly according to > plan."_

Yeah, definitely, if you plan to fail. Playing the numbers game with applications (sending off hundreds a month) is doing it wrong. He says he does research and tailors his applications to each one. With so many, they can't possibly be tailored enough. Those kinks will have been optimised out to save time.

Job hunting is a difficult and thankless task. But go about it the wrong way, with the wrong attitude, and it'll never get any better. Cutting the "woe is me" attitude and focussing more positively on what you can do to fix a shitty situation would be the first step.

I was in a position of thinking I'd never amount to anything, a couple of years ago. I spent 7 years in a supermarket, with only the faint tease of career prospects and progression (rapidly pulled away when I actually went for them). I thought I'd never get out, and I applied for all sorts of jobs (though not on the mass-production scale this fella has), slowly becoming bitter about them hiring other people over me.

Then I thought, "what can I do to get out of this rut?" I'd taught myself how to design and develop a website many years ago and for some bonkers reason didn't capitalise on that at the time (that's 7 years of good career progress I consciously chose not to take - no one's fault but mine). I got back into it and got a contact who gave me good work that I chose to do for free. It wasn't long before I was approached by an agency with the offer of a job. My first full-time position, at 23 years old. That was only 12 months ago.

It's been onwards and upwards ever since, even with recent redundancy.

Maybe if I'd done what this guy did, I would still be sending off 100 applications to any old job every month. The time spent doing that could easily have been spent making myself a more attractive prospect. After all, you're not being paid to 'troll' a jobsite 7 days a week, so you may as well do some unpaid work that puts you in a better position instead.

</comment><comment><USER45> I suggest that anyone who feels like the guy in this article does get a copy of Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and read it cover to cover or listen to the audio book.

I've never gone to university and I was much worse off than that guy was success wise, but I managed to pull myself up and I make a living contract programming now.

Don't give up. Also, don't assume that the only correct path is through the front door.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can't say I have much sympathy for him. He's 29, and despite having reasonable writing skills seems to have expected a Beemer and a blonde upon graduation.

He also seems to signal that he's far more into what a job gives him than what he can bring to a job in terms of skill. This is something that is easily sniffed out, even just through his writing. Oh, he gives the usual "hard work, sacrifice, and a bit of luck," bit, but then goes on to blame HR, the economy, etc instead of applying any rigor to his own skills and experience.

It's never been easy to break into a job. The idea that a college degree is a Golden Wonka ticket to riches and Everlasting Gobstoppers needs to die.

If you don't have the entrepreneurial spirit to create your own job/startup/career, then you're going to be a piece of phytoplankton, carried by the vagaries of the ocean's currents. There are jobs for people lacking this motivation, but they're not the ones with "I wanted the tailored suits, the chance at a high income, the BMW, the prestige, the respect, and the power."

And I have to say that this isn't particularly credible from what I've witnessed:

"due to job-hunt and financial issues, my age group finds it extremely hard to go out and be in social settings, so the usual networking and schmoozing that previous generations indulged in isn't nearly as possible for us"

And finally, playing the blame game with the faceless and apparently evil minions of HR is just ridiculous. In my experience, HR tends to weed out people so as not to waste a hiring manager's time. And in 90% of the people I've seen hired, the manager took their resume to HR to have it vetted after already having received recommendations for the applicant. In other words, if you're trying to get to the hiring manager through HR, you're doing it wrong.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is EXACTLY how I feel about life.

<comment><USER47> That sucks when I read that, because I know how that feels.

Email me (in my profile) if you want to talk and bounce some ideas around and make life better.

<comment><USER48> Hi, I actually tried e-mailing you, as I'm having this same situation. However I received a reply from gmail that "Hotmail can not find this address". I would actually like to talk with you, and find any ideas for help, if you're willing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Would it help if the number of non-STEM field seats are regulated every year based on employment statistics ?

I don't have anything against non-STEM fields and believe everyone should be allowed to choose what they want to graduate in, just letting people graduate while piling up debt only to end up jobless seem tragic.

<comment><USER24> The purpose of university has never been to enable you to find a career, so by limiting the number of seats by industry metrics, you will only take away spots from people who want to legitimately study the material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Maybe knowing how to network properly is important... You can't just meet someone and say "Call me when you hear anything!" I got my current job essentially through LinkedIn. I reached out to employees at the firm/agency I wanted to work at to hear about what it was like to work there, etc. After a couple weeks we talked again and I asked how to get started in the industry, if they had anything available, etc.

Networking isn't a one-off kind of thing, essentially you are trying to be something of a 'friend' to this person, benefiting both parties.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think what we are seeing over and over again as articles similar to this run in papers all over (HuffPo, NYT, WaPo) is this point: Most young people are bad at searching for jobs! Just like we're bad at dating, we're are bad at job searching. Obviously not everyone is bad, but a large majority of people who are unemployed or underemployed do not have a system in place that makes there job search efficient or effective. I'm currently working on addressing this problem, so hopefully stories like this can stop.

<comment><USER7> How can this be true? When companies are hiring, do young people suddenly get better at finding work? Or is it more like the bottom X% of job seekers will be under- or unemployed, and sometimes X is 5%, sometimes it's 40%? A lot of people got jobs with these same tactics in previous eras, so there's something about "now" that's worse than before.

<comment><USER52> Globalization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> How can it be possible to write 100+ good applications in a week? That seems unrealistic to me.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is so true. Everyone wants to say we're not trying hard enough but we really are the guys with the awesome grades, extra-curriculars, part time jobs, and involved in sports plus finding time to be social.

The silver lining is that if you're in the right industry it can be easier. Last week I sent out 10 resumes and got 4 interviews for web development positions. My chances are good at every company I interviewed with but only time will tell if I'm not being too optimistic. Your location has a lot to do with it too im sure. I live in Chicago so it was relatively easy to land those interviews but if you're not in a major metro area (New York, Chicago, LA, etc.) then surely it's a lot tougher to break in. The solution is probably to move. Half the people at the companies I interviewed at told me they moved from places like Kentucky, Mississippi, Michigan to where the jobs were.

It's tough though no matter where you are and what you're trying to break into.

<comment><USER55>
        This is so true. Everyone wants to say we're not trying hard enough but we
        really are the guys with the awesome grades, extra-curriculars, part
        time jobs, and involved in sports plus finding time to be social.

Don't confuse the sweat of your brow with hard work.

No employer has ever asked me about part time jobs, clubs or sport. Frankly I don't think any of them cared about my grades either.

These things are noisy signals, proxying for hoop jumping. What's more important is proving that you have relevant skills.

        It's tough though no matter where you are and what
        you're trying to break into.

This generalization is false. If you can program your way out of a soggy paper bag there are hordes of folks who will fill that bag with money.</comment></comment>