Hint: I'm posting on a forum called EliteTrader. But I desperately yearn to be doing something that actually makes use of my brain, rather than this mindless drudgery. I didn't go to school for 5 years to merely spend 20 minutes of my day "working". I'd rather be making wealth, rather than just figuring out some fancy way of usurping it from someone else. But the economy hasn't given been giving grads any opportunities to do that in the past decade, which is why we are in the situation that we're in today -- in the midst of an economic collapse and catastrophe.
I should rephrase: you haven't worked in your chosen field since 2002 (graduation)? If that's the case, you probably never will. You're 30 with a huge gap on your CV, more than likely you won't be given a chance at this point. Just being realistic. For what it's worth, I have a couple of friends that graduated Comp Sci at Waterloo back in 2003 and were able to get jobs just fine. In Toronto mind you.
Well, everyone is in the same boat, so if the economy ever recovers, certainly people with gaps will have to be brought back into the fold. I mean, the economy won't remain bad forever. And just crunching the raw numbers of jobs in the economy would show you that many people have large gaps. Are they going to be permanently sidelined? I doubt it. I know that I have the skills to walk right into a entry to mid level tech job, and certainly once the demand comes back, those jobs will be open as there certainly is a lot of pent-up demand after the tech industry has gone a decade without hiring. Didn't hear of any hiring of new grads back in 2003; the market was overrun by ex-Nortel people with a couple years head-start in programming (or EE), so not much luck for the new grads. I personally have no idea what would fix the economy, but having a decade worth of grads unemployed or under-employed is definitely a major problem. These are the people who need to be employed in order to support the housing market, the stock market, etc., and to develop exports.
Debt is Money, Money is Debt; it's the same thing. So why worry about it? It's like living in a cloudy city that could rain any moment, and it looks like its going to rain but it never does; do you carry an umbrella everyday if you were to live in that hypothetical city? In Depressions people die from hunger, I still haven't seen mass starvation around my hood. I can see depression in Somalia, North Korea, in war torn nations; not the US. People should work in jobs that they are proficient at (ideal situation) however (reality) don't provide them that CHANCE. Hence people should work whatever jobs they can get, not because of communism or whatever ~ism you want to put in. But simply to provide for their loved ones and family. Because their parents/kids are suffering 2x as bad. I'm not making fun of doom and gloomers. Just stating that type of mindset boxes themselves into a extremist pessimistic view and prevents them from moving forward. I also hate overly optimistic people, they tend to be snake oil salesman that annoys the hell out of ya. With that said, I hope you the best of luck on your IT job search, perhaps swing by the East Coast. After checking craigslist I do see a lot more job offerings for IT people than before.
I dropped out of comp sci, I saw it coming in late 2001 and squeeze out a summer job at nokia that year. that was it. Then I realized it was screwed in comp sci land, and for the last 8 years its been manufacturing and technology associated with manufacturing. Some people got jobs in logistics, but I never heard about anyone in RIM or otherwise. until about 2007. Im self employed, and thats a whole other journey. I realized about 2003 that self employment was the only way, but it took til late 2006 to make that happen. Scary thing is millions of us jobs are simply obsolete forever.
So we all have to be riding around on horses, and lining up at soup kitchens before someone officially declares a 'depression'? Key metrics such as the stock market (down 80% since 2000 when measured the same way as in the previous depression, ie: against commodity-backed currency), unemployment (U-6 = 20%, which is similar to the unemployment rate of the GD), housing price declines, etc. all show that the collapse began back in 2000 and has continued unabated. Even during the first Great Depression, there were certain sectors that were vibrant. For instance, the gold sector absolutely boomed during the Great Depression, because, gold was money back then. In the modern "Great Depression", the money sector boomed because money (ie: federal reserve notes) is considered money nowadays. But the rest of the economy sucked in the 1930s, as it did 2000-2009. To someone who worked in the gold sector in the 1930s -- the mere talk of the economy being in a 'depression' would have been blasphemy, just like trader6666's comments. The 2000's financial sector is essentially the equivilant of the 1930s gold sector in terms of its role in the economy. But a 26-year-old college grad who takes a clerk job, is just taking the job away from someone who is better qualified to be a 'clerk', and taking himself out of the market for jobs that are more suitable. That's why I said "communism" -- communist economies collapse not because they lack people, and not because people aren't working, but rather, it is because the people are working at the wrong jobs, and aren't making efficient use of human and physical capital. For instance, I suck at sewing. My girlfriend sucks at computers. Hence, in the household, I do all the computer stuff, and she does all the sewing. But if we equally split the sewing duties and the computer duties, the cumulative sum of our efforts would be less than they would be if we each did what we exceled at.
My father told me a story that in the soviet union, the most highly paid guy was the bus driver, because he had to be the most reliable and get everyone there on time...
Yeah, I was done all my CS and EE courses in early 2001, but had to stick around to complete electives (ie: History, Philosophy, Law, etc.) that I had deferred trying to get the core coursework done. That's how I got caught. Nortel had flown a bunch of us around the country to recruiting events, but the week we were supposed to receive offers (or rejections), nothing arrived, and HR went completely silent. A few grads had offer letters and had accepted them, and received ~$10k in compensation after such offers were rescinded. IIRC, one went on to become a Catholic priest, the other married a rich Accountant with an inheritance. Truly a travesty though whats been happening to the tech industry and to grads who are greeted with such ignorance when they reach out for help. Many of the grads I speak of, in the past number of years, have been told by employers outside of the technology sector, "you would just leave once Nortel recovers". Or they've been told, "you wouldn't want to work here, its too boring for you".
Its funny that this is all being talked about in 2010... I was aware of it all in 2001, but there was no one discussing it back then.. I guess when everything has turned to shit, there is no one else to step in it... or something.. Kinda funny what kind of reality was taken for granted back then
I think everyone was in complete denial back in 2001. The lack of jobs for grads was just temporary. Things would improve, "next year". Google would grow enough to hire literally everyone cast off by the rest of the sector. Techies who can't find jobs are just 'unemployed losers', 'whiners', and 'self-entitled'. Microsoft/Google/Cisco must have hired all the domestic talent, since they've resorted to hiring foreigners! If the problems in the tech industry had been properly addressed back in 1999, it is very unlikely that the economy would have devolved into this sort of mess. The complete mismanagement of the latest mess, dealing with the banks, and the propping up of unsustainable firms, is going to ensure that the finance industry never recovers to health. In short, we're scr*wed, and people are quickly realizing that the fault lies not in their own efforts, to live honourable lives, to manage their affairs well, and to give 110%, but rather in the leadership. Its an unescapable conclusion.