100% agree about keeping hobbies going (or developing new ones). If your whole life is going to work and hanging out with the friends you made in college/high school, you're not going to make a lot of new friends.
I joined a triathlon team five years after college and have had an amazing time. I'm not an athlete at all, but nobody cares - half the team is just there to meet people and have fun. I really wish I'd gotten into it (or something similar) straight out of college. My social life would have been a lot better.
Keep those hobbies going. Keep playing soccer, or pool, or surfing. Keep doing yoga. Keep reading. Keep doing you. You’ll develop some great friends around those interests.
One of my most resounding fears is meeting people in different fields. In school, it's easy. I can go to a party, go out to a club with friends, or just sit down at a library table with a stranger and meet someone new.
Out of school, it seems those opportunities erode... and the majority of friends are either coworkers or friends from the past :(
For those of you who have graduated recently, how have you dealt with this? Not that tech friends aren't great - but diversity is wonderful.
I think joining a group of people is a great way to make new friends around an interest and that's usually industry agnostic.
Usually if I hear someone surfs, I'll invite them to surf pretty quickly and then follow up later about actually doing it. I've made a few really good friends this way.
College is interesting because it's forcibly social. Everyone is happy to make new friends but in the professional world, I've found just the opposite to be true. People are pretty set with the friends they have, most people seem to want something from them, many think.
That's why I really love making friends around interests because you start as that as your base rather than the commonality of an industry.
I haven't graduated recently, but I moved from Texas to New York City three years ago, and I've met most of my current friends through Reddit meetups and IRC channel.
There are general weekly meetups in a bar, and other meetups catering to more specific interests - rock climbing, board games, programming, etc.
Reddit itself may get some (well deserved) flack on HN, but it's just a community made up of people, and you can't forget the inverse of Sturgeon's law.
And if you can't find one that interests you, start one yourself. You have to pay but you get to pick the location, making it most convenient for you. You actually come out ahead. And most people really appreciate that you made the effort.
People should share their friends and acquaintances more often. Mixing disparate groups of friends and quickly introducing new acquaintances to existing friends is a surefire way to build a community in the city you live in. This may seem old fashioned, but older folks need mixers—essentially friend referrals. If you get this ball rolling, it can cascade and you'll end up meeting people you truly connect with and share interests with. The easiest way to start is simply having a party where you allow coworkers to bring their friends. I've made really good friends by finding people that enjoy backpacking as much as I do and spending a night in the woods with them (for better or worse, heh).
My wife and I are having a Christmas party tonight where 40-50 people are coming. Hopefully out of that, two or more people will become better friends. 100% of these people are friends she or I have made after college, predominately through other people willing to share. For reference, we're in our late 20s.
Simply put, it's on you to build community after college. It doesn't get forced upon you like in a university.
Also, make friends with the friends of your friends of the past. (If that made any sense...)
I find that the bulk of the people I meet who are not in tech are friends of my college acquaintances. I went to a liberal arts college, and then my path diverged from my classmates rather drastically after college. So most of my college friends are humanities types, either going to law school or med school or struggling to find employment. And their friends tend to be like them.
Basketball is a surefire way to meet people in any town, because it puts 10 strangers in the same spot and requires 5 of them to work together. If you play regularly at the same court, after a year you'll know 50 people pretty well.
Of course, your status among those people will be determined by how good you are at basketball and nothing else :)
Quite a few people find a life partner and/or a best friend or two during college -- if you're lucky, these people won't go down the same career path that you do, and you'll have an automatic link to new potential friends that way.
It's important to find ways to expand the people you meet, though, and nurture the connections you value even though you may move to a different city, etc..
Getting new real friends as an adult is trickier than at university -- most of the other adults you meet already have their circle of friends, routines of interaction, etc., and even if you click, spending time with you would mean spending less time with their existing friends and activities.
I've found that it's easy to let your life become unfocused after leaving college. Up until graduation, you always had built-in goals on which to focus: pass that test, find scholarships/jobs, graduate, etc...
After graduating and finding a job, I was suddenly without any pressing objectives in my life. What's next? Retirement? That's way too far off (probably). I was working and living my life day-to-day, not unhappy, but sort of drifting without direction.
As cliché as it sounds, trying to answer the question "where do I want to be in 1, 5, 10 years" honestly helped. I thought about it for a while and came up with some vague ideas. Every once in a while, I do a mental progress check and that helps me see past the daily routine to something greater.
For the most of my life having those external "goais" and having to meet them was extremelly painful and frustrating for me.
You would not believe how happy the lack of "objectives" made me. I can just work, have my salary and not be bothered. It's like as you was under cripppling pain for all of your life and then suddently it is relieved forever.
Strange, I found exactly the opposite. I went to industry for a while because I was tired of goal-seeking and working hard all the damn time, but actually being there made me feel pressured as all hell.
What I really should have done was exploit my white male upper-middle class American privilege and travel for a while. After how much I burned myself out finishing undergrad the way I did, my parents were actually quite willing to fund it.
But no, I felt the need to get a job and try to "build an adult life". I had said, "I want my 9-5". I use the scare-quotes because I discovered that short of being married, with a house, with kids or dogs, there's basically no such thing, and any attempt to treat a real job as a 9-5 for funding your social life will inevitably collapse.
Now that I'm "back" in academia on the research-school side (which is, ironically, the stage I was already at by the end of undergrad, mostly), I'm actually a good deal happier. I was also pretty happy with my second industrial job because I got to live where I wanted and work from home, but I actually really like research and feel far more comfortable working hard in pursuit of an achievable goal (publish stuff, write thesis, accumulate credit-points, graduate) rather than just to maintain a hard-working image.
Big Life Lesson: you need to find a lifestyle and environment suited to you, and you also need to take responsibility for how you run your own life. I could easily get sucked back into pathological workaholism like many graduate students, even though I felt crushed by having to keep busy for eight straight hours in an industrial job. The right work environment is one that makes me feel want to put in effort, but I also have to cut myself off and go have fun at some point.
This is one of the biggest things for me post-graduation. My life has recently been so consumed by achieving one big goal. Once it's accomplished, I just kind of wonder..."what's next?" I mean, I have a big interview at a top tech company on Monday and I've got a standing offer at my current job where I can be comfortable, but it's such a big transition to not have some large, looming goal to work toward.
I had a similar experience and judging by other comments it seems pretty common. School is really good for this because it provides both goals and immediate deadlines. You want to graduate and to do that you have to do this assignment for Thursday and that lab for Monday. In engineering school it's particularly bad since you only have to decide on 5 or 10 electives throughout the degree, and there's usually common easy ones a lot of people know about and take. I still struggle with anything that doesn't have a drop-dead date - and it feels like less things in Real Life™ have one than in school. But recognizing the problem is a part of the battle.
I think it's an intentional play on the infamous "you should follow me on twitter" sign-off popularized by Dustin Curtis[1] and propagated by bloggers who don't understand the limitations of split-testing.
The comfort zone one is important. I know a lot of people that stop growing their skills because the money is flowing and it's easy. When you stop growing, it's probably time to move on.
Remember how those first few weeks of college were intensely social. You meet a lot of people you'll know the rest of your life. It's a critical time. I recommend:
Social > academic. But they're intertwined, so work hard, and work with others in your core area. Be helpful and smart and humble. Don't worry about your non-core subjects (let others help you).
Don't go nuts with freedom. Go to parties, but drink very little, avoid drugs, don't get caught up in sex. It's fun, but save it for later.
Don't go back home. Don't have a girlfriend back home. Don't have a girlfriend at all, this is a time for lots and lots of friends.
Of course being in a relationship and having other friends are not incompatible, but the time commitment, reordering of priorities, strain on your mental/physical/pecuniary resources will almost inevitably harm your relationships with other friends.
Not to mention being in a relationship with someone can lead to profound changes in a person's character, and those changes may not gel with existing friends...
Wait, GP is talking just about the first few weeks of college right?
If so, I can see some truth to this. I can't think of anytime in your life you'll ever again not only have no commitments, but also be surrounded by so many people who haven't yet formed (social) relationships. Makes sense to 100% focus on meeting people and building friendships -- it only gets harder going forward.
Go to parties, but drink very little, avoid drugs, don't get caught up in sex. It's fun, but save it for later. Don't have a girlfriend at all, this is a time for lots and lots of friends.
I personally think the opposite. It's your 20s, enjoy it while it lasts.
I'd rather live with the regret of 'Oh I wish I hadn't done this/that/the other' than being 50 and looking back on my life regretting I didn't enjoy myself more.
Exactly, I used to think and practice like the OP did. You find that all your friends start transitioning into couple things and you are a workaholic who doesn't have any interests outside of work. Sure, that is fun and it will be exciting to spend all your time solving the nth problem in your work BUT life is not just that. Life is experiencing everything, yeah all that yada yada about doing it in moderation holds obviously but still. You can't just live your entire life, hope to be interesting to a wide range of people encounter adventures if you isolate yourself and not do any of this!
Possibly one of my biggest regrets. I don't know that things would have worked out better otherwise, but objectively speaking it was one of my most foolish mistakes.
This month marks one year out of college for me. 2012 was the most productive year of my life.
The best advice that I could give anyone is,
"Don't be afraid to be yourself"
While in school a lot of this is defined for you, but the real world will challenge you in ways you haven't seen. Do not roll over for your job, friends, girlfriend, whatever.
If you don't know who you are or what you want (none of us really do), try as many different things as you can. Explore, learn, fail, succeed, cry, laugh... just experience things and find yourself.
> Your first job out of college won’t make you or break you
I disagree with this statement. Certainly, if you go to Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple, the choice doesn't matter and you can do whatever after you've learned how to work on real software.
But getting into games and many other fields can be astoundingly difficult even two years out of college, as it's difficult to overcome the "finance," "healthcare," or "consulting" tags once they're on your resume. For better or worse, employers usually only see new college grads as full of potential to do anything; after even a single stint at X, you're branded an X-person.
I'd love to have more employers pipe up and comment here.
I'm guessing that, although more challenging, changing gears is not altogether impossible (or even very difficult).
Certainly one should develop skills in an area that one is interested in impacting, but this kind of mentality breeds fear and risk aversion because new grads begin to see pursuing interesting opportunities as career risks versus character/skill building.
I think most recent college graduates have bigger issues than worrying about their 'self-branding'. It takes time, and, usually some experience, to build an identity. Sometimes you just have to 'wing-it' and see where that takes you. I'd bet that most employers wouldn't expect a kid fresh out of college to know his/her 'true calling'.
As a manager, I tend to look for potential both when I review the resumes and when I talk to candidates. Most of my questions are open-ended and I try to see if they can bring some of their learnings to the field/role they want to shift to and if they have done their research on why they want to move to a particular field or role.
Brand yourself as a generalist. It helps if you work for a company that does a whole gamut (from hardware to GUI-level software). Also do side projects in a totally different area from your work. I was (am?) a hw engineer but had no trouble selling myself as a software guy by emphasizing the software work I've done and my side projects. If you still remeber algos and datastructures you can blast through the interview once you get your foot in the door.
Very true. Your first job isn't going to make or break you, but you'd be surprised how many new grads stumble into an industry and are still working in it 5 years down the road. I was a programmer at a brokerage firm out of college, and after recently getting out of the industry a few jobs later, it'll take a while before my resume is really attractive to non-finance gigs.
I just graduated last night, but this doesn't feel terribly enlightening to me. I don't know if I didn't have the typical college experience or if people like the author just tend to be more vocal about their experience because those in my position had a less rosy view of the whole thing. But it's obvious that I'm in a different group when I read stuff like
> There’s no more Spring break or three months off for summer.
When I was in college (feels weird to say it in the past tense), summer wasn't 3 months off. If I wasn't taking any classes, I was working full-time so that during the long semesters, I could work only part-time and still be able to pay rent. Spring break meant I could get a little boost to get me through until summer.
I just finished yesterday and I'm intensely relieved. I will have so much more free time than I've had the last several years. Maybe I can start a side project or contribute to open source. I'm playing a video game right now. A month ago I would've felt guilty because weekends were the only time I could catch up on homework.
My post-graduation plans? Seize all that extra free time! Start working out more. Go to that weekly Reddit poker night. Go to more concerts. Go to programmer meetups.
I sure hope so! I didn't mean to imply that I have it all figured out. But I have to wonder how much a post-college transition article applies to me when written from the perspective of a "traditional" college student. Or at least the type who was a student and only a student when in college since a lot of the transition difficulties are centered around having to work every day and so on.
This resonates loudly with me-- I'm almost 35 and have been out of the university 5 years now.
On one hand, my wife paid her way though school and had a very similar experience of working FT (or several part-time) jobs).
It's only been since she graduated several years ago that (as a violin teacher) she's been able to schedule time into her life for things like vacations and the like.
On the other hand, I spent 10 years in the university, switching from CS to philosophy, getting an MA in English, and leaving a PhD in Literature after a couple of chapters in my dissertation. In that process there is a tremendous pressure to be constantly working on your project, and I simply don't have that now that I have been doing freelance web development.
Much as with my wife, the certainty of being able to find however much work I need has really allowed me to throttle back on feeling guilty when I'm not pushing forward on some project or other (or, perhaps, just allowed me to feel less guilt on pushing forward on non-remunerative projects like becoming a better musician or learning a new programming technique/technology without a direct short-term payoff).
If I could add anything to the OP, it'd be this: taking a full time job that doesn't mark seasons or develop you into some new person isn't inevitable. IMO, your plan to seize new found free time is much more profitable than giving into the flow of "Wednesday just being Wednesday".
Oddly, I felt like I had much more free time after college. When work ended at 5pm, I suddenly had this huge 7 hour window of time where I had no homework to work on, no projects etc... I started reading for fun, working out, doing side projects, and I still had time!
I felt the same, until I started seeing my job as not "Do what my boss tells me to" but as "Contribute something awesome to the world." That job is never done - there's always some other project you could be working on, some way you can make your product better, someone else you can help out.
On the plus side, it's a lot more fulfilling than feeling like you put in 8 hours for a boss so you can have 7 hours to yourself. It's like the distinction between work and play melts away and it's all play.
I'm in the same boat here. I worked for a Fortune 500 corporation for the first 3.5 years after college, and for the most part I was just putting in my 8 hours. I enjoy software development, but the atmosphere and mentality at this business didn't encourage you to go the extra mile. If you said, "Man, I love this company," people would give you strange looks, probably suspecting you of being a suck-up. There was a lot of "us-vs-them" mentality with regards to the regular employees and managers. On top of all that, the systems and teams were so huge that you could only get so far ahead with your work before you had to stop and wait for the "marathon, not a sprint" types to catch up. All in all, it was discouraging, and it started to kill my passion for developing great software.
Earlier this summer, I quit that corporate job and joined a 10-person tech start-up with highly-motivated, smart, and optimistic employees. Everyone believes in the business's potential, and we all strive to make our work better and better. There are no set hours (whatever is most efficient for your lifestyle), and vacation is unlimited. Combined with a small, motivated workforce, these policies result in an environment where developers no longer feel like children doing chores but trusted professionals who can handle their own responsibilities and work/life balance.
All that to say: Life after college can vary greatly depending on how you make your career choice. You can take the corporate job if you like, but I love working for a smaller business with flexible policies and motivated co-workers working hard to change the future.
In the financial sector, there are regulations requiring a minimum consecutive absence.
> It is the FDIC's goal that all banks have a vacation policy which provides that active officers and employees be absent from their duties for an uninterrupted period of not less than two consecutive weeks. http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/1995/fil9552.html
I think as a general rule, I do agree with this. When you don't have mandatory vacation, you start asking yourself the question, "Should I really time off work?" Motivated, hard-working people have a hard time saying "yes" to that question. So far, we've all taken time off for vacation this past summer, and we're getting a couple weeks for Christmas, but I can see how such a system could have negative impacts.
I agree with this big time. Not that I didn't have hobbies, interests, desire to contribute to the world from the beginning. But after a while for me it shifted from "I have all this time and I would like to have productive hobbies where I make things and contribute to the world," to "oh my god I really have to WORK if those hobbies are ever going to turn into anything worthwhile and oh look I'm taking on more responsibility at work and now there are so many more days when I come home tired..." Life changes really quickly.
If I may suggest one addition to your list of things to do with your newfound free time: travel! It can be really difficult to go on any real adventures while you're in school, especially when you're holding a job on top of that. Now that you're out and still young, go explore!
Its true that post college will be different for different people. Life is different, but this last statement "My post-graduation plans? Seize all that extra free time! Start working out more. Go to that weekly Reddit poker night. Go to more concerts. Go to programmer meetups." is a restatement of the article author's point.
The author makes the first derivative version of that point, which is that one needs to actively live your life, but the expression is the same, deliberately go into life and make your way. Or more practically pick a direction and move out.
If you get through college, and many people do, and you still have no idea what you want to do, you are at a relative disadvantage with respect to your peers who are charging off into their destinies.
College makes sense as a program to get a degree, but that really only makes sense in the larger context of "with that degree I can then move on to this next thing and that gets me closer to ..." If you don't pick a direction and go there you will find 10, 20 or even 30 years go by and suddenly you start seeing that you are going to be dead eventually and wondering what it was you have done with your time.
Some positives I didn't realize about life after college:
- You have complete control over you choices. You did in college, but by choosing to go, you are forfeiting some of that I think, at least psychologically.
- There may be things about school in general that you hated, or thought were stupid, but never realized until you got some distance from them. I had this experience, I was filled with a warm glow for about a year when I realized this!
- You are in the "real" world. I hate this distinction, because it is not true, but it is still nice to know that the hopefully small part of your mind that subscribes to that distinction can now forget about it.
- You can use all your strengths to do what you want. Instead of trying to play the academic game, which limits the degree to which you can be resourceful, now you can use anything and everything to make things happen.
- You will learn a lot more about who you are, and your natural tendencies, since you have so much more freedom.
- I was, and still am surprised at how incredibly incomprehensibly vast and mysterious the world is. This was much more hidden to me in school.
This may not be true for everyone, or even for most, but I'm sure there are lots of people on HN who felt these things. To those of you on your way to graduation, I hope you aren't fearful. For me, it was probably the happiest transition of my life. That's not to say there weren't some of the most extreme difficulties, but overall, its been wonderful.
When people say academia is not the real world they generally mean a few things. "Real world" might not be dictionary-correct but this is what is meant:
1. Many of the problems you're forced to solve are contrived. They're practice problems and often the knowledge required to implement the solution has been provided to you already in classroom or textbooks.
2. You are evaluated on the academic quality of your work. In the "real world" you're evaluated on whether your work meets the needs of the customer and how well you present yourself.
3. In college you are rewarded based on how you are evaluated. In the real world you are not paid based on how well you are evaluated you are paid what you're able to sell or negotiate which is dependent on what your skills are worth (not just how well you perform them).
4. Basic needs (food/shelter) are paid for by someone else or on credit. This is not always true but often is. In the real world there is pressure to provide for oneself.
I agree on the first three points. I disagree on the fourth.
The fourth point is, ironically, most true for those who manage to become highly sought-after professionals. You have to be very well-paid and sought-after these days to achieve financial independence from any one employer, allowing you to take full responsibility for yourself. At the other end, you either get basic needs supplied via the wage paid by your employer, who is on some level morally responsible because they basically own you, or your employer fails to provide for you and you become dependent on family or the state.
The broad swathe of people who will forever remain proletarians, poor or well-off, rely on someone else to supply them/us the means to their/our basic needs.
And, in fact, the financially independent (including the rich) aren't really any better. They depend on the entire market economy that has evolved to enable them to trade one highly specialized form of labor or property for otherwise-valueless tokens which they can then trade for all their basic needs and more.
Real material independence from other people - for an individual, family, village, or nation - is possible, but its desirability is very questionable. A tiny homestead, a small farming village, or a large nation-state like America or China can afford to say, "We want to achieve complete economic self-sufficiency without depending on trade with the outside world." Most units of existence in between those will start having to make trade-offs in the standard of living and level of technological sophistication they can afford if they don't admit they need the help of others to live well.
I don't really understand what you're going on about. The parent was discussing about how most people in college are either living off loans or their family but when they graduate they have to get a job because no one else is paying the rent. I don't know, it's pretty simple, right?
You're talking about some kind of "workers of the world unite" type stuff, which is not where the parent had any intention of going.
The thing is, most college students these days don't actually have someone else paying the rent. They have their future selves paying the rent via student loans. There's a level of indirection, of insulation, yes, but ultimately they are not actually being supported off someone else's charity.
Actually, given the interest rates and contract conditions on student-loans these days, I'd argue students are blatantly exploited. But that's beside the point and even more political.
No that's actually the only point of #4. The whole context of this discussion is the difference between students and graduates. One thing that happens when you graduate is that it becomes a lot harder to recruit your "future self" to pay for your basic needs of today.
I see what you're saying and have various opinions on this topic in general (in some cases I disagree strongly), but the point still remains that college, especially the undergraduate level, still tends to be yet one or two layers more insulated than what you describe. That's really all I was saying.
Technically speaking there is nothing that is not the real world and I think that's what cat_kittles was getting at. There's always a mix of personal responsibility and dependence on others and society. My point was specifically about the relationship between college students and everyone else.
And for those like me, who were well-off and went to college on our parents' dime, fair enough. For those literally betting their future on their education in a financial transaction for which they take personal responsibility... not so much.
Which still doesn't quite hit the note I really wanted to hit. The apparent "trade-off" between personal responsibility and dependence on others doesn't exist. The real trade-off, in my opinion, is between independence and interdependence. You can live in an ultra-interdependent social-democratic economy where you depend on others both to operate both private businesses and public services that supply your need, but you still have personal responsibility. What interdependence lets us do, as any Econ 101 class explains, is specialize ourselves into our preferred niches rather than having to waste half our time farming when we really want to be computer programming.
But, in my opinion, it's downright arrogant to simply forget the interdependence. We might depend only on other people's self-interest, but that's still interdependence, and our lives would be much worse without it.
For those literally betting their future on their education in a financial transaction for which they take personal responsibility... not so much.
Most students have no way to reasonably measure the risk they are taking or or commitment they are being asked to make. A college student funding food and shelter from a financial aid package is not yet truly assuming personal responsibility for those things. Not in the way most adults do. That's the distinction I'm making. That's what people are saying when they say that college is not the real world.
For students who really do make the investment with awareness and appreciation of the risks and financial commitments involved, my statement obviously does not apply. That's a fairly small minority of students, though.
Nice tips but I already knew that in elementary school. The most important thing is not the transition after the college or university but your work and making connections WHILE you are studying.
- You must build your network while you are studying and find people who you like to work with (look at Facebook?). Of course that depends on what University you are studying. Better University, better networks.
- Besides chasing girls and partying don't just learn to get good grades. Find something you like to do and work on it, your field of interest etc.
- Join all kinds of university projects WHILE you are studying that you think can help in your future job, career.
Ask your teacher and tell him: I WANT MORE :) Especially if he is well known and you think he is awesome. Work more then everybody else and show him your own projects. He will introduce you to other interesting people.
Latter in your life he can recommend you to someone or help you in finding a good job (maybe, you never know).
- Go to other lectures and find interesting people and ideas
- Don't enjoy your student life too much
If you work on all this your transition will be a lot better after you get out.
I studied with one of the best teachers and performers in my field and he used to say to his students: "Look at that guy over there (me), you have to be crazy like him"
You're picking up lots of downvotes, including from me. I'm going to explain why.
* Your first point is trite. Everyone says, "find your passion". Guess what? Most real people don't live lives structured around the pursuit of some driving passion -- just like how most people don't become start-up millionaires. You or I in specific may or may not be special, unique snowflakes, but any Life Advice premised on the recipient being a special, unique snowflake is very bad advice.
* Your second point combines workaholism with straight-up brown-nosing. Nobody likes a brown-noser, and contrary to your apparent thinking, bosses and professors can in fact spot them. Especially professors, actually! My stepfather is an old-hat Electrical Engineering professor, and he has told our family the occasional story about undergrads who were obviously just looking for a nice letter of recommendation or graduate students who could not complete PhDs because they were better at sucking up and obeying orders than original thinking.
* Your third point is trite.
* Your fourth point is... ugh. I don't even have commonly-understood words for this concept. It's like trying to find a word for water in Fish Language. Puritanical? Anti-Spiral? There's something really fucked-up about telling other people to avoid enjoying a valid, valuable part of their life.
Overall, your post comes across as if you're someone who kicks puppies, sucks up to everyone above him, and only cares about career advancement. If people in your field say "you have to be crazy" to mean "you have to be a joyless, semi-sociopathic workaholic", tell me what line of work you're in so I can avoid it for the rest of time.
Hmm..You totally missed my points and managed to insult me and my work, although the part with puppies was funny :)
* I never said you have to be a snowflake. I know that most men live quite lives of silent desperation, as Thoreau once stated. My first point was about making a network, BEING SOCIAL. And working on something you like.. I am not talking about true passion because for some people they need time to find it. Is it that hard to find something you like and collaborate with other people on it?
* brown noser? I was never nice with teachers. My problem was, since elementary school I mostly did not like my teachers and often times told them what I think. Why is somebody who wants more a brown noser. In my life I had few good teachers and always tried to learn as much as I could from them. I was not like a pest at the lecture or kissing ass. There is a difference. My point was that you alone or with somebody else make a nice project and show it to him or her for example. Not boost on lectures asking stupid questions.
* whats wrong with going to other lectures?
* Of course you have to enjoy your life at the Uni, I did. But also some people do it too much. I just wrote don't do it too much.
My teacher meant crazy because I would stay for all the classes and listen to the all the lectures while other people would goo home after theirs, there were other things as well.. now we come to my profession. I studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, classical guitar with one of the best guitarists today. And I was the youngest student, age 15.
I visited lots of other universities including Juilliard etc. and played in US and Europe. Maybe that will clarify some things and explain the crazy comment. I also did audio programming, jazz, composition with other people as well. And I was crazy about linux, still am. I would argue how better is from windows etc.
In short, avoid me next time you go to the concert hall :) Maybe my style and English is a bit brash but all I wanted was to give some tips based on my insights. Here is my recording from youtube http://youtu.be/n9c48k4FDx8
My sincerity and truth telling is clear from this music.
I am currently dealing with this. I'm not sure about his specific tips, but the general feeling that this transition is not easy is something I don't feel I was adequately prepared for. I just finished my PhD and started working at a company, and I thought I would really enjoy the job since it's in a fun and exciting field, but honestly the experience has been pretty jarring. I've spent the last 7 years basically in charge of my own research projects, and all of a sudden being tasked to fix someone else's software that I'd never seen before and that was already at quite an advanced stage was just a bit difficult and a shock to my system. Not that I couldn't handle the work technically (I managed to commit a few pretty important bug fixes in my first week), but socially and mentally it was very difficult for me; suddenly not being around any of the people I have become good friends with, and being tied down to such a strict work schedule. 9-to-5 instead of waking up when I feel like it and taking a long coffee break with my friends in the afternoon. I am sort of starting to get used to it, but it sure hasn't been easy.
I remember this as well -- there's a particular feeling in my gut that I recall, sitting down in front of the computer at 9am, feeling sick and drained already, to work on a task that would be both tedious and difficult and didn't interest me in the slightest.... I could force myself to go ahead and get something done, but it would feel like I was somehow doing permanent damage to my psyche.
You have to look for the opportunities (and sometimes make them, once you have the clout to do it), but it's quite possible to get back to the kind of schedule (and better focused/motivated work & life) that you mentioned. In the meantime, get talking with the people around you -- some of them can become friends, and they have some say in what you work on -- while someone probably needs to get this software fixed now, your next task may well be still undecided. If you seem happy with this kind of assignment (and do it well), you're probably going to get more like it.
Thanks for the support. Yeah, I'm already seriously evaluating my options. I have realized that it's okay if the first job I get may not end up being what I'm looking for.
I mean that, especially for introverts, trying hard to make friends usually is counterproductive. If instead you start finding things you actually enjoy and start enjoying them (forgetting there's people around) it's easier to engage in productive interactions
> If instead you start finding things you actually enjoy and start enjoying them (forgetting there's people around) it's easier to engage in productive interactions
I've tried that but I didn't see the same phenomena. But thanks for the suggestion. I also find that I don't really enjoy anything nowadays.
Normally I wouldn't go off topic like this but I didn't see any way to contact you and I just wanted to tell you that:
a. Don't give up on finding friends. It may seem rough right now but these things have a way of changing over time so just persist and you'll succeed.
b. Lighten up. Smile a little. Instead of thinking crap like "I'm just not fun to be around", take a look about and realize "damn, what an amazing world. I have a rough time getting out and meeting people but when I stay in there are millions of people right here with me, just a few feet and two screens away."
Look for other people who are new -- new to town, new to the company, etc.. They'll probably also be more open to new connections.
The trouble with everyone else is that they already have their daily routine, their set circle of friends, possibly spouse & kids... they may well find you interesting, and even good friend material, but they'd have to shuffle up their lives to make space for someone new.
Lots of people live their entire lives in one area -- they may have best friends they've known since they were 7 years old. You're not going to displace something like that, and that has nothing to do with who you are.
Be patient & don't go negative -- it certainly takes more time (and more looking) than making friends in a university setting, but it happens just the same.
Probably what I miss most about college is living off the same hall as most of your friends, who you're around 24 hours a day. There was always something fun going on.
Here are some things I wish someone would've shared with me...
- If you want to thrive in the professional world, get a fucking haircut and at least look the part.
- If you think that you can send out a bunch of resumes and be flooded with calls about job offers, you are wrong.
- Most of the phrases you've heard in your youth are true. Ex. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease". See the above point. If you get a job (or a check) just by sending a resume (or invoice), consider it an anomaly, and yourself lucky.
- In life, everyone is only concerned about their own well-being. You've got to learn to highlight 'what's in it for them'. See the above point.
- You're on your own, so make your time and actions count!
I disagree about your second point. I'm a CS Major at a top 10 program, with a pretty good GPA (~3.7). This is a throwaway account btw.
During this fall recruiting season, I sent out my resumes to all the top companies, and was offered interviews at every single one. With the exception of two companies, I received offers from everywhere I interviewed, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. I think the market is so hot right now that you CAN get showered with job offers just by sending out a lot of resumes.
I suppose that's sometimes true. However, some people in certain situations might receive unsolicited job offers, without ever even creating a resume or submitting an application, right?
The point I was trying to make is that, I'd encourage young people to follow-up after sending out a resume. It will help you gain 'chops' for future calling/prospecting that may be required. Also, it's professional to follow-up with a phone call after sending an email to someone you've never met or spoken to before.
I get a lot of unsolicited resumes sent my way. Hardly anyone ever calls to follow-up. My thought is, I'm a busy person, and if the person really truly wants to work with me, they won't give up. I want to see persistence.
I bet that Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft all have very well-thought-out recruiting programs. I'd imagine that young college grad's could be hired for a lower salary than older, more seasoned software engineers. Those large companies are probably more flexible with young recruits. Everything in life is a trade-off. Why would those companies "shower" kids fresh out of college with job offers? I'd venture to guess that they are interested in hiring them because it's cheaper than hiring someone else with more experience. Or maybe that's how it is in the software job market. But as I see so many Americans out of work, expecting someone to 'create jobs' for them, I think it's important to highlight what it takes to get a job that you want. I'd consider your example of software engineers being "showered with job offers" as an exception to the rule. Most people have to actively pursue what they want in life. Plus, in 25 years you don't want to be one of those people on TV begging the government to 'create jobs' for you! So my advice is to learn how to get what you want by asking.
It is a common practice to hire anyone promising and see how it works out. It is a fools errand to think that you understand what a person will deliver from a job interview process. I recently put an ad on craigslist for a personal assistant for me. I was looking for a college student, times were flexible, and my office is within one mile of University of Arizona and Pima College - 60,000 students.
The ad asked for a cover letter, resume, and to come in person to the office for a typing test. I have a chronic condition that prevents me from typing much more than an hour a day. Simple, right? I received over a hundred responses of mostly low quality, people blindly firing in poorly written resumes or worse (one simply stated "I need a job and will work for money") and 5 people that actually followed instructions. I hired all five of them. One didn't like the job and left on good terms, another was great but ended up needing to work on school more, two were fired for being incompetent and the remainder is left but I promoted her and made her full time.
I know that this is not a typical hacker job, merely a personal assistant job. The point is that even in a small 10 person non-tech company like mine you can take a risk of over-hiring to try and find the good ones, the people that fit and like your business culture. Microsoft, Google, Apple et al can certainly afford to hire every reasonably competent programmer they can find that seems to fit their hiring profile. Time will tell if their potential gets realized at BigCorp. Just remember that this is a learning experience for both sides of the table.
Count yourself lucky. I graduated in 2011 and only got 2 offers from BigCo's like that, and 3 grad-school admissions out of 7 applications. Ended up being much easier to get offers from start-ups, actually.
> If you get a check just by sending a invoice, consider it an anomaly, and yourself lucky.
So very, very true.
"Oh you want to get paid for this consulting project huh? Well we can't just wire the money to you, no, please fill out this form so we can put you in our SAP system. Oh, you haven't been paid? well well, you're not in our system.
We've finally put you our system, here's a record of our payment to you.
no money in my bank account
argh!"
Direct experience with my country's 3rd largest bank. Once outside regular salaried work, liquidity is more of an issue than solvency. You might have billed 5 months of rent, but your real estate agent doesn't accept unpaid invoices as legal tender....
I graduated Dec. '11. There are three things that I wish I had been told about working after college:
1. Find a mentor. If you have any flexibility in the projects you work on or the people you get to work with choose to work with someone who will be a mentor to you. I think we're all familiar with the benefits of a mentor as a teacher, but there's another important function of a mentor: they can be a "cheerleader". A good mentor will talk you up around his co-workers and management, and make sure that those who don't work directly with know that you are capable of putting out quality work and that you should be considered for more interesting/challenging work in the future.
3. Ask questions. When you start your new job you'll feel like you need to prove yourself as just as capable as everyone who's been working on the same project/codebase/technology for years. So you'll stay late banging your head against the desk trying to solve a problem that has nagged you for days. You finally breakdown and ask an experienced engineer what he thinks, he says, "Oh yeah, I've seen this a hundred times. It tricky the first time you come across it..." and then explains how to fix it in a few minutes. If you had gone to him earlier you could have increased your productivity and saved your self a headache. The more experienced engineers are a resource. If you aren't using all the resources available to you to get work done efficiently, you're not doing your job.
2. If you're unhappy with your work, speak up. Your management cannot read minds. If you find your work soul crushing but you do well on it your management will keep you there until you burnout. At that point you'll rip off your clothes and streak through the halls and your management will think, "I never saw that coming." Your company(probably) wants you to be happy because if you are you'll be more productive and that adds to there bottom line. Let your management know that you would like to do other work and they'll try to move you somewhere you can be happy. It may take time but I've found that just knowing that you management cares goes a long way to easing the pain. If your management does care, start working on your resume and browse wanted ads during lunch.
1. If someone gives you good advice, surprise them by taking it.
2. Ask questions. Just not the same ones over and over again, and not ones easily answered by Google.
3. As a manager, remember that I can't tell if you are having a bad day because you are mad at your spouse or mad at me or ???. So just tell me your issue, I would like to help.
The vast majority of kids who enter college do so right after high school. They are used to summers off, parents sending tuition checks and allowances for rent/living. There is a misunderstanding in todays youth that college is a social club with the side effect of gaining an education. Few kids choose their school on quality of education, but rather how big the parties are/what the scene is like.
To me this entire subject reeks of #firstworldproblems, and the fact I don't have much respect for the beaten path or the zombies they churn out(referring to a BA). Life after college isn't hard at all. This generation is simply not used to feeling ANY discomfort or pain in their sheltered little lives.
Not going to college and excelling to the point of someone with a degree is not that difficult, though it's more difficult than going to a structured setting to be hand-fed information. (most of college could be condensed into one year study, one year practical)
Working in an electronic graveyard in Ghana at age 13 with no parents seems difficult. It seems in places like this, limits of the human experience are tested everyday in terms of what people can and cannot withstand. Spend some time learning how other people live purely for our convenience, and repeat "Graduating college is a difficult transition from one easy thing to the next easy thing." You'll sound ridiculous.
There is a misunderstanding in todays youth that college is a
social club with the side effect of gaining an education. Few
kids choose their school on quality of education, but rather
how big the parties are/what the scene is like.
Source? This seems extremely anecdotal.
Life after college isn't hard at all. This generation is simply
not used to feeling ANY discomfort or pain in their sheltered
little lives.
This is hyperbole and personal opinion presented as fact. HN is not the place for this kind of writing.
College is wasted on the college aged. I don't think I was ready at 18 and neither were most of the people I went to college with. I suspect a few years of work or national service would do a lot to help young people.
As a 55 year old I would say that this is exactly right, especially the part about keeping yourself healthy, both physically and mentally. I have, and it has paid off.
I would add one item to the list: Set a 5-year goal and update it every year.
I haven't gone to College, I've gone out from High School and started building a startup. Doesn't apply so much to me because when I wasn't working in school I was up all night getting a few hours of sleep after working on projects.
Seems like these are instructions for how to live life by default. Instructions on how to fit into the cogs of the system and not fall into depression. In my opinion, life should not be like this.
For those who haven't already, you should read this article from HN a few weeks ago:
Yes, it is basically entirely about being not only a cog but a good little cog. Honestly, to anyone reading this stuff and looking for direction or advice on life, don't take from HN. If you listen to anyone on HN at all about life issues, just listen to the ones that tell you not to listen. This crowd is too biased toward one direction that it's going to bias in advice toward that ideal lifestyle. If you really want to be a healthy, skinny, hipster whose goal in life is to increase the share value of the company he works for and make his managers happy then a lot of stuff would probably be very useful; it sounds like a dreadful bore to me. :)
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadI joined a triathlon team five years after college and have had an amazing time. I'm not an athlete at all, but nobody cares - half the team is just there to meet people and have fun. I really wish I'd gotten into it (or something similar) straight out of college. My social life would have been a lot better.
Totally what's important
One of my most resounding fears is meeting people in different fields. In school, it's easy. I can go to a party, go out to a club with friends, or just sit down at a library table with a stranger and meet someone new.
Out of school, it seems those opportunities erode... and the majority of friends are either coworkers or friends from the past :(
For those of you who have graduated recently, how have you dealt with this? Not that tech friends aren't great - but diversity is wonderful.
Usually if I hear someone surfs, I'll invite them to surf pretty quickly and then follow up later about actually doing it. I've made a few really good friends this way.
College is interesting because it's forcibly social. Everyone is happy to make new friends but in the professional world, I've found just the opposite to be true. People are pretty set with the friends they have, most people seem to want something from them, many think.
That's why I really love making friends around interests because you start as that as your base rather than the commonality of an industry.
There are general weekly meetups in a bar, and other meetups catering to more specific interests - rock climbing, board games, programming, etc.
Reddit itself may get some (well deserved) flack on HN, but it's just a community made up of people, and you can't forget the inverse of Sturgeon's law.
And if you can't find one that interests you, start one yourself. You have to pay but you get to pick the location, making it most convenient for you. You actually come out ahead. And most people really appreciate that you made the effort.
People should share their friends and acquaintances more often. Mixing disparate groups of friends and quickly introducing new acquaintances to existing friends is a surefire way to build a community in the city you live in. This may seem old fashioned, but older folks need mixers—essentially friend referrals. If you get this ball rolling, it can cascade and you'll end up meeting people you truly connect with and share interests with. The easiest way to start is simply having a party where you allow coworkers to bring their friends. I've made really good friends by finding people that enjoy backpacking as much as I do and spending a night in the woods with them (for better or worse, heh).
My wife and I are having a Christmas party tonight where 40-50 people are coming. Hopefully out of that, two or more people will become better friends. 100% of these people are friends she or I have made after college, predominately through other people willing to share. For reference, we're in our late 20s.
Simply put, it's on you to build community after college. It doesn't get forced upon you like in a university.
I find that the bulk of the people I meet who are not in tech are friends of my college acquaintances. I went to a liberal arts college, and then my path diverged from my classmates rather drastically after college. So most of my college friends are humanities types, either going to law school or med school or struggling to find employment. And their friends tend to be like them.
Of course, your status among those people will be determined by how good you are at basketball and nothing else :)
It's important to find ways to expand the people you meet, though, and nurture the connections you value even though you may move to a different city, etc..
Getting new real friends as an adult is trickier than at university -- most of the other adults you meet already have their circle of friends, routines of interaction, etc., and even if you click, spending time with you would mean spending less time with their existing friends and activities.
But when times get tough, it's nice to have something to pay the bills
Bottom line, pick what you like, but something that pays some money, and you're good at
After graduating and finding a job, I was suddenly without any pressing objectives in my life. What's next? Retirement? That's way too far off (probably). I was working and living my life day-to-day, not unhappy, but sort of drifting without direction.
As cliché as it sounds, trying to answer the question "where do I want to be in 1, 5, 10 years" honestly helped. I thought about it for a while and came up with some vague ideas. Every once in a while, I do a mental progress check and that helps me see past the daily routine to something greater.
You would not believe how happy the lack of "objectives" made me. I can just work, have my salary and not be bothered. It's like as you was under cripppling pain for all of your life and then suddently it is relieved forever.
What I really should have done was exploit my white male upper-middle class American privilege and travel for a while. After how much I burned myself out finishing undergrad the way I did, my parents were actually quite willing to fund it.
But no, I felt the need to get a job and try to "build an adult life". I had said, "I want my 9-5". I use the scare-quotes because I discovered that short of being married, with a house, with kids or dogs, there's basically no such thing, and any attempt to treat a real job as a 9-5 for funding your social life will inevitably collapse.
Now that I'm "back" in academia on the research-school side (which is, ironically, the stage I was already at by the end of undergrad, mostly), I'm actually a good deal happier. I was also pretty happy with my second industrial job because I got to live where I wanted and work from home, but I actually really like research and feel far more comfortable working hard in pursuit of an achievable goal (publish stuff, write thesis, accumulate credit-points, graduate) rather than just to maintain a hard-working image.
Big Life Lesson: you need to find a lifestyle and environment suited to you, and you also need to take responsibility for how you run your own life. I could easily get sucked back into pathological workaholism like many graduate students, even though I felt crushed by having to keep busy for eight straight hours in an industrial job. The right work environment is one that makes me feel want to put in effort, but I also have to cut myself off and go have fun at some point.
Hmm... that last paragraph sounds too pat.
Heh, I actually dug up the comment I also mentioned this in, written back in February 2011: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2186121
[1] http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter....
Social > academic. But they're intertwined, so work hard, and work with others in your core area. Be helpful and smart and humble. Don't worry about your non-core subjects (let others help you).
Don't go nuts with freedom. Go to parties, but drink very little, avoid drugs, don't get caught up in sex. It's fun, but save it for later.
Don't go back home. Don't have a girlfriend back home. Don't have a girlfriend at all, this is a time for lots and lots of friends.
Avoid toxic people.
You seem to be suggesting the two are incompatible, but in my experience that's not really the case at all...
Not to mention being in a relationship with someone can lead to profound changes in a person's character, and those changes may not gel with existing friends...
If so, I can see some truth to this. I can't think of anytime in your life you'll ever again not only have no commitments, but also be surrounded by so many people who haven't yet formed (social) relationships. Makes sense to 100% focus on meeting people and building friendships -- it only gets harder going forward.
I personally think the opposite. It's your 20s, enjoy it while it lasts.
I'd rather live with the regret of 'Oh I wish I hadn't done this/that/the other' than being 50 and looking back on my life regretting I didn't enjoy myself more.
And drugs are bad mmmkay. (I don't advocate, still, let's hope people know what's their limit)
Except the 'don't have a girlfriend' part, do have a girlfriend!
Be as healthy as you can as early as you can because it doesn't get easier as you get older or have a family.
Bad habits are cumulative, you can't fix poor health just by stopping certain habits.
Possibly one of my biggest regrets. I don't know that things would have worked out better otherwise, but objectively speaking it was one of my most foolish mistakes.
I mean it's one thing if all you want is for you to have a long life of just 9-5 mundane, workaday life. But that's not for everyone.
The best advice that I could give anyone is,
"Don't be afraid to be yourself"
While in school a lot of this is defined for you, but the real world will challenge you in ways you haven't seen. Do not roll over for your job, friends, girlfriend, whatever.
If you don't know who you are or what you want (none of us really do), try as many different things as you can. Explore, learn, fail, succeed, cry, laugh... just experience things and find yourself.
I disagree with this statement. Certainly, if you go to Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple, the choice doesn't matter and you can do whatever after you've learned how to work on real software.
But getting into games and many other fields can be astoundingly difficult even two years out of college, as it's difficult to overcome the "finance," "healthcare," or "consulting" tags once they're on your resume. For better or worse, employers usually only see new college grads as full of potential to do anything; after even a single stint at X, you're branded an X-person.
I'm guessing that, although more challenging, changing gears is not altogether impossible (or even very difficult).
Certainly one should develop skills in an area that one is interested in impacting, but this kind of mentality breeds fear and risk aversion because new grads begin to see pursuing interesting opportunities as career risks versus character/skill building.
> There’s no more Spring break or three months off for summer.
When I was in college (feels weird to say it in the past tense), summer wasn't 3 months off. If I wasn't taking any classes, I was working full-time so that during the long semesters, I could work only part-time and still be able to pay rent. Spring break meant I could get a little boost to get me through until summer.
I just finished yesterday and I'm intensely relieved. I will have so much more free time than I've had the last several years. Maybe I can start a side project or contribute to open source. I'm playing a video game right now. A month ago I would've felt guilty because weekends were the only time I could catch up on homework.
My post-graduation plans? Seize all that extra free time! Start working out more. Go to that weekly Reddit poker night. Go to more concerts. Go to programmer meetups.
On one hand, my wife paid her way though school and had a very similar experience of working FT (or several part-time) jobs).
It's only been since she graduated several years ago that (as a violin teacher) she's been able to schedule time into her life for things like vacations and the like.
On the other hand, I spent 10 years in the university, switching from CS to philosophy, getting an MA in English, and leaving a PhD in Literature after a couple of chapters in my dissertation. In that process there is a tremendous pressure to be constantly working on your project, and I simply don't have that now that I have been doing freelance web development.
Much as with my wife, the certainty of being able to find however much work I need has really allowed me to throttle back on feeling guilty when I'm not pushing forward on some project or other (or, perhaps, just allowed me to feel less guilt on pushing forward on non-remunerative projects like becoming a better musician or learning a new programming technique/technology without a direct short-term payoff).
If I could add anything to the OP, it'd be this: taking a full time job that doesn't mark seasons or develop you into some new person isn't inevitable. IMO, your plan to seize new found free time is much more profitable than giving into the flow of "Wednesday just being Wednesday".
On the plus side, it's a lot more fulfilling than feeling like you put in 8 hours for a boss so you can have 7 hours to yourself. It's like the distinction between work and play melts away and it's all play.
Earlier this summer, I quit that corporate job and joined a 10-person tech start-up with highly-motivated, smart, and optimistic employees. Everyone believes in the business's potential, and we all strive to make our work better and better. There are no set hours (whatever is most efficient for your lifestyle), and vacation is unlimited. Combined with a small, motivated workforce, these policies result in an environment where developers no longer feel like children doing chores but trusted professionals who can handle their own responsibilities and work/life balance.
All that to say: Life after college can vary greatly depending on how you make your career choice. You can take the corporate job if you like, but I love working for a smaller business with flexible policies and motivated co-workers working hard to change the future.
I think there's a case to be made for mandatory vacation. Just make people take off at least two weeks every year.
> It is the FDIC's goal that all banks have a vacation policy which provides that active officers and employees be absent from their duties for an uninterrupted period of not less than two consecutive weeks. http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/1995/fil9552.html
The author makes the first derivative version of that point, which is that one needs to actively live your life, but the expression is the same, deliberately go into life and make your way. Or more practically pick a direction and move out.
If you get through college, and many people do, and you still have no idea what you want to do, you are at a relative disadvantage with respect to your peers who are charging off into their destinies.
College makes sense as a program to get a degree, but that really only makes sense in the larger context of "with that degree I can then move on to this next thing and that gets me closer to ..." If you don't pick a direction and go there you will find 10, 20 or even 30 years go by and suddenly you start seeing that you are going to be dead eventually and wondering what it was you have done with your time.
- You have complete control over you choices. You did in college, but by choosing to go, you are forfeiting some of that I think, at least psychologically.
- There may be things about school in general that you hated, or thought were stupid, but never realized until you got some distance from them. I had this experience, I was filled with a warm glow for about a year when I realized this!
- You are in the "real" world. I hate this distinction, because it is not true, but it is still nice to know that the hopefully small part of your mind that subscribes to that distinction can now forget about it.
- You can use all your strengths to do what you want. Instead of trying to play the academic game, which limits the degree to which you can be resourceful, now you can use anything and everything to make things happen.
- You will learn a lot more about who you are, and your natural tendencies, since you have so much more freedom.
- I was, and still am surprised at how incredibly incomprehensibly vast and mysterious the world is. This was much more hidden to me in school.
This may not be true for everyone, or even for most, but I'm sure there are lots of people on HN who felt these things. To those of you on your way to graduation, I hope you aren't fearful. For me, it was probably the happiest transition of my life. That's not to say there weren't some of the most extreme difficulties, but overall, its been wonderful.
1. Many of the problems you're forced to solve are contrived. They're practice problems and often the knowledge required to implement the solution has been provided to you already in classroom or textbooks.
2. You are evaluated on the academic quality of your work. In the "real world" you're evaluated on whether your work meets the needs of the customer and how well you present yourself.
3. In college you are rewarded based on how you are evaluated. In the real world you are not paid based on how well you are evaluated you are paid what you're able to sell or negotiate which is dependent on what your skills are worth (not just how well you perform them).
4. Basic needs (food/shelter) are paid for by someone else or on credit. This is not always true but often is. In the real world there is pressure to provide for oneself.
The fourth point is, ironically, most true for those who manage to become highly sought-after professionals. You have to be very well-paid and sought-after these days to achieve financial independence from any one employer, allowing you to take full responsibility for yourself. At the other end, you either get basic needs supplied via the wage paid by your employer, who is on some level morally responsible because they basically own you, or your employer fails to provide for you and you become dependent on family or the state.
The broad swathe of people who will forever remain proletarians, poor or well-off, rely on someone else to supply them/us the means to their/our basic needs.
And, in fact, the financially independent (including the rich) aren't really any better. They depend on the entire market economy that has evolved to enable them to trade one highly specialized form of labor or property for otherwise-valueless tokens which they can then trade for all their basic needs and more.
Real material independence from other people - for an individual, family, village, or nation - is possible, but its desirability is very questionable. A tiny homestead, a small farming village, or a large nation-state like America or China can afford to say, "We want to achieve complete economic self-sufficiency without depending on trade with the outside world." Most units of existence in between those will start having to make trade-offs in the standard of living and level of technological sophistication they can afford if they don't admit they need the help of others to live well.
You're talking about some kind of "workers of the world unite" type stuff, which is not where the parent had any intention of going.
Actually, given the interest rates and contract conditions on student-loans these days, I'd argue students are blatantly exploited. But that's beside the point and even more political.
Technically speaking there is nothing that is not the real world and I think that's what cat_kittles was getting at. There's always a mix of personal responsibility and dependence on others and society. My point was specifically about the relationship between college students and everyone else.
Which still doesn't quite hit the note I really wanted to hit. The apparent "trade-off" between personal responsibility and dependence on others doesn't exist. The real trade-off, in my opinion, is between independence and interdependence. You can live in an ultra-interdependent social-democratic economy where you depend on others both to operate both private businesses and public services that supply your need, but you still have personal responsibility. What interdependence lets us do, as any Econ 101 class explains, is specialize ourselves into our preferred niches rather than having to waste half our time farming when we really want to be computer programming.
But, in my opinion, it's downright arrogant to simply forget the interdependence. We might depend only on other people's self-interest, but that's still interdependence, and our lives would be much worse without it.
Most students have no way to reasonably measure the risk they are taking or or commitment they are being asked to make. A college student funding food and shelter from a financial aid package is not yet truly assuming personal responsibility for those things. Not in the way most adults do. That's the distinction I'm making. That's what people are saying when they say that college is not the real world.
For students who really do make the investment with awareness and appreciation of the risks and financial commitments involved, my statement obviously does not apply. That's a fairly small minority of students, though.
- Besides chasing girls and partying don't just learn to get good grades. Find something you like to do and work on it, your field of interest etc.
- Join all kinds of university projects WHILE you are studying that you think can help in your future job, career. Ask your teacher and tell him: I WANT MORE :) Especially if he is well known and you think he is awesome. Work more then everybody else and show him your own projects. He will introduce you to other interesting people. Latter in your life he can recommend you to someone or help you in finding a good job (maybe, you never know).
- Go to other lectures and find interesting people and ideas
- Don't enjoy your student life too much
If you work on all this your transition will be a lot better after you get out. I studied with one of the best teachers and performers in my field and he used to say to his students: "Look at that guy over there (me), you have to be crazy like him"
* Your first point is trite. Everyone says, "find your passion". Guess what? Most real people don't live lives structured around the pursuit of some driving passion -- just like how most people don't become start-up millionaires. You or I in specific may or may not be special, unique snowflakes, but any Life Advice premised on the recipient being a special, unique snowflake is very bad advice.
* Your second point combines workaholism with straight-up brown-nosing. Nobody likes a brown-noser, and contrary to your apparent thinking, bosses and professors can in fact spot them. Especially professors, actually! My stepfather is an old-hat Electrical Engineering professor, and he has told our family the occasional story about undergrads who were obviously just looking for a nice letter of recommendation or graduate students who could not complete PhDs because they were better at sucking up and obeying orders than original thinking.
* Your third point is trite.
* Your fourth point is... ugh. I don't even have commonly-understood words for this concept. It's like trying to find a word for water in Fish Language. Puritanical? Anti-Spiral? There's something really fucked-up about telling other people to avoid enjoying a valid, valuable part of their life.
Overall, your post comes across as if you're someone who kicks puppies, sucks up to everyone above him, and only cares about career advancement. If people in your field say "you have to be crazy" to mean "you have to be a joyless, semi-sociopathic workaholic", tell me what line of work you're in so I can avoid it for the rest of time.
Correct. Those are the people that Thoreau was talking about.
* I never said you have to be a snowflake. I know that most men live quite lives of silent desperation, as Thoreau once stated. My first point was about making a network, BEING SOCIAL. And working on something you like.. I am not talking about true passion because for some people they need time to find it. Is it that hard to find something you like and collaborate with other people on it?
* brown noser? I was never nice with teachers. My problem was, since elementary school I mostly did not like my teachers and often times told them what I think. Why is somebody who wants more a brown noser. In my life I had few good teachers and always tried to learn as much as I could from them. I was not like a pest at the lecture or kissing ass. There is a difference. My point was that you alone or with somebody else make a nice project and show it to him or her for example. Not boost on lectures asking stupid questions.
* whats wrong with going to other lectures?
* Of course you have to enjoy your life at the Uni, I did. But also some people do it too much. I just wrote don't do it too much.
My teacher meant crazy because I would stay for all the classes and listen to the all the lectures while other people would goo home after theirs, there were other things as well.. now we come to my profession. I studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, classical guitar with one of the best guitarists today. And I was the youngest student, age 15. I visited lots of other universities including Juilliard etc. and played in US and Europe. Maybe that will clarify some things and explain the crazy comment. I also did audio programming, jazz, composition with other people as well. And I was crazy about linux, still am. I would argue how better is from windows etc. In short, avoid me next time you go to the concert hall :) Maybe my style and English is a bit brash but all I wanted was to give some tips based on my insights. Here is my recording from youtube http://youtu.be/n9c48k4FDx8 My sincerity and truth telling is clear from this music.
You have to look for the opportunities (and sometimes make them, once you have the clout to do it), but it's quite possible to get back to the kind of schedule (and better focused/motivated work & life) that you mentioned. In the meantime, get talking with the people around you -- some of them can become friends, and they have some say in what you work on -- while someone probably needs to get this software fixed now, your next task may well be still undecided. If you seem happy with this kind of assignment (and do it well), you're probably going to get more like it.
Maybe I'm just not very fun to be around.
If I don't try then I just stay at home.
I've tried that but I didn't see the same phenomena. But thanks for the suggestion. I also find that I don't really enjoy anything nowadays.
Normally I wouldn't go off topic like this but I didn't see any way to contact you and I just wanted to tell you that:
a. Don't give up on finding friends. It may seem rough right now but these things have a way of changing over time so just persist and you'll succeed.
b. Lighten up. Smile a little. Instead of thinking crap like "I'm just not fun to be around", take a look about and realize "damn, what an amazing world. I have a rough time getting out and meeting people but when I stay in there are millions of people right here with me, just a few feet and two screens away."
Things'll work out. Don't worry.. :)
The trouble with everyone else is that they already have their daily routine, their set circle of friends, possibly spouse & kids... they may well find you interesting, and even good friend material, but they'd have to shuffle up their lives to make space for someone new.
Lots of people live their entire lives in one area -- they may have best friends they've known since they were 7 years old. You're not going to displace something like that, and that has nothing to do with who you are.
Be patient & don't go negative -- it certainly takes more time (and more looking) than making friends in a university setting, but it happens just the same.
- If you want to thrive in the professional world, get a fucking haircut and at least look the part.
- If you think that you can send out a bunch of resumes and be flooded with calls about job offers, you are wrong.
- Most of the phrases you've heard in your youth are true. Ex. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease". See the above point. If you get a job (or a check) just by sending a resume (or invoice), consider it an anomaly, and yourself lucky.
- In life, everyone is only concerned about their own well-being. You've got to learn to highlight 'what's in it for them'. See the above point.
- You're on your own, so make your time and actions count!
During this fall recruiting season, I sent out my resumes to all the top companies, and was offered interviews at every single one. With the exception of two companies, I received offers from everywhere I interviewed, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. I think the market is so hot right now that you CAN get showered with job offers just by sending out a lot of resumes.
The point I was trying to make is that, I'd encourage young people to follow-up after sending out a resume. It will help you gain 'chops' for future calling/prospecting that may be required. Also, it's professional to follow-up with a phone call after sending an email to someone you've never met or spoken to before.
I get a lot of unsolicited resumes sent my way. Hardly anyone ever calls to follow-up. My thought is, I'm a busy person, and if the person really truly wants to work with me, they won't give up. I want to see persistence.
I bet that Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft all have very well-thought-out recruiting programs. I'd imagine that young college grad's could be hired for a lower salary than older, more seasoned software engineers. Those large companies are probably more flexible with young recruits. Everything in life is a trade-off. Why would those companies "shower" kids fresh out of college with job offers? I'd venture to guess that they are interested in hiring them because it's cheaper than hiring someone else with more experience. Or maybe that's how it is in the software job market. But as I see so many Americans out of work, expecting someone to 'create jobs' for them, I think it's important to highlight what it takes to get a job that you want. I'd consider your example of software engineers being "showered with job offers" as an exception to the rule. Most people have to actively pursue what they want in life. Plus, in 25 years you don't want to be one of those people on TV begging the government to 'create jobs' for you! So my advice is to learn how to get what you want by asking.
The ad asked for a cover letter, resume, and to come in person to the office for a typing test. I have a chronic condition that prevents me from typing much more than an hour a day. Simple, right? I received over a hundred responses of mostly low quality, people blindly firing in poorly written resumes or worse (one simply stated "I need a job and will work for money") and 5 people that actually followed instructions. I hired all five of them. One didn't like the job and left on good terms, another was great but ended up needing to work on school more, two were fired for being incompetent and the remainder is left but I promoted her and made her full time.
I know that this is not a typical hacker job, merely a personal assistant job. The point is that even in a small 10 person non-tech company like mine you can take a risk of over-hiring to try and find the good ones, the people that fit and like your business culture. Microsoft, Google, Apple et al can certainly afford to hire every reasonably competent programmer they can find that seems to fit their hiring profile. Time will tell if their potential gets realized at BigCorp. Just remember that this is a learning experience for both sides of the table.
So very, very true.
"Oh you want to get paid for this consulting project huh? Well we can't just wire the money to you, no, please fill out this form so we can put you in our SAP system. Oh, you haven't been paid? well well, you're not in our system.
We've finally put you our system, here's a record of our payment to you.
no money in my bank account
argh!"
Direct experience with my country's 3rd largest bank. Once outside regular salaried work, liquidity is more of an issue than solvency. You might have billed 5 months of rent, but your real estate agent doesn't accept unpaid invoices as legal tender....
1. Find a mentor. If you have any flexibility in the projects you work on or the people you get to work with choose to work with someone who will be a mentor to you. I think we're all familiar with the benefits of a mentor as a teacher, but there's another important function of a mentor: they can be a "cheerleader". A good mentor will talk you up around his co-workers and management, and make sure that those who don't work directly with know that you are capable of putting out quality work and that you should be considered for more interesting/challenging work in the future.
3. Ask questions. When you start your new job you'll feel like you need to prove yourself as just as capable as everyone who's been working on the same project/codebase/technology for years. So you'll stay late banging your head against the desk trying to solve a problem that has nagged you for days. You finally breakdown and ask an experienced engineer what he thinks, he says, "Oh yeah, I've seen this a hundred times. It tricky the first time you come across it..." and then explains how to fix it in a few minutes. If you had gone to him earlier you could have increased your productivity and saved your self a headache. The more experienced engineers are a resource. If you aren't using all the resources available to you to get work done efficiently, you're not doing your job.
2. If you're unhappy with your work, speak up. Your management cannot read minds. If you find your work soul crushing but you do well on it your management will keep you there until you burnout. At that point you'll rip off your clothes and streak through the halls and your management will think, "I never saw that coming." Your company(probably) wants you to be happy because if you are you'll be more productive and that adds to there bottom line. Let your management know that you would like to do other work and they'll try to move you somewhere you can be happy. It may take time but I've found that just knowing that you management cares goes a long way to easing the pain. If your management does care, start working on your resume and browse wanted ads during lunch.
1. If someone gives you good advice, surprise them by taking it.
2. Ask questions. Just not the same ones over and over again, and not ones easily answered by Google.
3. As a manager, remember that I can't tell if you are having a bad day because you are mad at your spouse or mad at me or ???. So just tell me your issue, I would like to help.
To me this entire subject reeks of #firstworldproblems, and the fact I don't have much respect for the beaten path or the zombies they churn out(referring to a BA). Life after college isn't hard at all. This generation is simply not used to feeling ANY discomfort or pain in their sheltered little lives.
Not going to college and excelling to the point of someone with a degree is not that difficult, though it's more difficult than going to a structured setting to be hand-fed information. (most of college could be condensed into one year study, one year practical)
Working in an electronic graveyard in Ghana at age 13 with no parents seems difficult. It seems in places like this, limits of the human experience are tested everyday in terms of what people can and cannot withstand. Spend some time learning how other people live purely for our convenience, and repeat "Graduating college is a difficult transition from one easy thing to the next easy thing." You'll sound ridiculous.
Source is the darn kids on his lawn.
Actually, having street smarts would be anecdoatal;
<because>
Actually having street smarts would be anecdotal.
But this is OK. It's the point of the thread...
I would add one item to the list: Set a 5-year goal and update it every year.
For those who haven't already, you should read this article from HN a few weeks ago:
http://www.raptitude.com/2012/07/most-lives-are-lived-by-def...