I got a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from a ‘good school’ and yet I never got a good entry level job in the field so I was just wandering the wastelands for a long while before I got a good corporate bullshit job from which I got fired after 3 years and now I have no actual engineering skills and tens of thousand in college debt
I’m 33 and live with my parents and I’m in this constant cycle of living with them until I find a good job in some far away city. They live in a remote place where the only jobs available are 7.50 and yet the living costs are absurd so really, you’re pretty much working just to work. The problem is I can’t move out and do human things such as live by own and have a meaningful because I need a decent salary to survive, and that can only happen if I get something in a far away big city. I don’t want to have to fend for peanuts living paycheck to paycheck(i’ve already tried that a couple of times) in some rathole in a city but I also hate living with my parents so I’m forced in an all or nothing mindset where I need to have a decent salary. I wish I could just take a low wage jobs in some other city but the logistics don’t allow me to.
I feel like I’m rambling, I just feel incredibly stuck, my social life and dating lives are nonexistent and I’m completely fucking broke. I just masturbate all day in my parents house. I have a degree that should be lucrative according to this shitass society, I’m not the archetype of a basement dwelling reddit loser because I do have drive and have moved from place to place and worked and clawed my way through life and stay fit and know how to talk to women and I constantly feel like I shouldn’t be where I’m at but…I kind of am a fucking loser.
Experience shows me that, I guess, this too shall pass and I should land on my feet but god damn I’m regressing constantly and every aspect of my life can’t be moved forward if Instay with my parents in this town. Sorry to rant
If you need a fake reference, I’ll tell anybody whatever you want.
I wish I wasn’t the kind of autistic that sucks at lying
Same flavor and it certainly doesn’t help when/if you land an interview.
seconded and i can do the professional BS jargon too.
Thirding this, if you need a reference can help (we should do a r/bemyreference knock off).
The problem is I can’t move out and do human things such as live by own and have a meaningful because I need a decent salary to survive, and that can only happen if I get something in a far away big city. I don’t want to have to fend for peanuts living paycheck to paycheck (i’ve already tried that a couple of times) in some rathole in a city but I also hate living with my parents so I’m forced in an all or nothing mindset where I need to have a decent salary.
I think this is very true for a lot of people in your age cohort. It really sucks that without the necessary “start-up capital” so many people are trapped in this sort of scenario. I’m sorry this is going on for you right now.
Honestly this sucks but the way out of the “educated but no experience and all jobs require experience” trap for a given field is internships, and probably the only way to get internships if you didn’t do them in undergrad is to take on more debt & go back to school for a masters. Either that or become very good at networking online through niche field-related hobbies. It’s easier to network if you live in one of those cities with the good jobs you want but that’s expensive and nobody is giving out loans to go be unemployed somewhere for a while unless that place is a college.
& go back to school for a masters
I’m speaking from experience here, DO NOT DO THIS. A masters is just delaying the inevitable unemployment and results in employers thinking you have even less experience.
Well fair enough, what other routes are there to get internships do you think?
Getting lucky and knowing someone who works in the field and hoping they have an internship available where they work/know someone in another place who has an internship available.
I love how getting a job, a necessity to not starve, boils down to “get lucky”…
Really cool system we got here 😎
Don’t forget cronyism and nepotism! Gotta have some of that, too! Wouldn’t want ivy league frat bros not being able to work alongside their drinking buddies.
internships
‘You are overqualified for the position, so we have to reject you’.
I made the dumbass mistake of going into debt to get a bachelors from a supposedly good that I might have too much to qualify for student loans. I have been looking at studying in Europe since apparently (grad) school is subsidized. I might be wrong
Also, I tried getting an internship in college and I couldn’t and it’s evidently fucked me for life. Getting internships is just as hard as finding a job, and it feels like the entire field of engineering is built on the farce that it has an abundance of opportunity.
the following is assuming you’re in the US:
i think in general, and definitely my experience, that getting grad school paid for is considerably easier, structurally. my undergraduate cost me a boatload. my MSc cost me like $400 in lab fees. undergraduate is the “cash cow”, but the university runs on exploitable grad student labor through assistantships and tuition waivers for “university employees”. this is where you work some almost full time job being a figure-it-out-and-do-all-my-scut for a research lab/team at some R1 school, and then also take 1-2 classes a semester, mostly in that same department that your boss is in, and for your masters research project, you glob on to whatever research project they are running and carve out some little piecemeal research question for your own limited investigation. in theory, you could totally go rogue and dream up whatever question you want, but its easy to paint oneself into a corner.
this is a tricky route because you’re effectively signing up to be the serf of some tenure tracked faculty and many younger faculty are careerist psychos who were traumatized by their advisor and are now going to visit that trauma on their own grad students. if you can find an older professor, they can be more chill because they have less to prove. sometimes.
anyway, so you’re taking classes, doing that homework, doing scutwork most hours of your day, and also having to learn how all kinds of equipment works and following weirdly complex/ad-hoc procedures. if your relationship with the professor goes bad before you can get your MS, you’re kinda fucked unless you can find another prof to take you on and help you across the finish line.
an MS opens more doors into federal and state gov jobs and is about 2-3 years ish for part timers.
Pros:
- you can pause your student loans because you’re technically back in school (though if you’re going non-profit/state work, i wouldn’t. i would look in PSLF.)
- after 2 years as a research tech + MS, you will have enough fodder after that to have an “impressive” resume/CV
- in theory, you are getting paid to go to grad school and develop expertise
- there is a camraderie to being a grad student with other grad students. you’re all nerds, you’re all broke. they know about cheap housing and bus schedules and cheap food.
- a broadly recognized as respectable way to press pause on entering the job market
- aside from specialized knowledge and experience, in terms of professional development you will get a lot better at written and oral communication in those topics and public speaking more generally. if you suck, you’ll become OK. if you’re OK, you’ll become good. if you’re good, you’ll become great.
Cons:
- the academy is second only to the military for harassment and bullying. motherfuckers can be toxic AF and the institution will protect them at your expense.
- it fucking sucks to work all day and then have homework and class. my social life and hobbies were fucked.
- the PhD cult will try to recruit you into doing a 5+ year bid instead of a 2+ year bid. a PhD informally closes certain professional doors and has a way of narrowing the horizon to include just the academy. i know people who have made it work and “do well” now, but honestly i don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze for mental/emotional development. tenure tracked junior faculty with intact souls are the exception.
- the public university system is very neoliberal anymore and nowhere is this more evident than as a grad student at an R1. the most odious aspect is that the people who are most highly remunerated at these institutions pretend they are public servants and engaging in public intellectualism instead of the most base and vain careerist sophistry. do not dispell their illusions or they will probably try to destroy you.
the way you get into this is looking at job openings at the R1 on campus, in the department that you would want to attend graduate school. you would apply for the job and once you figure out who the professor is that would be your supervisor, tell them you are interested in graduate school and inquire if that’s an option. look up everything you can on that professor on their university profile and if you are actually interested in their research, that can really work in your favor in pitching yourself. someone who is curious about what they are curious about and can critically engage with the research is a rare diamond for a research professor. you also want to find a way to have candid conversations with their other grad students and see what they say, but you’d probably have to be stealthy about that.
i don’t know if i fully recommend this path, but it exists, i took it out of frustration, and it worked out. if you’ve worked shit jobs before, you can handle the scut easy.
the most odious aspect is that the people who are most highly remunerated at these institutions pretend they are public servants and engaging in public intellectualism instead of the most base and vain careerist sophistry. do not dispell their illusions or they will probably try to destroy you.
absolute lmfao
Yeah. Getting internships in college is important if you want to go into industry, so it’s unfortunate the school let you down in this way. Often schools will have career fairs or databases of registered internships through their career office, and those offer higher chances of success than applying from outside channels.
There were career fairs, I did go to them, but I had no luck getting anything. I remember waiting in massive lines only to get told to apply online at the booth. Like, might as well spit on my face.
Wow, that is ridiculous.
I wish I had chosen a school with guaranteed internship placement
Wish I could sue the fuck out of the entire collegiate system for being such a fucking racket
Class (action lawsuit) of 2024
Just keep applying to whatever you can find, if you need to leave stuff about yourself off and try to get into one of those horseshit min wage jobs since some money coming in is better than none, especially if your parents are chill that helps you save money. Use chatbots to piece together a bullshit resume and cover letters, its chatbots, unicru personality tests and ATS AI bullshit all the way down to fucking capitalist hell. Play every trick you can to get a job. This is a failing of society rather than any personal one, never was, never will be, every time I see someone in a situation like yours (myself included, exact same scenario a few years older) it should trip that whole shake of injustice, not self deprecation. Survive is the game, it doesn’t look pretty for most on this planet, and especially not in capitalist hellholes.
With all the hexagonal bears having employment issues maybe our own jobhacks sub should be in order.
Your situation is very similar to one I found myself in after becoming unemployed from the job I had after graduating with a CS degree. We’re close to the same age, also.
I’m still not using my degree, but things have gotten a bit better, I found a job that’s not high paying but it’s stable and I got out into my own place again and got married (also again, a divorce was a big part of what left me on my ass financially too). I’m still hoping to actually get into my field and a higher paying job at some point but I also have contingency plans for if that doesn’t happen, and we’re scraping by for now. I hope it gets better for you as well.
I really identify with the “have to pass through the eye of a needle to have a life” feeling. Until recently I was jobless for 13 months, just yeeting job applications into the ether. Each day, each application felt like a dice roll with the worst odds in history, and potential employers were the disinterested croupiers blankly watching me try to gamble my way out of limbo.
I did eventually get a winning roll just a couple of weeks ago, and it feels like my adult life is finally starting. It CAN happen. It’s just really hard to feel like anything else can happen until it does.
Like others have said idk if you’re open to advice, but the only universal bit of that I’ve got is to keep trying. It really sucks, and I can’t tell you how many times I broke down in front of my therapist lamenting that fact, but it’s the only thing to do at the end of the day.
For slightly less generic advice, I was able to get some hours on DataAnnotation like others here which helped pay for groceries. Depending on your living setup it could help you build up a little cushion for when you do take that leap into the next part of your life
it feels like the only way to get a job now is to go to a staffing adjacency where they pay you less and urge you to work multiple jobs. middle men capitalists on top of middle men capitalists, all the way down
Unfortunate where I live the staffing agencies are super transphobic, they outed me to HR when I got into a factory job and since I’ve legally changed my name etc they made up a deadname based my legal one and misgendered me every 3s. Said agency also misrepresented all experience I did have as factory work. There was obviously no training due to this, quit in like 3 days.
In CA all the positions staffing agencies would offer all required blood draws, nothing like having your blood taken with nothing to show for it but a bruise on your arm and no work.
More proof that capitalists are vampires
I’ve gone through 3 staffing agencies since I got fired a year ago and they haven’t offered me jack shit.
some do bench pay at least
What’s that?
You get paid while looking for new work
Ah, we don’t have that here.
I didn’t know there are jobs outside of creating bombs and tanks for mechanical engineers
My three step plan for you:
- Get a remote IT support job; lots of those and they should pay enough to make them worth the time.
- If you can’t start at a company in your M.E. field initially as IT support, pivot to one once you’ve got your IT support claws sharpened.
- Either via networking within that company or some resume tomfoolery, pivot to a job in your field from that field-adjacent position.
Optional fourth step:
- Realize that you pine for a life at sea and enlist in the Merchant Marines for a somewhat alternative life where you don’t have to pay rent anywhere for most of the year and you’ll never need to think about a resume again.
Realize that you pine for a life at sea and enlist in the Merchant Marines for a somewhat alternative life where you don’t have to pay rent anywhere for most of the year and you’ll never need to think about a resume again.
Hold on this actually kinda sounds sick, what’s the catch
Typical union style seniority pay (some exceptions, like if you can get security clearance you will get higher paying contracts, etc)
You can go into:
-Navigation (deck-hand to captain)
-Stewards (kitchen to chef to quartermaster)
-Engine (Jr Engineer to Sr Engineer); the initial apprenticeship program rotates you through all three
As the union is predicated on keeping sailing jobs occupied by US sailors you do have to swear an oath of loyalty to the US - but i mean it’s just words really. The training programs also have some quasi-military style structure. You kind of start off in a boot-camp scenario but it’s mostly to weed people out.
The only real catch is double-edged: You will be away from family and friends for long periods of time; so great if you don’t really care for your family and don’t have super close IRL friends. While you are in the training program and while you are at sea you have no expenses - this is why you only have to worry about rent for part of the year while you aren’t working contracts. So, if I were doing the program I’d be looking for a situation where I either live family while I’m not at sea or find a person will to rent to me month-to-month. Paying rent for a residence you aren’t living in for the majority of the year would be silly unless you are like the head of a family that at least gets to use it while you are away or something.
https://www.seafarers.org/training-and-careers/jobs/entry-program/
It’s a bit of a rugged life-style but some people like that. Makes you feel alive and all. For the women comrades FYI: about 25% of the people enrolled while I was there were women and they seemed to be treated very well by staff and other people enlisted in the program. Felt very safe for everyone and everyone was pretty cool/chill (except the Commandant, he was cool but definitely not chill lol).
While the lifestyle is a bit rugged, the food is fucking amazing - no joke. People at sea eat like kings (for free apparently).
One of the cool things is that they have political education classes where they give you some union history (watered down, they aren’t revolutionaries) and teach the power of unions to their members. Self-serving sure, but it is literally the only time I’ve seen institutionalized political education in action in the US, was pretty wild.
Honestly I’d recommend it to anyone who is:
-Is young and directionless
-Wants to be in a unionized sector
-Loves the open sea / wants to travel in a non-tourist way
-Is economically vulnerable
Don’t apply if any of these describe you though:
-Unwilling to work on your drug habits/addictions
-Unwilling to work on your fitness/health generally
-Unwilling to tolerate any forms of authority/discipline
-Unwilling to to complete a 3 month training program where you live expense-free but have no income and are essentially chaperoned.
FYI, though: they will not tolerate drugs or alcohol while in their training program and if you get caught inebriated while working a contract they will come down hard on you (they have a rehab clinic they’d force you to attend).
But for real, if you are someone who just cannot find any economic traction and are living a meek existence - please apply for this program - you’ll actually get to start living your life.
Of course if you don’t like the sea/ocean then probably not for you.
Before anyone asks why I left the program, it was because of family shit - turns out mine falls apart without me around.
If any one does go through with an application my advise is to convince them why the program suits your particular life. Just like most jobs they are going to turn away applicants who seem to be applying on a whim who they might have a bad ROI on.
My current job is cushy but a dead end. I will genuinely consider this. Gives me something to try if the job I’m in becomes too much. Thanks for the info. I’m young, want to travel, good at following rules, generally like the sea, not against physical labor, don’t do any drugs, and have almost no connections to where I live so it pretty much sounds perfect for me except that it would kinda suck to leave my grandmother all alone
Also idk how well they’d accommodate veganism, I might end up stuck eating crackers and white bread lol
I have not contemplated how vegan friendly they are, tbh. Sorry for the oversight. From my experience I’m confident that a vegetarian would be alright; for full veganism I’d encourage you to reach out to their contact #.
It’s not utopia but it is uniquely different from selling individual labor-power on a market.
Return to tradition (breaking your teeth on hardtack at sea)
How young is young? This sounds like a great idea, but I’m pushing 30yo and have never finished school or had proper steady employment. Wonder if that will be a deal breaker
It’s relative to you, I’m afraid. I felt like I “missed the boat” when I enrolled at 30, but I will tell you straight that there were people from 20-60 enrolling in the program.
It’s just due to the seniority aspect that I mention “the younger the better”.
But, if you need work and are willing to do it - no matter the age, I’d enroll.
Probably living and working with the same 5 or 6 people for months on end in a setting that can be very dangerous
… But there’s satellite internet and stuff these days so it can’t be that bad
Get a remote IT support job
I would genuinely love that but I feel like I’ve been getting rejected left and right from anything and everything, let alone a remote job in IT. Any advice?
check DMs
Hey, thanks so much, I’ll check it out and reply in the dms
ik you’re getting bombed with request but i’m in a similar boat in the IT industry at the entry level. may i request a dm as well? i really appreciate any help i can get
Hey comrade-
Just seeing this now, sorry - life gets fast.
Still willing to talk about anything that might help you orient yourself for employment, etc.
If you can hit me with a quick (op-sec friendly, use DM) bio about yourself and your experience level along with some pointed questions about what you are struggling with now I will respond with advice on how to proceed.
Can I be greedy and ask for a dm too? I am trying to do freelance web dev with zero luck but I also have an IT background.
We can talk about whatever you want. I specialize in IT but I can talk compsci a bit; I was going down that road for a minute - would love to save you some misery where I can.
Can you DM me too? I’m studying Cybersecurity right now but it sounds like this BS is affecting my field too.
sent
I’m not really sure if you want advice or to vent. If you don’t want job advice, please ignore the rest of my comment.
An option is looking at remote work that is technical, but not related to your degree/what you want to do. It won’t be a fun experience but it helps pay bills.
Something like data entry or technical writing doesn’t have much of a barrier to entry other than having a technical degree.
Another option is assembly/factory type work. This one is very location dependent, but there are stuff like PCB houses where if you know how to solder, you can probably find work. Or welding or something since you’re a MechE. It isn’t great pay, but it is usually more than retail.
similar position here.
I’m 34, no degree, haven’t worked in 8 years (just got approved for Disability this February for mental health reasons, so I get like $1500 per month which conveniently is average monthly rent here).
I never got to experience a dating life, or even have a FWB or anything. And I don’t see how I ever will. It’s so hard to get anywhere or do anything, and at my age nobody will even want to sleep with me unless I “have my shit together”. Like it doesn’t matter who I am, it only matters my future financial prospects and being someone to brag about. Especially on dating sites.
I live with an abusive, emotionally unstable grandparent that I dream of being able to move away from, but rent prices are just too fucking high and I don’t know anyone else in this stupid world who could help me.
I’m just so fucking depressed about my dating life prospects. I recently met a girl on some dating site who is also on Disability for mental health reasons (nice to know she also wouldn’t judge me for it). We were talking every day for like 4 months, but she suddenly started soft-ghosting me and I don’t know why. Probably nothing this good will ever happen to me again – and it was barely even anything. I’m in good shape but obviously no car + no job + on disablity pay + live at home => nobody will ever want me, not even just for a FWB/no commitment type of thing
Don’t be so hard on yourself, keep putting yourself out there you may still find someone, it won’t be Hollywood or conventional, but it will be something.
One day I’m going to do the everyone is wanted post, but it probably should be a badpost since how…off I realize it sounds typed or said outloud.
Don’t be so hard on yourself, keep putting yourself out there you may still find someone, it won’t be Hollywood or conventional, but it will be something.
I don’t see how. I’ve been using dating sites for years and that was the closest thing to a thing I ever had, and even this one fizzled out.
where am I going to find a woman who doesn’t think no car + no job + living at home in my 30’s is a deal-breaker?
yes, the golden age of “dating apps” is long over. They are monetized to hell and back now. Most of the profiles are bots or scammers. The “real” ones are typically not great people. I’m not sure what your disability entails, but public spaces are where you will find genuine people.
If you absolutely insist on using dating apps, try Hinge.
Try hobbies or meeting places IRL, people on those dating sites and apps are stuck up AF.
Do the post! Put it in c/effort!
People need to hear it.
Nah its going to be a badpost, people will pay more attention then, comedy for unfortunate truths. When I feel like it, that is.
Same boat comrade. The future sucks. Empire in decline. I wish you good luck
similar situation here, shit sucks. unsure whether your hope is a gift or a curse, good luck.
Are there seasonal agriculture jobs in your area? They aren’t exactly fun but especially with overtime can pay quite a bit. Now is about the time a lot of them would be hiring.
Alternatively you might check out room and board type jobs anywhere.
How would I go about finding either agricultural jobs or room and board type jobs? Would massively appreciate if you could elaborate just a bit.
assuming you’re US, the department of labor has a site for seasonal listings
I think I’ve got links on my computer so I’ll try to find them when I get home, but sometimes they don’t advertise super well so it might be a matter of looking up what farms exist in your area and calling them.
There’s a few sites dedicated to room and board jobs so I’ll try to grab links for those too.
Other than that searching “seasonal harvest jobs” will pull up some of them.
Sorry for the late reply. I couldn’t find my old bookmarks, but here’s what I found from memory:
https://www.coolworks.com/jobs-with-housing
https://old.reddit.com/r/roomandboard/comments/r4748p/room_and_board_megathread/
As well as the link the other comrade posted. I did search my old job on there and it didn’t show up, so it may be worth searching google for companies and/or checking local labor boards
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Nah it has nothing to do with your intelligence. You shouldn’t in any form feel like you’re less than for not having a stupid piece of paper
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