I’m a hiring manager at a FAANG, and might have some advice.

First, as you are painfully aware, you ended up landing at an entry level during a contraction phase in the market. Two or three years ago you’d have landed a job straight out of school. Of course, there’d be a chance you’d have been laid off by now, but the market was different then.

It will be different again soon. I’m old enough to have been through this in 2000-2003 or so, and again in the 2008-9 downturn. Capitalism is a stupid system incapable of moderating wild swings. We thought we could do it, but the money took charge again and removed those circuit breakers, and we ended up with administrations like Trump’s driving us into deeper debt to prevent a slowdown, which was like running up your credit card balance while you’re still pulling in more and more money to increase yet further your spending. Yes, it lets you inflate your lifestyle but it leaves you with little or no headroom when you need it.

In any case, it’s going to come back. In the meantime, there’s a couple of options if you don’t want to pivot. The most obvious one is grad school. If you don’t have a family (and especially if you can get a grant or other funding), that’s both a great way to wait things out for a couple of years (or more if you want a PhD) and a way to make more money and have a more targeted career in the industry once you’re out. It might even be worth getting a student loan, but if you do DO NOT DROP OUT NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS. You will make things infinitely worse if you end up owing a tuition loan with no degree to show for it.

The second is to check your location. Things are tough all over, but some locations and industries are different than others. NYC, Bay Area, Research Triangle, SoCal, and Boston are all different markets, and that’s leaving out the Midwest etc.

Third, assuming you’re in the US and a citizen, is to consider government work. They pay solid salaries (if not as high as industry at its height) and do fewer layoffs. That can extend to contractors as well. In fact, you’d probably start through a contractor regardless, but it’s a solid possibility as long as you can get/maintain a security clearance. I did military and intelligence work for a long time before deciding I wanted to do something less morally ambiguous, but by that time I was afforded that flexibility. Basically you need no criminal record, no recent drug use, and US citizenship.

The last one, and I hesitate mentioning it because it is not universally applicable, is to use your social network. A friend of a friend slipping your resume to someone at a company is going to leapfrog you over the other applicants. Especially as the industry starts to come back, do not hesitate to talk to friends and family or people you’ve worked on OSS projects with. I can tell you from the inside it’s a huge advantage.

Good luck, and I hope at least some of this might apply.

I used this book. "Discover What You Are Best At" by Linda Gail. It's a series of self tests that let you know where your aptitudes lie, and a list of jobs that use them. The book pointed me at a career I'd never considered.

I’ve been in tech for a long time. I don’t even have a high school degree (fucked up family life). Ride it out. You have qualifications. You’ll get there.

IT can be cutthroat and saturated, especially if you plan on going into administration and networking.

I'd suggest database or leaning on your embedded experience and do that if you're looking to get into something that's in demand.

How do you feel about cybersecurity? It’s a much larger field than it appears on the surface, and to my recollection the unemployment rate has never been positive - we have always had more jobs than people.

Data science might be a good fit. I've been looking into changing careers and taking classes. Data sci is a mix of stats, crisp-dm, programming, and presentation. It isn't strictly accounting, but there is a lot ~~if~~ of overlap. Throw in a few ai buzzwords and you'll land something.