You are entering the job market at a bad time, unfortunately. Many places are under hiring freezes still and have likely done recent layoffs that likely disproportionately impacted more jr workers.

The GPA doesnt matter once youve got a job or two under your belt but before that they dont have much to go on and particularly in this market they can be choosey. I would suggest doing open source projects and contribute to open source projects you use. This will keep you learning new things with the added benefit of producing materials you can talk about on your resume.

it's not a silver bullet to your situation, but "gap" time can be reframed fairly easily as self-employment on resumes.

It's time to start lying on your resume. I literally can't code better than your average highschool graduate but I know enough about the industry and job to lie my ass off and I study a lot to pass these leetcode, system design, and behavioral interview questions. I work on some super complex financial systems I can't understand at all but hey, I'm still employed for now until they decide to PIP me

DM me for advice if you're open

Im university educated, have been unemployed for years in the past while looking for work in my field, and now work in the same job that I had when I was 16. its helpful to at least have a place to go, people to speak to, a routine and a space to organise in, its good for you.

revolutionary optimism doesnt always come easily, dont lose hope comrade.

I was in a similar situation: unemployed for 2 years after college, eventually just bit the bullet and got a min-wage job (thankfully not customer-facing). A year later I got a job actually in my field entirely through nepotism. I don't know what to say, other than death to america, burn this blighted system to the ground.

Hang in there, was in the same situation early 2000 during the it-bust. Keep some job and reeducate if needed. If you like coding, keep at it for fun while your not in an energyzapping corporation. Your time will come and there is more to life than work (dumb as it sounds and I know it's no fun having to rely on others)

I've tried doing some independent game development to maybe transition in that direction, but I can't force myself to do it because the whole time I just feel like I'm wasting time I should be spending looking for a "real" job.

I think efforts along these lines are good. I personally wouldn't choose indie game dev unless you really feel the need to express yourself artistically, but FOSS contribution is a great way to split your time while job hunting. This has many benefits, from building out your network to practicing your skills (which need development, fresh grads are basically useless professionally for a few years) to giving you something to actually work on that other people care about and not sink into the black hole of feeling like you're useless. If you're good at self-motivating then a few years of FOSS contribution is much, much, much better than a masters in CS that you take to kill time. The only reason I would do a masters (which is IMO totally useless in CS) is to get an internship through the school program. Which certainly is valuable; work experience is the #1 thing you are missing from your resume.

I'm closing in on a year unemployed after getting laid off. It's hard out here, and don't let anyone tell you different just because the stock market is up.

I know you're hesitant on extra education, but it doesn't have to be a masters or grad program. There's often certificates out there that might help you stand out with much lower time and monetary investments and get you in somewhere. Maybe part-time work to build up savings/contribute to household while you knock one of those out would be manageable?

it took me a year back in 2014 to get my first job out of college, basically as a QA/basic scripting person. I got completely lucky with it because a recruiter on one of those job sites like Indeed reached out to me with it. A big bonus you can add to your resume is to have open source projects you have contributed to on it, that you can talk about at length during the interview. That will make you stand out from the other applicants.

Regardless, yeah the job market for programmers has been pretty terrible this past year or two. It sucks. I would probably not go further in debt for a masters; maybe just do lots of open source work you can put on a resume. I personally did a lot of work on emulators like ppsspp and citra

I had the same situation when I graduated. I ended up finding a technical sales-related job that sucked but led to a better position. Then I got laid off and couldn’t find another similar job for a long time until I got one through a recruiter and had to move states again. Some advice I have:

• Use recruiters. Not just for your situation, but in my experience going through recruiters is a much easier way to find and get jobs since they have relationships with these companies and know how to navigate the process. They can also basically coach you through the interviews so that you have a leg up on most people who would apply directly through the company. They also are better at negotiating pay and benefits and can help you there as well. I think all of the recruiters I’ve dealt with I found on LinkedIn (the paid job seeker thing puts you on their lists, or you can search directly and message them) and also I’d look for technical recruiting agencies and sign up on their websites.
• Be willing to move - Some job markets are better than others and being willing to move for a job gives you a lot more options. On the other hand, I’ve moved way too often and haven’t really been able to settle down anywhere and make any good real life friends, which sucks, but what are you gonna do. I have my pup to keep me company at least, and you all too of course.
• Embellish your resume - You don’t want to blatantly lie about your qualifications and put yourself in a risky position, but I’d definitely say you should exaggerate as much as you can get away with without arousing suspicion. ChatGPT is very helpful for this.
• Sort of related, also tailor your resume and cover letter to the job description of where you’re applying and using the same key words and phrases, since that will make it more likely you’ll get through the automated software screening and to an actual interview.
• Be flexible and look for opportunities that others might ignore. For example, maybe also look for programming jobs in areas like manufacturing, health care, small businesses, etc. and not just software companies. Sounds like you’re probably already doing this, though.
• I’m not a software dev but I’ve used hobby projects a bit in the past as a way to “demonstrate skills” when I had not much experience but wanted to pad my resume any way I could. Some hobby like 3D printing for example isn’t that big of a deal as far as a skill, but I was able to fluff it up quite a bit to my advantage. Seems like software would make hobby projects easier to get into, given you don’t need buy a bunch of stuff besides having a computer. Also sites like Coursera and edX have free classes that include projects that can be also be useful for this sort of thing.

Sorry for the wall of text here. I’m sure you’re already doing a lot of this already but I hope at least some of it is helpful.

Took me over a year to land my first job too. I’m doing quite well for myself now, so it’s painful to remember that there was a time not that long ago when I was full of self-loathing and doubt, questioning my intelligence and inherent value.

Marxism is about more than exploitation and surplus value. It includes the subjective human experience within capitalism, the alienating aspects of capitalist society. You are unfortunately experiencing this hard right now. I can’t promise anything for you, other than that things can turn around suddenly and quickly.

i'm at 10 years since graduation and the only jobs i've had since then were pizza delivery and doordash. Liberal Arts instead of coding though so i was always doomed. my 'plan' for whenever i lose access to free housing (i.e. when/if my parents kick me out) is to just be homeless until i die, which will probably not take long.

How do you feel about joining the trades? I was unemployed for years for various reasons. I signed up for a class a few months ago and have been working now for two months. The situation where I live at least is that people are desperate for workers. If you use boomer methods (call nearby businesses and ask if they’ll train you) some might say yes.

Never found nothing, been working retail for 15 years since I graduated. I've tried going back to school to try out teaching, but my head isn't in that place anymore. And I got a job teaching students English, but the pay was worse than retail once you factored in needing to spend hours on prep and assessment and left me an exhausted wreck, who was also still working 12 hours of retail.

I really empathize with katz who got their degrees and graduated into this mess of job market. The game is all fucked up, it's been fucked up, but I'd say it's uniquely fucked up in a way I haven't seen it fucked up since maybe 2009.

Took me 4 years to find substitute teaching with a heavily altered resume, I made up bullshit jobs for every gap year and had relatives or rando people I knew online be my references. Then when I moved to rural chudlandia 4yrs later I couldn't even do that since I'm trans, so I work part time retail, and it was a total beast to get that job with an even more doctored resume (I made my dabbling nerd haxaday sort hobbies into jobs to cover my 7 years worth of gaps), also with a STEAM degree, they indeed did lie to us. Usually most places don't ask for your GPA. My GPA was good (silly retail job asked for it, they're among the higher paid retails gigs here, so they can do really silly things), but being a transfer student and poor made getting internships difficult in college. I was so broke I could only apply to one school for grad school and the bourgeois scum had the mindless cheek to tell me after I drove 8hrs one way there I should backpack EU, like they totally paid 0 attention to my app. My competitors flew in, where well rested etc, me? Nah man, nah. Wish I knew the class aspect of gradschool in STEAM going in was that strong. I had some bad poverty, like in collections for years over a under 50 dollar medical bill, 0 money, something people like that will never understand. When a dollar is basically a gold nugget, when a bus fare is impossible, etc.

Its weird to see people my age who have careers and such here in chudland, with no education, in CA everyone seemed to be equally hosed. Its an inversion of how Gen Y was told, go to college get a job, go to tradeschool etc, that plumber is my coworker and the dude that dropped out of highschool is going full Kevin on both of us as we try to ring up his purchase of a good third of the store.

Back when I graduated I was told if you had one response per 1000 job apps your resume was solid. So many terrible interview stories. My family is understanding since they had trouble finding jobs too, but again same issue they won't live forever. I've always had to pay rent in some form, either giving them all my food stamps or selling what little I beer money I came up on Mturk or something. They'd always help with a place to stay at least, but beyond that I was always on my own, which was hard.

12years out, another 12 years assuming I'm not murdered by chuds fast nor slow things will be exactly the same, still not even surviving getting older and sicker, I've long lost hope of even slight personal economic improvement, best I can do is help others and lil homies maybe succeed and learn as much theory and repeat it on. Take some slack at work for the college kids so they can study sort deal and provide poverty survival 101 tips. Funniest thing is in the city the nearest 'orgs' saw my degree and required wildin fees, I suspect they were scammy but damn sib, in all my years working I still haven't met a year of the dues they were asking, I would have to live to 200 to be able to. I haven't been active in anything since college because of that when I lived in the city, legit orgs were hella far away, and now I'm so rural there's pretty much nothing. So its basically be a book shelf help in an old school universal nice sort of way, which is fine and all but only does so much.

I'd first reccomend a schedule so you don't fall into despair as fast, that's the hardest, then a vpn and a big book, game and movie list, along with your study plans, there's a place for all of it. I like to do a review of my area every year or so, though it does like 0 good and no one's going to believe me, its some weird paradox, when being education benefits me everyone believes the fancy degree from fancy school is fake, but when it hurts me everyone totally buys it. Don't let gap years deter you, they're trivial to cover if you're in any country that doesn't do job verification. Lie your ass off, whoever is hiring will, do the same back.

Overall, not worth the paper it was printed on. I personally love whining about this, don't blame you.

wait for the job market to improve

I hear people saying the programming job market will improve in the US from the low of the 2022 and 2023 era FANG firings, but why would the US job market improve? I don't see why all those programmers with work experience would be removed from circulation and fresh grads still will compete with them. What would change for the market to improve? The Silicon Valley Bank collapse and bailout way back in March 2023 is probably going to cause less startups to be funded in the long run and solidify FANG monopolies in the US even more. Now that the lock downs have been over for a while, I predict the population is going to be lowering usage of social media over the next few years if they haven't already, lowering demand. I would expect the job market to worsen in the long run, not improve, much less return to the 2019-2022 glory days. In the US the only programming field I see that is growing is the AI and GPT stuff.

I know the feeling very, very well

I do programming and have had a career for the last 12 years. The field is so much different and far more rotten than when I started, and it wasn't really great then either. I have been unemployed since being furloughed last January and I have had peanuts since then. My wife could not find a min wage service job for months and months; we watched a 7/11 go from denying her application after seeing a help wanted sign to shutting down a few weeks later, and I think that is a perfect encapsulation of how things are right now. The owners would rather the ship go down than throw a bone to workers for everyone's benefit post-2020. This is the worst job market/economy I have ever lived through. I have no idea how young graduates are expected to survive this. I'm so sorry I don't have any answers, but this is not just a "you" thing. People with my level of experience and more are massively struggling right now too, and don't listen to anyone telling you everything is fine. That dude on his 12th covid infection is "fine", too. I can only hope something gives soon.

You want some terrible advice? Get an emt certification. If you are in a populated state you can get one in a single college simester and it looks great on a resume. The work is mostly just driving with the occasional heavy lifting. The job gives you ptsd so people always quit and you can get hired easily. It is soul crushing but it sounds like capitalism already has you there.

Lie about your internship.
Lie about experience.
Lie about your GPA.
Lie, sell shoes, and lie.

Is your resume eye catching? I know this sounds like LinkedIn advice, but you gotta play the game.

Something like this:

vs

There are already good suggestions here but:

As others said, many many people can relate, and it sucks.

There are coding programs and certificates that are valuable both in terms of learning and job placement.

What if you lie and pretend you don't have an education at all in order to get some job somewhere to end the work gap on your resume and/or get into an internship while you're living with your parents and more able to deal with the burden of unpaid labor

This is assuming your education is what's making employers be like "oh you'll just leave us soon 😔"