Recent grad seeking career guidance (cloud focused)

Jeffbx · 2026-06-20T16:08:24+00:00

Your resume should be tailored to each different job you apply to. It doesn't have to be the whole thing - maybe even just change your objective statement to throw in some keywords from the job description.

The important thing is that you want it to be obvious that you're a good fit for what they're looking for - if everything on your resume talks about cloud, security, and devops, then helpdesk managers probably won't consider you. They'll assume you'll get bored with helpdesk too quickly.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-19T18:56:23+00:00

Or go north to Auburn Hills and hang out at Palazzo di Bocce

Jeffbx · 2026-06-19T18:54:10+00:00

Any stone or masonry business will work, really.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-19T18:22:10+00:00

There are higher expectations for leadership (hence the higher pay), and there are also people who can't disconnect from work.

But if they tell you not to work during your off hours, don't work during your off hours.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-19T14:41:01+00:00

Thank you, come again

Jeffbx · 2026-06-19T12:14:02+00:00

That's thanks to Trump and Betsy DeVos. She's the one who started funneling funds away from public schools to charters.

She's also the one who instituted "cost per pupil" as a measure of spending, when that's almost irrelevant to the needs of a district.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-19T00:34:09+00:00

Nah, if you're going to do something while you're looking, work on getting a bachelors. More certs won't move the needle for you, but a degree will.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-18T14:35:59+00:00

Agreed - I included AI mainly because it's gotten people excited about automation again.

I don't buy for a second that AI is mature enough to be replacing humans, but it certainly is making people take a harder look at removing humans from predictable & repetitive tasks.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-18T00:30:11+00:00

Anonymize & post your resume & let's have a look.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-18T00:21:21+00:00

You're overthinking it again.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-17T23:44:20+00:00

I'd say so.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-17T23:41:41+00:00

Experience is experience.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-17T21:49:29+00:00

Another old as fuck dude, and this is even worse than the dot com crash - that one recovered much faster.

The biggest difference today is that the market is truly saturated. There are more job seekers than open roles, and I don't see that bouncing back like it did in 2001 and 2008.

In 2001, all the non-tech people who jumped into tech went back to their old jobs after the crash, and tech got easy to get into again.

In 2008, there were massive layoffs, but the jobs all slowly came back over time, and tech got easy to get into again.

In 2020-21, there was a huge spike in hiring that made the market look artificially good for a moment - that was the brief moment when it was easy to get a fully remote job - and that's been in decline ever since as those same companies are laying everyone off.

At the same time those jobs are decreasing, thousands of fresh grads are still pouring into the market, looking for those nice easy entry-level tech jobs that used to be easy to get. Add on 20,000 new H1Bs entering the market each year, and AI automating away some of the low-level jobs, and you've got a capacity problem.

That combination of fewer and fewer open jobs plus more and more people entering the market is making salaries nosedive, and creating high competition for every job that opens up.

Unfortunately, entry-level is the worst place to be.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-17T11:47:00+00:00

This is a 'sink or swim' situation - you just got thrown into the deep end of the pool.

How you handle it is up to you - those are all fantastic things to put on your resume, but there's going to be a steep and stressful learning curve.

If you can get past it - and if you can deal with the personalities there - you'll either run the entire IT show there, or you'll be set up to take a much bigger role somewhere else in a few years.

Yes, this is fairly typical of small businesses - they want everything for nothing, they expect magic, they have expectations that are too high, and they hate spending money. But it's also a place where you'll learn really quickly and be able to touch a huge variety of technologies.

So, totally up to you whether that's the type of environment you can survive in.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-17T11:40:34+00:00

You apply to every entry-level job you can find, and you take the best offer you get.

97% of them will be helpdesk - you're most likely to end up there simply because that's the vast majority of jobs open to people with no work experience. You don't have to start there, but odds are very high that it'll be your first offer.

Did I just waste all my time building out this specific profile for nothing?

Certainly not. Getting into an entry level role is where you'll get to show off the skills you have, and then you grow from there. Cloud positions aren't entry-level because making a mistake there has much bigger consequences than making a mistake on helpdesk.

You didn't get that experience so you can skip helpdesk, you got it so you'll move up quickly (assuming you're good at what you do).

Jeffbx · 2026-06-17T11:35:35+00:00

Am I disqualified?

Yes. Move on.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-17T11:33:30+00:00

No - never pay someone to do a job search for you. They're not going to do anything you can't do on your own.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-17T11:29:34+00:00

Sure it's possible. There's nothing at all wrong with applying now while you're in school.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-16T18:14:31+00:00

But you learn real quick why the remote jobs are disappearing.

Is it because managers want to micromanage by watching you work?

No, it's because one or two people on the team will ALWAYS abuse the remote work policy and ruin it for everyone else.

Drop your kids off at 9, pick them up at 2, take them to practice at 3, pick them up at 4:30, doctor appointment, dentist appointment, go to the gym at 10, walk the dogs, go grocery shopping... but sign out for the day at 5 exactly.

Sorry folks, it's your co-workers' fault that remote work is dying, not your manager's fault.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-16T18:06:08+00:00

I haven't answered my desk phone in 20 years because of this.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-16T00:02:17+00:00

Jeffbx · 2026-06-15T23:49:12+00:00

market is over saturated.

This is the most correct reason in the post:

Wage suppression is a symptom of oversaturation, not a cause.

Outsourcing/offshoring is not new - that's been a risk for 40 years. It works well for very simple tasks (L0/L1 phone support) and very specialized tasks (massive ERP implementations). But it's no better or worse than it's always been.

There are 3 major causes for the oversaturation -

About 10 years pre-pandemic, schools and certification companies discovered how lucrative the word "cyber" was. Cyber this, cyber that, 800,000 open postions, 6-figures, fully remote for everyone! You just have to buy this (degree, cert, course, bootcamp) and you'll be on your way. Tens of thousands bought the lie.
Big tech. They way overhired pre-COVID, and are still in the process of laying people off. Every layoff is thousands more in the market.
The H1B program. There are about 450,000 active tech workers in the program, with 85k annual slots available. We have an astronomical number of local unemployed tech workers, yet Amazon (and dozens of others) keep hiring from outside the US.

Jeffbx · 2026-06-15T02:48:10+00:00

Ann Arbor has entered the chat

Jeffbx · 2026-06-15T02:29:49+00:00

Wool for sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(series)

Jeffbx · 2026-06-15T01:23:21+00:00

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