Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

I live in a community full of high-achieving GenZ who did 4-7 AP courses, studied their butts off for the SAT, got into good universities....only to not find any jobs when they graduate with STEM degrees. A dozen neighbors' kids have been asking me for zero-salary jobs just to get experience.

For those who have no experience, one can gain experience while in college:

1. contribute to a significant open source project

2. write some significant work of software

3. design and build your own computer

4. build a robot something

5. work as an intern in industry

6. do work as a research assistant

When I was at Caltech, students did (entirely on their own):

1. built a gas powered helicopter from scratch

2. built a tracked robot with an arm and a manipulator

3. built an electronic synthesizer

4. built a functioning railroad that ran through the dorm

5. many built a single board computer for their own use

6. designed and built the campus radio station

7. one fellow designed, built, and sold custom speakers in the student workshop. After graduating, he turned it into a real business and made a fortune

and so on. In other words, turn yourself into someone useful to a company.

You gotta realize that "experience" refers to "professional" or "commercial" experience, i.e. you gain experience by having the status of an employee at a company and having relevant job title.

No, I don't gotta realize that. I'd be impressed by a resume with such accomplishments.

I think you're right that it did used to work that way but now all the juniors are competing with people like me who have done all of that and also have five years of professional experience at large companies.

I don't know you, so I will speculate that something else is going on. There are a lot of ways to not get hired.

For example, one guy I interviewed spent all his time asking about what benefits he was going to get. He had no interest whatsoever in what he'd be doing, and what the company was doing. No hire.

Unfortunately, such is commonplace. This gives the savvy interviewee an advantage - approach the interview from the employer's point of view. Save your questions about how much vacation you'll get until after the employer has decided to hire you.

First of all I don't think you should be surprised that pay is the most interesting thing to potential employees? That is the entire reason they're tolerating you. If I just want to work on interesting things you would only get in the way.

Secondly, yeah, I'm not like that. I've got three or so side projects (I guess they're just projects now) I'm actively working on and have been building things with my teens. It doesn't matter anymore socially, like everything else in the US your counterpart just never shows up.