As of today, we are exactly one month into the term. That’s one month closer to being done with this degree. I knew how close I was to finishing in my brain, but it never really hit until one of my friends asked how much longer I had to go. “Less than two months” was immediately followed by “Oh my god, am I really that close??” For a while, I’ve been slowly dipping my toes into the water to see what jobs are available, but with so little time left, I realized that I really need to start putting serious effort into trying to put this degree to use.
Hunting troubles
Career-wise, my timing has been abysmal. As I said in my first blog post, my job right out of college was in the aerospace industry… a mere six months before COVID hit. Now that I’m finishing up this degree, there are tech layoffs sweeping the country, the most famous being the 12,000 people laid off from Google and other Alphabet subsidiaries only a few weeks ago. I’m not saying that I was expecting a Google job right out of the gate, but these high-profile layoffs make me nervous about the job market. Not to mention, computer scientists losing their jobs means more competition for the jobs that are still out there.
Something else I’m concerned about is my own experience, or lack thereof. By the time they graduate, most computer science majors have had at least one or two internships in which they worked and gained real-world experience in the industry. All this time, I’ve been working, but in a completely different field. Which brings up another thing that I’m worried about. I live alone and pay rent and bills. If/when I change my career path to the computer science flavor, I’m going to have to jump straight into a full-time position in order to make ends meet. And even worse, I still don’t know what I want to do with the degree. I’m leaning towards software engineering, but I don’t get a trial period like an internship, so it will be hard for me to change if I decide I don’t like it.
Everything will (hopefully) be fine
Thankfully, the future isn’t all doom and gloom for me. While I am nervous (and rightfully so, in my opinion), I also have many reasons to believe that I will do well and successfully find a job. Many of my friends from my undergraduate studies majored in computer science, and they have been supporting me every step of the way through this degree. They have been willing to look over my resume and give tips on how best to present myself, for which I am eternally grateful. Aside from that, my mom, in true mom fashion, has been sending me application links to jobs that she thinks I would find interesting, even after I told her she didn’t need to do it.
Something else that’s helped my anxiety is the realization that most of the people affected by the tech layoffs are not really going to be my direct competition. I am mostly looking at entry level positions, so I will be competing mostly with new college graduates instead of seasoned Google veterans. And while, yeah, the college graduates probably have internships under their belt, I’ve also realized that my capstone project is quite similar to an internship. I am working on a project sponsored by an outside company, under their tutelage and to their specifications, and enjoying it quite a bit. I really have no reason to believe that I won’t enjoy working as a software engineer.
Hopefully things will go well and I’ll have a new job lined up before the end of the winter term. I’ve been putting in the work and effort and so I have no real reason to believe that I won’t succeed. Even if I don’t find a job as quickly as I want, I’m definitely looking forward to not having to juggle school work and work work at the end of the term.
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