A Stanford engineering degree -- and no job

[Newsjock]

Source: Mountain View (Calif.) Voice

Mountain View resident Chad Bowling, 23, never thought he would fall a victim to the down economy.

As a chemical engineering student at Stanford University, "I assumed that I would not have a hard time finding a job," he said.

... Fall passed, and winter and spring quarters rolled by. It was graduation time and Bowling still didn't have anything lined up.

By that time, he was "desperate," he said. He decided to widen the pool of jobs he would apply for, and continue his search from his parents' house in Kentucky, with the eventual goal of heading back to the Bay Area.

"I was sending out tons of e-mails every day," he said, "applying for everything I could online, e-mailing alumni -- anything I could do. But it was all so electronic and anonymous, and nothing came back."

... Heading into winter with no prospects, Bowling began applying for more "immediate" positions. He took weekend babysitting gigs, and submitted his resume at restaurants or retailers with "now hiring" signs in their windows.

At one point he went through two rounds of interviews for a serving position at the Olive Garden. Despite having restaurant experience in the past, the manager said Bowling was overqualified -- he might leave the job if something better came up.

... Finally, in March, Bowling landed an interview with Envia Systems, a Hayward start-up that makes lithium ion battery materials for electric cars. The company was looking to hire a Ph.D., but agreed to speak with him anyway on the recommendation of a professor.

Though he was unqualified for the open position, the company offered him a temporary job in their lab, with the potential for full employment in six months.

... In the end, Bowling only interviewed with two companies during his time out of college. He said the quantity of applications he submitted and job-related e-mails he sent numbered well over a thousand.

Read more: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=2805

[opihimoimoi]

1. He should tell everyone to vote BLUE in the future...the GOP is known to lose jobs.

[branders seine]

2. The Bandidos are hiring chemists

in my neck of the woods.

If he doesn't mind working in a trailer and moving often.

[femrap]

9. ....

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[apples and oranges]

3. a friend of mine with a computer science degree and an MBA

was recently forced into taking a non-paying internship. He has lost just about everything!

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. awful.

[SheilaT]

5. So when did the job market

for engineers dry up?

I thought engineers were always being hired. Haven't I recently read stuff about how we aren't educating enough people in math, science and engineering to keep up with demand? :shrug:

[brentspeak]

6. Since corporate America discovered cheap H1-B's and outsourcing

[jberryhill]

15. Yep

I have the best H1-B story ever. I couldn't get a junior position in a lab that hired one of my own students. As the "qualifications" narrowed down to a ridiculous level, I finally laughed and told the guy who was trying to disqualify me that the assistant director of that lab had been a student of mine in the relevant subject. I said, "but, look, you know you want to hire the H1-B you already have lined up for this job, and I don't want to work for a crooked outfit like yours,either."

That was IBM circa 1990.

[OhioChick]

24. Bingo! n/t

[femrap]

7. I think they hire the ones

from India.

I have a MS in Industrial Engineering...that and $1.59 gets me a tall coffee at Starbucks.

And with the job market as it is, the bosses can treat you like poop. I hate Corporate America a lot.

[Hannah Bell]

19. they've been saying that since the 60s. it's an excuse to hire cheap labor.

[Dappleganger]

8. He should apply to the US gov...

they hire engineers of all kinds, although the process may take awhile to get in.

[jberryhill]

10. An Engineering Degree - the ultimate kick in the pants

What we've done to engineering in this country over the last couple of decades is disgraceful.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

11. Yeah. Everybody says "Apply at NASA".

They can't hire everybody at Mission Control in Houston.

DH used to do Chem E, has BS and MS in physics/math/E.E. He said the people in the oil bidness were right wing assholes who didn't know their "first principles" of physics like he did. He said they also thought that if you were a math/physics major, you just couldn't know all the stuff you knew if you had an engineering degree. Why? because physics is in the College of Arts and Sciences, therefore it must be liberal arts, instead of the College of Engineering. What a bunch of Bullshit!!

He has told me more about designing glycol dehydrators than anybody needs to know.

He got kicked outta the oil bidness due to hard times as of January 2, 1993. Bill Clinton had been elected president and we KNOW that means that "hard times" are HERE!! Seriously!! Time for the boss to fire a bunch of people. Keep that bottom line growing.

Then he went back to school and got one of those useless student loan slave 18-month degrees, thinking it would help him change careers and do video production. Wrong again....

He had a shitty stressful job where he took home $20K a year and got demeaned and insulted on a daily basis by illiterate stupid supervisors. He has another degree in video production, but you gotta know somebody, or bribe somebody, or apply suction on the right body part, or something....I have no idea. His boss would change his database programming because the idiot boss didn't understand what he was doing, and mess it up. He could have done a lot more than what he did but we live in Chimp World, where there is a constant struggle for Dominant Male.

He finally got canned and that was a blessing in disguise. He would have died from the stress, he was turning into a pretty awful person to live with. We decided to retire on his SS and my renthouse income. Ain't a whole lot but at least we got out of the rat race. He also presented them with an Excel spreadsheet he had kept from the first day he worked there -- six years -- showing all the extra overtime he worked that they had not paid him. After a few weeks they managed to cut a check for that unpaid overtime, in exchange for an agreement not to sue.


Me, I got a Juris Doctor (Law degree) 25 years ago and a BA in Biology 30 years ago and neither of those difficult degrees was any help on my resume. So what's 9 years of college and wear and tear and stress and daddy's money and my money good for on a resume? Just like WAR: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!

We were all lied to, us baby boomers. All that crap about going to school for the space race and learning math and science was a BIG FAT FUCKING LIE. I couldn't find a job as a science teacher after I got my BA in Biology, so I decided the propaganda telling us they needed science majors to teach kids science was also a lie. And this was with a degree from the best pre-med school in the State of Texas, and supposedly the best liberal arts college west of the Mississippi.

BIG. Fucking. DEAL.

:wtf: :banghead:

[Newsjock]

12. Wow

This should be an OP of its own.

[jberryhill]

14. We ate a lot of our seed corn in engineering

Anyone whose been in it has a dozen stories just like that one.

We are losing a load of know-how in this generation. The thing is, we don't need to compete with the Koreans to make TVs. They make great TVs. We used to be the engine that drove and spun off new technology industries to other countries as we progressed to better things. But we didn't reach for the next trapeze swing after we shed ourselves of fundamental electronic product and device development.

In the 80's, the wise guys scuttled R&D while they cashed out corporate assets like a drunk at the ATM in a whorehouse. We might never have research powerhouse like Bell Labs, Xerox, Eastman Kodak and all the progeny of Fairchild Semiconductor again.

Now, I'm not some cheerleader for corporate interests, because it is the rapaciousness of unenlightened management that killed the fine research arms of companies like Westinghouse, GE, DuPont, which, among a lot of things not to like, were powehouse of a lot of basic engineering research.

You take a look at something like the Dutch seawall that protects Rotterdam - the only robot visible from space - and you think, you know, we don't even have the kind of public works that develops that sort of talent. And in a single generation, that type of talent can simply disappear. Engineering is more than a college major, it is a culture - as vulnerable to failure to transmit any culture. It is among our defining characteristics of our species that we have to modify our environment to survive. It's what you do when you develop a large cranial cavity and start walking upright.

What amazes me about Holland is that the entire country is a work of engineering, they are technologically astute and enthusiastic, and it is GREEN as all get out. They made that land, and they use it wisely.

[Hannah Bell]

18. it's the same story in a lot of areas, not just engineering. knowledge = culture of doing & think-

ing. you don't get that when you have a culture of service jobs.

one of my older cousins told me he learned math & physics working on the farm & in the woods. factories, production & research facilities = cultures of knowledge, & they're being shut down, depopulated a/o deskilled.

[JHB]

21. That's a point to make to people: we used to have these powerhouses...

...before the "Free Market" gurus were allowed to make the economy safe for swindlers.

Once the rules and tax structure were upended all that counted was how much cash they could shovel into their pockets, and so those institutions were gutted and chashiered.

It isn't "socialism" to want to move the economy back in that direction.

[jberryhill]

13. People who haven't been on the inside have no idea

OH heck yeah...I spent two years as a substitute teacher with three degrees in electrical engineering.

Best thing that ever happened to me was to get out of that profession. And, heck yeah, a JD is a great way out.

[Hannah Bell]

16. he had plenty of time to get a job. or so a DUer said today re the cutoff of UE

benefits.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. It's Ironic

I was on another board with an I T specialist and he was telling us how he would never be unemployed because he was indispensable and the rest of us, mostly in sales, were dispensable because we mostly sold "air".

[Hannah Bell]

20. i remember the same story from IT guys in the 90s - they were making the big money

& saying "it's because of our *skill set* unlike the rest of you useless peons" -

union? who needs unions, we have our *skill set*!

that was the quickest boom & bust i've seen. car guys had a longer run.

formerly libertarian IT guys now working for cheap. but they've still got their skill set.

[MadHound]

22. This is a horrible time for anybody to be graduating college and trying to find a job

College grads are coming out and finding that there simply isn't anything there for them to get into. Those who have the means to do so are fleeing into grad school, those who don't are trying to get by the best they can.

And frankly it doesn't matter what your degree is. Graduation is coming up in the next few weeks, and behind the celebration of finishing college, there are a lot of scared people wondering what the hell comes next.

[AwakeAtLast]

23. I had to work two jobs after I graduated college in '94

I opened a retail store, worked 10-5, changed my clothes and worked 5:30-closing at a restaurant. I did this for two years while trying to find something in my field. I realize the job market is bad, but I'm a little confused as to why college graduates expect a high paying job right away. What happened to paying your dues? :shrug:

[Name removed]

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