I made quite a few lofty goals for my site last month with my 1 year create-a-versary. Many of these under the presumption that my job search would continue to have bleak outcomes and I would remain unemployed. However, this ended up somehow NOT being the case, despite the abysmal job market for many others my age.
I have secured a position! A far more technical one than I ever would have imagined myself in, but honestly a dream job for me. I get to work IN TECH (my long-term career goal), with STATS (my favorite subject in my educational endeavors), and as an… ENGINEER? Which, to me, is a huge curveball, seeing as I have a BUSINESS degree. I guess keeping all A’s, skipping a few grades, and a tinge of nepotism can actually get you somewhere in this day and age. I feel incredibly lucky for this opportunity and am super excited to start working in June.
Job Market Rant
Before I get into the big ‘catch’ surrounding my position, I need to express my frustrations on the job search process in 2026, because holy hell is it abysmal.
Before I got my offer, I was spending at least 2 hours a day applying to positions (filtering out if i actually fit the requirements, tailoring resumes for the positions, writing cover letters), getting ~10 a day done. I started tracking them near the end of my search, and out of 200 applications I had gotten 3 interviews and 7 rejections. This was with a 3.94 GPA, project experience, and networking with people in companies to vouch for me on some applications. I actually felt so hopeless.
This doesn’t even mention the SCAM jobs that I would accidentally apply to, devil corps who make you do door-to-door sales commission roles after shipping you off to an unfamiliar state, MLMs who set up a huge zoom interview to make it seem ‘legit’, companies who just wanted you to work for them for free as an ‘interview’, and to top it all off the multitude of fake postings just sitting there to harvest your data. The amount of spam calls I would receive just for applying to positions is ridiculous, and the spam emails still haven’t stopped despite clicking the ‘UNSUBSCRIBE’ button countless times.
In a recent report from the Strada Institute for the Future of Work and the Burning Glass Institute, they found that 52% of graduates with only a bachelor’s degree end up underemployed a year after getting their diploma. That is, they work in jobs that don’t typically require a college degree. Ten years on, that number only drops to 45%.
That is a depressing statistic. I know so many people in my degree programs, or just other peers I’ve met in college STRUGGLING right now, even if they worked their ass off.
I can acknowledge that the only reason I managed to find this position is because of the tinge of nepotism in the networking involved. Which is so sad. It shouldn’t be that only the already fortunate get opportunities to advance in life. Especially when the wealthiest 1% held about $55 trillion in assets in the third quarter of 2025; roughly equal to the wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans combined.
The ‘Catch’
You may have noticed me setting myself expansive goals, rearing into development head-first, followed by what only can be described as ZERO commits to my site’s repo.
This is because my job offer came with the news that I would be moving literally all the way to the other side of my country, from the west to the east coast. This will be my first move away from home, as I’ve previously just been around a 30 minute drive from my parents, meaning I could just go over whenever I had a problem or just wanted to spend time with my family.
Any free time I was previously spending coding this site has instead been temporarily allocated to planning my move. Researching local DMV stuff ill have to do, actually transferring my cars title fully to me (instead of being split between me and my parents), researching apartments, figuring out how to get my stuff from here to there, shopping for furniture, getting my referrals for specialty doctor care, scouring the internet for reviews on good non-specialty doctors in the area, and oh so much more…
I know NOBODY where I am moving to, and frankly that terrifies me. I know I will figure it out, I always manage to do so, but actually being on my own is a scary thought to reckon with. I will be leaving my girlfriend, my friends, and my family behind in exchange for a career. At least I think this is literally my dream job though. Should be worth it, cause working minimum wage at McDonalds as the alternative sounded like such bleak outcome for the $30k I blew on my degree.
I am also a bit terrified of being so young through all of this, and I’m sure that won’t help much with my social life. Cause wdym I have a bachelors degree, will be living completely on my own (a 48+ hour drive from my own family), and am not even 21 yet. I have already come to terms with the fact that I will be the youngest one at my company, and I just already know I’m gonna have to turn down getting drinks with my coworkers. I know I can still talk to my friends online. But it isn’t the same, and with the difference in time-zones I likely wont be able to talk to them much anyways.
Hoping my girl will be able to join me out here on the east coast once she graduates. Thankfully I convinced her early in her college career to take some extra classes in the summertime, so she is graduating a semester early. Should be only 6 months (ish) by myself. We are going to attempt long distance, but I already know I’m really going to miss her. Going from living with her to being a 6 hour plane flight away is a LOT.
Wish me luck!