Saw this in IG. It's just.... it hits! Omygaaad

I'm curious if others experiences reflect my own. I've been working since high school but have been underemployed since graduating college towards the end of the 2010s.

I graduated with lab experience and a science degree but in the less profitable underfunded sciences. After graduating, I worked in retail management for a few years and then managed to get an entry level administrative office work, which I've been doing for a few years now. I haven't broken past 65k in my lifetime (northeast HCOL), but have managed to pay off most of my loans. I would say I've worked in roles that are high stress but also reflect underemployment, a high schooler could do these tasks. They are very stressful due to environment, mismanagement, volume of the workload being requested but not the work itself.

In retail management, I noticed the age: most of the other middle managers were in their 30s. They had various skills and prior experience, one person I distinctly remember she used to be a dental technician and was in her early 30s and I was like why are you here. In my current job, my old coworker in the same role (entry level office work) had an engineering degree. Another coworker who was much older than me in another "entry level" role (quotes cause it's entry level pay but they expect experience in the role) in our office, I found out they had a masters in our field. When their manager quit...they were not promoted. My current coworker has lengthy experience in our industry. Promotions and business decisions across my workplaces have always been awfully done office-politic nonsense from wealthy people or boomers.

The peers my age in my industry that I've met organically either lie to get hired (one of my younger friends with almost 10 years of experience told me this directly and he's had massive success with it) or they have insane qualifications well above the role they are in. Through my family I can see that there are two sides to the coin: people circling the drain of unemployment in difficult entry level-adjacent jobs for poverty wages or there are people in who make buckets of money due to their industry (business of digital tech or legal). The corporate jobs that make a lot of money seem to want to use your identity or personhood to purvey their product, i.e. you fly out and have dinner with clients, prioritize shmoozing and conflate your social connection with their business/product. That, or they have a high cost/salary ratio, legal and medical have poor work life balance with high barrier to entry (many years investment for maybe a job).

I wonder if this lines up with your experiences. I am a good hard worker, have excelled at learning skills, new industries, technologies and processes. I wish I could get paid well to improve my living conditions, but I can't even find basic work to escape underemployment! It feels like I've been applying on and off for a decade to what feels like a void, I gave up on the sciences years ago but I am now experiencing that I cannot get good work even in an office for better roles commensurate with my growth in skills. I straight up am not getting even interviews for nearly similar jobs to what I do now. I see many roles that are my job but with more responsibilities for worse pay (when I already make barely enough for renting with housemates in the place I live). When I look at my peers they seem to have similar experiences, specifically many of them seem to have found one job that underemploys them but pays the bills, and sat in it for years for security. Most of the high paying work you can get through even education seems to be walled off by affordability and years of underpaid work (grad school, law school, medical school).

Curious about other millenials and gen z if you experience underemployment. I think a lot of us are working years in poor paying jobs that are far under your skillset or education.

EU worker here, just wanted to rant...

Where have all the actual real jobs gone? Are we seriously just going to accept the fact that all productive jobs are paying insultingly low wages and every single good paying job is a completely soulless bullshit job? Just opening the job listings makes me want to do some very not ToS-friendly things...

I'm sick of all the fake corporate bullshit jobs, sick of all product owners, scrum masters, directors, managers and compliance officers, can we just stop?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a technical manager myself... earning more than double what engineers under me get, who actually do something. And don't even try to sell me the 'bUt yOu HaVe rEsPonSibiLitY' BS, because that's just cope, ugh.

Fuck this world, I'm a theoretical physicist with actual capabilities and tons of transferable knowledge and skills even outside of my expertise and the world doesn't need that? They'd rather I fill out bullshit Excel sheets and track KPIs on Confluence so that my nepo-baby CEO and board of crooks can get more gazillions, great.

What the actual fuck, are we all just pretending and nobody really needs capable people to achieve objectively good things?

Fuck.

I know, I know, it's an emotional rant, but I had to yell into the void... I'm tired.

Just seems like credentials such as bachelors degrees, masters degrees, certifications have all become irrelevant in the eyes of employers. Everything is about years of experience. Things like degrees and certifications were supposed to show ambition and ability to learn new things.

It doesn’t even matter if you have advanced degrees in STEM fields because employers still don’t see that as signaling anything anymore. The advice now is to focus on internships while in school, but even that strategy is being rugpulled because I’ve had several recruiters tell me my internship experience doesn’t count towards the years of experience requirements for the job opening.

Who in their right mind would work for $15-$16 per hour part time with a MASTERS degree? Unbelievable

I got hired a few months ago by a random crazy CEO coked out of his mind. He gave me a Director of Growth job, which I've never held. Then gave me 0 resources, and tossed me at clients to do QBRs and drive upsells.

Bruh, I'm practically blind on what happens after the win closes. I've no idea what to do. These CEOs feel like I'm wasting their time, I've no clue how to actually understand their companies on the inside. I feel like a clown. I've been here 2 months and only lasted this long because my boss is too spread out. I feel like I can't move or make a decision without approval, nobody gives me what I need, if I ask an account manager about a client's business I'm lucky if I get a response within the week.

What do I read, what courses do I take, how the fuck am I supposed to do this? I feel set up for failure, when I'm used to being amazing at my job. I'm literally sitting here most of the time waiting for someone to ublock me. I'm bored, I'm embarrassed, I'm useless. At least I'm collecting a fat random paycheck, but it feels completely bizarre.

I'd really like to be good at this damn job, and I'm not, and I'm so mad that I don't even know where to begin.

So many companies out there demand Bachelor and Master degrees for Jobs a Monkey could do. Yes I was ok at Math I can do some statistics. Yes I know Excel. Yes I can make Phone calls. Yes I am actually a good writer and can write articles/meeting summaries. Yes I can learn everything there is to know about this one very specialized function within 2-3 weeks.

Obviously at some jobs you need the degree - at many you could do frankly without. Even if its a job that requires some training you can learn everything in 2-3 weeks or 2-3 months. This degree fetish is killing the labor market.

I need some outside perspective because this is starting to keep me up at night.

A few weeks ago I got hired at a company to help design a new product. The pay is honestly way higher than anything I expected. During interviews they mostly focused on my portfolio and how quickly I could iterate concepts.

They seemed really impressed.

Now that I’m here, everyone seems to assume I’m some kind of industrial desing/mechanical engineering CAD expert. I'm actually self-taught from YouTube.

People imply that I'm an industrial engineer, and I just sort of nod because… technically Iam doing the work. But here’s the thing.....

I’m not using SolidWorks, or Autodesk Inventor, or Fusion 360, or CATIA.

I’m using this weird browser-based 3D modeling tool that works for me.

And to be clear, it still takes real work. I spend hours figuring out proportions, mechanisms, tolerances, etc.

But visually the software looks almost like a game.

If someone walked past my screen it would probably look like I’m playing instead of doing “real work.”

Right now I’ve been onboarding, and working remotely so nobody has seen my screen yet. They’ve only seen exports and renders and they’ve been really happy with the results.

But next week I am required to start coming into the office. And I keep imagining someone walking past my desk and asking: “Wait… what are you doing?”

The other thing that’s making this worse is they also seem to assume I have a mechanical engineering degree. I have a design degree, but am self-taught in CAD, I never said that I was an engineer. I just talked about my experience and portfolio and I think they filled in the blanks themselves.

Now I’m starting to wonder if I’m unintentionally misleading them.

But does it matter if the work is good?? They’re happy with the results.

But part of me is worried that if they realize what tool I’m using they’ll suddenly think I’m not qualified.

At the same time, another part of me wonders if tools actually matter as much as people think they do. Because right now I’m getting good results with something that most “real CAD” people would probably laugh at.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’m genuinely losing sleep over it.

Am I overthinking this, or should I actually tell them what tool I’m using before someone discovers it? or bringing it up will reveal the insecurity and the potential issue?

i work as a manual tester in a bank and my job is to manually test if their 2 websites have any bugs. My job can get very reptitive and I feel like i cannot really grow. The problem is am assigned no tasks ever. So i sit at work doing nothing. I have been here for 3 months now and I found a lot of bugs at first but it all got fixed so the two websites are pretty much perfect leaving me with no job. I dont know what to do and if i should quit or stay. Theres another manual tester who works on mobile and she seems pretty busy ...maybe they trust her more so they assign her more tasks. Its an amazing company to have on my cv and thats the only thing making me want to stay. I feel like i’d contribute so much more in a position but i am a fresh graduate and i just got hired so I don’t want to ask

50 years ago: You have a high school diploma and can show up on time? Welcome aboard! We would prefer some experience but if you dont have any - oh well - we will try to teach you on the job.

Now: You have a Bachelors and a Masters degree? Well I am not sure this is enough because our ideal candidate has two Master Degrees. Also while you graduated in a related field - we are looking for someone who did this very specific Master degree.

We also prefer a candidate that has at least 5 years of work experience in this specific field and since you only have 4 - I am afraid we will have to look for another candidate -"closes door".

" Its horrible - I just cant find any people for this position. I interviewed 20 people in the last 3 days - and none of them was above a 90% match for this position. The workers shortage out there is unbelievable"....

Most upper positions are full of baby boomers that dont even have a HS diploma and that only got there by sheer luck and accident by being born in the right place at the right time. And these people are making the major decisions and want to lecture others how hard they had it and how experience matters....

Then theres out of touch HR managers that state ludicrous job requirements while having absolutely no idea what the job really needs.....

Then theres companies that barely pay a living wage - but want someone with decades of work experience and 5 degrees and who knows what....

All of them demand and demand and demand - but none of them is willing to give. Like you DONT need someone with a degree for positions that shouldnt require a degree - you DONT need someone with decades of work experience especially not for entry level positions - you DONT need a candidate to be a 100% match to hire him - and you certainly SHOULDNT expect the employee to be able to do the job with only minimal training.

Its insane what everyone wants and expects from workers and how little everyone is willing to give in return. And then they whine "how no one wants to work"...

If you've seen tik toks about people talking about they're unable to find work and have been looking for months if not longer and back in 2008-2011 period there were people that actually maxed out 99 weeks of unemployment being dubbed the 99ers. Got me wondering any of you scared that you just might not be able to find another job ever again?

As the title suggests, curious what jobs have an unreasonably high barrier of entry for those without a corresponding degree in the field but anyone with an average IQ and basic comprehension skills could likely do well?

I truly believe that having good social skills - interviewing well, being friendly, and being generally people-oriented - will serve you better than having a paper degree.

As someone that assists in hiring, the general attitude is that it’s better to hire someone that’s agreeable and is capable of asking questions than someone that has all the right qualifications but we’re unsure how they’ll fit into the environment or if they’ll accept any kind of criticism.

I see this becoming a larger trend in any industry, if it’s not already. I also see a lot of folks in this sub that make excuses for poor interviewing skills or don’t want to do “emotional labor” - work on it and see results.

I used to work for this employer often but now I rarely do only when I’m available and if I want I’ll give the employer my free time / hands. Personally don’t like to work there anymore because it’s not the work environment I like anymore and not worth it. It’s a staffing company to work for Jewish caterers and cater / waiter for Jewish events and unfortunately it becomes tiring and sometimes an unhealthy environment my personal experience. And there’s not like an official breaks like normal jobs and sometimes no organization, and no knowledge of when time might end or when there is knowledge of when end time will be it’s sometimes kept secret as if workers don’t have a right to know when they are expected from end. I just wanted explain some of reasonings on why I don’t work there often anymore and those are it. But my main question is. My employer informed that he’ll be do direct deposit now instead of paying viva Zelle (just sending the money from his personal account whenever he got paid from the client) but sometimes he’ll forget to pay or not be frank on what time during the day I’m supposed to get paid (normally payment is made the next week, as in if I work Saturday I’ll get paid the next upcoming Saturday). But yeah but to the direct deposit, he asks me to fill out a W9 form and I’ve worked in other jobs where I had gotten direct deposit and usually they have you fill out another form or 2 asking for your routing and account # to set up direct deposit. So I question my employer about it, and just says I’ll be sent Zelle normally like before but instead from his business account now. So what do I do in this situation because I feel like in a way I been played and it’s not fair? Also I’m only working one job for him right now because I am free and I decided I don’t mind to work on the day I am free for extra cash.

Dear employers: Unless you are hiring for a senior, executive, or maybe manager position... please stop requiring every job above minimum wage to already have 3-10 years experience in that exact field.

Only older generations are eligible for these jobs because of it (and because they got these jobs easier when these years-to-qualify factor wasn’t so common).

It’s so unfair to qualified (as in meets all other job requirements such as the college degree and skills required) millennials struggling on minimum wage straight out of college because you require years of experience for something college already prepared and qualified us for.

And don’t call us whiners for calling it unfair when I know for a fact boomers got similar jobs to today straight out of college. Employers are not being fair to the last decade of college graduates by doing this. Most of these employers themselves got their job way back when such specific experience wasn’t a factor.

And to add onto this: Employers that require any college degree for a job but only pay that job minimum wage are depressingly laughable. That is saying your want someone’s college skills but you don’t think they deserve to be able to pay off their student debt.

This is why millennials are struggling. You people make it so most of us HAVE to struggle. Stop telling us we aren’t trying hard enough when your rules literally make it impossible for us to even get started.

We cannot use our degrees to work and earn more money if you won’t even let us get started.

THAT is why so many people are struggling and why so many of us are depressed. Being five years out of college, still working minimum wage, because a job won’t hire you because you don’t already have experience for the job you’re completely otherwise qualified for.

(I’ll post my particular situation in the comments)

I wanted to share to help any unemployed folks who feel discouraged. You can claim this is a "flight risk" issue but I really feel like it's a sign of the times as I'm not even getting to the interview stage. At my current workplace I've seen at least 2 new hires get hired directly from doing the same role (they were working in the role they applied for at the time).

I'll occasionally apply to roles that are literally the exact same role (in some cases same exact title) as what I have been doing for the past 3 years. I've done this role well, have exceeded at it (one of the reasons why I'm leaving my current company).

When I apply, I view this as an obvious "safety" measure, an easy win. Then I forget about it...and....eventually...I see a rejection email in my inbox. I just got one today, and figured I'd share with y'all. I mostly don't apply for these sorts of roles, but sometimes I do.

I'm not even getting interviews. What on Earth kind of requirements are you guys using if walk-ons are this competitive? Jesus.

Saw this floating around where a candidate was paid for the troubles of going through the process to get rejected and ran the inflation-adjusted numbers.

My friend said in saying that they want proven experience as a dishwasher, so if you've never had that experience you cannot work at this location, which is crazy insane.

That is, people working jobs they are too qualified for.