Unemployed for Three Years

Introduction

It has been a very difficult few years for working people, especially in information technology. For about the past fifteen years, information technology jobs were considered stable, but that seems to be no longer the case for the foreseeable future. Many experienced people are getting laid off and unable to find work. There are many fresh graduates who are not even being given a chance to prove themselves. Ironically, I changed careers in software engineering very soon after I graduated because I could not find work for over three years. Note that one of those years included getting a computer science degree, but I was applying to jobs the whole time. In light of all this, I felt I could share what I learned from my experiences, so you may be better able to overcome the challenges in your own life.

The Decision

In the late 2000s I was living in Arizona and I had important decisions to make. Where should I go to college, and what should I major in? I really wanted to go somewhere far away, but I got a good scholarship at Arizona State and my mom really wanted me to avoid as much debt as possible, which was very good advice, so I ended up going to Arizona State. As for my major, I picked chemical engineering for three reasons:

1. I like chemistry.
2. I like math.
3. It sounded like a major for smart people.

For the record, these are bad reasons to pick a major. If I had to do it all over again, I would have looked at what jobs I could see myself doing and worked backwards from there. Where I grew up, it was an achievement to simply get into a college, let alone an engineering college with a difficult major. I figured once I graduated I would be on easy street. I would have a high‑paying job and would not have to worry about money again. After all, I believed that if I was smart enough to be a chemical engineer, then everyone would be willing to pay top dollar for my services. I am sure plenty of you are laughing now, but we all were teenagers once.

College

Getting a degree in chemical engineering turned out to be, unsurprisingly, hard. I had to spend all my time studying and going to classes. When I slacked a little bit, my classes were not forgiving. I got my first and only D in fluid mechanics and had to retake it because I was not studying as hard as I could. Getting a degree in chemical engineering was very good for developing a resiliency to failure. Almost every test felt like I was studying for a final, and I got less than 50% on many tests too. I was forced to feel dumb and incompetent at math and science, a feeling I never had in high school, but I bounced back every time.

Finding Jobs

Internships

While in school, I did not get any industry internships. This was probably because I did not know how to prepare well for interviews, and I also had a hard time getting interviews at all because I did not have a well‑designed resume. Fortunately, I was able to get a job working in a research lab by going door‑to‑door and knocking on professors’ doors asking if they had openings. It should have been a lesson to me that getting to know people in person is the best way to find work, but, unfortunately, that was a lesson I would have to learn later.

Entry Level

In my senior year of school, I started applying to full‑time entry‑level jobs. I began to get nervous because I was not hearing back from most of them. I was also hurting my chances by applying mostly to Arizona jobs. Keep in mind that chemical engineers are mostly employed by oil, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical companies, which Arizona does not have many of. I really should have applied to oil companies in the southeast, but I didn’t want to live there. Fortunately, I was able to get a job doing consulting work for municipal landfills in Arizona. It was not a bad job, but it was not for me.

The Big Move

In the mid-2010s, my wife got a job in New York. I was very happy because I had the chance to change jobs into something I would enjoy. But a few months into the move, I still could not find work. I was applying for hundreds of jobs, but I didn’t hear back from most of them. There would be the occasional interview here and there, but for the most part, I heard nothing from the companies I applied to. It was around this time I started to go into a depression, which made me perform even worse on the interviews I did get. To keep my mind off of my problems, I started to code. There were many days I did not want to get myself out of bed, but programming was my escape. It was the one thing I could do at home to keep my mind fresh. It was great for building my confidence since I could see I was getting better, and I had the talent. After about a year of not getting a job I ended up enrolling in an accelerated online one year computer science program.

Majoring in Computer Science

Getting my degree in computer science was pretty easy. I found all the good study habits and problem-solving skills I learned in chemical engineering easily translated to programming. If you are interested in seeing how I think software engineering can learn from chemical engineering you can take a look at my blog posts “The Factorio Architecture” and “Data Transport Phenomena”. Anyway, as I progressed through my major I was intimidated by how difficult it was for me to get a job. I kept worrying that I would never get another job again. I thought people would assume there was something wrong with me since no one wanted to hire me. After a year, I graduated with my degree in computer science. I had some hope that it would be easier to find a job, but I was in for a surprise.

Getting Jobs as a Programmer

I had a hard time letting go of being a chemical engineer. I did not realize it at the time, but being a chemical engineer was a part of my identity. It was something I was proud to be, and I felt like I was giving up on myself by switching careers. I kept applying to programming jobs which were more scientific in nature, and prominently displayed the fact that I was a chemical engineer. In retrospect, that really hurt my job prospects because I could not commit to being a programmer. I wanted to find a way back into chemical engineering, and I could not let it go. After another year of looking for work, I was in a deep depression. I really started to believe that this was never going to end. I lacked any understanding of how I could get myself out of this situation.

Eventually, I had an interview with a coding boot camp company that would train you and then have you work as a consultant for one of their clients. The interview was on Wall Street in Downtown Manhattan. Foolishly, I decided to drive in rush hour traffic to Lower Manhattan because I was worried that I wouldn’t successfully navigate public transit. I know it is silly, but I rarely used public transportation in Arizona, and I was intimidated. The stress of driving during rush hour and the anxiety of knowing I had to perform well on the interview was a terrible combination, to say the least. I did poorly on my interviews, but there was one old man who noticed I was nervous and asked me bluntly, “Why don’t you work as a chemical engineer? You should be able to easily get a good job, and our company is going to take about half of your salary for itself.” I told him that I was desperate, and I needed to get a job. The next day after the interviews, I got a call informing me that I didn’t pass, but there was one person who interviewed me who thought I should be given another chance, it was the old man. I was given a phone interview a few days later, and I was able to pass it. It’s something I will never forget. When I was extremely depressed and at my lowest, someone took a chance on me. I assume many people reading this have been in a similar spot where they were given a chance, and that’s all they needed to pick themselves back up. Again, if you are a manager like me, don’t forget that some people are dealing with a lot when they interview with you, so please don’t be unnecessarily hard on them. I personally remember I can have that kind of positive impact on someone’s life even if it’s as simple as allowing someone to interview again. I can’t thank that old man enough for what he did for me and my career.

Finally Getting Interviews

The nice thing about working for the consulting agency was that I had interview after interview. I got rejected a lot, but the fear and anxiety of interviewing slowly went away. I began to not put as much pressure on myself because I knew there would be other interviews. Instead of feeling like I needed to get the job every time I interviewed, I started to focus on something I could control. When I went to every interview, I made it my goal to make it the hardest “no” the hiring manager had given. When I had this shift in mindset, I started getting to the final rounds more often. I believe this was due to me not coming off as depressed and feeling more confident that I had some control over the situation. To this day there are jobs I was rejected for where I think the hiring manager was being too cautious, but I achieved my goal of making the “no” very hard on them and so it doesn’t bother me as much. Interviewing so much also taught me about how to conduct interviews when I became a manager. Just like candidates don’t always prepare well for interviews, there are interviewers who do not prepare at all for interviews. I noticed some managers would ask me very relevant questions while others would ask questions they definitely googled ten minutes before the interview. Because of this, I always prepare well before interviewing someone. Not only is it good because I am able to evaluate a candidate’s skills better, but also I am obviously very aware of how big of a deal interviews can be for a candidate and I want to prove to them that I respect their time. After a few months of constantly interviewing, I finally was able to get my first software engineering job. I could not believe it! I somehow made it! Not only that, but I finally had a chance to get my life back on track.

The First Programming Job

My first programming job was nothing special. It was a full stack web development job. When I first arrived, I assumed I would be one of the bad developers since I had gotten so many rejections, but it turned out not to be the case. It turned out that all of that practice I had done while I was unemployed had paid off in a massive way. I did not have a lot of experience on paper, but I had made so many side projects while not working that I was able to get up to speed fairly quickly. I even found out that I am much better at software engineering than chemical engineering. It was at this point that it had finally clicked for me, it was not a technical skill problem I had when it came to interviews, but I was terrible at understanding how the whole hiring process worked. As ridiculous as it may sound, I always assumed that applying for thousands of jobs online and having a good enough resume would eventually get me a job. I lacked the creativity and insight to know more effective ways to get a job. I think what was the main problem for me not seeing this is that I was too depressed to rethink what I was doing.

Lessons of Long Term Unemployment

It still hurts me to this day to reflect on the three “lost” years of my career. Years that I spent nearly every day in front of a computer screen either playing video games, working on school work, applying for jobs, or working on side projects. As terrible as it feels to reflect, the pain made me want to learn from my mistakes, so I could be better prepared to handle a similar situation should it ever arise which is a situation many of you reading probably have yourself in currently. So with that in mind, what lessons have I learned?

1. Take Good Care of Your Health

   I was not taking care of my physical and mental health. I was losing the battle to get a job before it ever began. Since my long term unemployment I have been exercising daily while not pushing myself so hard that it causes injury. I used to only be able to handle working out for twenty minutes a day, but over the course of years I was able to work my way up to an hour a day. This obviously has improved my physical health, but it also seemed to greatly improve my mental health including anxiety and depression. I’m obviously not a medical expert, so it’s best to ask a medical professional, but if you’re going through a tough time in your life then you might want to see if exercising daily gives you the strength to get through the day.

2. Connect with People

   When I was unemployed I felt like I needed to spend every minute of my day in my apartment looking for work or getting better at writing code. I isolated myself. My social skills regressed which in turn made me perform worse on interviews. I was lucky to have my wife. If I was single, then I think I could only imagine how much worse my depression would have gotten. These days I make a deliberate effort to see friends outside of work. This, in addition to exercise, has made a huge difference to my mental health. Having good friends makes life a lot more fun to live.

3. Always Be Networking

   When you fall on hard times, having a strong network increases your odds of getting a job. When I was going through unemployment, I thought of it as a slimy sales person thing to do. I didn’t want to bother random people for a job since I felt it was an annoying thing to do, and I was right, it is annoying for strangers to ask you for jobs. If instead you ask a friend if they have any job openings, you are much more likely to get the job because you will have a strong referral. No one likes having friends who are just using people and the same is true for your network. These days I go to programming meetups and conferences even though I am happy with my current job. I do this because I want to be a part of a group of friends that look out for each other if they fall on hard times. Having friends in the industry means that I learn a lot about how to be better at my job as well. When I network, I always tell myself I am just going to have a nice conversation with a friendly stranger. If nothing more comes of it, I at least had a pleasant conversation. Since my long term unemployment, I have gotten jobs just by making friends.

4. Be Willing To Train And Develop People

   This one is more for managers, but there were a few times when I barely got rejected for a job simply because I did not quite have the skills the hiring manager was looking for. It can be scary, but when I have to make hiring decisions I am okay with someone who doesn’t check all the boxes for a position. The most important question I ask myself is “Does this person want to be here?” If they don’t, then they will fail, but if they do, then they’ll learn quickly.

5. Take Good Care of Your Finances

   One of the best decisions my wife and I made while I was unemployed was to be good with our money. We avoided debt the whole time I was unemployed. If we were bad with money then it would have put a severe strain on our marriage. When you go through good times, make sure you save. Bad times are easier to get through when you can afford to buy your way out of problems. We were able to afford my school and me taking a low paying software engineering job because of how careful we are with money.

6. Be Willing To Let Go Of A Career

   I could not let go of being a chemical engineer. I wanted to be able to leave it on my own terms, but I was essentially forced out. In my interviews and in my resume I kept bringing up that background because it was a part of me. It held me back. These days I’m still proud of my chemical engineering degree, but I use it to help me be a better software engineer and not dwell on what could have been.

I want to end with this. No one’s life goes the way they planned it. This is okay. It’s a part of life. I had to learn the hard way that you have to give up on things even if that wasn’t a part of your plan. I am in a much better place in life because I switched careers. If I knew in high school how my life would turn out, including my period of unemployment, I would be very proud of myself. I have become fearless when it comes to getting rejected and learning knew things. When I go through difficult times now they always seem so much easier to overcome than what I had to deal with when I was going through long term unemployment. By reflecting on my mistakes and growing from them, I became a much healthier and happier person, but I still wish I did not need to learn the hard way. If you are going through a hard time yourself with unemployment, learn from my mistakes including especially excellent care of your mental health.

Recommended Resources

1. What Color Is Your Parachute?

   Talks about how to optimize finding and getting a job you enjoy.

2. How to Win Friends & Influence People

   Talks about how to make friends and improve your social skills. It turns out genuinely caring about and being interested in other people is a good start.

3. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

   As you might expect, there are a lot of expletives in this book, but it is a fun read. It talks about how to come up with values for yourself. It’s definitely worth the read if you are going through a difficult time.

4. Exchange-Traded Funds for Dummies

   Talks about how to invest in ETF’s and focuses mostly on index funds. I found the advice to be easy to understand and not a scam which is hard to find in finance books.