Your heart is in the right place, but I think “no regrets” is an insane take.

As a fellow unemployed CS grad, I once thought software engineering was my best shot at a middle class life.

Now after 5 years of unemployment, the financial reality is setting in. I will never be able to afford a home. I will never be able to afford a family. I will never be able to afford retirement. I will never be able to afford a vacation. I will never be able to afford most things that make life worth living.

I thought I was going to be an engineer. I thought I was going to be a professional. Now I’m fasting at the end of every month bc food stamps always run out, and the electric company is threatening to shut off my power.

Choosing CS is deeply regrettable.

Lol well I guess it’s easy to get confused. I was submitting job applications to write computer applications.

I was submitting app apps.

Over the years I have tried a handful of subfields.

I always felt particularly adept at assembly language programming, so I had a couple projects doing that, and applied to every relevent job I could find.

As a math nerd I enjoyed data science and machine learning, I had quite a few projects like a neutral network from scratch in Matlab, and many data analysis and computer vision projects in R. I was always aware this field is very competitive and my chances were low here.

I had a friend get a job in the biomedical field, so I tried to follow that, I have Python projects doing basic gene sequencing and analysis, even a really cool project that replicated evolution.

Another friend landed a government job, so I followed his advice and got some security certs.

I also had smaller projects and attempts at databases, finance programming, and video games.

There was even a class action suit against UW for their negligence during covid. I guess the case is already settled, so I’m looking forward to my meager restitution check.

And I actually feel lucky that most of my serious classes were complete before Covid lockdown, bc the quality of education during covid was absolutely pathetic.

I’m not sure I was misled, what you said was explicitly taught to us at University. I think my degree is the #1 thing on my resume, but of course I also had projects, a few certificates, and multiple attempts at more specific fields.

Back when I was applying, my GitHub activity was pretty solid green.

You’re right that my time was wasted, and knowing the outcome, I wish I could go back and do more project work before trying to enter the job market.

But I don’t think that is a financial possibility for most Americans. Going to school drained my savings, when I graduated I had almost nothing except for school debt, medical debt, and high rent. Saying “I’m gonna take off and work for free for a year” never really seemed like a possibility.

And as for my apps, the 3000 were not shotgun, they were all personalized, custom cover letters, keywords, etc. It only averaged out to 3/day. I did not track the apps where I used AI to submit them- the AI ones were definitely shotgun.

I fled from the Midwest because there were no good jobs outside of the oil and gas industry, and ended up in the Seattle area. Saving up and moving cost 2 years of my life, Im not sure I could do it again.

…and I did apply to some jobs on the west coast, although most of my apps were around Seattle.

But please tell me, where should I have went instead of Seattle?

No I have a spreadsheet with 3200 lines of submitted applications, which includes both entry level positions and internships. Many with customized cover letters.

When you do the math its not even a strong pace, only about 3/day over 3 years. On a good day I was submitting 12-15.

I even applied to some famous ones, like the time Microsoft opened up 30 entry level positions and received 100,000 applications in 24 hours. It is rumored thet they realized they cannot process 100k apps, so they threw them all away and hired internally.

Whether they actually threw them out or not, that one always sticks with me. Submitting 100k apps is literally a lifetime of human work. All of that wasted effort is a form of social murder in my opinion.

I graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the University of Washington in 2020, during the height of Covid.

After over 3000 handcrafted applications (and many more AI-written ones), I have never been offered a job in the field.

I know of multiple CS graduates who have killed themselves, and so many who are living with their parents and working service/retail.

I think the software engineering rush of the early 2000s will be looked back upon like the San Francisco gold rush in 1949.

I like how she tags Neil DeGrasse Tyson as if the funny haha tv scientist podcast man is out there writing budget proposals for CERN or Fermilab

Someone driving or operating machinery high is just as dangerous as someone driving drunk

You have a source or anything to back this idea up?

I delivered pizzas in downtown Seattle for a couple years, and most of my coworkers were constantly stoned. Many weren’t just hitting pens or joints, they would hit a fat dab with a torch lighter and then hop in their vehicle and make a delivery.

Both years I worked there, our delivery team got an annual award for having 0 vehicle accidents.

Obviously this is anecdotal, but if you run this same situation back with alcohol instead of weed, I am confident there would have been many accidents.

corner a pedo

And since these are internet vigilante kids with no oversight, they will inevitably corner some non-pedos too.

Put yourself in that situation- a couple teenagers with cameras approach you on the street and start accusing you of some of the sickest crimes imaginable. Even though the accusation is false, this has the potential to ruin your career, your relationships, your entire life.

I’m not sure how anyone would respond, or should respond, but I can definitely see how people might resort to violence when falsely accused of this horrible shit on camera.

Alright I watched your video. I agree it is a problem that a small subsect of secular humanism has been entangled with “anti-wokeness”, Trumpism, and fascism. Many of the figureheads of the atheist movement in the past two decades have become part of the alt-right pipeline, and that is a tragedy.

But as your video readily admits, the vast majority of atheists, anti-theists, and secular humanists are on the left. I was involved with the Freedom from Religion Foundation for a decade or so, and my personal experience was that nearly everyone there was on the left(even in a heavily rightwing state).

I think you are falling into the pitfall, judging a large and diverse group for the misdeeds of a small subsect of that group.

As for “not thinking of religious people as people”, if you would personally know me you would understand this is a laughable notion. I am surrounded by religion and religious people everyday, their views and beliefs are thrust upon me often, and I always respond with respect, very rarely will I offer a counter argument.

But I am still of the conviction that religious people are victim to religion. I believe my cousins, who do not allow their children to see any doctor, are victims of religion. I think any rational person would agree that their young child, recently ill for a month but not allowed to see a doctor, is a victim of religion.

And as for marginalization, I do believe religion should be marginalized. Just like I believe the alt-right and fascist movements should be marginalized. Good things are good, and bad things are bad, and I am convinced religion is bad. But let’s be honest, the power dynamics are heavily weighted on the other side. Religious people are marginalizing atheists, fascists are marginalizing leftists.

As for “intellectually engaging with their position”, I would love to. My experience has been that very few religious people are willing to intellectually engage in the subject. Despite this, I have had many intellectual and respectful discussions on religion, and I appreciate that you are giving me one more.

But if you are so concerned about anti-theism leading to Trumpism, then you should be much more concerned about religion leading people to Trumpism. That correlation is much stronger.

I think my post makes it quite clear that I was not referring to people as diseases, I specifically said that religion is the disease. The people are victims to the disease.

And if it isn’t also obvious, I do consider myself an anti-theist. The overall effect of religion on society is negative, and we would be better off without religion. I don’t see what this has to do with “woke mind virus” nonsense.

Those many “private, personal” benign religious people form a strong foundation upon which the crazies, cults, and conmen build their structures.

In my experience, these benign people are one tragedy away from metastasizing into the malignant religious type.

I have cousins who were benign-religious for most of their life, but after a death in the family they started following a new sect of christianity. Their children have never seen a doctor, nor a vaccine.

I agree people are entitled to their personal freedoms, but we would be much better off as a society if we could educate our way out of the cancer that is religion.

Yes the British film Battle for Haditha received funding from the DoD’s Entertainment Media Office. It is difficult to find any military film that has not been funded in part by this propagada office.

I do have one fact incorrect though, they did not receive millions. It appears they received much less, although I couldnt find an exact number.

But here you are ignoring the thrust of my argument, that the insidious free market propaganda by the US is much more effective than the heavy handed authoritarian propaganda by China. Yes, you can go get an advanced degree and learn about Haditha freely, but that knowledge is effectively prevented from reaching the broader public.

Both US and China actively deny and suppress information. The Chinese method is more authoritarian, the US method is more effective.

I argue this point on another comment in this thread.

Well I thought we were discussing education, but as far as information supression is concerned, I think both countries are heavily supresssing information, but the US method is simply much more effective.

Take for example an event similar in scale to the Tiananmen massacre, the Haditha massacre. The US military actively suppressed all info after it happened, classifying everything related to the killings. The only information from the state dept about this incident were leaks to the press downplaying the severity of the incident. Later, the DoD spends millions funding a Hollywood film to whitewash the incident, focusing on the perspective of the poor sad soldiers who did the massacre.

The result, I would argue, is that the Haditha massacre has been whitewashed, justified, and erased from history much more effectively than the Tiananmen massacre.

So you were left ignorant of the other half of the atrocities I mentioned, just like we suspect Chinese citizens are ignorant of Tiananmen?

I went to high school in North Dakota btw.

I think there are many events in American history that could be analogous to Tiananmen.

Were you ever educated on the 1985 MOVE bombing? The destruction of black wall street? The house un-american activities committee? The battle of Blair Mountain?

Were you ever taught about any of the coups we did to overthrow democratic governments in latin america? The death squads we trained? The authoritarians and fascists we put into power, and the oppression and death they caused?

Or, in general, the 70-or-so countries we invaded since WWII? I think most Americans can only name Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam.

And that’s just the stuff I can name off the top of my head, I’m sure there are countless American atrocities that I am unaware of.

Personally, the American education system taught me none of that. Many of these subjects are not discussed in broad American culture.