That you've cancelled Christmas to collectively endure some sort of misery spiral instead obviously isn't going to help either. What on earth are you thinking?

She's learned this harsh life lesson that the world is unfair later rather than sooner, but she has a long life and career ahead of her. Not being able to get the type of job she wants, for a little while at least, isn't the end of the world.

For what it's worth, my company, a medium-sized business that operates in the cybersecurity space, is stil actively hiring junior staff. Many other companies we work with and compete with are too. Perhaps she needs to cast her net wider than wherever she's currently looking.

IMO the questions you pose are not important at all, and not worth your energy. What practical difference does it make to you and her if it’s due to bad timing or something else? Some junior devs are being hired somewhere and you both should focus your energy on making sure she’s part of that number. Have you shaken all the trees in your network? Does she do side projects that can get her noticed? What about the MIT alum network? That’s what LinkedIn messages and X dms are for? What abt throwing wide the aperture of industry sectors and locations she considers? Is she going to all the meetups? What abt pursuing her own startup idea? I agree with someone else here: AI and YouTube (and X, tbh) make this the very best time to learn or build or promote anything that has ever existed.

I went through an identical experience as your daughter when I graduated in 2000. The only solution is perseverance.

You believed that because you wanted her to be safe. That’s love. And you were working with the information you had. The guilt you’re feeling is its own kind of grief — the loss of being able to protect her through guidance.

You can acknowledge this to her without making it about you. Something like: “I gave you a map that turned out to be incomplete. That wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry.”

That kind of honesty, rather than weakening your relationship, might actually strengthen it. It models that being wrong isn’t the end of the world — and that love doesn’t require being right.

I am similar to your daughter in some ways but much older. Lately, I have felt that I have reached a dead-end in my career (though I am still employed).

I have a few thoughts that might be useful. One is the concept of ikigai: finding the intersection of what you enjoy, what you are good at, and what the world needs. For a long time, it seemed like building software hit all three marks for me, but in the last couple of years, it no longer seems to hit the last one very well.

When I was younger, my reaction to difficult things was to simply try harder. I’d throw myself at the problem repeatedly until it yielded. That can be the right thing to do, but with age I have gained enough wisdom to realize that sometimes it’s better to go after the lower-hanging fruit.

I am not suggesting that your daughter give up, but if I were you, I would help her identify a back-up plan. Help her get excited about the possibilities in case plan A does not work out. If she feels that she has other options, she may regain her confidence regardless of what happens.

Oh, and make sure that she knows how much you love and respect her no matter her job situation.

Merry Christmas.

P.S. Cold applying is probably a waste of time. Too many people are applying using AI bots. Find ways to network with real people if possible. Maybe contact career services at MIT?

Don’t try to reframe it positively yet. Don’t suggest she “pivot to AI” or “try startups.” She knows the tactical advice. What she doesn’t have right now is a felt sense that she still belongs — to her family, to the future, to herself.

The absence of decorations, the quiet — I understand the impulse. But consider: the ritual of showing up for each other despite the pain is itself medicine. Not pretending things are okay. Just being together in the not-okay. It’s different from performing normalcy.

None of the things you listed are signs of merit, they are signs of pedigree. If people recommended them here, they did so in error.

There's certainly a difference between universities, but the most important differentiators are connections (has she exhausted these) and prestige. If those aren't working for her, the only thing left is personal projects. That is the true indicator of merit in the software space.

As for specific advice, your daughter is in a similar situation to me. I graduated thinking I had did all of the right things, and that my degree (mechanical engineering) was some sort of magic ticket. I was unemployed and then underemployed for a year or two. I eventually went to a job fair and got a job as a data analyst then, finally, moved into data engineering.

Reality has shown her that there isn't always a direct path to a goal. Are there other skills she has that she could use to get meaningful or interesting work?

Tell her to explore alternate jobs outside of her field or preferred industry, build up a portfolio of projects on the side to keep her skills sharp, and keep applying to her preferred role, but now at a much slower and deliberate pace.

I did invest my time on more specific technologies, not following the mainstream, I accepted a 35% cut, but on smaller and promising small company that smells like startup, but it's actually an small business sharply focused on some types of customers. No VC funding.

I'm also a father of a daughter and I'm "training" her to understand that she needs to sell something that is not abstract.

As a computer scientist, I still sell implementations in form of code, but I dearly assumed many years ago that this (abstract product X concrete product) could be the difference to put food on my table - and now on my daughter's table - or not.

I'm far from highly successful because I'm still fighting this urge to just focus on code, but luckily that understanding above make me talk to any kind of person that is not a coder as well. Understanding business in general, meet concrete needs on different types of industries and so on.

I'm not from the US, so take that into account. I was near shoring to the US, now I'm doing that, but to the EU. I moved to a different market.

Also I'm fully invested in using AI a lot. With that I feel as a senior dev that indeed I don't need as many juniors as before, and I dearly miss having some junior dev to ask the "dumb" questions that I forgot to ask myself sometimes. AI still does not fill that role.

What helped me with AI is not caring as much about the number of LOC as before, as long I met the product's needs.

I hope you can find some comfort, keep your temper cool, so your daughter can feel that as well. That she has at least someone to hold and float.

My best wishes and I hope that 2026 could bring better luck.

Y’all have each other, and that’s more than many. If celebration is not possible, try to find some joy being together for the holidays. This too shall pass. Wishing the best. Don’t give up.

(When she finds an org and manager where merit is what drives her success, perform to expectations and hold on tight; these opportunities and roles are somewhat rare, imho)

My advice to your daughter: to try to make software into a fun hobby, watch a ton of coding youtube, AI and youtube are tearing down hurdles to learning, make a twitter, talk about your hobby, farm those likes. What were her favorite courses at MIT? it's true that software is increasingly competitive and yet the barriers to becoming competitive are ever lower (FOR those in a supportive environment who can make space to take advantage)

This is grief. Specifically, it’s the grief of losing trust in a covenant she thought existed between her and the world. The isolation, the crying alone, the withdrawal — these aren’t character flaws. They’re the nervous system’s response to having foundational assumptions shattered. Shame makes us hide. And when we believe we did something wrong (even when we didn’t), we hide from the people who love us most.

people get laid off, let go etc

the trick is to bounce back

maybe go for Masters? Phd at MIT?

maybe she can apply to an adjacent job, in qa, product management etc

maybe apply to a job she is over-qualified,

maybe take 1/2 a loaf

when I graduated it was a bad recession, all my friends were not getting jobs,

I stayed in school as long as I could,

then I got first job of testing some phone games with high school dropouts at min wage....I was the one with a grad degree in engineering

I kept applying and I got a job that I was happy

and I didnt have my family, parents, friends etc to cheer me on or I sure was not an MIT smart

Is all about luck and there's only so many seats, you better be born closer to the free ones.

    Start an LLC in your state.  Normally a couple hundred dollars and some paperwork. 

    Create a bank account for the LLC and put a couple hundred dollars in the account. 

    Contribute to Open Source or make an open-source project 

    Make ‘free’ software for yourself, friends and family – something is better than nothing – show and tell 

    Make ‘free as in beer’ software for local business or non-profits 

    Get a job at a local mom and pop outfit, do the job you are hired to do, but also become the ‘IT’ person.  Install software / hardware, do backups, make helpful ‘apps’, automate and innovate 

    All of these will count towards experience when you do get a ‘real’ job, increasing pay range and giving ‘experience’ with ‘x’ technology. 

    Host on a cheap VPS to learn about Linux / system admin, install something like Dokploy (PaaS), configure Traefik (Reverse Proxy / Load Balancing / HTTPS / DNS), then build your own SaaS apps.  Full Stack? 

    CERTS – GCP ACE, CISSP, Azure AI, ChatGPT, etc.... 

    With the help of a good LLM there is no better time to build something when you really have nothing to lose and no family to support, no house payment, etc... 

 

Everyone knows someone who went to school for ‘x’ who is the local bartender or barista. If the new grads decide money now is more important than gaining ‘tech’ experience any way they can then they may never get that job in the ‘x’ degree. Tech includes everything from hardware to software, with more jobs being ‘full stack’ the more you know about the better.

Hoping you and your family the best. There is still time to celebrate Christmas even if dinner is Chinese food and the only gifts are each other.

Ping me on my profile dummy id if you wish. We currently don't have openings in the US, but if there's anything I know in my network, I can push them to take a look.

But on the other hand, software dev seems to be racing in the direction of replacing developers with fungible AI operators. It's too soon to tell how it will end, but whatever labor can replaced or reduced will be. A long-standing equilibrium of labor is gone.

So you can't say this is about merit when so much of the equation depends upon others who many have nothing to do with your daughter.

1) Effort still correlates with outcomes, it's just that there is some random noise in the signal. Maybe moreso in these noisy times.

2) DID any of what she did matter? If she enjoyed it or found it meaningful, then yes. If it was just being "sensible" a.k.a. grinding and bald careerism, then no, even if she weren't laid off.

3) She's young. My first layoff, I took it hard too. By the third or fourth one, I would laugh and look forward to a small vacation of coasting on unemployment.

4) Ordinarily a post-college-age kid with a job is living on her own and you wouldn't have access to her crying moments. And another primary emotion alongside despair would be anxiety about making rent. It's painful to watch your kids suffer, but suffer they will and suffer they must.

5) Continuing from point 2, does she have a meaningful hobby? She needs to start one. If only to provide a break from the unhealthy amount of grinding she sounds like she's doing. Try music, a lot of engineers are good at music. I'm good enough at it that I was once able to support myself on it, and now see my day job as something I can leave, something I tolerate but am too good for. My genius is not defined by it. It's only work.

6) Celebrate Christmas the way all half-assed unprepared people do: Big feast at the Chinese restaurant tonight. Or Thai, I guess is the new Chinese. Pretending everything is okay? Who fucking died? Everything IS okay. A little perspective would go a long way and you're the one who needs to provide it.

I know this is rough advice, but: her approach isn’t working. She should try something different. Stuff is different right now, you/she can’t expect the 2016 playbook to work unchanged in 2026.

I’m not a junior so i’m not sure what to advice specifically, but something other than “the playbook” is needed.

Well, if you say so.

If you're a parent of a recent college grad who is on Hacker News, haven't you been in tech for some time? I would expect your perspective to include experience seeing at least a couple cycles of economic ups and downs.

> It’s Christmas and we aren’t celebrating. No decorations. No pretending things are okay. I’m completely shattered as a parent, mostly because I don’t have answers. I told her for years that merit would protect her. It didn’t.

This is pretty bonkers on multiple levels. IDK what your family's overall situation is, but based on what we can infer, your family is not in economic jeopardy. If I'm mistaken, then I apologize, but it seems you are just one of the many, many families with an unemployed recent college grad, and if you're positing on HN, I assume you and your wife are doing at least adequately.

I don't understand how you, as a grown man, could be under the illusion that "merit would protect her" or that somehow graduating from a good school guarantees someone anything, or how you could lack the perspective that this is temporary and less important than health, family, etc.

Nobody is above broader, universal developments and forces, whether economic vicissitudes or worse (war, societal collapse, etc.) Your arrogance in thinking that "merit" could protect an individual from these things is justly punished.

I also went to a top school, and there is also something to be said about your daughter's lack of resilience and naiveté here, but she's a ~22 year old girl, so that's acceptable. From you, this is not, IMO.

Your entire view of the world was mistaken and brittle, and reveals a stunning lack of value placed on things other than career and such, but the good news is that it's much better than you seem to be stuck thinking right now. Economies get good again, and your daughter is in a better position than many because she at least had one job and has a good CV.

I never had any of this and I managed to find work in tech in 2000, 2008, and even now (during the worst down markets in my lifetime), when everyone says that 'nobody is hiring', I had 5 interviews (I only applied to 10 or so jobs) and an offer in less than a month.

Education has never guaranteed you a job. The key is to be able to stay positive, even with rejections. I've never had the luxury of having an internship or network at a well-known university.

Getting a job is all about getting yourself in reduced in a smaller pool of candidates that the company will choose from. Education, experience, being personable can all do this.

The economy is rough right now. You also have do things that can set yourself apart from the rest. I got my latest offer by calling the person that posted the job directly and had a second interview by the end of the week.

"She spends most days in her room applying, "

Mass applying will almost never get you the job. She should be focused on customizing her resume and trying to get in touch with the person posting the job and getting face time.

"It’s Christmas and we aren’t celebrating. No decorations. No pretending things are okay. I’m completely shattered as a parent, mostly because I don’t have answers. I told her for years that merit would protect her. It didn’t."

This is an odd response from a parent. Why are you wallowing in her sorrow? You should be showing her that life can still be good and she will eventually find work again.