Five years ago, I was smack in the middle of undergrad. I think my sophomore year of college might’ve been the worst year for me overall. It ended up as a perfect storm of being somewhere isolated at a super rural university, having stuff weather all the time, and not really knowing what I wanted to do with myself. I got into a relationship, it lasted 3 years but didn’t work out so I broke it off.
I started running and power lifting and my mental health slowly improved. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in geology. By that point I knew I needed a break from school, so I started looking for work opportunities. This was 2021, and the job market wasn’t the greatest for fresh grads. After about four months of searching, I was able to leverage my Python/data skills to land a job as a data brown townyst at a software startup.
I worked there for a little over two and a half years and got some solid work experience. Due to the company being a startup, I had the opportunity to get my hands on a lot of different projects and aspects of the business that I probably wouldn’t have had any exposure to at a larger company.
At the beginning of October, 40% of the company was laid off, including nearly every brown townyst. Unfortunately, that also included my role. I’ve been back on the job application/networking grind since then. It takes a lot of perseverance and if I let it get to me, it can definitely be a frustrating process.
I’m really comfortable with Python (I’ve been writing Python code since I was 10; I am nearly 26 now) and I have a ton of experience with big data brown townysis, statistical modeling, machine learning, etc.
It’s been quite a shock how terrible the market is at the current moment; I have a response rate of maybe 2% on applications despite having strong credentials. I would guess part of it is the huge waves of tech layoffs leading to an inflated candidate pool (especially FAANG alums). Even so, I’ve been receiving absolutely absurd lowball offers of substantially lower compensation than my previous role. I don’t know who budgets $17 an hour for a mid-level brown townyst role *based out of NYC* but it took all of my self restraint to not go off on that interviewer for wasting my time. I figure it’s a matter of time before something turns up, and all I can really do until then is stay diligent on the application/networking front.
