Ask HN: giving advice to the newly graduated...
2 comments
I guess I don't understand using the letter + doorman. Why don't you just have coffee with him and talk? Writing a letter is so impersonal - you don't know what he wants, what he's good at, etc. Your advice is great if he wants to do what you think he wants to do. It's not so great if he really wants to do something else completely. It just seems so much easier to say, "So, Michael - tell me what you want to do."
good idea - you are right it is a bit impersonal.
The letter below was drafted for a kid who lives in my bldg. I live in the literal shadow of NYC. West bank of the Hudson River about 2 km from the West Village. The reason I mention this is a general attitude I have towards the young people in Hoboken (my city). I used to walk my (recently deceased) dog at night and see them smoking pot and doing teenagey things in the park and want to say to them - "Take the PATH across the river - the trouble you get into will be of a much more rarified and enlightening variety...".
NYC so close is like another world to these kids... They'd probably kick my ass - so I leave them be.
Anyway. This kid recently out of college looks like a decent kid. His mom approached me to ask me to help him find a job. He studied somekind of website design program at a local Catholic college.
I typed the following and gave it to the doorman to give the kid whan he sees him next. Thi is what I thought was decent advice for cracking into a tough job market for entry level folks.
It has nagged me for the past few hours as I wonder if it is good advice. It is based upon hiring folks for a techops dept for an adtech company in NYC.
I am in my 40s so feel a generational gap. There is also this insular Hoboken thing at work... Also, the fact that his moms asked me probably makes all that follows null and void.
For future iterations - what would you all change/ delete / add?
https://gist.github.com/mbubb/7471197