[mooxie]

My understanding from younger colleagues is that entry-level positions are much more competitive than they were when I was leaving college and entering the tech market 10 or 12 years ago. At that time, my experience was that if you knew Linux (at all) or Windows/Mac administration - and were otherwise a good interviewee - you essentially had your choice of jobs.

People entering the market now talk about it like it's a complete wasteland. Apparently entry-level 'learn-on-the-job' tech work is extremely competitive and difficult to access for new graduates these days. If you're already 'in' and have a network and experience it's still largely like the glory days, but getting to that level is supposedly much more difficult now.

(To be fair to any younger people reading this, my entry-level tech job was at $28k/yr and I worked restaurants and bars until I was able to move on, so it's not like I got a degree and someone threw $150k at me to intern. It took a lot of work, even in the glory days)

[kylecordes]

There are many people entering the industry that can already demonstrate their skills well, and interview in a way that shows that even if they are technically entry-level, they likely won't stay there for very long.

This probably contributes to a very competitive situation for traditional entry-level "actually I need to learn this job once I get there" candidates.