[jakejake]

I have some, but not a huge amount of empathy because I came out of school right during a similarly depressed time for finding work. I pounded the pavement looking for jobs with similar results.

Clearly this guy feels that he is entitled to be at an executive level even though he hasn't built up much real experience. He doesnt want to pay any dues and scoffs at a $36k/year job. I lived in Chicago working for $18k/year making photocopies with an evening job cleaning offices, barely able to pay my bills. I did that for 4 years and was able to use that experience to get a decent job. (probably could have moved up sooner had I been looking during those years) A few more years at the new gig and I made a more significant bump.

I would have killed for a $36k first job . (even with inflation it's much better than my 18k gig - I'm not that old!)

I'm doing very well now but it was a lot of work to build up the career that I now have. I probably could have moved up faster, but even still I needed that first crappy job to start the ball rolling. Ironically I'm starting to think about being unemployable due too being old, since tech can tend to be a young persons field. Maybe I'm just too old to relate, but things were not any easier back then.