[ForHackernews]

Unfortunately, if you do take a job that's "beneath" what your qualifications would suggest, you'll sometimes wind up torpedoing your career prospects going forward.

I think a developer who was "consulting" or "freelancing" (read: unemployed) for the past six months would get more callbacks than one who'd been working at McDonald's, or needed to telecommute from North Dakota.

I suppose you can mitigate that effect by leaving it off your CV, but working a "crappy" job is still going to take away time and energy that could otherwise be spent improving your skills for your desired career.

[cantastoria]

This is the typical response (and there is evidence to back it up) but then are these people really deserving of long term unemployment benefits? If you've been unemployed for five years and I say to you "hey there are jobs in xyz" and your response is that taking that job will "ruin your long-term career prospects" (it's almost funny) maybe unemployment is no longer serving it's intended functions (as a stop-gap between jobs).

[ForHackernews]

> maybe unemployment is no longer serving it's intended functions (as a stop-gap between jobs).

That's basically true. I'm of the opinion that we need a real basic/guaranteed income program, because what we have right now is a terrible hodgepodge of TANF + unemployment + SSDI (http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/) which only serve to paper over the fact that we have more people than there are jobs.

This problem will only get worse in the future as automation hollows out the middle of the labor market.