Letter to CS Grads of 2025

Just keep knocking

Your inbox is a graveyard. "We've decided to move forward with other candidates." "The role has been filled." "We're not hiring new grads at this time."

Friends land Meta offers while your GitHub stars collect dust. Parents ask questions you can't answer. Everyone seems to have the playbook except you.

You're being freed from a trap you didn't know existed.

Microsoft just laid off 6,000 people. Meta cut 3,600 in February. These weren't struggling companies. They posted record profits while investing billions in AI designed to automate roles you might've landed. The safe path, that comfortable Big Tech job, is disappearing.

I got lucky. LinkedIn hired me out of college when hiring grads was common. Clear trajectory, stable path, everything you're supposed to want. Two years later, I left for a chaotic 10-person startup. Friends thought I was crazy. That startup, barely growing, taught me more in six months than the comfortable years at LinkedIn.

Your job search is sales now. Everyone's "building in public," flooding Twitter with launch posts and LinkedIn with side projects. Standing out feels impossible when everyone runs the same playbook. But most quit after three rejections. They post about hustle, then scroll LinkedIn for jobs. Build one project, get no traction, vanish. Persistence became unfashionable, which makes it more valuable.

Getting my Yahoo internship took shameless persistence. Email after email, each more desperate than the last, until someone finally responded. Every successful founder I've backed heard "no" more times than you've sent resumes. They kept knocking.

Brian Chesky couldn't get hired, so he sold cereal. The Collisons were too young for banks, so they built their own. Brian Acton got rejected by Facebook and Twitter. Then built WhatsApp. When the front door slams, builders find windows.

Stop refreshing job boards. Ship something.

The startups eager to hire you NEED builders like you who understand AI is changing everything. You'll ship code that breaks on Fridays at 3 PM, debug production fires while customers rage, and rapidly learn skills no CS degree covers: speed, clarity from chaos, building with AI as your teammate. You'll master product. Your friends at Big Tech will master process.

I had advantages you might not. No crushing loans. A visa giving me 90 days if fired, but at least I had that first job. Your constraints might be tighter, your fear more real. But constraint breeds clarity. When comfort isn't an option, you optimize for growth. Every path is hard. Pick the one leading somewhere new.

The universe didn't take your backup plan. It removed your excuses.

The builders who define this next decade won't be those who got hired easily. They'll be the ones who refused to stop knocking.

Start knocking.