Hi, so I posted this on LinkedIn at the start of the year and it got a bit of attention (190K views which seemed great given my 800 followers). It resulted in a new hospital mattress from a really kind resume company owner, but not much in terms of job leads. Basically, I make 15k per year serving as the IHSS caretaker for my disabled mother and get $29/month in food stamps (the max I qualify for given my income). I've been her caretaker since a bad accident (she was run over by a garbage truck) back when I was 22. It happened just before my undergrad graduation, so it was quite sad that my mom couldn't see me graduate. I took a gap year before grad school to adjust to my caretaking duties. It took me 4 years to complete a program most finish in 2, but I finally finished in August 2022. I've had only 4 interviews since then. December 2022 - conversational AI startup for a jr data scientist role at 125K-250K base (rejected before final round) August 2023 - predictive data analyst for the County of Los Angeles at 88k (told I'd hear within the month but never did) October 2023 - dialog engineer at PolyAI at 65k (told I'd hear back by the end of the week, but never did hear anything) January 2024 - computational linguist - Mexican Spanish at Meta (contract) for 108k (hiring manager cancelled the role as the recruiter mentioned that none of the candidates met her expectations) I'm mainly focused on contract roles given that I don't have much in terms of relevant work experience (I also did a grad thesis instead of an internship as it allowed for more flexibility so that I could care for my mom). I've noticed that some alums of my NLP grad program have a role at NVIDIA called generative AI analyst, but it seems to be a secret role that is never posted. From asking them, all they've said is that it's a contract role. Given that my field might be a bit niche/limited to the intersection of language and technology, I've also been trying for random apprenticeships without much luck. The grad director for my program mentioned that the average starting salary for alums is about 112k, but as you can see from my limited interviews, I'm not all about TC. I would have been just fine with the PolyAI role. I mainly just want to make renovations to my mother's room. I've never once been on an airplane to travel out of the country, but I'm honestly okay with that by now. I just want to help my mom. I was blessed with a new hospital mattress (the attached picture is the old mattress), but the walls are half-painted since I ran out of white paint and the flooring is a disaster. She had carpet, which didn't seem ideal for her wheelchair, so before she was finally released from the hospital, I just tore off the carpet revealing a rather ugly hardwood floor base. I'm so embarrassed at the appearance of her room. Her caseworker for IHSS even told me that I needed to renovate her room. But yeah, I'm really hoping if any kind souls come across this and/or those who have had to care for a parent and can relate with the struggle, they might have some leads for contract work or entry-level/apprenticeships at their company #tech #pinterest #instacart #referral #microsoft #ibm
DM for Pinterest referral if you see any relevant role
Hard luck bro. This isn't cringe. Requires courage to be vulnerable like this.Tough market for entry level gigs. Have you tried staffing companies? That's your best bet to land a job. You can then jump after gaining some experience. Hope things work out for you!
I've tried a bunch. That's actually how I got the Meta contract interview. I applied directly on their Meta CW job board, but got rejected like the next day. Someone currently in the grad program had the same job before he quit to enroll, so I figured I must be semi-qualified. I tried again for the job a few days later with a staffing agency called HireArt and I didn't get auto-rejected/got the interview.
Respect!
Ohh man you're a much stronger human than most of us here. How are you managing her medical and your family living expenses?
She's on SSI, so that check covers the mortgage / we don't have to worry about being unhoused. But yeah, we just barely scrape by with the utilities/other expenses so there's really nothing in the budget for renovations. We both are on Medi-Cal. If I had to pay for healthcare/insurance, we would really be drowning.
Feel free to DM me for referral if you find anything at Google. Current headcount is limited, but hopefully it will open up. Are there roles in UX research or labeling for chatbots? With so many companies jumping into this field, I feel this is a strong growing area. And a good fit for you with you NLP linguist background.
Hey! Let me know if you need LinkedIn premium
DM for Ambarella referral if you see any relevant role. PS: stay strong and keep applying.
Message me, I’ll send google referral
DM me for LinkedIn referral and premium
Do you have more than one premium giveaways?
DM for referral if you see anything interesting at SpaceX
What did you study or graduate in? What type of jobs are you looking for? Swe? Etc etc Dm if you see any relevant role.
I studied computational linguistics/natural language processing. My main interests in grad school were sentiment analysis and speech recognition. I'm probably aiming for something like computational linguist. So many of my grad program alums work at Amazon, but they don't seem to hire for my field in Los Angeles.