Comment Re:delayed gratification was the original model. (Score 1) 321
That's my experience in Australia. I'm a mechanical and mechatronic engineer. My university requires me to complete two 6 month internships to graduate. I've completed all my subject, and one internship. This final internship is proving to be rather obstructive for me graduating. Most places just don't want to look at someone who's fresh out of university, even though I have worked for a manufacturing company (who unfortunately went broke, as many are in Australia at the moment) and was employed for longer than my allotted internship time. For the very few ads, 5 years experience and for the ones which aren't, they'll be larger companies who have some extremely repugnant HR department who manage to narrow a field of applicants into ones who present the best in interviews and that's about it.
I might come off as jaded, but I'm getting rather annoyed. I'm passionate about engineering, I actually enjoy learning but it seems that no one is interested in employing anyone to do actual engineering work. The university has careers expos, and the last one I went to, only had two companies who were interested in consulting work. The others, were either foreign engineering companies who were after technical sales people, like as if I'm going to spend all those years at university, just to become a sales person, and the other mobs were financial institutions such as banks and 'professional services' companies. The logic being that it's easier to train an engineer on business related matters and finance, than a business or economics graduate, maths and problem solving.
I think my best option would be to try to create a start up with acquaintances, but even then, Australia would have to be one of the worst countries in the developed world to do that and probably worse than many developing nations. So my future is probably not going to be one in Australia unless I resign myself to a life of mediocrity.