When I graduated in 2011, the Great Recession was just beginning to unthaw. I nearly joined the Air Force as an officer. I even went to MEPS and did the physical but decided against it at the last second and joined a military contractor instead.

It was a similar situation, but honestly nowhere as dire as yours. Even in that rough situation, the best of my state college were at least getting one offer. I cannot imagine how rough it must be for MIT grads to not be getting job offers.

I'm not proud of either, but I did what I needed to so that I never moved back home.

I find this seriously unlikely. Most MIT grads are getting into Jane Street or at minimum Google - they literally think working at Amazon is beneath them. Course 6 grads are not going unemployed.

It is funny to hear that this person might have an unstable environment though - that isn't the profile of someone that gets into MIT.

If OP is actually serious I'm more than willing to give resume advice - including in person living in the area. But again, I seriously doubt this is real, or if people like OP are willing to take advice from failures like me.

You keep trying. You may have to take a lesser job to pay the bills, but you keep trying until you succeed. You also need to understand that the CS market has something of a glut right now and with companies downsizing for various reasons, jobs in CS are tight. When I went through the same thing, I took jobs at small companies, startups, etc., to pay the bills and I kept applying to other companies until I landed a job with one of them. You might also consider talking to consulting firms for contract work, something I've done before.

If you give up, you will certainly fail, so don't give up and realize that the hardships you may experience will make you stronger, more resilient, and better prepared to deal with hardships in the future.

Since there are currently no posts mentioning this, if you have down time, build something.

Not because it will make you rich, but because it shows you have the grit to actually do something. It will also keep your skills fresh and/or grow them.

These things do make a huge difference to hiring managers.

Hunting for work in a down economy is hard and depressing. Building something is a excellent way to stave off depression. Much better than self-pity, alcohol, drugs, videos games, or doom scrolling.

MIT class of '75 in course 18 (math - 3 years) and class of '76 course 6.3 (CS - fourth year). I stayed for that 4th year because the job market and grad school pool were awful. Was unemployed when graduated in June '76. Took advantage of that to take a cross-county motorcycle tour. Finally got a job in mid-September. That company went belly-up 6 weeks later. Remained unemployed until January '77. With the dream job that really launched my career. I wish I had more encouraging words for you, but what worked for me was - stick to what you love - eventually it'll work out. But don't be afraid to do what it takes to survive. I made ends meet by working as a bartender - moonlighting during that first job, and then as main income for a few more weeks until I got that wholly unexpected call from a headhunter that changed everything.

1. Go for masters in a field where you can get TA or other stipend. Masters is generally worth it because it will give you more experience. There are lots of places outside of US that are starting to invest into AI infra, and having advanced knowledge gives you an edge. Don't limit yourself to MIT - other universities (even overseas) have funding. A lot of times, especially in US, the graduate projects are basically company funded tasks that they can get done while paying way less than the market price, so plenty of those are floating around.

2. Look outside US for jobs. There are remote opportunities everywhere, and at your young age, its not super hard to move. Even China has some startups that can hire within US.

3. In general, even in recession, there are companies that end up making big as demand shifts to more fundamental things. Most companies need IT support. Generally, as a computer engineering grad, you should be able to do the full range of IT support (and if you can't ask yourself why not).

Talk to peers, friends, even people you do not know that well and ask about their plans. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Crash on a couch for a few months. Keep refining and sending out resumes. Take a job that you might be overqualified for. Early in your career you should accept and work for entry level positions and anticipate that you will be doing this same thing every 2-4 years in order to get to a salary range you are hoping for anyway.

Don't expect or even look for a dream job straight away. Lower your standards. That's what I did, and I ended up where I'm supposed to be in my career after a few years. I took an early risk on a personally important project early in my career and found myself broke and headed home afterward. I just committed myself to taking entry level work and moving jobs several times in order to catch up with my peers who went straight into industry.

If you can self-host or publish a demo of your work that is open-sourced, I find that that really opens the door for a lot of web dev positions, regardless of what particular languages you know and/or what’s in vogue.

(Mine would be https://jonline.io/jon, part of a larger project that does federated social media, but just a “hello world” portfolio server app that you open source would be quite effective, I think. This is all based on recruiters’, hiring managers’, and other devs’ responses when I link them to it.)