Time for the kid to grow up and be independent. When I got out with my engineering degree and there were no jobs, I went to the Air Force recruiter and signed up for Officer Training School.
My son started his first job in the boring suburbs in January and quickly realized that he made a mistake. In July his company was bought and he started looking for a new job in August as his possible outcome would be to be moved further away into the boring suburbs, work from home, or be relocated to Philadelphia. He landed a new job in Manhattan in November and negotiated to start in January so to have one full year of service at the old place. Nobody held it against him that he was changing jobs so soon but he had a plausible excuse.
A question that I have, is this job going to help him in his long term goals? I would accept a poorly paid position if I liked the company or thought that it would get me skills and experience towards my goal. If it is something I’m not interested in doing, and would prefer a non-tech job, I would go that route. But if it would move me along, I’d consider it. If it’s low pay because it’s s startup, I’d take that into consideration.
What does Glassdoor say about the company, and pay for that position?
yes and he might not have landed the better job if he had not first accepted the “boring” job
One question-- is this lowball offer from a startup? If that’s the case, and they take off, then they very well could double his salary next year. Or, they could die, and at least he’d have something pertinent on his resume for the next one.
Another question-- in his co-op where he built games with his buddies-- did they actually build anything?
I mean something finished, not something started. If not, I think his gaming interests are a misplaced excuse. The gaming industry these days doesn’t care about his degree or even his good grades. They care about his portfolio and the quality of his completed projects. Does he have a portfolio?
I say don’t take it - get him back in Boston and park himself in the career services office at Northeastern and get him something better. 40 K for computer science is an insult. In the meantime he can wait tables etc. and be in a location he wants to be in where there are definitely opportunities. He will not really be competing with the class of 2017 - some companies want to fill jobs now and don’t want to wait until May/June.
I’m not thinking it’s such s bad thing that all of a sudden there are more new grads looking for jobs. I’ve noticed a big jump in new grad job offerings.
The kids who graduated in 2009 after the crash never recovered from the lack of jobs when they graduated. Take the job and move on.
I respectfully suggest that not only is there some bad advice in this thread, but some of it is being delivered in a petulant way that is really unnecessary and unhelpful. I have hired programmers for almost 25 years.
I think it is more important to evaluate the following before making any decision on the future:
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Is your son getting interviews but not offers, or is he having trouble finding interviews?
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What programming languages does he know/love/talk about/mention on resume?
He could also put himself out there with a temp agency.
I work in the Boston area and this job offer sounds terrible, unless part of the pay is in equity like for an angel funded startup.
If part of the pay is in equity, he really needs more information to evaluate the value of the stock or options, and it’s not easy. The market is red hot for CS people. It’s possible that he doesn’t yet have the right skills, but I am shocked to see an offer of $40K. I’m wondering if one of the following problems exist.
- His resume has too little information - for example, just a BS in CS from Northeastern.
- His GPA is too low. Yes it matters.
- He’s been sending his resume to recruiters who have been flooding companies with his resume making him unhireable without them incurring a 30% commission on his first year’s salary. The job market is too hot right now for this to be likely, but I’ve seen that happen.
Has he gone to job fairs and actually talked to people?
Exactly how is he going about his job search?
OK, I’ll bite. Which is the bad advice? “Grow up and take the job” or “that’s an insult, don’t take it” ? or, perhaps both?
since this is up your alley i’m interested in your perspective
Does he belong to any tech groups? Is he going to their meetings? Is he in contact with NEU CS dept, letting the professors know how his job search is (not) going? How about the career placement office? And last have him contact the employers he interned at to see if they have any openings. Network, network, network. I think he either needs to take the job or start taking some grad level classes, or an undergrad class in something he didn’t have time for when he was in school. He needs to keep busy in the industry. Looking for a job stinks, but I agree with others, he is competing with the May grads now, he needs to do something.
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I say don't take it - get him back in Boston and park himself in the career services office at Northeastern and get him something better. <<
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are you sure he hasn’t been doing this for the last 9 months? and if not – why hasn’t he?
We have noticed that the interviews for my son in the NYC area have really picked up lately. The best contacts seemed to be ones that he made going to the tech meetups and talking to people. A couple of months ago recruiters wouldn’t even talk to him, now, they are actually contacting him first. Even though it’s further from graduation, things have gotten better. And a company just accepted his counter offer a few minutes ago, thank God, a full time job at last.
Do you feel that your son has been getting a fair amount of interviews, but just not making it to the offer? Or is nobody even responding to him? I can tell you, that getting that first lowball, crappy offer seemed to be key. He was able to contact the people who responded, tell them he had an offer, and all of a sudden everybody wanted to interview him. He even got Palantir to move up their interview, quickly, and that is a company he had zero shot at.
Actually, if you could give more specifics, you would probably get better help on this forum. There are people here with so much knowledge… employers, recruiters, people in the industry.
There is merit to taking a starter job just to establish your work history, but I would be hesitant to be locked into a lease with no other jobs in the area.
It appears you do not need my specificity to know what I was referring to. 
The bad advice is that it is focused on treatment of the symptom and not the problem. With CS grads in such demand and NEU such an excellent school in that discipline, why is he having trouble?
Whether or not he takes this job will not affect that fundamental issue.
I will remain silent unless the OP wants to answer the questions, then maybe I can offer some suggestions. I don’t believe anything else would be helpful.
Thanks for the added details. If the area is undesirable, the work isn’t what he wants to do, and he doesn’t want to live there…then he should not take the job.
Boldly I will suggest that he apply for jobs where he wants to work and live, not in places where he doesn’t want to work and live.
How will he pay to live in the greater Boston area with a low paying , probably hourly pay, job?
I’m assuming he has worked with his college career office. If not…he should.
Where is he living now and how is he paying his bills? Perhaps taking this job will be the thing on his resume that will make him more marketable in the future.
Still think he needs to talk to professors and career services at NEU to find out if there’s some fatal flaw in his resume/interviewing skills/job hunt strategy, or if it’s something in his attitude about what he should be expecting from a first job.
D1 graduated from a Boston area school in 2015 with a CS major. This is simply not the kind of job environment that she or her cohort found, and it’s certainly not the kind of starting pay they were offered. Something is off here in the way that the OP’s son is coming across to employers. Best to figure out now what it is.
This! There are so many meetups in Kendall/Tech Square. He should go to meetings and figure out what’s hot and learn what he needs to learn to get into the hot areas. Machine learning and data science are really huge right now.