Why are college graduates who work in retail or other low menial job look down upon? What advice would you give these young adults?

probably won't apply to you at all, but:

my husband is a cisco engineer. realized he could do it via self-study versus classes, and got his first cert in about five months for the cost of books and testing (versus a two year program at... much higher expense, plus cost of books and testing). took him three weeks to get a job after getting that first cert.

self-studied for the second over the course of a year, and jumped his income by 30% after passing the tests.

i'm a c-suite executive assistant. temped for two years from 18-21, then landed my first grownup job as an office manager (small company - was hired to answer phones and call on receivables; ended up doing EVERYTHING). stayed there three years, then jumped to a bullshit useless job (paid more), where i stayed for about five years. however, in that job, i reported directly to the general manager, and ended up doing a lot of HR work.

when it was time to leave there, i decided to parlay the office manager + GM reporting experience to 'administrative assistant'. immediately got a job as an EA supporting a CEO... with virtually no relevant actual experience.

fortunately, turns out i was good at it, so i've been in the C-suite ever since. we're both six figures.

we'll never be rich, per se (socal, so COL is a thing), but we're way more comfortable than we ever thought we'd be. i'm at the ceiling on my earnings (in fact, above it at this point - wages in LA are astonishingly depressed; i keep my eye on the market and my role is paying less than it was six years ago, overall), but my husband still has room to grow. he could actually be earning about $25K more with his existing certs, and would jump up to $75K beyond that if he got the CCIE.

/r/jobs Thread Parent