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A Princeton PhD Applied to 2,300 Jobs. He Still Can't Get One
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Jack Weis, a Salt Lake City native who earned a Princeton Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 2024, has applied to more than 2,300 jobs without securing employment. He lives with his parents and describes himself as unemployed despite his advanced degree and extensive job search. Weis initially targeted corporate science positions and prestigious postdoctoral fellowships at national laboratories. He later expanded his search to software-engineering and other roles, but was eventually ghosted after applying for food-preparation work, including a job at a frozen-crab-cake company. He temporarily earned income training AI systems in engineering and fluid mechanics, but that work also ended.
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The discussion was overwhelmingly about the opacity of hiring, the limits of elite academic credentials, and whether the profile leaves out decisive information such as interview performance, referrals, or a poorly targeted application strategy. It barely engaged with AI itself. The one clear AI-related thread treated the market for AI and machine-learning researchers as a sharp exception to the broader STEM slowdown: readers argued that firms still compete fiercely for proven AI talent, with senior researchers commanding extraordinarily high compensation. That contrast mattered because it undercut any simple reading of the story as evidence that every advanced technical degree has lost its value. Commenters implied that a prestigious doctorate alone is not interchangeable with scarce, commercially valuable AI/ML expertise. But they did not establish whether the job seeker had relevant machine-learning skills, publications, or industry experience, so the AI comparison remained illustrative rather than diagnostic. No one debated model quality, safety, training methods, or AI products; the AI angle was strictly about labor demand and the premium placed on specialized researchers. The thread therefore offers little basis for judging AI sentiment beyond recognition that frontier AI hiring remains unusually lucrative and selective.
- Praise: AI and machine-learning specialists were portrayed as one of the few technical talent pools where employers still bid aggressively, making frontier research expertise unusually valuable.