u/Purinto

Hi, I'm here mainly looking for advice because I'm a little bit lost.

So basically I'm a business student doing an apprenticeship ( I work and study at the same time) and right now I'm a Junior PO at a scale up. My contract ends once I graduate and it's up to them to hire me as a full time employee.

I'm having a great time at the company, they're such cool, understanding and humane people & company. I have a great manager who always give me work to better myself and learn new things instead of just giving me leftover tasks.

I get to work with developers who take time to explain the workings of the code to me, then listen to my input even though I'm at least 10y younger and basically only got 8 months of experience under the belt. They also tolerate many of my mistakes.

As a working environment, I couldn't have wished for any better. I'm genuinely grateful to be part of the team.

When starting I had the opportunity to start a new webapp "from scratch" and got to design some of the features and work on some of the issues. I also did doc, Q&A, some light programming doing some figma, a few excels here and there and customer management. We also had all the weekly stand-ups and ceremonies. And while it was a lot of work it was also really rewarding. Now that this project is pretty much complete, I just spend my time doing less interesting stuff, if any.

And in hindsight, the projects themselves are groundbreaking or conceptually complex. Once you get the gish of the general ecosystem, it becomes repetitive.

I'm still learning a lot btw (I'm the main tech stack we operate with by going through code and asking claude for explanations) and working with devs actually got me more comfortable using github at its full extent.

It's by no way the company's fault that there just isn't much going on.

I do not hide the fact that I'm available from my manager neither, and actively ask for more things to do.

What I'll say might sound really stupid but I kinda fear getting comfortable.

Here are the three options I've got :

- I could remain at the company get comfortable but then I might not get hired and realize that I might be lacking skills.

- I could remain in the company then get hired, but that's (

1 - too optimistic since other apprentices weren't hired mainly because growth slowed down, and the business model is kinda fragile.

2 - not sure if it's desirable either from my pov, to only work at one company all your life, no matter how good it is. Btw, one reason why it's so good to work there is that many if not most people there have been working there pretty much since graduation so they are tightly knit and basically friends, so no shame in that i just don't know if it's for me)

- I could change try changing jobs right now and look for more learning opportunities: more complex projects and richer features, possibly better pay and benefits since I'm not well paid compared to classmates and I pretty much have 1-2 days remote days a month, classmates got 3d a week on average ) but it comes at the risk of not finding a job or not finding one as good as the one I currently have when it comes to the people and the management.

I still got about a year with them, then... Well then I don't know.

What do you think ? I'm open to every suggestion.

As we're approaching the elections, we have to reconsider our priorities. If most of us are well aware of the lack in investment in health and education, youth unemployment isn't talked about as much although it is arguably more important than education. Last time I checked, we were hovering around the 30% rate of youth unemployment, with those having a diploma struggling more than those without one.

Youth unemployment has many consequences be it on the economy, socialy or economically.

Economically speaking, the consequences are obvious : the economy is wasting hours of skilled and unskilled labour that could otherwise be allocated to improve growth, and we're also missing the consumption needed for businesses to grow and expand.

Socially the matters are far worse, as there is a huge social cost for unemployment, generally translating into a feeling of unsafety tied with a higher crime rate.

It is the most dire on the youth itself, with higher rates of depression, loneliness and a feeling of guilt for failing one criterion of a successful life since its very start.

Unemployment is a doom loop, and when you're not given the chance to enter the job market, you end up losing your skills and become less desirable. Then at some point you're just not taken because you're competing against people of the same age or younger with the same experience etc.

Being unemployed isn't for the most part an individual failure, but the failure of the state and the economy to provide decent job opportunities.

I hope that during the next elections, inserting the youth into the job market will be a focus as important as is healthcare and education, and that we can find a durable solution to this issue.

A country is as strong as it's young people are.