6 ms·

I wonder about these statements. While many of them are nice to think of as true, are they? - Flipping burgers is "opportunity." Yes, maybe in the past a stro

by asolove 16y ago

I wonder about these statements. While many of them are nice to think of as true, are they? - Flipping burgers is "opportunity." Yes, maybe in the past a strong recommendation from a manager at a high school job could help you get a post-graduation job. Today, do any colleges even consider this? In the time you work flipping burgers, you could just as easily become leader of 12 after-school activities that look "impressive" on a resume. Who's to blame for that? Today's lazy kids? Or the generation of boomer hiring managers and admissions committees who look for "upside potential" instead of work ethic? - Bosses will expect you to work harder than teachers. Not in my experience. Most of my college-graduate friends have post-graduation jobs where they have no impact on the company's success, and do mostly busywork filling out forms and going through the motions. Flipping burgers, at least you can show some hustle, being nicer and faster and more careful than your peers. Same in most tech jobs. But if your job is to fill out paperwork and answer the phones and no one supervises you, how do you measure doing "better"? And why care if your supervisor can't tell either? So who is to blame here? Lazy kids? Or boomer corporate structures that doesn't give junior employees even the smallest responsibility for trying hard, doesn't mentor them to work harder or more intelligently, and then promotes those people into management jobs where they continue to not help the next generation? I think the real problem here is the Boomers: they rejected the idea of listening to their parents' generation when they entered the workforce, and they seriously screwed things up. Today, most businesses expect a high school or college grad to already know how to work hard, how to give good customer service, how to prioritize business goals. Where would they have learned this? Historically, by working a job in school and then being intensively trained when they start full time. Today, there is no similar process unless you go into a field controlled by a strong professional society (doctor, pilot, etc.). Go find an old 1920's or 50's book (or instructional video) on management. The younger employee, although not comptent or hard-working, is thought of as a project that the manager has to look in on, give advice to, occasionally challenge. How many places today will spend that time on someone just out of high school or college?

jarin 16y ago
I think the key phrase from #5 is "Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity", not "They called it opportunity". It's not about being grateful for a burger flipping job, it's about taking the burger flipping job when you need to. For example, my first consulting gig was set to rake in about $5k a month, but since I didn't know that you can ask for a deposit I had to wait until the end of the first month to get paid. I had enough money saved up to cover rent, but I still needed food money so I worked nights for a month as a delivery guy at Papa John's for the tips. Funny thing was I busted my ass (cleaning grease traps and doing all of the other stuff none of the teenagers wanted to do), because I knew I was only going to be working there for a month, and doing mindless work with my hands was a nice break from writing ActionScript. I actually felt bad when I quit, because the manager offered me a $1.25/hour raise to try to get me to stay, haha (that's actually pretty generous for a minimum wage hourly job). Anyway, that lesson is something I've spent a lot of time trying to teach my little brothers, as they tend to try to wait for the perfect job to come along. There's absolutely nothing wrong with taking a job that you feel is "beneath you", while you look for something better. I think it's more "beneath me" to sit on my ass all day being broke than it is to clean grease traps.
- asolove 16y ago
  Fantastic story, thank you. And you are absolutely right, "menial" work is really fun if you work hard and know you don't have to do it forever. I spent a week doing hospitality and loved it. Getting to talk with different people, help them, run around and jump up and down to get things done right away, and then seeing people obviously appreciate it. I wish we could convince more kids to do it, and more adults to take it seriously.
- arethuza 16y ago
  While a student I dug ditches, weeded fields of barley, worked in a lab and even had a stint on a trawler in the North Sea. Sure does make you appreciate a nice desk job!
noahlt 16y ago
> Today, do any colleges even consider this? In the time you work flipping burgers, you could just as easily become leader of 12 after-school activities that look "impressive" on a resume. Most college application forms have, in addition to after-school activities, a section for employment history. I don't know how much it counts for, but it's not ignored.
- wnewman 16y ago
  Noahlt wrote "Today, do any colleges even consider this?" It probably depends on the school. Perhaps in some pretty perverse ways. I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Espenshade and Radford study yet. It's quoted at e.g. http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=28258 http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=28258 . Apparently "Being an officer or winning awards 'for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, 'has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions.' Excelling in these activities 'is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission.'" The scuttlebutt I'd heard is that Caltech was and is the highly selective school most interested in straight-up academic performance. Anecdotally in the 1980s my grades and SATs and decent MAA contest score and after-school job writing PDP-11 and Z-80 assembly language got me into Caltech, but they sure didn't impress Stanford or MIT. My brother had similar academic qualifications and test scores, but did a lot of photography and ran the yearbook instead of doing much programming, and he got into MIT the next year. Caltech was my first choice anyway, but my father was an enthusiastic Stanford alumnus, and he was grouchy about me not being admitted. Around my sophomore year at Caltech he sent me a clipping from the alumni newspaper lamenting how Stanford did poorly in the Putnam math contest (http://www.maa.org/awards/putnam.html http://www.maa.org/awards/putnam.html) and suggesting that alongside all the other baskets for people with nonacademic qualifications, the admissions office create a basket for people who are just extremely academically impressive.
sskates 16y ago
"Most of my college-graduate friends have post-graduation jobs where they have no impact on the company's success, and do mostly busywork filling out forms and going through the motions." Really? I'm a little surprised that most of your college friends have jobs where their bosses don't care that much about performance. Can you give a few examples?
kingkawn 16y ago
Apparently the back-door into Harvard is having the regular requisite fabulous GPA bla bla bla and having worked at McDonalds. Something about its symbol as a lower-class experience marker.

by asolove 16y ago

jarin 16y ago

I think the key phrase from #5 is "Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity", not "They called it opportunity". It's not about being grateful for a burger flipping job, it's about taking the burger flipping job when you need to. For example, my first consulting gig was set to rake in about $5k a month, but since I didn't know that you can ask for a deposit I had to wait until the end of the first month to get paid. I had enough money saved up to cover rent, but I still needed food money so I worked nights for a month as a delivery guy at Papa John's for the tips. Funny thing was I busted my ass (cleaning grease traps and doing all of the other stuff none of the teenagers wanted to do), because I knew I was only going to be working there for a month, and doing mindless work with my hands was a nice break from writing ActionScript. I actually felt bad when I quit, because the manager offered me a $1.25/hour raise to try to get me to stay, haha (that's actually pretty generous for a minimum wage hourly job). Anyway, that lesson is something I've spent a lot of time trying to teach my little brothers, as they tend to try to wait for the perfect job to come along. There's absolutely nothing wrong with taking a job that you feel is "beneath you", while you look for something better. I think it's more "beneath me" to sit on my ass all day being broke than it is to clean grease traps.

asolove 16y ago
Fantastic story, thank you. And you are absolutely right, "menial" work is really fun if you work hard and know you don't have to do it forever. I spent a week doing hospitality and loved it. Getting to talk with different people, help them, run around and jump up and down to get things done right away, and then seeing people obviously appreciate it. I wish we could convince more kids to do it, and more adults to take it seriously.
arethuza 16y ago
While a student I dug ditches, weeded fields of barley, worked in a lab and even had a stint on a trawler in the North Sea. Sure does make you appreciate a nice desk job!

noahlt 16y ago

> Today, do any colleges even consider this? In the time you work flipping burgers, you could just as easily become leader of 12 after-school activities that look "impressive" on a resume. Most college application forms have, in addition to after-school activities, a section for employment history. I don't know how much it counts for, but it's not ignored.

wnewman 16y ago
Noahlt wrote "Today, do any colleges even consider this?" It probably depends on the school. Perhaps in some pretty perverse ways. I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Espenshade and Radford study yet. It's quoted at e.g. http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=28258 http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=28258 . Apparently "Being an officer or winning awards 'for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, 'has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions.' Excelling in these activities 'is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission.'" The scuttlebutt I'd heard is that Caltech was and is the highly selective school most interested in straight-up academic performance. Anecdotally in the 1980s my grades and SATs and decent MAA contest score and after-school job writing PDP-11 and Z-80 assembly language got me into Caltech, but they sure didn't impress Stanford or MIT. My brother had similar academic qualifications and test scores, but did a lot of photography and ran the yearbook instead of doing much programming, and he got into MIT the next year. Caltech was my first choice anyway, but my father was an enthusiastic Stanford alumnus, and he was grouchy about me not being admitted. Around my sophomore year at Caltech he sent me a clipping from the alumni newspaper lamenting how Stanford did poorly in the Putnam math contest (http://www.maa.org/awards/putnam.html http://www.maa.org/awards/putnam.html) and suggesting that alongside all the other baskets for people with nonacademic qualifications, the admissions office create a basket for people who are just extremely academically impressive.

sskates 16y ago

"Most of my college-graduate friends have post-graduation jobs where they have no impact on the company's success, and do mostly busywork filling out forms and going through the motions." Really? I'm a little surprised that most of your college friends have jobs where their bosses don't care that much about performance. Can you give a few examples?

kingkawn 16y ago

Apparently the back-door into Harvard is having the regular requisite fabulous GPA bla bla bla and having worked at McDonalds. Something about its symbol as a lower-class experience marker.