11 ms·

Profiles of the Jobless: The 'Mad As Hell' Millennial Generation

58 points by miraj 15y ago

larrykubin 15y ago
I'm getting a bit tired of these articles. They are all the same -- some kids finish college, and don't have a job or many practical skills. It's not the end of the world. Suck it up, keep learning, keep working. You don't have to have it all figured out yet. There is still plenty of time. I remember trying to find a tech job when I finished school in 2002 and didn't have any luck. Worked for 10 bucks an hour for the next couple of years and read a bunch of programming books to build skills. Another friend finished with a CS degree who graduated at the same time answered phones for 12 bucks an hour for a year or two. Another friend got an engineering degree and his first job was working for the city for about 10 bucks an hour for a year or two. Eventually we got more experience, talked to more people, and got exactly what we wanted -- it just took a couple more years.
- Hyena 15y ago
  No, in 2002 the US and Europe were in recession. That is why you had trouble finding a job, not your skills or whatever else. That it took a couple of years is incredibly bad and that recession was comparatively minor. I think you don't know the trouble you've seen.
esk 15y ago
Considering the tone of these letters (especially the last one—wow!), it's a bit difficult to summon empathy with their authors. And I think that's unfortunate, because they have an exceedingly valid point—American universities are making a killing churning out graduates with very few relevant skills for today's economy. That's not to say these students are completely innocent—many, many American students view college as their "last gasp" of living without any real responsibilities, and they make make the most of that opportunity (rather than making the most of the opportunity to better themselves and prepare for today's economy). Now and forever, using only the internet, it's possible to learn... well, nearly everything. Once employers accept this, the cost of a degree will plummet, and universities will be forced to offer something well beyond what Wikipedia, web forums, and online instructional videos can provide. That's the only way they'll stay relevant and worth the investment. I think the universities can do it, but they are going to fight tooth and nail to avoid having to change. All large institutions do.
- patio11 15y ago
  This assumes that employers see value in colleges in terms of teaching and not, say, as outsourced pedigree verifiers which are socially permitted to discriminate along axes that employers are not permitted to. A degree from Harvard in Commercially Valueless Trivia with a minor in Not Comprehensible Outside Your Specialty and a thesis in Not Even Good Cocktail Conversation still tells employers that you were good enough to get into Harvard. (Or, more insidiously, that you're the kind of people who get into Harvard.)
  - esk 15y ago
    You're right—employers are being lazy. It's safe for people in HR to mindlessly prefer mediocre Candidate A with a degree over stellar Candidate B without one, so instead of actually examining the values the candidates can bring to the company, they take the easy, defensible path. Part of the process of employers' recognizing that someone learning online can easily learn more than someone going to a university will be to empower HR departments to honestly examine candidates' value to the company rather than looking at increasingly irrelevant badges on their resume. In short, employers lazily prefer people with degrees. People want employment. People seek degrees. Universities see tons of demand and little pressure to improve, so they don't. Most graduates skills are irrelevant for today's employers, so they don't get hired. Employers can break this cycle by empowering their HR departments.
    - patio11 15y ago
      I think you are thinking of a fairly different phenomenon than I am thinking of. Let's take two candidates, A and B. A has a degree in Anime as Literature (a degree which fairly few people have but which is available if you want it from at least one university, and which we'll stipulate has fairly little commercial relevance in the United States) from, without loss of generality, Washington University in St. Louis (my alma mater). B has equivalent knowledge regarding postmodern interpretations of Evangelion but gained it all through self-study. You are describing that companies discriminate against B in favor of A because their hiring processes are broken and doing so is organizationally safe. I agree that in many cases their hiring processes are broken, but think that it doesn't matter because companies do not care about anime. It is utterly irrelevant to them. Knowledge of anime does not make you more efficient at filling out TPS reports. However, the degree from WashU brackets you as Top X% of Valued Quality Y distribution, where Y might be "intelligence" or "ability to follow through on moderately complex tasks with long time horizons" or simply "success in a highly selective process" if you're feeling charitable or "social standing" if you're not. Prospective employers aren't allowed to effectively discriminate based on intelligence (no, really), so they can use possession of a degree as a proxy for it. By comparison, the actual contents of the education received post-matriculation are irrelevant, so the fact that Candidate B has objectively equivalent knowledge of anime is not meaningful to the prospective employer.
grammarnazi 15y ago
These letters are positively heart-wrenching, indeed. Really, what does my college degree mean, if the person possessing it can't be trusted to understand the difference between "it's" and "its," or "there" and "they're"? Sad state of affairs indeed.
- bmj 15y ago
  This is hardly a new problem. I served as a TA in various humanities courses roughly 17 years ago, learning that many, many college students could not write coherent sentences, let alone use proper punctuation.
cdjarrell 15y ago
According to the Strauss-Howe generational theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-Howe_generational_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-Howe_generational_theor...), Millenials are a Hero generation. We grew up in an "increasingly protected post-Awakening" era of parental coddling and are now coming of age during a "team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis". The crisis is here and it is severely draining on our generation as a whole. But we are not going to get beaten by it and the only way to combat it is with perseverance. One of the best ways to shorten this particular recession is through innovation. As employment numbers have been dropping, companies have been evolving by consolidating the missing roles and generally becoming more efficient. We need to meet this increase in efficiency with a greater number of attempts at innovating today's status quo. That's one of the best benefits of Y Combinator. It's going to take a lot of hard work but luckily grit is regarded as one of the best traits of successful people (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-true-grit/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-tr...). While it's true we have one of the toughest outlooks in recent memory, that just means we have that many more possibilities to improve upon. There is so much talent out there right now that is not being properly utilized that it could supply a couple of entirely new industries. Innovation will get us there but not after we stumble a couple of times on the way up. It's time for us to get together, use our collaborative abilities and solve the world's growing areas of concern of today for everyone tomorrow. #millenialmanifesto
- nazgulnarsil 15y ago
  reminiscent of The Decline of the West. Such theories should be taken with the grain of salt that they are mostly descriptive, not prescriptive. At the very best they produce qualitative predictions which aren't of much use.
  - cdjarrell 15y ago
    Of course. Descriptive theories still help identify things better than no theories at all, even if they are wrong. Because then you can at least cross one off the list
  - sedev 15y ago
rbranson 15y ago
The greatest delusion of our world is the idea that there is actually a job for everyone. I have an unsubstantiated, but very real gut feeling that the economic crisis was the tipping point in which humanity moves beyond anything resembling full employment.
- ovi256 15y ago
  From a production viewpoint, that's certainly possible for several sectors. World agriculture produces enough food that every human could have a 2700 calorie diet, which is excessive for sedentary occupations. So which is the sin here, that some people die of hunger or that others die of obesity ?
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    The sin is in the coexistence of these two circumstances.
- danssig 15y ago
  That would be nice! Though I'm a bit skeptical. Big business has most of the tools at the moment and their trend is to want to get more and pay less (i.e. more hours for less pay).
- cdjarrell 15y ago
  Rather than 20 full-time jobs we need to fill them with 40 part-time jobs and then those 40 people work part-time on other interests (their own start up, works of passion, another job to bring in the money, etc.)
  - ultrasaurus 15y ago
    Unfortunately there are still returns to scale. To stay on top of everything in your field|industry|organization might take 20 hours a week so some jobs aren't manageable on a part time basis.
rdl 15y ago
I didn't see any engineers, mathematicians, or scientists in that list...
- potatolicious 15y ago
  My brother is a scientist - a damned good one at that. He's scraping by in an academic research position making well below the poverty line. He's unmarried, frugal and has few expectations (well, years as a student in the sciences prepares you for that), so he's managing well under the circumstances. I do know though that it bothers him that his parents are paying for his $500 flight back to visit during Christmas. He's nearly 30. Engineers are doing alright - but scientists have not done well for a long, long time. It's cut-throat, employment is anything but sure, and even if you have a job, good salaries are few and far between. And every year the output from colleges continues to far outstrip positions available.
  - rdl 15y ago
    Presumably he could use a science degree and mathematical mind to get a higher paying job in industry, tech, etc. If he values research more than money, that makes sense too, but I would think he has more options than these people.
    - rjd 15y ago
      No science is historical a place of people working in poverty for the love of the job. I myself did a degree in Microbiology and started working at a research lab as an assistant. One thing caught me very quickly, people I worked with, some of the leading geneticists on the planet.. I'm talking about people who where splicing human DNA in animals to cure Parkinson's... where earning minimum wage. These people literally fought for basic funding, maybe they got a million dollar cheque, but boy that had to last, if the results didn't come through or you got 80% of the way there, there was no second cheque. Failing to deliver could also cost you further funding. So everyone was accounting for every cent, and there was no spending on anything extravagant. The head of my department wrote some of the text books I read through high school, thats how he made his living, he earned maybe $10k more than the rest of the scientists but that was still next to nothing. The only perk was a contract we had testing wine for pesticides. Which meant taking a 5ml sample from each bottle of wine and prepping it for testing. We literally had a shed full of wine which a research centre of several hundred scientists couldn't drink fast enough :) I was told by one scientist you had around 15 years to make a breakthrough and then it was more or less over. You trained till you where 30 to get a PHD so you could get funding, worked till you where in your 40s, then started writing text books, being a manager, or a teacher/professor. Decided I didn't have the constitution for a life like that and retrained as an artist and some how ended up a programmer. I could have always moved in the commercial of being a food technician or something, OK money doing that, but its crap work... unless you are inventing new ice cream flavours... otherwise you are more or less loading samples into a machine and waiting for the results... overkill for a scientist really.
abduhl 15y ago
These articles are depressing to me but for entirely different reasons from those listed in this and the thread on the previous article. They show a severe case of entitlement and a large disconnect between what the writers want and what they're worth. Common complaints amongst these letters fall into three categories: 1. "I was tricked into going to an expensive college" 2. "Other people screwed around but happened to network while I was busy studying all the time" 3. "I've been screwed over by the previous generation for reasons x, y, and z (usually debt, taxes, and the rich getting richer)" All of these complaints are rather childish and point towards other people being the problem. Out of all of the letters, very few accept any blame and those that do are quick to deflect it with a "yes, but" type statement that leads into argument 1, 2, or 3. You are not entitled to a job. A degree no longer sets you apart and the cost of college is the price of doing business in the world today in most large industries. You need to differentiate yourself in today's world and, more importantly, you need to be adaptable. Learning doesn't stop when you get your degree.
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  I don't know anyone who thinks that way, and I know hundreds of people in my age range. A lot of these articles are like street interviews where the interviewer finds a lot of dissenting opinions, but only plays those in agreement with the target narrative.
- tick80 15y ago
  It always disappoints me when I hear that point number two is such a successful tactic. I have read quite a few books from people in influential positions, and even today it's mostly not "what you know" but "who you know". You can be an alcoholic with other serious drug addiction problems, and yet powerful positions are dropped onto your lap because that very alcoholism rewards you with the best networking opportunities. It just fuels the image that is presented to us by the likes of reality TV and gossip magazines.
  - ericflo 15y ago
    Well, since what you know is that it's all about who you know then it's really about what you know, now, isn't it? ;)
miraj 15y ago
somewhat tangential notes: "Are jobs obsolete?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986501 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986501
kitsune_ 15y ago
The underlying theme of the millennial generation is a sense of entitlement. A lot of people live under the illusion that their college degree is an accurate indicator of their intelligence and entitles them to enormous sums of money. Well, gee? How is that supposed to work out for every one? Were you one of the smart guys back in primary school? Or where you merely one of the average students? Why do you think that with 24 years of age you should earn 100'000 a year? And on the other end of the spectrum, if they don't have a degree many people (rightly?) ask themselves why they should work so hard for so little. There is no respect for manual labor any more. The dream that corporate America, Gossip Girl and MTV is one of fast money, selfishness and greed.
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  I keep hearing this, but I don't know anyone in my generation with a sense of entitlement. You can't expect someone to drive down to McDonalds and ask for a job right after graduating. But they will (and do) accept a worse job if it comes down to it.
  - billswift 15y ago
    I don't think it is generational. I just turned 50 and have heard it, or something similar, every few years about the current "younger" generation (even back when I was part of the younger generation).
    - mkr-hn 15y ago
      I guess it's standard filler like the "[some kind of clothing] is back" stories.
helipad 15y ago
Whilst clearly there is a sense of entitlement, colleges do nothing to dispel the myth that going to a good school == good job at the end. When you're 18 and having to make a decision about your future, university has proven time and again a wise investment. It's only in recent years that a university education has shown not to always be the best investment, almost certainly due to the devaluing of a degree.
andos 15y ago
There are a lot of challenging, rewarding, generously remunerated jobs outside of the United States.
michaelochurch 15y ago
I'm glad our generation is getting "mad as hell" rather than depressed and glum. It's about time to understand that life is a fight. If you're lucky like most of us in technology, you struggle for relevance rather than survival, but it's a fight nonetheless. Work very hard, anticipate conflict, and do the right thing even if it hurts. First, the claim that we're "entitled" is an old saw. Whenever a downtrodden group (not that Millennials are "downtrodden" in absolute terms, but in relative terms we are, as a group, quite unfortunate) starts asserting itself, the first thing the opposition does is claim that it's "uppity", "impatient", and "entitled". The second thing it does is focus on extreme examples-- man-hating "feminazis" instead of mainstream, reasonable feminists, frank perverts instead of normal LGBT people, racial nationalists like Garvey instead of King, spoiled upper-middle-class 22-year-olds refusing perfectly decent entry-level jobs-- as an excuse for ignoring the more numerous moderates who have a compelling moral point. Next, I think it's useful to delve into a political philosophy that's endemic among our generation. Personally, I'm a libertarian. A left-libertarian. A true libertarian. For philosophical and theological reasons, I believe the objective of society is to maximize individual liberty, health, and creative freedom and that this often involves (preferably lightweight) "socialist" measures, but that small government is better than large (in the same way that 500 LoC to deliver the same functionality as 20,000 LoC is superior). As soon as full employment becomes untenable (and it looks like that may be the case) basic income programs are in order. All this said, there needs to be examination of the difference between absolute and relative rights, because this is where right-libertarians (the ones who currently use the name, "libertarian") embarrass themselves and our society (cf. healthcare). There are very few absolute rights. One is the right not to be murdered, but there is no "absolute right to life" (God will deny me that "right", and though I hope my death doesn't come too soon, I'm glad that it will someday happen). Another is the unconditional right to refuse sexual contact for any reason. That's an absolute right: not to be raped. A third is the right not to be coerced to work, except in life-threatening circumstances. Food, shelter, healthcare are not absolute rights. They are relative rights, contingent on the resources available. If food is plentiful, then everyone (even "useless" people like, I don't know, myself 28 years ago when I was 18 inches tall) has the right not to go hungry. If we are stranded where is no food, a "right to food" makes no sense because there is no food available. All this said, relative rights are just as morally meaningful as absolute ones. The people currently called "libertarians" (i.e. right-libertarians) focus on the absolute rights that apply anywhere, even in 476 AD in Bavaria or 1849 in Death Valley or 2075 in outer space, and not on the relative ones that depend on social infrastructure. It's rugged individualism. This is a severe mistake. Those relative rights are just as important. This seems like a digression, but it's extremely meaningful. If our generation can be characterized, I'd say that we're intensely libertarian, but we tend (on average) toward left-libertarianism that looks a lot like liberalism. We've seen that social conservatism is a moral disaster, but also that big government doesn't always work. Differences between us and the older style of liberalism are (a) that we're more practical, willing to rally behind a centrist presidential candidate if he's obviously an intelligent and good human being, (b) we're extremely skeptical of governments and we're fiscally conservative as a result, (c) we have a world focus and don't buy into it when someone tries to tell us we're special because we were born on a certain patch of land, (d) in general, we're anti-war, having seen the immense loss (of life, and of finances) that occurs when people are too quick to pursue violent action.
corin_ 15y ago
Slightly off-topic question, how many people got the Paddy Chayefsky reference and how many didn't (and therefore presumably assumed that bit wwas just a direct description)?
pnathan 15y ago
I think it's time to face up to the fact that the guiding advice for 30? 50? years of, "keep your head down, go to college, get good grades, you'll get a good job" is practically dead. Now, I advise these things: * go to college - you need to go to college because it's the best way to get a wide education. * get a degree - this needs to be in something very difficult for people to do. Math. Engineering. Accounting. * expect that your future job will not make you happy. Presume you'll hate it a bit. Concurrently, realize that your life is more than your job. * go to internships and find local networking events. Learn to drink responsibly. * save money. You probably have to take out student loans. Don't be afraid to put money by from them, because you will need to do things like move, buy a car, pay for car bills. * assume you have to move to get a job. Most jobs are going to be a place not in your college town. Get used to the idea. (Aside: I've known many people who go to college near their parents, and don't want to leave the area, just because they want to be near their family. That's not a productive idea. You are your own person. Invest into your future by finding a job you like, even if it's a country away). * grades matter to some people. I've been turned down solely on the basis of my GPA. Accept that if you don't have a 3.9+, you didn't jump high enough for some people, and there's no way to get around that. Either get the high GPA or find hiring people who don't obsess about that single metric. * learn business. Business is what pays your bills, if you know something about it, you'll understand the 'why' into seemingly irrational decisions.
gallerytungsten 15y ago
Rather than comment directly on the article, I'm going to give my advice on How To Get A Job Right Now. 1. Decide what you want to do. Don't say "I'll do anything." Be extremely specific about the type of job you want. (You can change your mind, but again, NEVER say you'll do "anything." That translates as "has no useful skills.") 2. Locate companies in your area that employ for this position. 3. Start making phone calls and sending emails to the company owner or manager. Forget about responding to ads for jobs and sending resumes blindly. That doesn't work. (Many ads are placed for compliance purposes or fishing expeditions and thus do not correspond to an actual job on offer.) 4. The really important part. Every time you get a "no" get a referral or two. Keep expanding your call list via referrals. 5. Within 100 phones calls, you will have a job. Make every call sincere and productive and you might only need to make 20.
geebee 15y ago
Part of the problem is that we're in a transitional phase where each generation can look forward or back and see privilege or entitlement in the other. As more of a Gen X'er myself, I think I was part of an early transition that has picked up a lot of steam over the past two decades. When I graduated from college (early 90s), there was still a lot of talk about how the old contract (you work for a company your whole life and they show you loyalty in return) was in decline. Truth is, it was probably in its last gasps. Now, I have a hard time thinking any 20 year old graduate would even think this arrangement exists in the first place. Young people still seem to have a few expectations ("I did everything I was supposed to do...", but I'd say the notion that going to college sets up for a good job is going extinct among recent grads). This is an incredibly important distinction that is often lost between the boomers and millennials. Sure, Millennials may not want to work from 8-5, and that may make them look lazy to the older folks - but keep in mind, the stability of an 8-5 job isn't there for them. If someone wanted a career in software back when I was in college, I'd have recommended that they study computer science or a related degree, work hard, get good grades, try to get an internship, maybe go to a good grad school, and show a lot of diligence on the job. That's still a reasonable way to go about it. But now? My advice to someone looking for a software career is: write something! Got an idea? Implement it, get it on the web, try to get some users for it. If you don't have a good idea, talk with people, learn about other fields, see what people need and try to create it for them. It's cheap to fail, so fail fast and keep at it. I'm not saying you shouldn't major in CS or go to grad school - a lot of great hackers (by the standards I listed above) seem to take that path. But what I'd really recommend is recognizing that the instability you have inherited can be liberating, even if it means you'll have to deal with a lot more uncertainty in your life. Funny thing is, it was there for me, too. I wrote all kinds of web apps in grad school, but I somehow couldn't wrap my head around the idea that they could be "real". I think PG mentioned this in an essay - when you open the door to a cage for an animal that has lived in captivity for a long time, it often takes a while before the animal realizes that it can leave. Maybe people are waking up to that now. Nobody's going to be delivering carrots and filling up your water bowl every morning anyway...
- cdjarrell 15y ago
  It's true the workplace is transitioning, just not as fast as the type of work being done. Everything is becoming more personalized, faster and more efficient. We (for the most part) don't expect to stay at a company for 20+ years or even 10 years because everything is changing so fast. It would be great if the workplace transitioned at the same speed as the work involved, but this can't be expected. We need jobs that fulfill our own personal career goals (rather than us adjusting them to fit the career), that can be worked on intermittently throughout the day (to take full advantage of our ever-shortening attention spans) and that have opportunities for growth (as we work in a dynamic world now).

58 points by miraj 15y ago

I'm getting a bit tired of these articles. They are all the same -- some kids finish college, and don't have a job or many practical skills. It's not the end of the world. Suck it up, keep learning, keep working. You don't have to have it all figured out yet. There is still plenty of time. I remember trying to find a tech job when I finished school in 2002 and didn't have any luck. Worked for 10 bucks an hour for the next couple of years and read a bunch of programming books to build skills. Another friend finished with a CS degree who graduated at the same time answered phones for 12 bucks an hour for a year or two. Another friend got an engineering degree and his first job was working for the city for about 10 bucks an hour for a year or two. Eventually we got more experience, talked to more people, and got exactly what we wanted -- it just took a couple more years.

Hyena 15y ago
No, in 2002 the US and Europe were in recession. That is why you had trouble finding a job, not your skills or whatever else. That it took a couple of years is incredibly bad and that recession was comparatively minor. I think you don't know the trouble you've seen.

esk 15y ago

Considering the tone of these letters (especially the last one—wow!), it's a bit difficult to summon empathy with their authors. And I think that's unfortunate, because they have an exceedingly valid point—American universities are making a killing churning out graduates with very few relevant skills for today's economy. That's not to say these students are completely innocent—many, many American students view college as their "last gasp" of living without any real responsibilities, and they make make the most of that opportunity (rather than making the most of the opportunity to better themselves and prepare for today's economy). Now and forever, using only the internet, it's possible to learn... well, nearly everything. Once employers accept this, the cost of a degree will plummet, and universities will be forced to offer something well beyond what Wikipedia, web forums, and online instructional videos can provide. That's the only way they'll stay relevant and worth the investment. I think the universities can do it, but they are going to fight tooth and nail to avoid having to change. All large institutions do.

patio11 15y ago
This assumes that employers see value in colleges in terms of teaching and not, say, as outsourced pedigree verifiers which are socially permitted to discriminate along axes that employers are not permitted to. A degree from Harvard in Commercially Valueless Trivia with a minor in Not Comprehensible Outside Your Specialty and a thesis in Not Even Good Cocktail Conversation still tells employers that you were good enough to get into Harvard. (Or, more insidiously, that you're the kind of people who get into Harvard.)
- esk 15y ago
  You're right—employers are being lazy. It's safe for people in HR to mindlessly prefer mediocre Candidate A with a degree over stellar Candidate B without one, so instead of actually examining the values the candidates can bring to the company, they take the easy, defensible path. Part of the process of employers' recognizing that someone learning online can easily learn more than someone going to a university will be to empower HR departments to honestly examine candidates' value to the company rather than looking at increasingly irrelevant badges on their resume. In short, employers lazily prefer people with degrees. People want employment. People seek degrees. Universities see tons of demand and little pressure to improve, so they don't. Most graduates skills are irrelevant for today's employers, so they don't get hired. Employers can break this cycle by empowering their HR departments.
  - patio11 15y ago
    I think you are thinking of a fairly different phenomenon than I am thinking of. Let's take two candidates, A and B. A has a degree in Anime as Literature (a degree which fairly few people have but which is available if you want it from at least one university, and which we'll stipulate has fairly little commercial relevance in the United States) from, without loss of generality, Washington University in St. Louis (my alma mater). B has equivalent knowledge regarding postmodern interpretations of Evangelion but gained it all through self-study. You are describing that companies discriminate against B in favor of A because their hiring processes are broken and doing so is organizationally safe. I agree that in many cases their hiring processes are broken, but think that it doesn't matter because companies do not care about anime. It is utterly irrelevant to them. Knowledge of anime does not make you more efficient at filling out TPS reports. However, the degree from WashU brackets you as Top X% of Valued Quality Y distribution, where Y might be "intelligence" or "ability to follow through on moderately complex tasks with long time horizons" or simply "success in a highly selective process" if you're feeling charitable or "social standing" if you're not. Prospective employers aren't allowed to effectively discriminate based on intelligence (no, really), so they can use possession of a degree as a proxy for it. By comparison, the actual contents of the education received post-matriculation are irrelevant, so the fact that Candidate B has objectively equivalent knowledge of anime is not meaningful to the prospective employer.

grammarnazi 15y ago

These letters are positively heart-wrenching, indeed. Really, what does my college degree mean, if the person possessing it can't be trusted to understand the difference between "it's" and "its," or "there" and "they're"? Sad state of affairs indeed.

bmj 15y ago
This is hardly a new problem. I served as a TA in various humanities courses roughly 17 years ago, learning that many, many college students could not write coherent sentences, let alone use proper punctuation.

cdjarrell 15y ago

According to the Strauss-Howe generational theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-Howe_generational_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-Howe_generational_theor...), Millenials are a Hero generation. We grew up in an "increasingly protected post-Awakening" era of parental coddling and are now coming of age during a "team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis". The crisis is here and it is severely draining on our generation as a whole. But we are not going to get beaten by it and the only way to combat it is with perseverance. One of the best ways to shorten this particular recession is through innovation. As employment numbers have been dropping, companies have been evolving by consolidating the missing roles and generally becoming more efficient. We need to meet this increase in efficiency with a greater number of attempts at innovating today's status quo. That's one of the best benefits of Y Combinator. It's going to take a lot of hard work but luckily grit is regarded as one of the best traits of successful people (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-true-grit/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-tr...). While it's true we have one of the toughest outlooks in recent memory, that just means we have that many more possibilities to improve upon. There is so much talent out there right now that is not being properly utilized that it could supply a couple of entirely new industries. Innovation will get us there but not after we stumble a couple of times on the way up. It's time for us to get together, use our collaborative abilities and solve the world's growing areas of concern of today for everyone tomorrow. #millenialmanifesto

nazgulnarsil 15y ago
reminiscent of The Decline of the West. Such theories should be taken with the grain of salt that they are mostly descriptive, not prescriptive. At the very best they produce qualitative predictions which aren't of much use.
- cdjarrell 15y ago
  Of course. Descriptive theories still help identify things better than no theories at all, even if they are wrong. Because then you can at least cross one off the list
- sedev 15y ago

rbranson 15y ago

The greatest delusion of our world is the idea that there is actually a job for everyone. I have an unsubstantiated, but very real gut feeling that the economic crisis was the tipping point in which humanity moves beyond anything resembling full employment.

ovi256 15y ago
From a production viewpoint, that's certainly possible for several sectors. World agriculture produces enough food that every human could have a 2700 calorie diet, which is excessive for sedentary occupations. So which is the sin here, that some people die of hunger or that others die of obesity ?
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  The sin is in the coexistence of these two circumstances.
danssig 15y ago
That would be nice! Though I'm a bit skeptical. Big business has most of the tools at the moment and their trend is to want to get more and pay less (i.e. more hours for less pay).
cdjarrell 15y ago
Rather than 20 full-time jobs we need to fill them with 40 part-time jobs and then those 40 people work part-time on other interests (their own start up, works of passion, another job to bring in the money, etc.)
- ultrasaurus 15y ago
  Unfortunately there are still returns to scale. To stay on top of everything in your field|industry|organization might take 20 hours a week so some jobs aren't manageable on a part time basis.

rdl 15y ago

I didn't see any engineers, mathematicians, or scientists in that list...

potatolicious 15y ago
My brother is a scientist - a damned good one at that. He's scraping by in an academic research position making well below the poverty line. He's unmarried, frugal and has few expectations (well, years as a student in the sciences prepares you for that), so he's managing well under the circumstances. I do know though that it bothers him that his parents are paying for his $500 flight back to visit during Christmas. He's nearly 30. Engineers are doing alright - but scientists have not done well for a long, long time. It's cut-throat, employment is anything but sure, and even if you have a job, good salaries are few and far between. And every year the output from colleges continues to far outstrip positions available.
- rdl 15y ago
  Presumably he could use a science degree and mathematical mind to get a higher paying job in industry, tech, etc. If he values research more than money, that makes sense too, but I would think he has more options than these people.
  - rjd 15y ago
    No science is historical a place of people working in poverty for the love of the job. I myself did a degree in Microbiology and started working at a research lab as an assistant. One thing caught me very quickly, people I worked with, some of the leading geneticists on the planet.. I'm talking about people who where splicing human DNA in animals to cure Parkinson's... where earning minimum wage. These people literally fought for basic funding, maybe they got a million dollar cheque, but boy that had to last, if the results didn't come through or you got 80% of the way there, there was no second cheque. Failing to deliver could also cost you further funding. So everyone was accounting for every cent, and there was no spending on anything extravagant. The head of my department wrote some of the text books I read through high school, thats how he made his living, he earned maybe $10k more than the rest of the scientists but that was still next to nothing. The only perk was a contract we had testing wine for pesticides. Which meant taking a 5ml sample from each bottle of wine and prepping it for testing. We literally had a shed full of wine which a research centre of several hundred scientists couldn't drink fast enough :) I was told by one scientist you had around 15 years to make a breakthrough and then it was more or less over. You trained till you where 30 to get a PHD so you could get funding, worked till you where in your 40s, then started writing text books, being a manager, or a teacher/professor. Decided I didn't have the constitution for a life like that and retrained as an artist and some how ended up a programmer. I could have always moved in the commercial of being a food technician or something, OK money doing that, but its crap work... unless you are inventing new ice cream flavours... otherwise you are more or less loading samples into a machine and waiting for the results... overkill for a scientist really.

abduhl 15y ago

These articles are depressing to me but for entirely different reasons from those listed in this and the thread on the previous article. They show a severe case of entitlement and a large disconnect between what the writers want and what they're worth. Common complaints amongst these letters fall into three categories: 1. "I was tricked into going to an expensive college" 2. "Other people screwed around but happened to network while I was busy studying all the time" 3. "I've been screwed over by the previous generation for reasons x, y, and z (usually debt, taxes, and the rich getting richer)" All of these complaints are rather childish and point towards other people being the problem. Out of all of the letters, very few accept any blame and those that do are quick to deflect it with a "yes, but" type statement that leads into argument 1, 2, or 3. You are not entitled to a job. A degree no longer sets you apart and the cost of college is the price of doing business in the world today in most large industries. You need to differentiate yourself in today's world and, more importantly, you need to be adaptable. Learning doesn't stop when you get your degree.

mkr-hn 15y ago
I don't know anyone who thinks that way, and I know hundreds of people in my age range. A lot of these articles are like street interviews where the interviewer finds a lot of dissenting opinions, but only plays those in agreement with the target narrative.
tick80 15y ago
It always disappoints me when I hear that point number two is such a successful tactic. I have read quite a few books from people in influential positions, and even today it's mostly not "what you know" but "who you know". You can be an alcoholic with other serious drug addiction problems, and yet powerful positions are dropped onto your lap because that very alcoholism rewards you with the best networking opportunities. It just fuels the image that is presented to us by the likes of reality TV and gossip magazines.
- ericflo 15y ago
  Well, since what you know is that it's all about who you know then it's really about what you know, now, isn't it? ;)

miraj 15y ago

somewhat tangential notes: "Are jobs obsolete?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986501 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986501

kitsune_ 15y ago

The underlying theme of the millennial generation is a sense of entitlement. A lot of people live under the illusion that their college degree is an accurate indicator of their intelligence and entitles them to enormous sums of money. Well, gee? How is that supposed to work out for every one? Were you one of the smart guys back in primary school? Or where you merely one of the average students? Why do you think that with 24 years of age you should earn 100'000 a year? And on the other end of the spectrum, if they don't have a degree many people (rightly?) ask themselves why they should work so hard for so little. There is no respect for manual labor any more. The dream that corporate America, Gossip Girl and MTV is one of fast money, selfishness and greed.

mkr-hn 15y ago
I keep hearing this, but I don't know anyone in my generation with a sense of entitlement. You can't expect someone to drive down to McDonalds and ask for a job right after graduating. But they will (and do) accept a worse job if it comes down to it.
- billswift 15y ago
  I don't think it is generational. I just turned 50 and have heard it, or something similar, every few years about the current "younger" generation (even back when I was part of the younger generation).
  - mkr-hn 15y ago
    I guess it's standard filler like the "[some kind of clothing] is back" stories.

helipad 15y ago

Whilst clearly there is a sense of entitlement, colleges do nothing to dispel the myth that going to a good school == good job at the end. When you're 18 and having to make a decision about your future, university has proven time and again a wise investment. It's only in recent years that a university education has shown not to always be the best investment, almost certainly due to the devaluing of a degree.

andos 15y ago

There are a lot of challenging, rewarding, generously remunerated jobs outside of the United States.

michaelochurch 15y ago

I'm glad our generation is getting "mad as hell" rather than depressed and glum. It's about time to understand that life is a fight. If you're lucky like most of us in technology, you struggle for relevance rather than survival, but it's a fight nonetheless. Work very hard, anticipate conflict, and do the right thing even if it hurts. First, the claim that we're "entitled" is an old saw. Whenever a downtrodden group (not that Millennials are "downtrodden" in absolute terms, but in relative terms we are, as a group, quite unfortunate) starts asserting itself, the first thing the opposition does is claim that it's "uppity", "impatient", and "entitled". The second thing it does is focus on extreme examples-- man-hating "feminazis" instead of mainstream, reasonable feminists, frank perverts instead of normal LGBT people, racial nationalists like Garvey instead of King, spoiled upper-middle-class 22-year-olds refusing perfectly decent entry-level jobs-- as an excuse for ignoring the more numerous moderates who have a compelling moral point. Next, I think it's useful to delve into a political philosophy that's endemic among our generation. Personally, I'm a libertarian. A left-libertarian. A true libertarian. For philosophical and theological reasons, I believe the objective of society is to maximize individual liberty, health, and creative freedom and that this often involves (preferably lightweight) "socialist" measures, but that small government is better than large (in the same way that 500 LoC to deliver the same functionality as 20,000 LoC is superior). As soon as full employment becomes untenable (and it looks like that may be the case) basic income programs are in order. All this said, there needs to be examination of the difference between absolute and relative rights, because this is where right-libertarians (the ones who currently use the name, "libertarian") embarrass themselves and our society (cf. healthcare). There are very few absolute rights. One is the right not to be murdered, but there is no "absolute right to life" (God will deny me that "right", and though I hope my death doesn't come too soon, I'm glad that it will someday happen). Another is the unconditional right to refuse sexual contact for any reason. That's an absolute right: not to be raped. A third is the right not to be coerced to work, except in life-threatening circumstances. Food, shelter, healthcare are not absolute rights. They are relative rights, contingent on the resources available. If food is plentiful, then everyone (even "useless" people like, I don't know, myself 28 years ago when I was 18 inches tall) has the right not to go hungry. If we are stranded where is no food, a "right to food" makes no sense because there is no food available. All this said, relative rights are just as morally meaningful as absolute ones. The people currently called "libertarians" (i.e. right-libertarians) focus on the absolute rights that apply anywhere, even in 476 AD in Bavaria or 1849 in Death Valley or 2075 in outer space, and not on the relative ones that depend on social infrastructure. It's rugged individualism. This is a severe mistake. Those relative rights are just as important. This seems like a digression, but it's extremely meaningful. If our generation can be characterized, I'd say that we're intensely libertarian, but we tend (on average) toward left-libertarianism that looks a lot like liberalism. We've seen that social conservatism is a moral disaster, but also that big government doesn't always work. Differences between us and the older style of liberalism are (a) that we're more practical, willing to rally behind a centrist presidential candidate if he's obviously an intelligent and good human being, (b) we're extremely skeptical of governments and we're fiscally conservative as a result, (c) we have a world focus and don't buy into it when someone tries to tell us we're special because we were born on a certain patch of land, (d) in general, we're anti-war, having seen the immense loss (of life, and of finances) that occurs when people are too quick to pursue violent action.

corin_ 15y ago

Slightly off-topic question, how many people got the Paddy Chayefsky reference and how many didn't (and therefore presumably assumed that bit wwas just a direct description)?

pnathan 15y ago

I think it's time to face up to the fact that the guiding advice for 30? 50? years of, "keep your head down, go to college, get good grades, you'll get a good job" is practically dead. Now, I advise these things: * go to college - you need to go to college because it's the best way to get a wide education. * get a degree - this needs to be in something very difficult for people to do. Math. Engineering. Accounting. * expect that your future job will not make you happy. Presume you'll hate it a bit. Concurrently, realize that your life is more than your job. * go to internships and find local networking events. Learn to drink responsibly. * save money. You probably have to take out student loans. Don't be afraid to put money by from them, because you will need to do things like move, buy a car, pay for car bills. * assume you have to move to get a job. Most jobs are going to be a place not in your college town. Get used to the idea. (Aside: I've known many people who go to college near their parents, and don't want to leave the area, just because they want to be near their family. That's not a productive idea. You are your own person. Invest into your future by finding a job you like, even if it's a country away). * grades matter to some people. I've been turned down solely on the basis of my GPA. Accept that if you don't have a 3.9+, you didn't jump high enough for some people, and there's no way to get around that. Either get the high GPA or find hiring people who don't obsess about that single metric. * learn business. Business is what pays your bills, if you know something about it, you'll understand the 'why' into seemingly irrational decisions.

gallerytungsten 15y ago

Rather than comment directly on the article, I'm going to give my advice on How To Get A Job Right Now. 1. Decide what you want to do. Don't say "I'll do anything." Be extremely specific about the type of job you want. (You can change your mind, but again, NEVER say you'll do "anything." That translates as "has no useful skills.") 2. Locate companies in your area that employ for this position. 3. Start making phone calls and sending emails to the company owner or manager. Forget about responding to ads for jobs and sending resumes blindly. That doesn't work. (Many ads are placed for compliance purposes or fishing expeditions and thus do not correspond to an actual job on offer.) 4. The really important part. Every time you get a "no" get a referral or two. Keep expanding your call list via referrals. 5. Within 100 phones calls, you will have a job. Make every call sincere and productive and you might only need to make 20.

geebee 15y ago

Part of the problem is that we're in a transitional phase where each generation can look forward or back and see privilege or entitlement in the other. As more of a Gen X'er myself, I think I was part of an early transition that has picked up a lot of steam over the past two decades. When I graduated from college (early 90s), there was still a lot of talk about how the old contract (you work for a company your whole life and they show you loyalty in return) was in decline. Truth is, it was probably in its last gasps. Now, I have a hard time thinking any 20 year old graduate would even think this arrangement exists in the first place. Young people still seem to have a few expectations ("I did everything I was supposed to do...", but I'd say the notion that going to college sets up for a good job is going extinct among recent grads). This is an incredibly important distinction that is often lost between the boomers and millennials. Sure, Millennials may not want to work from 8-5, and that may make them look lazy to the older folks - but keep in mind, the stability of an 8-5 job isn't there for them. If someone wanted a career in software back when I was in college, I'd have recommended that they study computer science or a related degree, work hard, get good grades, try to get an internship, maybe go to a good grad school, and show a lot of diligence on the job. That's still a reasonable way to go about it. But now? My advice to someone looking for a software career is: write something! Got an idea? Implement it, get it on the web, try to get some users for it. If you don't have a good idea, talk with people, learn about other fields, see what people need and try to create it for them. It's cheap to fail, so fail fast and keep at it. I'm not saying you shouldn't major in CS or go to grad school - a lot of great hackers (by the standards I listed above) seem to take that path. But what I'd really recommend is recognizing that the instability you have inherited can be liberating, even if it means you'll have to deal with a lot more uncertainty in your life. Funny thing is, it was there for me, too. I wrote all kinds of web apps in grad school, but I somehow couldn't wrap my head around the idea that they could be "real". I think PG mentioned this in an essay - when you open the door to a cage for an animal that has lived in captivity for a long time, it often takes a while before the animal realizes that it can leave. Maybe people are waking up to that now. Nobody's going to be delivering carrots and filling up your water bowl every morning anyway...

cdjarrell 15y ago
It's true the workplace is transitioning, just not as fast as the type of work being done. Everything is becoming more personalized, faster and more efficient. We (for the most part) don't expect to stay at a company for 20+ years or even 10 years because everything is changing so fast. It would be great if the workplace transitioned at the same speed as the work involved, but this can't be expected. We need jobs that fulfill our own personal career goals (rather than us adjusting them to fit the career), that can be worked on intermittently throughout the day (to take full advantage of our ever-shortening attention spans) and that have opportunities for growth (as we work in a dynamic world now).