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I think the younger generation, 22-27, has caught on to what a scam working is. By that, they fully understand that getting an office job and a mortgage means t

I think the younger generation, 22-27, has caught on to what a scam working is. By that, they fully understand that getting an office job and a mortgage means they will be chained to a desk with little chance at getting rich or escaping that life. I am a bit older, but have been seeing this mentality all over the place on the internet, but also in the real world. Its everywhere, young people trying to hustle money through odd job sales, youtube channels, online ecommerce. Whatever they can do to not get started on a career. And its completely rational, money printing has destroyed the value of the dollar, real estate is too expensive, and corporations extract too much value from their workers. An even more interesting point is the loss of status of having a good job when young. There is absolutely no shame, and its even cheered on to not be working a serious job. Making 200k at 24 is impressive to no one, and is instead met with disdain, "why spend your life working"

WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
whateveracct 5y ago
Making 200k at 24 is a sweet deal tho..
- musha68k 5y ago
  I’m not an economist but afaik if minimum wage would have kept pace with productivity it would be at USD ~50k at this point. So if we talk about skilled labour of any sort USD 200k would be somewhat normal across industries.
  - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
    US minimum wage reached $1/hour in 1956, or $10.25/h in 2021 dollars Since 1956, inflation adjusted GDP per capita increased by +218% All things equal, this would mean ~$66k / year for a 9-to-5 job paying minimum wage
trabant00 5y ago
This is my opinion as well, only you presented it a lot more clearly and simply. Hustling is now not only socially acceptable, it is an ideal. Children grow up dreaming of this.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  It does bring a few questions. Was the previous economy vaporous and thus this hustling as valuable or is the new economy just a temporary parasite leaving on top of "real-er" work. I'm asking semi honestly. I see a lot of fake work in traditional jobs, but I fail to see what value a lot of internet activities are bringing. Reactto videos, influencing..
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    You're seeing decentralisation at play driven by new technology. People are tired of making someone's else millions and they want in, risk and money wise. Especially because with digital media the cost/risk to start a business and enter the creator economy is way lower. There's abundance of information that could potentially help people to be more independent and rely less on apprenticeship to learn a trade. I think there's a lot of waste in companies, the bigger the company the bigger the waste, so I think this trend is positive. What we need to fight is the belief that picking a major you like is more important than picking a career the market wants.
    - fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
      You explained this better than I did. People are choosing new routes to make money rather than suffer under the old ones
    - trabant00 5y ago
      > People are tired of making someone's else millions It's not just that. People could start a small enterprise that is not geared towards hustling but they don't want to. That was the point of the original article.
    - 5y ago
vladvasiliu 5y ago
> young people trying to hustle money through odd job sales, youtube channels, online ecommerce. Whatever they can do to not get started on a career. And its completely rational, money printing has destroyed the value of the dollar, real estate is too expensive, and corporations extract too much value from their workers. But how are the two fundamentally different? It's not clear to me that it's comparatively "easier to make a good living" (by whatever metric) doing YT videos or odd jobs than working a corporate job or similar. I may be wrong since I've never actually tried it nor do I personally know people who do it, but it seems to me there still is a grind in producing content. Sure, you don't do it sitting on a chair in someone else's office, but you still have to "work" at it. And there's also value extraction done by the "platforms", just as there's value extracted by corporate employers. > There is absolutely no shame, and its even cheered on to not be working a serious job. Making 200k at 24 is impressive to no one, and is instead met with disdain, "why spend your life working" I'd say this may be more related to "success porn", where people talk about the long hours they work for their money. But I think there's a huge difference between making 200k and having trouble making ends meet. There's also the fact that the various content that works never shows people hanging around complaining about being poor and having a hard time making rent for a shoebox. Instead, they're having a good time, filming in picturesque locations, etc. So the perception may be skewed as to what's actually possible for the majority of the people.
apatters 5y ago
Comments like this are just so far outside the realm of what I am fairly sure is reality. In the nation called the United States, on the planet Earth, in the prime material plane, the average office worker makes about $40K a year. And the average rent is about $1100/mo. About a third of the office worker's income. Federal taxes are another 11% or so. That leaves more than half of an average office worker's income for essentials like food, clothing and utilities. Entertainment is cheap these days. If you budget there's still enough left over for your 401k/IRA/etc. which goes mainly into the stock market and if you stick with that for 40 years you will do pretty well. Always been the formula, still is. What is this dimension where 24 year olds are running around earning almost a quarter mil and it's not good enough? Is this Valley talk again? I get that this is HN and rent in the Valley and taxes in Cali are high, but so high that this 24 year old on a quarter mil can't make ends meet? If he can't achieve what the office worker on $40K can, why is he in that job and that city? It's more likely in my opinion that these people are worth less than they think they are, or don't know how to manage their finances, or both.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- friedturkey 5y ago
  Averages lean upwards due to some people making millions. Federal taxes aren't the only taxes. State and other taxes are factored in. Rent may average at $1100 in an ideal world, but near cities, $1100 is increasingly rare. Every time this is mentioned someone will chime in and say "yeah but I live in rural Nebraska and pay less than that." Which is fine. But then your employment options are slim, most jobs aren't paying $40k a month, not everyone is a tech contractor making 200k a year from their bedroom on a lakefront, not everyone wants to be or can be a tech contractor, and a lot of jobs performed by "normal" people (people on HN are generally highly paid and anything but typical) will involve long commute times unless they're living in the middle of town... in which case rent prices shoot up fast. The average person also needs to pay for health care in the US (even if their company provides insurance, they're fucked when they get sick because insurance covers very little for most people not in very expensive programs). They have car loans. They have college loans. They need to pay deposits just to move. 9-5s are being replaced with 9-6s and people have less free time. When you factor in all of that, the "average office worker" looks like a dream life to a lot of people. What people considered a boring hell of a life in 1965 is a fantasy unobtainable to an increasing number of "average" people. Comments claiming it's "easy" for "average" people here make me think some people live in a bubble detached from all reality.
p1esk 5y ago
Yeah no. I graduated college 2 years ago. Pretty much everyone I knew wanted to get (and got) a normal job. Oh, and making $200k at 24 is impressive.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Software is a different bubble
  - p1esk 5y ago
    That’s a pretty large bubble.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Even in software, $200k at 24 is pretty impressive. The lucky grinders in America are making less than half that, and most grinders are in the Philippines and Indonesia making $2k a month and able to feed a family on that. I think the word to describe the parent post is "privilege", but I'm not comfortable slinging that around since they're declaiming that $200k/yr is meaningless. (Ostensibly because intangibles like experience are cooler than making enough money to feed several families).
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
watwut 5y ago
> young people trying to hustle money through odd job sales, youtube channels, online ecommerce Most of these people are working super hard, struggling and will never ever get anywhere close to "getting rich" or "escaping that life".
kelnos 5y ago
> Making 200k at 24 is impressive to no one, and is instead met with disdain I think your bubble is showing. Making $200k at 24 is well out of reach for most Americans in their 20s.
- standardUser 5y ago
  Making $200k is completely out of reach for almost all Americans of all ages.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >Making $200k is completely out of reach for almost all Americans of all ages. Even ignoring urban areas that run on monopoly money (SF) a heck of a lot of professions will surpass 200k somewhere in middle age if you don't make a career change that sets you back. Not just doctors and lawyers but all sorts of white collar technical professions, managers of those types of workers and people who are the head administrators (but not owners) of all sorts of medium sized businesses will make that kind of money. Heck, state police officers who are savvy enough to milk the overtime system routinely surpass that.
    - Mezzie 5y ago
      Those still aren't most Americans. Most Americans, well over 50%, will not see that kind of income at any point in their life.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        I never said anything about "most". The ideologue I was replying to said "almost all"
        p1esk 5y ago
        According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States#Top_percentiles_of_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States... it seems that more than 99% of individuals (not to be confused with households) earn less than 200k. That's a reasonable definition for "almost all".
noduerme 5y ago
>> Whatever they can do to not get started on a career. And its completely rational That was completely rational for me when I was a good enough coder in 2004 to leave America and get on the road. I had a career. It's not rational for them. They don't want to be chained to a desk but they aren't actually qualified to do anything. Money printing had already destroyed the currency. That started in the 70s. Having value in the workplace lets you stay even with inflation. You just have to actually work or do something, not sit around "not getting a career" while you wait for one to magically come along because you're so fucking special. >> Making 200k at 24 is impressive to no one Really? It's very impressive to me. I think outside of SFBA it would be impressive to almost anyone in America, and certainly anyone outside the first world.
AussieWog93 5y ago
I am part of this younger generation, turning 29 this year (Jesus Christ!). Hustle culture is definitely a thing - I personally quit a career in software 2 years ago to sell second-hand video games on eBay (making about double now what I was then, and with the high likelihood that it will increase another 30-50% over the coming 12 months), but based on the people I know IRL I'd suspect it's less than 10% of us that are doing any sort of "hustle" at all seriously. Earning 200k a year is absolutely not something that people scoff at, either. The "why spend your life working" meme is more about people dedicating a huge part of their week to their work only to barely get ahead. If you're getting a large wage, you can invest a huge amount of what you earn without having to go without anything materially. The anti-work attitudes and hustle culture that you talk about are definitely there, but exaggerated hugely by reddit and other online forums.
- apatters 5y ago
  What sucks about hustle culture is that 90% don't make it and they waste valuable time. When there is an alternative that's been around for decades (centuries?) and it works. Build skills, work hard, live frugally, invest whatever you can for 40 years, you will end up just fine. Heck you don't even need to get all of those right, the only mandatory one is the last one, the other three just make it easier. But this strategy is slow and nobody wants to hear it, it's preached by lame boomers like Warren Buffet and Robert Kiyosaki. People would rather scroll through the Instagrams of a couple hustlers who are living large and dream. I get it on some level, there's never been a better time in history to get lost in fantasy.
  - danaris 5y ago
    Unfortunately, there are millions and millions of people who build skills, work hard, and live frugally, and still aren't left with enough to invest anything, because the world has shifted in ways that make it impossible. The idea that this is open to everyone—that working hard will guarantee you a decent income—is the big lie that's being increasingly recognized by young people today.
  - jsnodlin 5y ago
zuminator 5y ago
Just wanna point out that you're making points about "the younger generation, 22-27," but the article is lamenting a decline in the workforce participation of millennials. That's 27-41 year olds.
mgh2 5y ago
While some points are valid, most are just excuses. You are seeing the manifestation of about a decade of brainwashing by social media, there is no better way to say it.
tmaly 5y ago
You are spot on. I have observed the same thing both online and offline. For some reason I suspect the pandemic exposed some truths to many people.

WaxedChewbacca 5y ago

whateveracct 5y ago

Making 200k at 24 is a sweet deal tho..

musha68k 5y ago
I’m not an economist but afaik if minimum wage would have kept pace with productivity it would be at USD ~50k at this point. So if we talk about skilled labour of any sort USD 200k would be somewhat normal across industries.
- thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
  US minimum wage reached $1/hour in 1956, or $10.25/h in 2021 dollars Since 1956, inflation adjusted GDP per capita increased by +218% All things equal, this would mean ~$66k / year for a 9-to-5 job paying minimum wage

trabant00 5y ago

This is my opinion as well, only you presented it a lot more clearly and simply. Hustling is now not only socially acceptable, it is an ideal. Children grow up dreaming of this.

agumonkey 5y ago
It does bring a few questions. Was the previous economy vaporous and thus this hustling as valuable or is the new economy just a temporary parasite leaving on top of "real-er" work. I'm asking semi honestly. I see a lot of fake work in traditional jobs, but I fail to see what value a lot of internet activities are bringing. Reactto videos, influencing..
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  You're seeing decentralisation at play driven by new technology. People are tired of making someone's else millions and they want in, risk and money wise. Especially because with digital media the cost/risk to start a business and enter the creator economy is way lower. There's abundance of information that could potentially help people to be more independent and rely less on apprenticeship to learn a trade. I think there's a lot of waste in companies, the bigger the company the bigger the waste, so I think this trend is positive. What we need to fight is the belief that picking a major you like is more important than picking a career the market wants.
  - fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
    You explained this better than I did. People are choosing new routes to make money rather than suffer under the old ones
  - trabant00 5y ago
    > People are tired of making someone's else millions It's not just that. People could start a small enterprise that is not geared towards hustling but they don't want to. That was the point of the original article.
  - 5y ago

vladvasiliu 5y ago

> young people trying to hustle money through odd job sales, youtube channels, online ecommerce. Whatever they can do to not get started on a career. And its completely rational, money printing has destroyed the value of the dollar, real estate is too expensive, and corporations extract too much value from their workers. But how are the two fundamentally different? It's not clear to me that it's comparatively "easier to make a good living" (by whatever metric) doing YT videos or odd jobs than working a corporate job or similar. I may be wrong since I've never actually tried it nor do I personally know people who do it, but it seems to me there still is a grind in producing content. Sure, you don't do it sitting on a chair in someone else's office, but you still have to "work" at it. And there's also value extraction done by the "platforms", just as there's value extracted by corporate employers. > There is absolutely no shame, and its even cheered on to not be working a serious job. Making 200k at 24 is impressive to no one, and is instead met with disdain, "why spend your life working" I'd say this may be more related to "success porn", where people talk about the long hours they work for their money. But I think there's a huge difference between making 200k and having trouble making ends meet. There's also the fact that the various content that works never shows people hanging around complaining about being poor and having a hard time making rent for a shoebox. Instead, they're having a good time, filming in picturesque locations, etc. So the perception may be skewed as to what's actually possible for the majority of the people.

apatters 5y ago

Comments like this are just so far outside the realm of what I am fairly sure is reality. In the nation called the United States, on the planet Earth, in the prime material plane, the average office worker makes about $40K a year. And the average rent is about $1100/mo. About a third of the office worker's income. Federal taxes are another 11% or so. That leaves more than half of an average office worker's income for essentials like food, clothing and utilities. Entertainment is cheap these days. If you budget there's still enough left over for your 401k/IRA/etc. which goes mainly into the stock market and if you stick with that for 40 years you will do pretty well. Always been the formula, still is. What is this dimension where 24 year olds are running around earning almost a quarter mil and it's not good enough? Is this Valley talk again? I get that this is HN and rent in the Valley and taxes in Cali are high, but so high that this 24 year old on a quarter mil can't make ends meet? If he can't achieve what the office worker on $40K can, why is he in that job and that city? It's more likely in my opinion that these people are worth less than they think they are, or don't know how to manage their finances, or both.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
friedturkey 5y ago
Averages lean upwards due to some people making millions. Federal taxes aren't the only taxes. State and other taxes are factored in. Rent may average at $1100 in an ideal world, but near cities, $1100 is increasingly rare. Every time this is mentioned someone will chime in and say "yeah but I live in rural Nebraska and pay less than that." Which is fine. But then your employment options are slim, most jobs aren't paying $40k a month, not everyone is a tech contractor making 200k a year from their bedroom on a lakefront, not everyone wants to be or can be a tech contractor, and a lot of jobs performed by "normal" people (people on HN are generally highly paid and anything but typical) will involve long commute times unless they're living in the middle of town... in which case rent prices shoot up fast. The average person also needs to pay for health care in the US (even if their company provides insurance, they're fucked when they get sick because insurance covers very little for most people not in very expensive programs). They have car loans. They have college loans. They need to pay deposits just to move. 9-5s are being replaced with 9-6s and people have less free time. When you factor in all of that, the "average office worker" looks like a dream life to a lot of people. What people considered a boring hell of a life in 1965 is a fantasy unobtainable to an increasing number of "average" people. Comments claiming it's "easy" for "average" people here make me think some people live in a bubble detached from all reality.

p1esk 5y ago

Yeah no. I graduated college 2 years ago. Pretty much everyone I knew wanted to get (and got) a normal job. Oh, and making $200k at 24 is impressive.

jokethrowaway 5y ago
Software is a different bubble
- p1esk 5y ago
  That’s a pretty large bubble.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Even in software, $200k at 24 is pretty impressive. The lucky grinders in America are making less than half that, and most grinders are in the Philippines and Indonesia making $2k a month and able to feed a family on that. I think the word to describe the parent post is "privilege", but I'm not comfortable slinging that around since they're declaiming that $200k/yr is meaningless. (Ostensibly because intangibles like experience are cooler than making enough money to feed several families).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

watwut 5y ago

> young people trying to hustle money through odd job sales, youtube channels, online ecommerce Most of these people are working super hard, struggling and will never ever get anywhere close to "getting rich" or "escaping that life".

kelnos 5y ago

> Making 200k at 24 is impressive to no one, and is instead met with disdain I think your bubble is showing. Making $200k at 24 is well out of reach for most Americans in their 20s.

standardUser 5y ago
Making $200k is completely out of reach for almost all Americans of all ages.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >Making $200k is completely out of reach for almost all Americans of all ages. Even ignoring urban areas that run on monopoly money (SF) a heck of a lot of professions will surpass 200k somewhere in middle age if you don't make a career change that sets you back. Not just doctors and lawyers but all sorts of white collar technical professions, managers of those types of workers and people who are the head administrators (but not owners) of all sorts of medium sized businesses will make that kind of money. Heck, state police officers who are savvy enough to milk the overtime system routinely surpass that.
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    Those still aren't most Americans. Most Americans, well over 50%, will not see that kind of income at any point in their life.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      I never said anything about "most". The ideologue I was replying to said "almost all"
      - p1esk 5y ago
        According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States#Top_percentiles_of_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States... it seems that more than 99% of individuals (not to be confused with households) earn less than 200k. That's a reasonable definition for "almost all".

noduerme 5y ago

>> Whatever they can do to not get started on a career. And its completely rational That was completely rational for me when I was a good enough coder in 2004 to leave America and get on the road. I had a career. It's not rational for them. They don't want to be chained to a desk but they aren't actually qualified to do anything. Money printing had already destroyed the currency. That started in the 70s. Having value in the workplace lets you stay even with inflation. You just have to actually work or do something, not sit around "not getting a career" while you wait for one to magically come along because you're so fucking special. >> Making 200k at 24 is impressive to no one Really? It's very impressive to me. I think outside of SFBA it would be impressive to almost anyone in America, and certainly anyone outside the first world.

AussieWog93 5y ago

I am part of this younger generation, turning 29 this year (Jesus Christ!). Hustle culture is definitely a thing - I personally quit a career in software 2 years ago to sell second-hand video games on eBay (making about double now what I was then, and with the high likelihood that it will increase another 30-50% over the coming 12 months), but based on the people I know IRL I'd suspect it's less than 10% of us that are doing any sort of "hustle" at all seriously. Earning 200k a year is absolutely not something that people scoff at, either. The "why spend your life working" meme is more about people dedicating a huge part of their week to their work only to barely get ahead. If you're getting a large wage, you can invest a huge amount of what you earn without having to go without anything materially. The anti-work attitudes and hustle culture that you talk about are definitely there, but exaggerated hugely by reddit and other online forums.

apatters 5y ago
What sucks about hustle culture is that 90% don't make it and they waste valuable time. When there is an alternative that's been around for decades (centuries?) and it works. Build skills, work hard, live frugally, invest whatever you can for 40 years, you will end up just fine. Heck you don't even need to get all of those right, the only mandatory one is the last one, the other three just make it easier. But this strategy is slow and nobody wants to hear it, it's preached by lame boomers like Warren Buffet and Robert Kiyosaki. People would rather scroll through the Instagrams of a couple hustlers who are living large and dream. I get it on some level, there's never been a better time in history to get lost in fantasy.
- danaris 5y ago
  Unfortunately, there are millions and millions of people who build skills, work hard, and live frugally, and still aren't left with enough to invest anything, because the world has shifted in ways that make it impossible. The idea that this is open to everyone—that working hard will guarantee you a decent income—is the big lie that's being increasingly recognized by young people today.
- jsnodlin 5y ago

zuminator 5y ago

Just wanna point out that you're making points about "the younger generation, 22-27," but the article is lamenting a decline in the workforce participation of millennials. That's 27-41 year olds.

mgh2 5y ago

While some points are valid, most are just excuses. You are seeing the manifestation of about a decade of brainwashing by social media, there is no better way to say it.

tmaly 5y ago

You are spot on. I have observed the same thing both online and offline. For some reason I suspect the pandemic exposed some truths to many people.