11 ms·

A lot of these threads devolve into "have you tried paying more" but I'd also like to highlight "have you actually tried telling Gen Z that". I'm 35, from basic

A lot of these threads devolve into "have you tried paying more" but I'd also like to highlight "have you actually tried telling Gen Z that". I'm 35, from basically as early as I can remember until sophmore year of college I was told constantly by every adult (and I mean every adult not just the ones that had degrees) in my life to go to college, get a degree, any degree. So yeah I went to college. It was aggressively marketed to me for over a decade and that affected my aspirations. Doesn't help either I'm sure that unions, the organizations willing/capable of marketing-to, teaching/training people and giving them some sense of camaraderie, have been attacked for decades as being variously inefficient to straight evil.

mfer 4y ago
Many adults were told college was the only way to go. Those who went through college and those who didn't. Doesn't matter the debt. It's always better. Except it's not. First, society is going to have too few skilled trades folks in the coming years due to people retiring and not being replaced. Second, a lot of college degrees can't get someone a good job. I remember someone telling me they had a business degree and couldn't get a job managing a store at the mall.
- cudgy 4y ago
  A business degree makes the candidate over-qualified for managing a mall store is the likely reason. They are afraid of the employee using the position as a stepping stone to a higher paying, higher status job.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I am under the impression that business/communications bachelors degrees were a signal that the degree holder took the easy way out in school. It was considered the fallback degree when I went to college 20 years ago, since anyone could graduate with it with minimal effort.
    - quartesixte 4y ago
      Business degrees are good if you leverage the actual purpose of the degree correctly: networking and prestige status. Communications can be good if your school is in the middle of a communications hub. Which, for US students, boils down to Los Angeles and New York City. But a lot of the worth of that degree comes from its ability to unlock internships and networking inside the two biggest media markets in the US, if not the entire world. So not entirely worthless but only lucrative in specific cities and markets, and for mostly shibboleth reasons (many friends with communications degrees who also went to school in either city pull in mid-six figures working for big entertainment companies). But hey, at least you don’t have to actually study anything while spending most of your week at unpaid internships and networking events!
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
I guess being a poor kid who went to college in the 90s and chose his major before he had the internet had its perks. I never considered studying the things that actually interested me because I knew they were going to end up in dead end careers, and I didn't want to be broke my entire life. It's the same reason I didn't go to the top schools that accepted me. Hell, I didn't even go to the top schools that offered me scholarships because I was afraid of the cost. It's also why I ignore the pleas of people who came from substantially better backgrounds during the internet era and claim that they couldn't have known better and deserve debt forgiveness. They SHOULD have known better. They had every resource to know better.
- Avshalom 4y ago
  I think you (and sibling mfer) are commenting on "any degree" instead of my point that "maybe people don't go into the trades because they spend ~18 emotionally formative years of their lives being told to go to college" vs the idea "maybe people don't go into the trades due to wages offered" (which, mind you, I don't mean to discount).
  - MisterBastahrd 4y ago
    The wages are going to have to necessarily increase, though. Look at how home prices are increasing. Homeowner insurance rates increase respectively, and deductibles increase as well. Intelligent tradesmen are going to keep track of this and price their services accordingly, especially when it comes to maintenance contracts. I also think there's a stigma associated with the trades which doesn't necessarily permeate mixed middle class neighborhoods. I grew up in a situation where the majority of adults in my hometown did not have college degrees. Thus, college degrees became things to aspire to instead of things we MUST have. Plenty of my classmates then, and plenty of kids graduating now, are not going to college. For some, they've been told by their folks that they can stay at home and save up their money for the 4 years after getting out of trade school to put a down payment towards a house. Granted, the culture I'm from doesn't negatively view 20-something men hanging out on a porch with beers after dark. Cheaper than the bars, after all.
joecot 4y ago
I'm a millennial. First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. So everyone went and got a college degree, and since so many people had it it wasn't a status symbol anymore, so that wasn't enough to get a good middle class job. And then a bunch of people were told they shouldn't have gotten those degrees and they were worthless. Then we were told to go into STEM. So lots of people went into STEM even though they didn't want to, there are not enough STEM jobs for all of them, and in some cases the reason there are always jobs available is because they chew everyone up and spit them out (looking at you, Amazon). I got lucky. A lot of folks did not. Then we were told what we really need is nurses. So folks went to nursing school in droves. I'm not sure where we are with that, because it seems like hospitals still never have enough nurses but that those folks that went to nursing school also didn't manage to improve their situation much. Now we're told the money and demand is in trades. And that might be true, and that might remain true, but we've been given the wrong advice for so long we just stopped listening.
- yucky 4y ago
  > we've been given the wrong advice for so long we just stopped listening. Shouldn't we recognize that things change and life can be unpredictable? Rather than being jaded that every adult in our lives didn't have a magical crystal ball, maybe there are more productive things that can be done? Gen Z & younger Millennials constantly get shit for blaming everyone else for everything always, and taking no responsibility or being accountable for their own actions...but I would argue that comments like the above aren't going to dispel that. Maybe it reads different than it's intended, but a huge part of being an adult is adapting to an ever changing world and finding a path forward towards your goals. (Edited to remove what could be perceived as a bit harsh..)
  - joecot 4y ago
    The original premise was that trades are where all the money is, and Gen Z should be listening to that. My point is that we were previously told: the money is in college degrees, the money is in STEM, the money is in nursing. And people invested a lot of time and money in taking that advice and it went nowhere. Then we were called stupid and foolish and entitled for believing that advice. So why aren't Gen Z taking this magical advice on trades? Because they know older generations don't have a crystal ball, they've seen what happens if they listen to that crystal ball advice, and they're not falling for it. And if you talk to Gen Z, they have very little hope for the future, given we are doing very little to stop climate change, runaway capitalism, and they're watching jobs get automated without any change to the "cost of living" agreement when people are watching jobs disappear. Boomers don't have to worry about any of that anymore. And there's nothing more tone deaf than Boomers giving advice on a world that no longer exists for younger generations.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
RC_ITR 4y ago
>A lot of these threads devolve into "have you tried paying more" but I'd also like to highlight "have you actually tried telling Gen Z that". Trust me, once the all-in comp/lifestyle of a welder becomes better than say a paralegal, you won't need to tell anybody anything, they'll find you.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  Highly doubtful, you don't just switch careers because comp suddenly rises, social status is very much associated with these decisions, maybe anecdotal but physical labor also has a stigma around it, people working in the field might not be the kind of people you want to be working with, etc. Entire game dev industry is built in finding passionate young people, underpaying them and putting them through the grinder till they burn out. And there's no shortage of applicants.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
hinkley 4y ago
Gen X chiming in. Several of my uncles were skilled laborers. It was good work, it paid well, most of my cousins had a pretty good life. Most of them better than mine in fact. But there was always a bit of a stigma over their heads about being blue collar instead of white collar, and the general feeling was that Grandpa's generation never had that problem. This was something new, accelerated by things like the 1980's recession and in particular the rise of imported automobiles. So the Boomer parents saw this going on and encouraged their kids to go to college, which was the last generation where that advice mostly worked, and we, seeing our uncles and cousins and highschool friends struggle, doubled down with the thing that seemed to help us, but was already starting to look like a crapshoot when we went through the system. It's all class warfare, with a heavy dose of horizontal aggression.
MarkMarine 4y ago
If we have a free market, or any functioning market for labor, pay more is the answer right?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wardedVibe 4y ago
  Information is a key part of the rationality assumption of a free market, so having people systematically distort what jobs are available causes problems.

mfer 4y ago

Many adults were told college was the only way to go. Those who went through college and those who didn't. Doesn't matter the debt. It's always better. Except it's not. First, society is going to have too few skilled trades folks in the coming years due to people retiring and not being replaced. Second, a lot of college degrees can't get someone a good job. I remember someone telling me they had a business degree and couldn't get a job managing a store at the mall.

cudgy 4y ago
A business degree makes the candidate over-qualified for managing a mall store is the likely reason. They are afraid of the employee using the position as a stepping stone to a higher paying, higher status job.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I am under the impression that business/communications bachelors degrees were a signal that the degree holder took the easy way out in school. It was considered the fallback degree when I went to college 20 years ago, since anyone could graduate with it with minimal effort.
  - quartesixte 4y ago
    Business degrees are good if you leverage the actual purpose of the degree correctly: networking and prestige status. Communications can be good if your school is in the middle of a communications hub. Which, for US students, boils down to Los Angeles and New York City. But a lot of the worth of that degree comes from its ability to unlock internships and networking inside the two biggest media markets in the US, if not the entire world. So not entirely worthless but only lucrative in specific cities and markets, and for mostly shibboleth reasons (many friends with communications degrees who also went to school in either city pull in mid-six figures working for big entertainment companies). But hey, at least you don’t have to actually study anything while spending most of your week at unpaid internships and networking events!

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

I guess being a poor kid who went to college in the 90s and chose his major before he had the internet had its perks. I never considered studying the things that actually interested me because I knew they were going to end up in dead end careers, and I didn't want to be broke my entire life. It's the same reason I didn't go to the top schools that accepted me. Hell, I didn't even go to the top schools that offered me scholarships because I was afraid of the cost. It's also why I ignore the pleas of people who came from substantially better backgrounds during the internet era and claim that they couldn't have known better and deserve debt forgiveness. They SHOULD have known better. They had every resource to know better.

Avshalom 4y ago
I think you (and sibling mfer) are commenting on "any degree" instead of my point that "maybe people don't go into the trades because they spend ~18 emotionally formative years of their lives being told to go to college" vs the idea "maybe people don't go into the trades due to wages offered" (which, mind you, I don't mean to discount).
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  The wages are going to have to necessarily increase, though. Look at how home prices are increasing. Homeowner insurance rates increase respectively, and deductibles increase as well. Intelligent tradesmen are going to keep track of this and price their services accordingly, especially when it comes to maintenance contracts. I also think there's a stigma associated with the trades which doesn't necessarily permeate mixed middle class neighborhoods. I grew up in a situation where the majority of adults in my hometown did not have college degrees. Thus, college degrees became things to aspire to instead of things we MUST have. Plenty of my classmates then, and plenty of kids graduating now, are not going to college. For some, they've been told by their folks that they can stay at home and save up their money for the 4 years after getting out of trade school to put a down payment towards a house. Granted, the culture I'm from doesn't negatively view 20-something men hanging out on a porch with beers after dark. Cheaper than the bars, after all.

joecot 4y ago

I'm a millennial. First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. So everyone went and got a college degree, and since so many people had it it wasn't a status symbol anymore, so that wasn't enough to get a good middle class job. And then a bunch of people were told they shouldn't have gotten those degrees and they were worthless. Then we were told to go into STEM. So lots of people went into STEM even though they didn't want to, there are not enough STEM jobs for all of them, and in some cases the reason there are always jobs available is because they chew everyone up and spit them out (looking at you, Amazon). I got lucky. A lot of folks did not. Then we were told what we really need is nurses. So folks went to nursing school in droves. I'm not sure where we are with that, because it seems like hospitals still never have enough nurses but that those folks that went to nursing school also didn't manage to improve their situation much. Now we're told the money and demand is in trades. And that might be true, and that might remain true, but we've been given the wrong advice for so long we just stopped listening.

yucky 4y ago
> we've been given the wrong advice for so long we just stopped listening. Shouldn't we recognize that things change and life can be unpredictable? Rather than being jaded that every adult in our lives didn't have a magical crystal ball, maybe there are more productive things that can be done? Gen Z & younger Millennials constantly get shit for blaming everyone else for everything always, and taking no responsibility or being accountable for their own actions...but I would argue that comments like the above aren't going to dispel that. Maybe it reads different than it's intended, but a huge part of being an adult is adapting to an ever changing world and finding a path forward towards your goals. (Edited to remove what could be perceived as a bit harsh..)
- joecot 4y ago
  The original premise was that trades are where all the money is, and Gen Z should be listening to that. My point is that we were previously told: the money is in college degrees, the money is in STEM, the money is in nursing. And people invested a lot of time and money in taking that advice and it went nowhere. Then we were called stupid and foolish and entitled for believing that advice. So why aren't Gen Z taking this magical advice on trades? Because they know older generations don't have a crystal ball, they've seen what happens if they listen to that crystal ball advice, and they're not falling for it. And if you talk to Gen Z, they have very little hope for the future, given we are doing very little to stop climate change, runaway capitalism, and they're watching jobs get automated without any change to the "cost of living" agreement when people are watching jobs disappear. Boomers don't have to worry about any of that anymore. And there's nothing more tone deaf than Boomers giving advice on a world that no longer exists for younger generations.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

RC_ITR 4y ago

>A lot of these threads devolve into "have you tried paying more" but I'd also like to highlight "have you actually tried telling Gen Z that". Trust me, once the all-in comp/lifestyle of a welder becomes better than say a paralegal, you won't need to tell anybody anything, they'll find you.

moonchrome 4y ago
Highly doubtful, you don't just switch careers because comp suddenly rises, social status is very much associated with these decisions, maybe anecdotal but physical labor also has a stigma around it, people working in the field might not be the kind of people you want to be working with, etc. Entire game dev industry is built in finding passionate young people, underpaying them and putting them through the grinder till they burn out. And there's no shortage of applicants.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

hinkley 4y ago

Gen X chiming in. Several of my uncles were skilled laborers. It was good work, it paid well, most of my cousins had a pretty good life. Most of them better than mine in fact. But there was always a bit of a stigma over their heads about being blue collar instead of white collar, and the general feeling was that Grandpa's generation never had that problem. This was something new, accelerated by things like the 1980's recession and in particular the rise of imported automobiles. So the Boomer parents saw this going on and encouraged their kids to go to college, which was the last generation where that advice mostly worked, and we, seeing our uncles and cousins and highschool friends struggle, doubled down with the thing that seemed to help us, but was already starting to look like a crapshoot when we went through the system. It's all class warfare, with a heavy dose of horizontal aggression.

MarkMarine 4y ago

If we have a free market, or any functioning market for labor, pay more is the answer right?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wardedVibe 4y ago
Information is a key part of the rationality assumption of a free market, so having people systematically distort what jobs are available causes problems.