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Well, you can definitely sense it if you browse Reddit. Young people are freaking out about the job market, the house market, and the dating market. I don't mea

Well, you can definitely sense it if you browse Reddit. Young people are freaking out about the job market, the house market, and the dating market. I don't mean to dismiss their concerns, far from it. It does seem like we've been making it harder and harder for anyone to become an adult over the past few decades. Here's the quote I found most relevant to my own experience of work. It really does come down to autonomy. I could be writing the exact same code and feel awful about it, if it were done in an office with a guy looking over my shoulder. If you're young, you're more likely to have this problem. > More broadly, employers are successfully deploying new technologies to minimize ‘break’ times, and exert greater control over production processes, often aided by close technological monitoring of work processes, which limit worker control and autonomy over ever-more-demanding processes, all of which – based on Karasek’s (1979) theory regarding the importance of worker control and autonomy for wellbeing – should result in a decline in the wellbeing of workers. Evidence from task-based studies of work, and social surveys in which workers report on the nature of job tasks, indicates there has been a growth in job demands and a reduction in worker job control in the United Kingdom (Green et al., 2022) which, presumably, is mirrored in the United States. During COVID, the shift to home and hybrid working, whilst beneficial in some respects, may have exacerbated feelings of social isolation experienced by the young in particular as they missed out on the social component of the workplace. The demise of collective bargaining and trade union presence in the workplace implies a diminution in workers’ bargaining power, making it even more difficult for workers to resist such changes and to alter their terms and conditions of employment (Feiveson, 2023).

AtlasBarfed 1y ago
Good news, AI monitoring is coming! Maximum corporate dystopia as a training bed for overall societal totalitarianism. Unions are the only counter to this, as depressing as that is. Possibly overreach by corporations combined with the collapse of globalism will reempower workers. But robotics and AI may completely undercut that.
- owebmaster 1y ago
  Calling it globalism in place of globalization or just capitalism is so cringe
- saubeidl 1y ago
  Capitalism is the problem and the reason for everything you decry. Until we actually start naming it as such instead of using distractions like globalism, there's no chance at improving things.
  - bloak 1y ago
    To be honest, the term "capitalism" has accumulated a lot of baggage and people don't always have a clear understanding of what is meant by it so it might be helpful to use a different term with a clear definition.
    - saubeidl 1y ago
      While that is true, I believe part of trying to establish a better system is spreading an understanding that the current system is broken - you do that by naming it as such and not leaving the field to competing definitions.
      - igor47 1y ago
        Wait so, the thing that is broken is capitalism, and capitalism is the thing that's broken? Doesn't this seem a little circular?
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        AtlasBarfed 1y ago
        No, you just restated the premise. If I said like Yoda, "capitalism broken is" doesn't make it spherical.
        collingreen 1y ago
        Yoda would say "broken, capitalism is"
  - 1y ago
reedf1 1y ago
I do feel like gen x was the last generation to be given any significant autonomy in the workplace. I'm a millennial and I feel like I've always been 10 years away from autonomy. It seems the tide recedes as I go out.
- ben_w 1y ago
  Was Gen X ever given significant autonomy? I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space and the start of Dilbert both date to when Gen X were the newbies to the wold of work, and Dilbert in particular kept on going. I'm just on the borderline of Millennial myself, and people older than me have expressed similar frustrations at various workplaces.
  - reedf1 1y ago
    It's funny actually, I totally get that Office Space and Dilbert are pisstakes of office culture, but it has never really worked on me because I'm actively envious of their work arrangements. I work in an open plan office where, everyone can see everyone's screen, you can see who is at their desk. I would die for a cubicle. Every job I've had my line manager sits next to me, and their boss sits nearby, etc. Work seems to end when they clock off. They seem to have time for sit down out of office lunches. Their work hours seem shorter.
  - harimau777 1y ago
    Office Space seems like a pretty amazing work environment compared to a lot of what I've had to deal with. I mean how insane is it that everyone gets their own cubicles? I'd kill for that. That whole "Yeah, I'm gonna need you to complete that TPS report" bit is tame compared to Agile.
- lordnacho 1y ago
  I'm not sure it's generational, it may be more about finding a good niche. Or perhaps something like this: - For previous generations, for most jobs (but not all), you had an informal contract: work will be boring, but dependable. You can work through having a young family without fear of getting dumped out. You don't get surveilled, you can deliver on your own terms. - Since Neutron Jack and others of his era, this has become less and less true. Large corporations in particular no longer really hold up their end of the contract, and now workers see that and are happy to jump ship, for which the response is to prefer already-trained young workers along with keeping a close eye. So it gets very competitive to get a first job, and you aren't going to get the slack you need to live your life. - If you want autonomy, you can start your own business. Either a little one like a restaurant where you are a very small boat in a very large ocean, or a startup, where you are going to need the help of venture capital, who are going to be wanting their money back. Pick your poison.
saubeidl 1y ago
> Young people are freaking out about the job market, the house market Maybe it's finally time we admit markets are a horrible way of allocating resources unless you want to create a system in which some have endless riches without effort and others have endless effort without riches? Meritocracy claims have always been propaganda to distract from this simple fact.
- lurking_swe 1y ago
  free markets are just fine. The problem is the housing market in the US isn’t a proper free market AT ALL. The housing “market” here has a long history of problems. - strict zoning laws (and nimby attitudes) prevent the free market from functioning as intended. Housing is expensive because we make it hard to build more housing. - Read up on RealPage, software for landlords thats been accused of inflating rents. There’s a major lawsuit underway, focusing on the issues with its algorithmic pricing. Is that a free market? When the majority of landlords are (effectively) using the same 3rd party software to price-fix? - the US had a few decades of very racist housing policy, which made it difficult for blacks to get housing. I say this as a white man that’s studied this. Fun fact - the US govt used to mark black neighborhoods as “high risk”, meaning banks wouldn’t loan money money to blacks for buying a house. At one point in US history it was also legal to have HOA’s with bylaws preventing blacks from buying property in the neighborhood. I could continue to list many examples of how blacks got screwed, but that’s not the point. The point is whites had a HUGE advantage for decades, even after slavery was abolished. The government made sure blacks couldn’t compete for the desirable homes, for decades. So whites got nice cheap housing. Today the children of those white families enjoy the benefits their parents received, via unethical housing policy. Me included. Is that how a free market is supposed to work? Temporarily reducing competition in desirable communities, letting whites buy, and then reverting the law decades later after prices doubled? Definition of pulling the ladder up behind you if you ask me. I could go on, but i’ll spare you. :) I have receipts: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-realpage-algorithmic-pricing-scheme-harms-millions-american-renters https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history... https://longislandadvocate.com/decades-after-redlining-l-i-still-struggles-with-housing-disparities/ https://longislandadvocate.com/decades-after-redlining-l-i-s...
random9749832 1y ago
Reddit is a dumping ground for venting just like LinkedIn is a dumping ground for bragging. You are going to get skewed perspectives.
- nh23423fefe 1y ago
  You can only learn from normally distributed data?
  - MattGrommes 1y ago
    It's easy to over index on data when it's the bubble you're in. I know it happens to me on Reddit. Since I see so many different subs it makes it seem like you're getting a well-rounded view of things but that can be an illusion.
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  You will see skewed perspectives but the reality is somewhere in the middle. Yes it’s incredibly hard to find a job, let alone a high paying one to keep up with the rising costs of living. And more recently we are seeing an uptick in new grad unemployment. Which is a great indicator of where in the business cycle we are at the moment. However, there is also an element of unrealistic expectations coming to a head. New grads historically rarely got extremely high paying jobs, which seems to be an expectation especially in the tech sector. There are also a lot of people complaining about not being able to find a job with their degree that is not that in demand. A lot of people want an easy life in their 20s because they are comparing it with their parents lives in 30s and 40s.
trod1234 1y ago
The environment we live in has become disadvantaged to the average person not only in economic terms, but in terms of life goals. The people responsible are, generally speaking, the current leadership in power, and have been holding on to that power despite their increasing age. They have manipulated the systems to enrich themselves, at the expense of the future, and like all cyclicals in recent history, the economic pieces of it are driven by clever- re-imagingings of money-printing schemes. Most people are worse off today than they were 20 years ago, and 10 years ago, and its still getting worse. Eventually you have 27 grievances and revolutionary activity when the vast majority of people realize there is no out, there is only through, and that involves chaotically increasing violence which no sane person would wish for, ever.
nicbou 1y ago
I work in immigration and I akways say somewhat jokingly that if you want to make it in Berlin, you need 3 things: a job, a flat and a date. All of those markets are brutal, but if you have one of those things, it keeps you searching for the other two. Searching for all 3 at once is depressing and if people are unsuccessful for too long, they usually leave Germany altogether. It does seem like more and more people are giving up on those basic goals. Each of those markets is now controlled by monopolistic platforms, and they're tightening their grip.
easterncalculus 1y ago
> Young people are freaking out about the job market, the house market, and the dating market. If we're going to discuss this problem honestly we need to admit the elephant in the room: it is much, much worse for young men than young women. In jobs, from FT[0]: "The unemployment rate for recent male graduates has risen steeply from less than 5 per cent to 7 per cent over the past 12 months. For young female graduates in the US, joblessness is unchanged over the same period, if not falling slightly." "Most striking of all, recently graduated young men are now unemployed at the same rate as their non-graduate counterparts, completely erasing the college employability premium." In dating, despite being much more selective, women match with around 40% of men they like, while for men it's more like 2%. Anecdotally I know many women in metropolitan areas can receive hundreds or thousands of likes in a week, while even a hundred is more than many (pretty average) men will receive in a lifetime. The number is zero, very often. In housing it's more equal, but of course safety nets for young women exist through dating. Living in a HCOL metro area it's not uncommon for younger women to move in with their partners, and not have to pay much or any rent. That option is much, much rarer for young men, so if you don't have parents to save you, no one's coming. [0]:https://archive.is/D2cBy https://archive.is/D2cBy
- pixelatedindex 1y ago
  > If we're going to discuss this problem honestly we need to admit the elephant in the room: it is much, much worse for young men than young women. I empathize with my fellow young men, and sadly I don’t think most of my fellow progressives care about young men. It’s certainly not a platform that will get you votes if you run for office. If I were born post-2005 I doubt that I have been given any major advantage over women yet the messaging is all about how bad it is for the other side. At the same time it’s hard to argue otherwise because the GOP is actively eroding women’s rights. Young men are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
- wturner 1y ago
  The elephant in the room is the massive transport of wealth from the poor and middle class to the extreme rich coupled with the monopoly on incentives the extreme rich have on policy enactment. All that other shit is downstream.

AtlasBarfed 1y ago

Good news, AI monitoring is coming! Maximum corporate dystopia as a training bed for overall societal totalitarianism. Unions are the only counter to this, as depressing as that is. Possibly overreach by corporations combined with the collapse of globalism will reempower workers. But robotics and AI may completely undercut that.

owebmaster 1y ago
Calling it globalism in place of globalization or just capitalism is so cringe
saubeidl 1y ago
Capitalism is the problem and the reason for everything you decry. Until we actually start naming it as such instead of using distractions like globalism, there's no chance at improving things.
- bloak 1y ago
  To be honest, the term "capitalism" has accumulated a lot of baggage and people don't always have a clear understanding of what is meant by it so it might be helpful to use a different term with a clear definition.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    While that is true, I believe part of trying to establish a better system is spreading an understanding that the current system is broken - you do that by naming it as such and not leaving the field to competing definitions.
    - igor47 1y ago
      Wait so, the thing that is broken is capitalism, and capitalism is the thing that's broken? Doesn't this seem a little circular?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - AtlasBarfed 1y ago
        No, you just restated the premise. If I said like Yoda, "capitalism broken is" doesn't make it spherical.
        collingreen 1y ago
        Yoda would say "broken, capitalism is"
- 1y ago

reedf1 1y ago

I do feel like gen x was the last generation to be given any significant autonomy in the workplace. I'm a millennial and I feel like I've always been 10 years away from autonomy. It seems the tide recedes as I go out.

ben_w 1y ago
Was Gen X ever given significant autonomy? I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space and the start of Dilbert both date to when Gen X were the newbies to the wold of work, and Dilbert in particular kept on going. I'm just on the borderline of Millennial myself, and people older than me have expressed similar frustrations at various workplaces.
- reedf1 1y ago
  It's funny actually, I totally get that Office Space and Dilbert are pisstakes of office culture, but it has never really worked on me because I'm actively envious of their work arrangements. I work in an open plan office where, everyone can see everyone's screen, you can see who is at their desk. I would die for a cubicle. Every job I've had my line manager sits next to me, and their boss sits nearby, etc. Work seems to end when they clock off. They seem to have time for sit down out of office lunches. Their work hours seem shorter.
- harimau777 1y ago
  Office Space seems like a pretty amazing work environment compared to a lot of what I've had to deal with. I mean how insane is it that everyone gets their own cubicles? I'd kill for that. That whole "Yeah, I'm gonna need you to complete that TPS report" bit is tame compared to Agile.
lordnacho 1y ago
I'm not sure it's generational, it may be more about finding a good niche. Or perhaps something like this: - For previous generations, for most jobs (but not all), you had an informal contract: work will be boring, but dependable. You can work through having a young family without fear of getting dumped out. You don't get surveilled, you can deliver on your own terms. - Since Neutron Jack and others of his era, this has become less and less true. Large corporations in particular no longer really hold up their end of the contract, and now workers see that and are happy to jump ship, for which the response is to prefer already-trained young workers along with keeping a close eye. So it gets very competitive to get a first job, and you aren't going to get the slack you need to live your life. - If you want autonomy, you can start your own business. Either a little one like a restaurant where you are a very small boat in a very large ocean, or a startup, where you are going to need the help of venture capital, who are going to be wanting their money back. Pick your poison.

saubeidl 1y ago

> Young people are freaking out about the job market, the house market Maybe it's finally time we admit markets are a horrible way of allocating resources unless you want to create a system in which some have endless riches without effort and others have endless effort without riches? Meritocracy claims have always been propaganda to distract from this simple fact.

lurking_swe 1y ago
free markets are just fine. The problem is the housing market in the US isn’t a proper free market AT ALL. The housing “market” here has a long history of problems. - strict zoning laws (and nimby attitudes) prevent the free market from functioning as intended. Housing is expensive because we make it hard to build more housing. - Read up on RealPage, software for landlords thats been accused of inflating rents. There’s a major lawsuit underway, focusing on the issues with its algorithmic pricing. Is that a free market? When the majority of landlords are (effectively) using the same 3rd party software to price-fix? - the US had a few decades of very racist housing policy, which made it difficult for blacks to get housing. I say this as a white man that’s studied this. Fun fact - the US govt used to mark black neighborhoods as “high risk”, meaning banks wouldn’t loan money money to blacks for buying a house. At one point in US history it was also legal to have HOA’s with bylaws preventing blacks from buying property in the neighborhood. I could continue to list many examples of how blacks got screwed, but that’s not the point. The point is whites had a HUGE advantage for decades, even after slavery was abolished. The government made sure blacks couldn’t compete for the desirable homes, for decades. So whites got nice cheap housing. Today the children of those white families enjoy the benefits their parents received, via unethical housing policy. Me included. Is that how a free market is supposed to work? Temporarily reducing competition in desirable communities, letting whites buy, and then reverting the law decades later after prices doubled? Definition of pulling the ladder up behind you if you ask me. I could go on, but i’ll spare you. :) I have receipts: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-realpage-algorithmic-pricing-scheme-harms-millions-american-renters https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history... https://longislandadvocate.com/decades-after-redlining-l-i-still-struggles-with-housing-disparities/ https://longislandadvocate.com/decades-after-redlining-l-i-s...

random9749832 1y ago

Reddit is a dumping ground for venting just like LinkedIn is a dumping ground for bragging. You are going to get skewed perspectives.

nh23423fefe 1y ago
You can only learn from normally distributed data?
- MattGrommes 1y ago
  It's easy to over index on data when it's the bubble you're in. I know it happens to me on Reddit. Since I see so many different subs it makes it seem like you're getting a well-rounded view of things but that can be an illusion.
darth_avocado 1y ago
You will see skewed perspectives but the reality is somewhere in the middle. Yes it’s incredibly hard to find a job, let alone a high paying one to keep up with the rising costs of living. And more recently we are seeing an uptick in new grad unemployment. Which is a great indicator of where in the business cycle we are at the moment. However, there is also an element of unrealistic expectations coming to a head. New grads historically rarely got extremely high paying jobs, which seems to be an expectation especially in the tech sector. There are also a lot of people complaining about not being able to find a job with their degree that is not that in demand. A lot of people want an easy life in their 20s because they are comparing it with their parents lives in 30s and 40s.

trod1234 1y ago

The environment we live in has become disadvantaged to the average person not only in economic terms, but in terms of life goals. The people responsible are, generally speaking, the current leadership in power, and have been holding on to that power despite their increasing age. They have manipulated the systems to enrich themselves, at the expense of the future, and like all cyclicals in recent history, the economic pieces of it are driven by clever- re-imagingings of money-printing schemes. Most people are worse off today than they were 20 years ago, and 10 years ago, and its still getting worse. Eventually you have 27 grievances and revolutionary activity when the vast majority of people realize there is no out, there is only through, and that involves chaotically increasing violence which no sane person would wish for, ever.

nicbou 1y ago

I work in immigration and I akways say somewhat jokingly that if you want to make it in Berlin, you need 3 things: a job, a flat and a date. All of those markets are brutal, but if you have one of those things, it keeps you searching for the other two. Searching for all 3 at once is depressing and if people are unsuccessful for too long, they usually leave Germany altogether. It does seem like more and more people are giving up on those basic goals. Each of those markets is now controlled by monopolistic platforms, and they're tightening their grip.

easterncalculus 1y ago

> Young people are freaking out about the job market, the house market, and the dating market. If we're going to discuss this problem honestly we need to admit the elephant in the room: it is much, much worse for young men than young women. In jobs, from FT[0]: "The unemployment rate for recent male graduates has risen steeply from less than 5 per cent to 7 per cent over the past 12 months. For young female graduates in the US, joblessness is unchanged over the same period, if not falling slightly." "Most striking of all, recently graduated young men are now unemployed at the same rate as their non-graduate counterparts, completely erasing the college employability premium." In dating, despite being much more selective, women match with around 40% of men they like, while for men it's more like 2%. Anecdotally I know many women in metropolitan areas can receive hundreds or thousands of likes in a week, while even a hundred is more than many (pretty average) men will receive in a lifetime. The number is zero, very often. In housing it's more equal, but of course safety nets for young women exist through dating. Living in a HCOL metro area it's not uncommon for younger women to move in with their partners, and not have to pay much or any rent. That option is much, much rarer for young men, so if you don't have parents to save you, no one's coming. [0]:https://archive.is/D2cBy https://archive.is/D2cBy

pixelatedindex 1y ago
> If we're going to discuss this problem honestly we need to admit the elephant in the room: it is much, much worse for young men than young women. I empathize with my fellow young men, and sadly I don’t think most of my fellow progressives care about young men. It’s certainly not a platform that will get you votes if you run for office. If I were born post-2005 I doubt that I have been given any major advantage over women yet the messaging is all about how bad it is for the other side. At the same time it’s hard to argue otherwise because the GOP is actively eroding women’s rights. Young men are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
wturner 1y ago
The elephant in the room is the massive transport of wealth from the poor and middle class to the extreme rich coupled with the monopoly on incentives the extreme rich have on policy enactment. All that other shit is downstream.