I'm always perplexed by the (possibly rhetorical) surprised tone of these kinds of articles. As if it wasn't glaringly obvious that young people are getting screwed because of their lack of employment histories combined with an ultra-competitive job market (for most industries).
The discussion then usually turns to how young people have useless degrees or are lazy or entitled, or some other monday morning quarterback commentary. The reality is that prior generations goofed off and made blind decisions just like this one. They just had more of cushion to rebound from.
I'm steadily employed in a fantastic job but have been on the other side of the fence as well. One thing is obvious: most white-collar, educated people who already had jobs before 2008 are doing just fine, haven't noticed a thing, and don't give a neuron to thinking about unemployed people.
This is just another indication to me that there is a growing class divide and there will be plenty of losers (and no, the rising tide doesn't help undeveloped, inexperienced college grads with nondischargable debt). The means of production are now more abstract than owning factories -- they're owning the information networks. We have yet to see anything close to the sufficient political will or desire in DC to bust up these modern day trusts (like Teddy Roosevelt did with the industrialists a century ago). By design, they're harder to identify and harder to educate the public about. And with mass media stomping out thoughtful journalism due to basic economics and a civically uninterested public, where's the opposition going to come from?
If you happen to be in a line of work that helps those in power (like most programmers), you'll probably thrive. If you don't, you're going to have a tough road ahead: our public institutions are behaving more and more like results-driven board-run corporations. They're misappropriating improved efficiency to matters that benefit more from longer-term strategies ("Instant Dashboards! Metrics! Data-Driven Decisions!"). I fear most the speed at which the consolidation of power could take place (aided by the speed of technological progress).
> One thing is obvious: most white-collar, educated people who already had jobs before 2008 are doing just fine, haven't noticed a thing, and don't give a neuron to thinking about unemployed people.
I remember reading an article around 2008 (in the Economist, I think) based on a (then recent) research paper that showed that people who graduated during a recession had a lot more to lose in the long run (smaller wages etc) compared to people who graduated during "normal" times.
We're 5 years later, the "recession" supposedly ended three or four years ago (I'm talking about the US here), and yet things don't seem to have reverted back to normal. Unless maybe this is in fact the new normal.
I read the same article. It said graduates during a recession may take up to a decade to have their wages catch up to what it might have been had they graduated during normal times.
I know from personal experience much of the last 5 years worth of work for me (software / algorithm design) has been building automation. Helping companies that were struggling push forward by replacing human workers with software.
Perhaps in the recent down years companies were pressured to become more efficient and now that the economy is picking up they are reluctant to go back to hiring people versus paying for software and automation.
/completeSpeculation
I can think of two companies I've consulted with since 2008 where the CEO's told me they were picking up a new contract(s) that would represent massive growth (200-300%) but that they wanted to keep their same labor force without having to hire.
Because too many of them are busy looking for other people to give them employment (which has been difficult for employers to do), instead of figuring out how to create wealth on their own. If more created their own businesses, they would probably be able to hire the rest — you know, the ones working in coffee shops and retail. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/what-the-fate-of-..., for example.
It's an odd thing: the startup community often has all of the smug traits of the out-of-touch, old-money elite, but has none of their gifts for enjoying leisure. It's a particularly awful combination in my opinion.
And wages as a whole have diverged from productivity since the 70s. That we're happy that wages are once again keeping pace with inflation --another way of saying "well, at least we're no longer losing money"-- is depressing in this context.
>What might help? Easing the parts of the regulatory thicket without societal benefits. Providing public financing for the sorts of early-stage scientific research and physical infrastructure that the private sector often finds unprofitable. Long term, nothing is likely to matter more than improving educational attainment, from preschool through college (which may have started already).
So... we socialize the substantial costs of doing business (infrastructure and research), cut back on "the parts of the regulatory thicket without societal benefits," --whatever that means-- and just keep pumping people through college. Has Leonhardt being paying attention at all?
We already subsidize infrastructure and research costs. Hell, it's become standard policy that no corporation shall break ground anywhere unless the host promises it special favors and decreased (or absolutely no) taxes. Regulations are more industry specific. The big ticket ones however typically revolve around finance and environment. Perhaps we should ask --well, damn near anyone-- how the year 2009 was for them financially. Perhaps we should ask the Chinese just how "without societal benefits" all of those environmental regulations are. And college? We're putting more students through than ever before. And they are predictably finding that, as the number of people with degrees rises, the value placed on their own degree decreases. And what does the hiring company look for? Experience.
>Many business executives and economists also point to immigration policy. Done right, an overhaul could make a difference, many say, by allowing more highly skilled immigrants to enter the country and by making life easier for those immigrants already here. Historically, immigrants have started more than their share of new companies.
AND we need more H-1B's? This guy's a real piece of work. We already have the ability to bring in extraordinary talent. We don't need 50,000 more outsource firm slots.
==========
Here's the thing: businesses will hire exactly as many employees as they need. No more. Perhaps less, if they can get away with it. And if they run the remaining folks at break-neck pace long enough, that level will become the new "need" level. No amount of policy or regulatory finagling is going to make a lick of difference. By bending over for Corporate America, all you're doing is throwing taxpayer money at them with the vague and unsubstantiated hope that they'll take on a few more employees. This is beyond stupid. As business becomes more automated --not mechanized, automated, as in no human required-- you can expect fewer jobs to remain and for the employment rates to level off or decline.
> AND we need more H-1B's? This guy's a real piece of work. We already have the ability to bring in extraordinary talent. We don't need 50,000 more outsource firm slots.
Being on the hiring side of things, America needs all the talent it can get. Hiring good software engineers is seriously hard.
Maybe the problem is just connecting people with jobs, but given the low unemployment rate in the tech sector, I really doubt it.
Having to interview 5 candidates before finding one who just knows how malloc works isn't fun.
Indeed, one of our high quality engineers had to be sent back to his home country after his work visa expired, we are hoping to get him in on H-1B, and I believe he got approved, but now we have to sit and wait for government wheels to churn.
America should make it as easy as possible for highly motivated and talented individuals to come here. Jobs, heck, entire new industries will be created.
Isn't that the entire lesson from start-up culture? Get talented highly motivated people together, let them achieve their dreams (with someone who knows business and finances overseeing things!), and the economy will grow.
I'm not against H1 for other reasons, but I'm a little skeptical of the trickle-down benefits of software engineers. Civil engineers, industrial engineers, sure. But who else do we add to a company's payroll? A few sales, HR, here and there. A little business to local grocery stores, restaurants, etc. But I don't see software as a leveraged job-creation industry.
> I'm not against H1 for other reasons, but I'm a little skeptical of the trickle-down benefits of software engineers.
Video Games are a great example.
How many jobs has Halo created?
Well there are all the various paraphernalia that goes along with the series. From artists hired to design custom Xbox face plates, to the sales person selling the t-shirts, to statues, action figures, etc.
Then there are the advertisers who make the TV spots. The writers who run the various alternate reality games before releases. The musicians who do the score, the voice actors, directors, texture modelers, and so on and so forth.
Then there are the gaming bars that draw patrons in with Halo tournaments. The additional drinks sold, the chairs for spectators, extra food that is sold, and so on and so forth.
> A little business to local grocery stores, restaurants, etc. But I don't see software as a leveraged job-creation industry.
Ask Puget Sound and Silicon valley what the economic impact is!
Those areas are tech hubs. I've lived in Silicon Valley for 18 years, and most companies I've worked for are about half engineering. So, for every foreign engineer we bring in, perhaps the company can add one position on the other side of the house, in marketing, accounting, HR, etc. And then some small trickle-down effect as the engineer and his counterpart spend their salaries locally. It's good, better than nothing, but it's not like the old days of setting up a car factory and then bringing in thousands of relatively low-skilled new jobs.
The Halo example is good, but balance it out with things like Google's self driving cars. It's a relatively small team that will probably eliminate all of the taxi and truck driving jobs in the developed world. It will probably make vehicle sharing radically more efficient as well which will take a lot of cars off the road and eliminate more jobs there too.
All in all, I believe we're competing with foreign engineers no matter where they are so it makes sense to have them here. I'm just not seeing much evidence that we are creating jobs faster than we are eliminating them.
How many stores have employees dedicated just to selling electronics? How many video game t-shirts get sold? Entire comic strips like Penny Arcade, and all the associated goods that go with it.
Just an anthology book of comics, the printers, the person who does the page layout, the binding, the paper mill that makes the paper for the book, the factory that makes the glossy ink, everything is connected together.
Hiring top talent is certainly expensive. And if you're searching for the best of the best, it will always be hard by virtue of the fact that you're looking for people at the extreme of a bell curve, no matter how large the sample set is.
As for knowing how malloc works: fewer and fewer universities are even touching C. It's all C++ or, better yet, Java (no need to understand memory management _at all_ in that case). The only guys left that are into reimplementing malloc are the minority of Computer Science or Computer Engineering graduates that are into embedded work or HA scenarios.
And just to quench my own personal curiosity, since you're on the hiring side and I'm not: why is it that every company absolutely must find someone who fits the bill exactly? What is with this aversion to spending any amount of time training people?
> And just to quench my own personal curiosity, since you're on the hiring side and I'm not: why is it that every company absolutely must find someone who fits the bill exactly? What is with this aversion to spending any amount of time training people?
We don't have an aversion to training, but when someone has supposedly 8+ years of development experience and cannot answer simple questions, well, on to the next candidate.
I personally do always look for potential, I believe it is the most important aspect when hiring. But potential means having a drive to learn independently. I really do understand why a lot of employers are just saying "screw it" and not hiring anyone who isn't on Stack Overflow, or has a tech blog, or some sort of presence that said "I am passionate about this field."
(I'd be doomed by that metric, I don't have a github or Stack Overflow account! I'm on this site and /r/programming, however I do have a somewhat maintained tech blog.)
> As for knowing how malloc works: fewer and fewer universities are even touching C. It's all C++ or, better yet, Java (no need to understand memory management _at all_ in that case). The only guys left that are into reimplementing malloc are the minority of Computer Science or Computer Engineering graduates that are into embedded work or HA scenarios.
Ugh I know. My college still teaches native, and in fact the majority of the curriculum (last time I checked, its been a few years) was native, but they are unfortunately the exception to a general trend.
The thing is, managed languages are pretty damn nice for teaching software engineering principles in, but bad for hands on "this is how it works" explaining.
Covering how the JVM or CLR does stuff on a PowerPoint slide isn't the same thing as having students write an allocator. Which sort of sucks when they go on the job and have to write an allocator!
I wonder if your hiring process isn't more narrow and exclusionary of independent learners than you think. It is really quite easy in 2013 to have racked up 8 years of real high-quality development experience without having any idea how memory allocation works at a detailed level. For some portion of the people with 8 years experience it will be easy for them to go and independently figure out how it works and for others it won't. You want people in the first group, but you can't find them just by asking them questions about memory allocation.
(Also, do you do something having to do specifically with memory allocation or is it just your pet entry on the list of things you think everybody should know about to not be dumb?)
Honest question: what field are you in which means your candidates are going to need to write custom allocators on a regular basis?
What problems need custom allocators? I'm a fan of lower level details and all, but surely you can get away with one of the many existing allocator implementations when the problem to be solved isn't "sudo make me an allocator"?
> Honest question: what field are you in which means your candidates are going to need to write custom allocators on a regular basis?
Embedded. :P
> What problems need custom allocators? I'm a fan of lower level details and all, but surely you can get away with one of the many existing allocator implementations when the problem to be solved isn't "sudo make me an allocator"?
Memory is being counted in kilobytes. Processing time in cycles.
I'm loving it, but finding others who feel the same, and who are serious about software engineering, isn't easy!
>who feel the same, and who are serious about software engineering, isn't easy!
So what you're saying is that you have a hard time finding people experienced and passionate about your extremely small niche? I'm sure I'd have a hard time finding qualified child neurologists willing to work for < 200k as well.
I'd hardly call embedded work an extremely small niche. Now, what he's doing on them may or may not be. But microcontrollers on the whole are a much bigger industry than personal computing. You'll find many more 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers in any given house than you will Intel or AMD 32/64 bit general purpose microprocessors. Last I checked approximately half of all CPUs sold globally were 8-bit.
Have you (or your company) given any thought to telecommuting? I know of one software engineer who would love to return to the embedded space, but would not be willing to move (he is right now, on a "working vacation" for the next three months some six times zones away from his current place of employment; his employers put up with this because he is that good at what he does).
Heck, I might be interested in the embedded space. I certainly have experience with Assembly language (several different CPUs) and C (for twenty years now). It would certainly be a change from testing call processing.
Covering how $a or $b does stuff on a PowerPoint slide
isn't the same thing as having students write a $thing.
Which sort of sucks when they go on the job and have to
write a $thing!
That statement is true for many different projects in many different niches. Colleges can't possibly teach them all. If they try, then classes spend less time on CS fundamentals and employers are unhappy. If kids learn about $thing, that means less time for theory and employers are unhappy. (Not to mention that practically speaking, less time on theory means they won't be passing "top tech" interviews at all.)
"We need people who know $thing" does not imply that "colleges should teach kids $thing" is true. Is $thing important because you know it and use it, or do you know it and use it because it's important?
> That statement is true for many different projects in many different niches. Colleges can't possibly teach them all. If they try, then classes spend less time on CS fundamentals and employers are unhappy.
Well yes, very true, I believe in fundamentals.
But the 3 types of common memory storage (stack, static, heap), and how each is commonly implemented, seems like it should be covered. :)
Likewise, common GC algorithms should also be gone over!
CS curriculums really are over stuffed, just from a theory point of view there is so much that is already not covered.
> America should make it as easy as possible for highly
> motivated and talented individuals to come here. Jobs,
> heck, entire new industries will be created.
America also needs to remember that the high quality engineer they sent home has the world at his feet - if he has migrated out of his home country, the world is his oyster. He can migrate to any other country offering him a job and will not have to limit himself to the H1B.
As someone who is in his 20s (for another year!) and dating of the same age, my belief is because the current generation has a real lack of motivation.
I think it is something those of us on sites like this one, and in our field in general do not notice, we tend to surround ourselves with highly driven and motivated people, but we really are the exception to the rule.
Roughly 60% of the young women I have dated (generally aged 22 and up, college graduates) had no real future focus. They weren't looking forward to or striving for any sort of goal. They were just sort of existing.
Switching tracks a bit, I remember having a conversation with a man about my age, he had an undergraduate degree in psychology and a masters in a related field. He was talking about how poorly developed the social skills of many young adults in this area is (true, Puget Sound is a tech haven and a lack of social skills go along with that) and how much he would love to start up a program to teach social skills to engineers. And hey, I agreed, that is a great idea, there is a large market for that in the area, he would have customers lining up around the block!
So I asked him why he hadn't done it yet. "Because the government has cut funding to social programs and there is no way I could get money for it."
He then proceeded to spend the next 20 or so minutes complaining about how it was the governments fault that he couldn't achieve his dream.
When I recommended a small business loan, or even writing up a business proposal and seeking private funding, he brushed my suggestions aside and went back to complaining about how he needed government help to get his idea up off the ground.
Everyone on this site knows that if he really had aspirations, he would find a way to make them happen. He's living in an area surrounded by people with 6 figure income and plenty of 7 figure incomes a few miles away, private fund raising alone would easily pay for his minimal expenses to get started.
But he wasn't passionate enough to actually do anything, and he is one of the few people I have encountered who have any passion at all.
I have had friends (my age group) tell me that I need to stop being so aggressive, stop being so perfectionist, stop working so hard. "Why do you try to do such a good job at everything you do? There is no need for that."
Then I walk over to my friends who are in the tech sector. We strive for the best, we talk about what we want to happen in the future, what our dreams our, what we are working towards, what house we want to buy (if any), what projects we want to work on.
And we are the lazy ones who don't have enough initiative to found our own start up! (And we all feel guilty about it, we damn well know we should)
Then of course there is the Y Combinator crowd, who are fueled by nothing but drive and passion.
So, going back to the beginning.
A lot of the young adults who have "given up hope" never had any hope to begin with. They sort of wanted a job somewhere, but they didn't want it more than anything else. They didn't desire it, they didn't need it, and they sure as heck didn't make a plan of how exactly to get it.
Oh, Christ. Start-up wankery has its place, but something to keep in mind: there's nothing that makes working for a start-up the be-all, end-all of a meaningful life.
You complain about people just wanting to exist and live and enjoy time with their friends and family? And that they don't have grand dreams of starting a business, running it, doing a bunch of shit that's secondary to their actual interests?
Here's the thing: no one should have to start their own business to be successful in life. Not all people are cut out for it. And just because you're a 20-something guy who's willing to spend 60-80 hours a week working to change the world with a social networking site for cat photographers so that some VC can make bank doesn't mean that other people are somehow inferior because they don't want to.
Not everyone can be a special snowflake, and that's fine. Some people want to work a 9 to 5 job and then head home to cook dinner with their loved ones. In the past that's been possible, but increasingly for our generation it's becoming harder and harder. And that's a societal failure.
> Oh, Christ. Start-up wankery has its place, but something to keep in mind: there's nothing that makes working for a start-up the be-all, end-all of a meaningful life.
I work for a giant corporate behemoth, I just so happen to love my job. :)
> You complain about people just wanting to exist and live and enjoy time with their friends and family? And that they don't have grand dreams of starting a business, running it, doing a bunch of shit that's secondary to their actual interests?
The thing is, they don't even think that far ahead.
If they wanted to live the standard "get a job, get married, get a house" sort of thing, I can understand that, but so many young adults aren't even thinking that far into the future.
> Not everyone can be a special snowflake, and that's fine. Some people want to work a 9 to 5 job and then head home to cook dinner with their loved ones. In the past that's been possible, but increasingly for our generation it's becoming harder and harder. And that's a societal failure.
Bullshit at the last part. Those of us with passion are pushing the envelope every day. We will continue to automate and refine and improve efficiency. It is not a societal failure, society is changing.
Go back 120 years. "Some people just want to work the field, go inside to their wife and kids, and relax. Not go to the city, start work in a factory and claw their way up to management."
Go back thousands of years.
"Some people don't want to have to settle down on a farm and work a field, they just want to migrate with the herds like they have always done."
Those who have ambition forever change society itself.
Oh, come now, scarmig. All he was saying is that many in our peer group don't have a plan. And they blame others for their lack of a job and for their lack of a life they find meaningful--rather than going out and doing something about it.
I, for one, agree with him because that's what I've observed: numerous 20-somethings working at dead-end, menial jobs after graduation because they didn't adequately prepare for something more demanding. And many of them aren't thrilled to be merely subsisting. They want more, but they don't know how to get it, and they don't really own the responsibility for doing so anyway.
Somehow at some point they got the mistaken impression that if they got a degree they'd graduate, and be instantly awarded with that six-figure 9-5 job. And they'd live happily ever after.
So yeah, for that group they're a little disappointed to graduate and discover that the median income of someone with a bachelor's degree (as I recall) is $40,000/yr. And if they have an especially common degree and especially mediocre academic performance perhaps they can't even get that job. Oh, and they are surprised to discover they have to work their butts off to find ANY job, and then that most jobs are just "work" not "play."
I have no aspiration to necessarily work for a start-up or work 60 hours a week. But I do have a plan, and I do take responsibility for making my life what I want it to be. I have goals and aspirations and a long-term plan how to accomplish them. Most of our peers do not.
My hope is to be able to make a decent living (say $50,000/yr) working 25-30 hours a week so I can spend lots of time on my own interests and with my family. So I didn't hear him saying that we all have to want to work for start-ups or work 60 hours a week or anything. He was merely pointing out that many of our peers don't know what they want, or how to get it on top of being unemployed or underemployed...and they blame others for their situation rather than taking responsibility for their life.
> And many of them aren't thrilled to be merely subsisting. They want more, but they don't know how to get it, and they don't really own the responsibility for doing so anyway.
If you mean by that "aren't willing to do anything -at all- to achieve, well, anything really" then I agree with you.
> My hope is to be able to make a decent living (say $50,000/yr) working 25-30 hours a week so I can spend lots of time on my own interests and with my family.
That's certainly achievable I would think. However, be prepared for a lot of rejection. 40 (not 60) hour weeks + actual effort (dare I say it ... drive) is not just a requirement at startups.
>Oh, Christ. Start-up wankery has its place, but something to keep in mind: there's nothing that makes working for a start-up the be-all, end-all of a meaningful life.
Yes and no.
I would argue that being a productive citizen that has much to give to others (kindness, companionship, food, money, etc.) is the fundamental mark of adulthood. I am blessed to live/work in a world where I can do that very well without horrendous scrambling, due to a successful and enlightened employer.
If such is a good thing, is not offering good employment under highly civilized working conditions to many adults an achievement worth great accolades?
Let's not forget that if everyone started their own business, we wouldn't have anybody to staff the large companies that create the things we actually use day-to-day.
Just take a moment to consider. I am sure startups are mind-bogglingly amazing, but did a startup make your car? Your computer? Did a startup pave the roads you drive on?
Startups are good. Big companies are good. We need both.
As someone in his 50s, I can tell you that my generation was criticized for lack of motivation. The generation before mine was criticized for lack of motivation. You can find criticisms of the younger generation's lack of motivation (and lack of manners, and respect for their elders, and taste in music, and ...) written in ancient Greek over 2500 years ago.
Different people are motivated to different degrees, to do different things. A list of anecdotes won't convince me that there's any sort of trend in either direction.
Sometimes the worship of the startup culture gets to be a bit much... there's nothing inherently more valuable about making your own startup than there is in working for someone else, and you also forgot to add "money" to the list of things that drive the YC crowd.
We're basically still inside of a global economic recession and no amount of drive and passion can fix that for everybody. There are certainly some edge cases who can make entrepreneurship work but when you have 25% unemployment for a certain age group you have to assume that there's something else in play beyond a lack of motivation.
> Sometimes the worship of the startup culture gets to be a bit much... there's nothing inherently more valuable about making your own startup than there is in working for someone else, and you also forgot to add "money" to the list of things that drive the YC crowd.
Before there were massive corporations employing everyone, people typically did work for themselves in some way shape or form.
Heck go to other countries, look at how many street vendors there are, people going door to door selling food, trinkets, hand made creations.
Why is our attitude that "some giant corporation should hire me to work 9-5"?
Why should that happen? Just because, by some economic anomaly, that is how it worked for 60 or 70 years?
Corporations are very inefficient, but less so now than in times past.
We all have heard stories of a secretary whose sole job was to take mailed in checks, open the envelope, take the check out, and type it into a computer, or copy it down onto some form.
Or even worse, employees whose job was to take items coming in on one computer screen and copy them to another computer screen.
Even more antiquated, the guy pulling the same lever in the factory every 5 seconds.
And we have all heard stories (or encountered first hand) corporate employees whose sole job was to go to meetings and discuss things and then write papers that got read by no one and ignored. (A lot of these types exist around the IT sectors in large companies, writing "strategy" papers on integrating some piece of software that consist of Power Point slides that have little to no meaning.)
Those are all examples of waste. Those jobs are gone, because they should be gone. They contributed nothing to society except to fill a void that existed solely because of inefficiencies in how large companies were run.
So now the people who would have filled those jobs need to find something that actually contributes to society.
That is sort of what money is supposed represent after all, how much value someone has provided through goods or service.
Who said anything about corporations? Hiring people to do work has been a basic part of the human experience for thousands of years. Unless you can run your entire business on your own you're going to need help, and so you give someone else money to do what you can't. Many people are fine with this, they don't necessarily have the desire to start their own ventures for whatever reason. This tends to work out because the people who do want to start their own companies are eventually going to need to hire another employee if they're at all successful.
I'll accept increasing amounts of automation and efficiency as a reason for the reduced number of open positions but the idea that this generation is somehow more lazy than any other is ludicrous.
And finally the idea of "contributing to society" is so nebulous I don't know where to begin. Is someone who makes a really good latte contributing to society? Is an investment banker contributing? Kim Kardashian? Zynga?
> And finally the idea of "contributing to society" is so nebulous I don't know where to begin. Is someone who makes a really good latte contributing to society? Is an investment banker contributing? Kim Kardashian? Zynga?
The way we have defined it in an open capitalistic market is that if someone is willing to pay you money, you are providing value!
(Societal value is obviously slightly different, since people will pay for things like hitmen, who are obviously providing value to one party but taking away a near infinite amount of value from another.)
And yes it is sort of a circular definition.
> Who said anything about corporations? Hiring people to do work has been a basic part of the human experience for thousands of years. Unless you can run your entire business on your own you're going to need help, and so you give someone else money to do what you can't.
So what we need is a certain % of people who are willing to be entrepreneurs, thereby keeping others employed.
Thus one has to ask:
• Are entrepreneurs being provided with enough incentive and possibilities to open their businesses?
• Has something changed from a societal perspective that has decreased the percentage of people who have an entrepreneurial mindset?
Obviously the first the government (and private industry) can help solve, but the second, well, that is a bit harder of a problem!
Great comment! I'm similarly situated in life and know plenty of people my age who aren't so well situated. While my anecdotes tend to differ from yours in that I don't see a general lack of motivation, you've already handled that argument; perhaps I just know people who are highly driven rule-exceptions.
Having said that, I do believe there was a time in this country when going to college meant you were a motivated person who could expect a high likelihood of success finding a good job after graduating. This seems to be different now. More people go to college now, which could either represent an increase in the number of people who are motivated or a decrease in the proportion of people who go to college despite being unmotivated. A smaller proportion of college graduates are successful in finding a good job, which could either mean that it has changed in lock-step with the diminishing level of student motivation or that there are motivated students who now have more trouble finding good jobs.
My anecdotal sense of both of these things is that increasing college attendance is a sign of more young people being more motivated than ever rather than a sign of unmotivated people increasingly attending college, and that the market for good jobs for college graduates has lagged behind the number of motivated graduates competing for them. I think there was a time that people with humanities degrees from good schools were widely thought by businesses to be highly intelligent, hard-working, and imminently employable. Now I see people scoff at such degrees as the useless outcome of bad decision-making. Perhaps the new reality is that far more people need to be motivated to develop the passion and drive required to succeed in a business of their own making, but I personally think it's a shame that there seems to be far less room these days for people who just want to work hard for someone else.
@com2kid You're spot on. As a recent college graduate (at a non-traditional age: in my 30's) I saw a TON of exactly what you describe. Our peer group (not the Hacker News peer group, clearly, but the rest of the 20 to mid-30s group) is, by and large, listless. They simply don't have much drive or motivation. They're--as you put it so aptly--merely "existing."
I attribute this to changes in "higher" education. High school isn't about academics most places for most people; And college isn't either. High school for most people most places is about socializing and being a place for busy parents to send their kids for the work day. College is just a place to put off getting a job, and a place to party and continue socializing.
Their is a myth in college that "C's get degrees" and all you need is "a piece of paper." Students believe that as long as they have a degree in anything they'll be able to get a good job. So they select the easiest degree that matches their interests and abilities. Of course, not all degrees are equally as valuable to employers. And there's only so much demand for various specialties. But most students aren't familiar with the BLS statistics on which jobs are in demand now, how much they pay on average, what the jobs associated with various degrees entailed, and what the predicted outlook is for various professions. They just assume that a degree, any degree, is all they need and riches await. So they graduate to discover that numerous peers also pursued their easy "soft" degree in college, got average grades, and are now competing for the same jobs. The employers can't tell one applicant from another when they're all so average, so they just pick one and the rest go to work as waiters, taxi drivers, gas station attendants, etc.
In short: we're producing far more graduates in certain fields than the market requires; and far less in other fields than the market demands. And we can't really expect this to change until we start educating students in high school and college about how many jobs are available in various fields, and what they pay. We need to also work to defeat the myth that everyone "needs" a college education and that all you need is a degree, any degree, to get a good job. Some people aren't cut out for college and would be happier earning great money as an electrician, or machinist, mechanic, plumber, etc. And those who are a good fit for college would be more effective if they selected more quantitative degrees which match their interests and abilities. In other words, those who do college should not look at it as a time to put off going to work, or a time to party--they should look at it as the few precious years they have to prepare themselves as best they can to get a good job...take the hardest classes they can, expand their horizons, and distinguish themselves from their peers (do undergraduate research, do more than required, get better grades than required, diversify, etc.).
The other element is that our peer group plays the victim a lot. They don't own their own lives, happiness, or success. Granted, this is a broad statement, but many of them really place the blame for things on others. They blame someone else (the government, evil corporations, etc) for their lack of a job. They blame others for their inability to follow their dreams or carry out big aspirations (like your friend).
The truth is that for all of us, we need to take responsibility for making our lives what we want them to be. We can't blame others for not telling us how worthless a Film & TV degree is, or for not giving us a great job, or for not supporting our brilliant venture.
In short, I've blathered on at length when your post did an excellent job of succinctly saying the same thing. Thank you for your comment.
Shouldn't it be the other way around in an ideal world?
Why has the economy been created in the first place? As an end in itself? Or was it to make life easier for everybody?
In my opinion, if the system fails to enable a fullfilled life for the majority of the people, the system needs to be changed.
It's easy to say people should not acquire worthless Film & TV degrees, when you yourself have a C.S. degree, only because computers have been your passion since the age of 8.
I would not want to spend the majority of my precious time on earth with something I do not like to do. And of course I think other people shouldn't either.
> I would not want to spend the majority of my precious time on earth with something I do not like to do. And of course I think other people shouldn't either.
The world does not exist to provide you with enjoyment. If you can make a living doing what you love to do, like many of us here, that's a fantastic added bonus but realize -- it isn't the nature of life to be able to do what you enjoy 24/7 (or 8/5). This is why we have hobbies and relationships and recreation.
The expectation that life will be working 9-5 at a job you love then coming home to a dream version of your domicile of choice and a wonderful spouse/partner/dog/cat and spending your evenings drinking tea/coffee/wine/beer/whiskey debating politics/technology/art/music/literature while gazing over a picturesque sunset/oceanscape/bikini model/forest and sighing gently over how great everything turned out -- that expectation destroys happiness. Life plays out roughly according to the choices you make and is colored by luck. You can change your level of fulfillment by adjusting your expectations or working harder/differently or both. This might sound a little eastern, but what I think we need is a dose of gratitude. You're (probably) alive, (possibly) healthy, (presumably) not living on the street, (hypothetically) employed, (likely) have one or more people in your life who love you... be grateful. I expect this point to be misunderstood, but note for the record this is not the "things could be worse!" argument. It's exactly the opposite argument: "look how good things already are!".
So you work a job that isn't exhilarating? So what. Your job isn't your life, your life is your life.
> The world does not exist to provide you with enjoyment.
Why not?
Why does the world exist in your opinion?
In my opinion there is no reason, at least none of which we are able to understand.
So why not make the best out of our time here?
An enjoyable working place is especially important, because this is where we spend most of our time.
> If you can make a living doing what you love to do, like many of us here, that's a fantastic added bonus but realize -- it isn't the nature of life to be able to do what you enjoy 24/7 (or 8/5).
Demanding this from others is one thing, doing this yourself is another one.
There were multiple stages in my life where I had to do work that I did not see a sense in and they always made me depressed and I didn't really do a good job at them even though I tried really hard.
Now I do what I love and I am really good at it. That this is computer science (something that is considered valuable at this specific place in time) is a complete coincidence.
The degree of is/ought fallacy and outright naivete in your statements is truly astonishing.
> "Why do people have to adjust to the economy?
Shouldn't it be the other way around in an ideal world?"
As Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." This has been and still is a basic truth of the world. Creatures that expect (much less demand) their environment or others to adapt to them always suffer. That's not to say that all suffering has its root here, but the economy was never "created" to do anything, especially make life easier for everybody. Economic forces emerge naturally from basic human interactions, and there is no single authority who can tweak the knobs on "the system" to change it for the betterment of everyone.
> "I would not want to spend the majority of my precious time on earth with something I do not like to do. And of course I think other people shouldn't either."
This is precisely the attitude that most older generations complain about when they belittle milennials. Many of these people worked in boring, sometimes pointless jobs to be able to pay their bills. They understood that work is called work because it is not necessarily fun. Fun is what you do when you get home from work, on your own time.
We are fortunate to live in an era where many people can find jobs that are inherently satisfying. We live in an economy that has many opportunities for creative minds and challenging problems for analytical minds. Most of these problems can be solved indoors, in an air conditioned room, without having to physically exert yourself or put yourself in any danger.
The economy will not adjust to you. The economy cares about what you have to offer it, and what you can purchase from it. It does not care what you demand from it without offering anything in return.
> Why has the economy been created in the first place? As an end in itself? Or was it to make life easier for everybody?
Economies are not created in any traditional sense (though ours is highly managed, for better or for worse).
They come into being as a natural part of human behavior.
For instance, we all place value on our time. If you ask me to do something, I will most likely ask for some form of reciprocation. Now maybe if I really like you, feeling good about helping you is payment enough itself, but there is a finite limit to that.
Even favors have an economic component to them. If you help a friend move, you reasonably expect him to help you move at some point in the future. Quid pro quo.
Our system of currency is a highly abstracted away formalization of those basic ideas.
Call providing some positive good or service "value".
You get reciprocated for providing value to others.
We use currency as a medium of exchange to represent this.
At times, it is easy to see this exchange. If you go watch a local band, you pay for a ticket, a portion of that ticket goes to the venue for providing you with a quality place to watch a performance, and part of the ticket price goes to the band for providing you with entertainment that you derived personal value from experiencing.
Other times, well, things are a bit more abstracted way. :) (And at some point it becomes arguable if value is provided at all, but that is a separate discussion!)
> It's easy to say people should not acquire worthless Film & TV degrees, when you yourself have a C.S. degree, only because computers have been your passion since the age of 8.
My argument is that people should acquire a degree that enabled them to provide value to society.
> I would not want to spend the majority of my precious time on earth with something I do not like to do. And of course I think other people shouldn't either.
The later half of the 20th century is the first time it was possible for a large number of people to have even a hope of doing work that they enjoyed.
That said, ask the people who laid your sewer pipes, built your building, pave your roads, how much they enjoy being out at 4am in the rain and snow working.
Ask those mining the rare earth minerals that are used to build our technology if they enjoy their jobs.
Middle class Americans have this romantic ideal of jobs being something someone enjoys. We are all spoiled and need to admit to that. But hey, it is a nice goal to make it so that everyone can enjoy their job right?
So here comes the funny part.
We are automating away the miserable drudge work jobs, and people are now worried.
Because it turns out the middle class fantasy of singing joys at work and coming home to a giant house with 2 (or 3 now days) cars and all that other assorted crud is not maintainable on a large scale.
I don't have a solution to this, really no one does. But we have to accept that we have made our bed and now we are going to lay down in it.
> That said, ask the people who laid your sewer pipes, built your building, pave your roads, how much they enjoy being out at 4am in the rain and snow working.
I do not think that you can compare those kinds of jobs with modern jobs.
Modern jobs require intensive training. Sometimes studying the subject for multiple years only on a theoretical basis.
This does not work if you do not like what you do, in my opinion.
I myself have tried to obtain a degree in a field that I did not like.
I failed miserably.
It eventually made me depressed, something I do not wish upon anyone.
As a 23 year old working in tech, I can say that much of my graduating class had no immediate plans to start a career and even more had no desire to relocate to a place that jobs were more plentiful. How do we fix this? We stop telling everyone that they are gifted and things will work out from an early age. We get far more out of constructive feedback as to why our project wasn't the best or why we lost than being told we're great in the face of defeat, getting a trophy, and going home with no fuel to better ourselves.
Like many people here, I work for a software company. We develop business automation software. Perhaps unlike most though, I'm closer to the bottom line (Sales Engineer), and are more closely tuned in to the types of business conversations our customers have when they are thinking about whether to buy our software.
Often times, the conversation revolves around the fact that the software we sell makes the average worker so ridiculously productive that often times they start being able to do the work of two people. They no longer have to spend time searching for important documents or worry about replacing lost/damaged ones, or pushing paper documents from one department to the other, or waiting for a certain supervisor to come back from a business trip so that they can sign off on stuff. For most knowledge workers this translates to at least a couple of hours of productivity gains everyday, if not more.
What do businesses do with these productivity gains? From what we have seen, the overwhelming majority use the opportunity to lay off workers they no longer need. The reason is simple: their company addresses a certain amount of customer demand, and if they can meet that demand with half the workforce then why not lay off the rest and become more profitable?
Over the years, this phenomenon has led me to the conclusion that the main problem with the economy is lack of consumer demand. If consumer demand was increasing, then companies would hire more employees despite the efficiency gains they get from automation. Or, at the very least, they would be less prone to lay people off, because their existing workforce would be more able to handle the demand by becoming more productive.
Traditionally, the main source of consumer demand in America has been the middle-class. If we find a way to bring that back, everybody wins.
Ironically, the middle class isn't coming back until the employment situation improves, with consequent improvements in salaries etc.
Soon we're going to be seeing low-skill jobs go almost entirely to machines, while higher-skill work gets more and more levered up. I expect at the pace we're going (on both technology and economy), that will happen before we ever recover from the current crisis. A large percentage of workers are not going to have much to offer, economically, and I'm not sure where we go from there.
>A large percentage of workers are not going to have much to offer, economically, and I'm not sure where we go from there.
I wonder about this all the time. My primary interest is in fields like Computer Vision, with an ultimate goal of contributing to the self driving car scene. As excited as I am by that and want to see that future as a reality, there's a side of me that wonders what the workforce will do as automated system continue their steady march forward. Once we 'automate away' driving, things like truck drivers (of which there are 3.5 million) will be a thing of the past, probably cabs too given enough time.
They go home to their robo-housing condo, eat meat grown on sheets in massive labs run by robo-farmers, and any supplies they need are transported by robo-truckers. When they get sick, they just go to the robo-hospital.
All these things are completely free and not staffed by any humans... because the billionaires who live in cities in the sky feel guilty about the pathetic insignificant lives of the idiot masses below. So we give them the necessities they need, and poison their food so they don't procreate too much.
You just conjured up imagery of the Pangu and Tai Yong Medical from Deus Ex: Human Revolution in my mind. Lower Hengsha is indeed a place I would rather not live :) I think more people could do with reading, watching, and playing dystopic sci-fi media. Keeps everyone cognizant of the fact that technological advancement isn't an inherently good thing.
Instead of self-driving cars, please instead use your computer vision to automate an entire food production line. Then we can move to a roughly post-scarcity society where only a minimal base-line of work is necessary to give people comfortable lives :)
So it's a chicken an egg situation. If consumers aren't demanding it's probably because they don't have enough disposable income and if the ways of obtaining an income are becoming scarcer then you have a positive feedback effect which depresses the economy. The economic question then becomes one of how to break that positive feedback.
Tax breaks for the middle-class are a fantastic way of breaking that positive feedback. The problem is that they need to be sufficiently large to make a noticeable impact.
The other alternative is government spending, a.k.a. stimulus. If we start working on improving our national infrastructure, those projects could result in a lot of jobs.
Do you read Paul Krugman at all? I cut his blog out of my information diet a while ago, but before I did, he was beating the "lack of demand" drum pretty loudly.
The discussion then usually turns to how young people have useless degrees or are lazy or entitled, or some other monday morning quarterback commentary. The reality is that prior generations goofed off and made blind decisions just like this one. They just had more of cushion to rebound from.
I'm steadily employed in a fantastic job but have been on the other side of the fence as well. One thing is obvious: most white-collar, educated people who already had jobs before 2008 are doing just fine, haven't noticed a thing, and don't give a neuron to thinking about unemployed people.
This is just another indication to me that there is a growing class divide and there will be plenty of losers (and no, the rising tide doesn't help undeveloped, inexperienced college grads with nondischargable debt). The means of production are now more abstract than owning factories -- they're owning the information networks. We have yet to see anything close to the sufficient political will or desire in DC to bust up these modern day trusts (like Teddy Roosevelt did with the industrialists a century ago). By design, they're harder to identify and harder to educate the public about. And with mass media stomping out thoughtful journalism due to basic economics and a civically uninterested public, where's the opposition going to come from?
If you happen to be in a line of work that helps those in power (like most programmers), you'll probably thrive. If you don't, you're going to have a tough road ahead: our public institutions are behaving more and more like results-driven board-run corporations. They're misappropriating improved efficiency to matters that benefit more from longer-term strategies ("Instant Dashboards! Metrics! Data-Driven Decisions!"). I fear most the speed at which the consolidation of power could take place (aided by the speed of technological progress).
Have a great weekend :)