Millennials - Not worth employing

[brianmanahan]

Millennials are in their mid 30s now, too!

millennial doesn't start until late 80s birth year IMHO

getting internet when you were 16 vs when you were 6 was a big difference

 

[slackerinabox]

You're wrong though, most experts consider early 80s as the start. You're just using the term as a generic one for dem lazy youngins. Two very different generations, millennials are less into face tattoos than this current gen of young adult

 

[Torn Mind]

millennial doesn't start until late 80s birth year IMHO

getting internet when you were 16 vs when you were 6 was a big difference

Lower income households still couldn't get computers until the mid-2000s and dial-up was a pain in the rear, both speed-wise and that it occupied the phone line. .

The analog world was still there for current 31 year olds who "grew up" in the 90s.

 

[slackerinabox]

RANT, be warned...Exceptional sativa blend and way too strong of a coffee brew...

You know what, I'm going to stand up for 20 to 30 somethings. Firstly you can't generically link them all as "millennials" - they represent two generations, 20 somethings are very different than even younger 30somethings and the blanket term reaches up to 1981 births, so you're dealing with Gen Y, Gen Z, and millennials. 99% of my clients are aspirational 20 somethings (meaning entry level Brooklyn, moderate priced up and coming areas, not fancy not ghetto) and I used to be an old man grouch about the youngins until I realized how they interact around each others and the larger community. 10 years ago 20 somethings were selfish, entitled, expected way too much for their money, and just kinda brats (aside from the hard working wall street set, they're a different breed). 20 year olds these days are brave, kind, not racist, not sexist (even in benign ways, ie. checking out girls while we wait for the elevator), team oriented, and really motivated for greatness beyond themselves. One broad example is how young white kids react to moving into previously black neighborhoods - when I started my career they'd try to live their segregated lives, building new cafes and bars just for them and not interacting with their larger communities. 20 year old white folks today join the community center, voluteer at the black own community garden, are solid and kind patrons who tip well at the local and color owned businesses, and when they start their own businesses really go out of their way to integrate not segregate. It's marvelous, as a darkie I've been very ... Cautious? Around especially upper middle class white people (the boss man class). I'm still scared of predominantly italiano neighborhoods in NYC. But 20 somethings white guys I'm meeting in particular (and my dope wife of course) make me proud to have half white kids, the culture is very much evolving for the better - ESPECIALLY white boys. Seriously, we need to give them more credit instead we dwell on the small percentage of basement dweller basket cases. The vast majority I'm meeting are less driven by toxic masculinity, have more empathy, and are just chiller cool guys.. Empathy and group think, much more *WE* than *I* if that makes sense. It's why so much of the BLM protestors are white, empathy is important to these kids and living in others shoes for a moment. I think that's the biggest shift I see in the post grads and my generation (late 30s) - my generation is flawed and very much concerned about the INDIVIDUALS legacy, about proving MY greatness. I don't blame my generation, our parents told us we were magical unique wizards destined to change the world. not living up to that's fucked up a lot of people to be honest. 20 somethings now seem to be more realistic and also appreciate being a team motivated around a common good, with high minded SJW stuff or simple "THIS PIECE OF CODE WILL CHANGE THE WORLD BY COMPRESSING GIFS 10% FASTER!"

The flip side is that their work has to matter to them, but when it does their career becomes their guiding light and a big motivator. They live and breathe their orgs mission, coding on a project into the wee hours just out of love for the idea. egging each team member on to do better. it's fun to watch how a group of 20 somethings interacts, regardless of sex gender or whatever baggage. They're so nice to fat people! Haha. . BUT I understand from our perspective it's pretentious - "just do your damn job." I think what's important to remember is that we all sucked at our jobs in our 20s for the most part - do you really want to be employee of the month and be super passionate about an entry level job at Staples? I've done that stupidly (being way too respectful of entry level grunt work and saluting my bosses, working at 3 am sorta nonsense) - it's no longer a solid plan for advancement but instead a recipe to be under appreciated at work and stuck in your position. The hard workers get more work and shat on. I learned it the hard way, being loyal and dedicated to a company that can can lay your entire department off weeks before Christmas makes you feel like a sucker at the end of the day.. Shit, I wish I used on my vacas and sicks because the fuckers didn't even pay me for that...I should have stolen a fax machine office space style in retrospect. apathy and slacking are in response to a workplace that doesn't value dedication nor reward adequately. it's not the kids fault.

 

[slackerinabox]

Also, to explain the zombie state of the youth these days (not all of them, nyc is expensive so the vast majority I meet are quite ambitious) - think of what they're going through - trump presidency, terrible economy for the struggling class. not a lot of great jobs or job security. also their media and culture sucks, it's more about the beat than the message and the movie's all spandex super hero nonsense. theyre not critical thinkers, they grew up addicted to screens. instead of dismissing those sorts (including my oldest, covid has her screen zombi-ing and i can't constantly babysit her) i find you have to be up front and shake them out of their comfortable numbness. my wife is a high school teacher in what some would consider the hood and every day i hear her dealing with low achievers, instead of threats or lectures she puts immediate context - "do you want to live in your mom's basement or do you want to have a nice apartment in the good part of town?" she explains to them why paying attention, learning how to learn and being an active participant matters, and her literally perfect rating and impressive graduation rate's testament to her ability to reach them. you need to adapt and learn to snap them into attention when needed and put context onto everything. i had a great professor who would constantly spout "if you don't pay attention you can kill someone years from now!"

 

[Ferrari355]

You damn kids with your hippity hoppy music and your smart phones! Back in my day we didn't even have music and the phones were just as dumb as us and that's the way I likes it consarn it!

 

[MtnMan]

Of course two months of "death by PowerPoint" can destroy anyone's mind.

My career was very technical, and I retired from it at 55. Wife said I "was not" staying home all the time, find a job. So I started teaching the technology at a technical community college.

There has to be "hands on" to actually apply and retain the theory they were just taught. And it has to start no later than day 2, unless perhaps you are teaching brain surgery.

 

[ralfy]

From 2006:

New Study of the Literacy of College Students Finds Some Are Graduating With Only Basic Skills | American Institutes for Research

Twenty percent of U.S. college students completing 4-year degrees—and 30 percent of students earning 2-year degrees—have only basic quantitative literacy skills, meaning they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of...

www.air.org

 

[Dranoche]

From 2006:

New Study of the Literacy of College Students Finds Some Are Graduating With Only Basic Skills | American Institutes for Research

Twenty percent of U.S. college students completing 4-year degrees—and 30 percent of students earning 2-year degrees—have only basic quantitative literacy skills, meaning they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of...

www.air.org

"Students about to graduate from college have higher prose and document literacy than previous graduates with similar levels of education; for quantitative literacy, differences between current and former college graduates are not significant."

“Despite the lackluster performance of many graduates on quantitative literacy, we should nevertheless be encouraged that current college graduates are not falling behind in terms of literacy when compared to graduates from earlier generations,”

 

[ch33zw1z]

Yea, and that report says graduates are better are reading documents

 

[slackerinabox]

Wife said I "was not" staying home all the time, find a job. So I started teaching the technology at a technical community college.

Can I ask you a question, is this a rhetorical regional thing to say "my wife wasn't having it so i got a job!" or is this really acceptable? If I were retired and my wife said in a country twang "now i won't have ye around the house, ya hear! get a job!" i would be getting a new wife. "i earned my retirement, wise and beautiful woman!" i hear things like this often, turns of phrase from my midwestern in laws like "NOW I wanted to do X but WIFEZILLA wouldn't have that so..." are people in parts of the country making life choices based on not annoying their wives? for context if someone said that their spouse said something like that here in nyc we'd say "did you stab her before or after she packed up her shit?" Seems incomprehensible that you literally got a job because your wife didn't want you home..

 

[Captante]

RANT, be warned...Exceptional sativa blend and way too strong of a coffee brew...

TL: /DR


*(I suggest switching to an Indica and decaf!)

 

[MtnMan]

Can I ask you a question, is this a rhetorical regional thing to say "my wife wasn't having it so i got a job!" or is this really acceptable? If I were retired and my wife said in a country twang "now i won't have ye around the house, ya hear! get a job!" i would be getting a new wife. "i earned my retired, wise and beautiful woman!" i hear things like this often, turns of phrase from my midwestern in laws like "NOW I wanted to do X but WIFEZILLA wouldn't have that so..." are people in parts of the country making life choices based on not annoying their wives? for context if someone said that their spouse said something like that here in nyc we'd say "did you stab her before or after she packed up her shit?" Seems incomprehensible that you literally got a job because your wife didn't want you home..

I have a feeling my marriage (now 51 years) is happier than yours...

Nor did I want to just go home and sit on my ass, but leaving a demanding job, with travel and long hours, with a pension was an opportunity I wasn't going to pass up, and basically finding something fun, and part time, with some insane pay was just whipped cream with a cherry on top.

I also filled time helping a friend with his saw mill business to get outside.

Judge all you want, personally I don't give a fuck what you think.

 

[slackerinabox]

I have a feeling my marriage (now 51 years) is happier than yours...

Nor did I want to just go home and sit on my ass, but leaving a demanding job, with travel and long hours, with a pension was an opportunity I wasn't going to pass up, and basically finding something fun, and part time, with some insane pay was just whipped cream with a cherry on top.

I also filled time helping a friend with his saw mill business to get outside.

Judge all you want, personally I don't give a fuck what you think.

Not judging your desire to keep busy, at ALL. Just questioning that your wife kicking your ass was your sole motivator, not in a judgmental just curious way. as far as who has the happier relationship, I guarantee that we're fucking more.. there's that.

 

[Zeze]

Did the OP watch nothing but fox news?

'Millenials' are old as hell now and have started families with mortgage already.

You can't collectively group up an entire generation as lazy.

I work with lots of jr developers... sharp mofos.

 

[Captante]

are people in parts of the country making life choices based on not annoying their wives?

All of them with an iota of common sense are !!!


*(kitchens are full of sharp knives and you have to sleep sometime)

 

[ralfy]

Test Finds College Graduates Lack Skills for White-Collar Jobs

Four in 10 U.S. college students graduate without the complex reasoning skills to manage white-collar work, according to the results of a test of nearly 32,000 students.

www.wsj.com

 

[Brainonska511]

Test Finds College Graduates Lack Skills for White-Collar Jobs

Four in 10 U.S. college students graduate without the complex reasoning skills to manage white-collar work, according to the results of a test of nearly 32,000 students.

www.wsj.com

Maybe companies should invest in some on-the-job training.

 

[Dranoche]

Test Finds College Graduates Lack Skills for White-Collar Jobs

Four in 10 U.S. college students graduate without the complex reasoning skills to manage white-collar work, according to the results of a test of nearly 32,000 students.

www.wsj.com

So college is education, not training, but some fields or degrees may passively provide some of those skills through the nature of the curriculum. Whether or not that's how it should be can be debated. I think there's merit to both but lean towards it being education. I think critical thinking and problem solving skills are generally developed earlier, and certain fields will reinforce that in college much more so than others. Teamwork and communication standards are largely dictated by company culture and structure. It sounds like a lot of companies make improper broad brush assumptions about what a college degree provides and are too lazy and/or cheap to train people and set clear expectations. The generations raising kids, educating them, and hiring them are mostly the same. The younger generations exhibiting these issues, if the issues really are more significant and not just better documented, are the symptoms, not the source.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Traditional schooling needs to change, and be more practical. Theory stuff means nothing once you get on the job. I took 3 years of computer science and graduated with honours, and I could in theory showed up at my first job in tech support and not know what ram is or how to reinstall Windows or other basic stuff. We never even opened a computer in that entire 3 year course. We also never coded anything beyond command line programs that prompt the user for basic info and then output it back. Everything was focused too much on theory than actual practical application. The only reason people go to college/university is because it's required to get a job in most cases. Either way though pretty much all jobs will require some form of on the job training as each environment is going to be different and require specific job knowledge.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Traditional schooling needs to change, and be more practical. Theory stuff means nothing once you get on the job. I took 3 years of computer science and graduated with honours, and I could in theory showed up at my first job in tech support and not know what ram is or how to reinstall Windows or other basic stuff. We never even opened a computer in that entire 3 year course. We also never coded anything beyond command line programs that prompt the user for basic info and then output it back. Everything was focused too much on theory than actual practical application. The only reason people go to college/university is because it's required to get a job in most cases. Either way though pretty much all jobs will require some form of on the job training as each environment is going to be different and require specific job knowledge.

I agree. I have an associate's, and it was more practical application stuff from a community college. However, it didn't cover almost any of what I do now, and my employer provided hundreds of hours of training to make sure I can effectively repair technology in the field. If an employer thinks they'll be able to just hire someone who knows exactly everything about the job, they're either hiring a veteran of that specific field or they're dreaming

 

[Captante]

Maybe companies should invest in some on-the-job training.

Also "4 out of 10" of those folks would most likely have been better off going to technical or trade school instead of college in the first place.

Heck a good plumber or electrician makes more than many MD's.

 

[Aikouka]

I'm a bit curious if that individual might have some underlying issues that are exacerbating the problem. To use myself as an example, I spent years playing World of WarCraft, and while some may argue that sinking years into a video game is bad enough, I think there was a worse aspect of it. MMOs are notorious for downtime whether it be travel or simply waiting for something (looking for a party member, etc.). The problem is when you sit there constantly seeking sources of entertainment, and that becomes the norm. I've found that if I don't feel mentally engaged in something, that I will become withdrawn from it completely. This could be something like someone inviting you to a two-hour meeting where you have absolutely no involvement.

I bring this up, because especially with all the devices that exist today, this idea of multiple sources of entertainment is easily within grasp. I see kids sitting there playing Roblox on a laptop while watching YouTube on a phone. While I'm not an expert in the field of child psychology, I don't see how that is leading down a good path. Although, along those same lines, I watched an interesting Wisecrack video not too long ago on how the idea of the childhood radically changed during the latter half of the 20th century. In my own experience, I've seen children just not get enough responsibility gradually placed upon them, and then, at the age of 18, they're expected to be almost solely responsible for themselves.

I took 3 years of computer science and graduated with honours, and I could in theory showed up at my first job in tech support and not know what ram is or how to reinstall Windows or other basic stuff. We never even opened a computer in that entire 3 year course. We also never coded anything beyond command line programs that prompt the user for basic info and then output it back. Everything was focused too much on theory than actual practical application.

Wait... what? Are you sure that was a CS degree? It sounds more like a CIS degree than a CS degree.

Although, even though I have a CS degree, I think that college was mostly useless. In this connected day and age, you can easily get invaluable team-based experience in software development that you might get a small taste of while in college. (My degree included one major team project -- we made networked, multi-player Tetris in C++/OpenGL.) At "worst", attending a community college for math courses would be a good idea.

The only reason people go to college/university is because it's required to get a job in most cases. Either way though pretty much all jobs will require some form of on the job training as each environment is going to be different and require specific job knowledge.

Back when I was in junior/senior high school (96-02), there was always this push for people to attend post-secondary education, and it was mostly celebrated. Although, my school did also promote a vocational-technical path, which allowed students to attend reduced hours of school to allow them to receive on-the-site job training in a specific field. To be frank, it wasn't that common.

In the US, we really need to consider tackling this "college is mandatory" problem that we've created. There's a lot of talk about student loan debt and such, but I think that talk really ignores that underlying problem.

 

[VirtualLarry]

(My degree included one major team project -- we made networked, multi-player Tetris in C++/OpenGL.)

I did that in HS. Well, except for the OpenGL. (It was on a VAX 11/780, I believe, with time-sharing terminals, VT220. Which, I discovered allow for user defineable font characters. Nintendo-style tile-based funfunfun!)

We (the group I hung out in) did a whole bunch of different video game classics on that VAX. It was quite fun. I'm most proud of my dual-player 3D line-graphics text-based engine, which could render basically a 3x4 block of wall/not-wall input array, and draw it on-screen using line-mode characters, and it actually looked like 3D brick walls. (It was modeled after the 3D game "Double Dungeons" on the TurboGrafx-16 console out at the time. It didn't have "monsters", It was just a sample maze, and two players running around, and you had to get a "key" (which you could steal from the other player by "punching" them, if you were seeing them in the next immediate front-facing square), and then find the "Exit".

It would have made an awesome 3D engine for someone's text-based monster RPG game, that one of the other fellows was working on. Sadly, that never got completed.

Also did a side-scrolling Defender/Parsec-esque shooter game. I did the original one with line graphics, but when we discovered the tile graphics ability, a good buddy of mine, re-did the entire game with animated tile graphics. It added a whole 'nother dimension to the game. It probably would have made it big as a mobile game on cell-phones today, actually.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wait... what? Are you sure that was a CS degree? It sounds more like a CIS degree than a CS degree.

Well my diploma says "Computer Engineering technology - science" so I guess that is the real name of the course, but everyone just called it computer science. There were no other tech/computer related programs so this was basically the course to take if you are planing to do anything to do with tech such as IT or programming etc. But yeah it is odd that we never really touched much on hardware. I guess it was assumed that if you take that course you know the basics of how to put a machine together and troubleshoot it.