The Money Mustache Community
Around the Internet => Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy => Topic started by: Slee_stack on December 09, 2016, 01:40:46 PM
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
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Newsflash! People born in the 1980s make less money than people with 40 more years of experience!
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Newsflash! People born in the 1980s make less money than people with 40 more years of experience!
On the other hand, in the past, the percentage was much higher. So sayeth the study. You might want to argue against evidence instead of strawmen - makes you look better.
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Newsflash! People born in the 1980s make less money than people with 40 more years of experience!
I read a similar article earlier today. It was comparing a 30 year old today to a 30 year old in 1970.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
It will be hard for millennials to make more than me unless they benefited from nepotism. I had to work full time to get my BA in accounting and then 10 years later with 2 kids get my MBA at night. I worked 12 hours a day and commuted two hours a day for 43 years. Yeah I made a lot of money but what Millennial is willing to work as hard as I did.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
It will be hard for millennials to make more than me unless they benefited from nepotism. I had to work full time to get my BA in accounting and then 10 years later with 2 kids get my MBA at night. I worked 12 hours a day and commuted two hours a day for 43 years. Yeah I made a lot of money but what Millennial is willing to work as hard as I did.
This is a typical attitude, but not actually based in an understanding of the current economic reality we're facing. No time to go way into it, but the most obvious fallacy here is the assumption that your college costs compare to costs today, which is very easy to disprove. Then there is the dismissive attitude of the millenial work ethic, which is not based in any sort of evidence but feeds the strangely persistent narrative that young people are all lazy and entitled.
Regardless, I do think the complainypants attitude about lower wages is silly and irrelevant, since it is what it is. There is still plenty of opportunity out there for most people to easily accomplish the "American dream," or FIRE. It's just a fair bit less than what the boomers had.
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Newsflash! People born in the 1980s make less money than people with 40 more years of experience!
On the other hand, in the past, the percentage was much higher. So sayeth the study. You might want to argue against evidence instead of strawmen - makes you look better.
Ok, well try this on. The "past" was 1940. So, those born in 1940 did better than their parents, who suffered through the Great Depression. Many of the men lost many productive years and experience to war in Europe or the Pacific, or, like my Grandfather, to one of those and then Korea afterward. The period of 1910 to 1940 (their parents would have been teenagers somewhere in those years) was a period of rapidly increasing secondary school enrollment - translation, many of their parents did not even GO to high school, much less graduate. Basically all of their grandparents failed to go to high school, attaining at best a grade school education.
There are LOTS of reasons the two periods they picked are not comparable at all.
And the argument AMandM made is not a "strawman." He directly addressed a point made in the article. That is not a strawman argument. You do not have to address EVERYTHING in the article to avoid strawman fallacies.
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the assumption that your college costs compare to costs today, which is very easy to disprove.
Not here in Georgia, it isn't easy to disprove.
College - I worked full time, went to school full time, and paid it out of my pocket for the first two years. If I did not have cash, due to an unexpected expenditure, I did not go until the next semester/quarter (the university system switched during that time period). The next two years were covered by something here called the Hope Grant, and during the last year, they had so much money they even picked up the cost of my books.
Any resident student here can, on merit, regardless of income, go to college for free if his grades are high enough.
So it is CHEAPER than it was for me, since I paid two years out of pocket, then it would be for students today here in this state, if they want to go and buckle down and get the grades required.
Inflation of tuition (which is real) does not enter into this discussion here. Unless your grades suck, in which case maybe University is not for you.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
It will be hard for millennials to make more than me unless they benefited from nepotism. I had to work full time to get my BA in accounting and then 10 years later with 2 kids get my MBA at night. I worked 12 hours a day and commuted two hours a day for 43 years. Yeah I made a lot of money but what Millennial is willing to work as hard as I did.
I know plenty of millenials who work that hard. Some of them have great opportunities, others do not. It depends on their industry.
However, you are correct - working hard is something that *may* be going by the wayside. My son's 4th grade teacher used to tell us last year that her kids are doing *very* well in their jobs because they show up and work hard. And it's not as common as it used to be (though this may be a regional California issue, who knows).
In any event...I believe the article is absolutely correct - if that's how you define the "American Dream" as "out-earning your parents". Will my kids out-earn us? Who knows, they are 10 and 4.
I would argue, however, that maybe that's not MY definition of the "American Dream". Work hard, but have a life. I had many many years of "burning the candle at both ends", starting from college+ROTC+part time job, then military+grad school, then long hours, then full time job+ kids. At some point, it really starts to suck rocks. A little balance in life is good.
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the assumption that your college costs compare to costs today, which is very easy to disprove.
Not here in Georgia, it isn't easy to disprove.
College - I worked full time, went to school full time, and paid it out of my pocket for the first two years. If I did not have cash, due to an unexpected expenditure, I did not go until the next semester/quarter (the university system switched during that time period). The next two years were covered by something here called the Hope Grant, and during the last year, they had so much money they even picked up the cost of my books.
Any resident student here can, on merit, regardless of income, go to college for free if his grades are high enough.
So it is CHEAPER than it was for me, since I paid two years out of pocket, then it would be for students today here in this state, if they want to go and buckle down and get the grades required.
Inflation of tuition (which is real) does not enter into this discussion here. Unless your grades suck, in which case maybe University is not for you.
Nice dismissive attitude. If you really believe college is more affordable than when the boomers were that age, I don't have the energy to fight that battle, although Google would fight it for me easily enough. If your response is just "if you work hard enough and get scholarships it won't matter," you are still showing a shocking lack of empathy along the lines of rich people saying "if the urban poor just pulled themselves by their bootstraps and worked hard enough, they could be rich like me!"
If I'm advising my own children, sure, but if I'm reflecting on a generation with systematically fewer opportunities than the one before, I'm not going to pile on with some false BS about how they're just not working hard enough.
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Newsflash! People born in the 1980s make less money than people with 40 more years of experience!
In the actual study (which was actually linked from the article and not behind a paywall, awesome!) they state.
In our baseline analysis, we measure income in pre-tax dollars at the household level when parents and children are approximately thirty years old, adjusting for inflation using the CPI-U-RS.
So the actual study is at 30, do you make more or less than your parents did when they were also 30. I suspect this is the same story @Indexer saw reported on elsewhere, just with an even sloppier write up.
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There are obvious differences between 20-40 years ago and now... It's a fact that 5million manufacturer & hightech jobs have been offshored, real employment (labor participation rate) is way down, nonsecure contract and temp jobs are way up, and worst of all, student loans are way up.
However, ironically there's a real shortage of skilled technicians in manufacturing.
I feel for the millennials but many are taking up the challenge to evolve and innovate.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
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In our baseline analysis, we measure income in pre-tax dollars at the household level when parents and children are approximately thirty years old, adjusting for inflation using the CPI-U-RS.
So the actual study is at 30, do you make more or less than your parents did when they were also 30. I suspect this is the same story @Indexer saw reported on elsewhere, just with an even sloppier write up.
Good guess. I went back and checked. I read it on the Wall Street Journal, and they do notate that it is inflation adjusted.
I would post the chart they had, but since WSJ is a paid subscription I don't want to upset a copyright.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-american-dream-is-fading-and-may-be-very-hard-to-revive-1481218911
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the assumption that your college costs compare to costs today, which is very easy to disprove.
Not here in Georgia, it isn't easy to disprove.
College - I worked full time, went to school full time, and paid it out of my pocket for the first two years. If I did not have cash, due to an unexpected expenditure, I did not go until the next semester/quarter (the university system switched during that time period). The next two years were covered by something here called the Hope Grant, and during the last year, they had so much money they even picked up the cost of my books.
Any resident student here can, on merit, regardless of income, go to college for free if his grades are high enough.
So it is CHEAPER than it was for me, since I paid two years out of pocket, then it would be for students today here in this state, if they want to go and buckle down and get the grades required.
Inflation of tuition (which is real) does not enter into this discussion here. Unless your grades suck, in which case maybe University is not for you.
Nice dismissive attitude. If you really believe college is more affordable than when the boomers were that age, I don't have the energy to fight that battle, although Google would fight it for me easily enough. If your response is just "if you work hard enough and get scholarships it won't matter," you are still showing a shocking lack of empathy along the lines of rich people saying "if the urban poor just pulled themselves by their bootstraps and worked hard enough, they could be rich like me!"
If I'm advising my own children, sure, but if I'm reflecting on a generation with systematically fewer opportunities than the one before, I'm not going to pile on with some false BS about how they're just not working hard enough.
That, as a general matter, college is "more affordable than when the boomers were that age"? No, of course not! But MP is correct about Georgia specifically that decent grades in high school, and maintained during college, leads to substantial tuition assistance and even free tuition for Georgia residents at schools like University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and many other public, private, and technical institutions in the state. All paid for by the nincompoops who play the state lottery. https://gsfc.georgia.gov/hope
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the assumption that your college costs compare to costs today, which is very easy to disprove.
Not here in Georgia, it isn't easy to disprove.
College - I worked full time, went to school full time, and paid it out of my pocket for the first two years. If I did not have cash, due to an unexpected expenditure, I did not go until the next semester/quarter (the university system switched during that time period). The next two years were covered by something here called the Hope Grant, and during the last year, they had so much money they even picked up the cost of my books.
Any resident student here can, on merit, regardless of income, go to college for free if his grades are high enough.
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So it is CHEAPER than it was for me, since I paid two years out of pocket, then it would be for students today here in this state, if they want to go and buckle down and get the grades required.
Inflation of tuition (which is real) does not enter into this discussion here. Unless your grades suck, in which case maybe University is not for you.
Nice dismissive attitude. If you really believe college is more affordable than when the boomers were that age, I don't have the energy to fight that battle, although Google would fight it for me easily enough.
Here's a link to the Hope Scholarship page for GA: https://gsfc.georgia.gov/hope (https://gsfc.georgia.gov/hope)
It's a real thing.
I know it changes a bit from year to year but it was fairly generous when it first came out.
As for kids not trying, when I was in public school from 7th to 12th grade, I noticed that a very large proportion of the white middle class kids in school didn't apply themselves. Very many of them did the absolute minimum necessary to get by. Quite a few couldn't even be bothered to do even that.
I've seen nothing in popular culture that has led me to believe anything has changed for the better. In fact, people of my generation who were parents made it worse because a lot of them attacked the teachers instead of disciplining their kids.
That's my take. That's not "old geezer saying the youngsters are worthless." That's old geezer saying a lot of his own generation were slackers at learning life's lessons and probably still are. And that a lot of his own generation were lousy parents, too
My wife is a university professor. A lot of her students don't bother to read the material. They do the minimum necessary amount of work to get by. And, quite a few of them can't be bothered to do that either. That's pretty much the consensus among a lot of teachers and professors I've known over the years.
We don't have a millennial problem when it comes to education or working hard, we have an American born and raised problem. (That's because immigrants haven't picked up our bad habits yet.) If I remember The Millionaire Next Door correctly, it showed that the longer an ethnic group had been in the USA in significant numbers, the lower the percentage of millionaires it had.
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the assumption that your college costs compare to costs today, which is very easy to disprove.
Not here in Georgia, it isn't easy to disprove.
College - I worked full time, went to school full time, and paid it out of my pocket for the first two years. If I did not have cash, due to an unexpected expenditure, I did not go until the next semester/quarter (the university system switched during that time period). The next two years were covered by something here called the Hope Grant, and during the last year, they had so much money they even picked up the cost of my books.
Any resident student here can, on merit, regardless of income, go to college for free if his grades are high enough.
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So it is CHEAPER than it was for me, since I paid two years out of pocket, then it would be for students today here in this state, if they want to go and buckle down and get the grades required.
Inflation of tuition (which is real) does not enter into this discussion here. Unless your grades suck, in which case maybe University is not for you.
Nice dismissive attitude. If you really believe college is more affordable than when the boomers were that age, I don't have the energy to fight that battle, although Google would fight it for me easily enough.
Here's a link to the Hope Scholarship page for GA: https://gsfc.georgia.gov/hope (https://gsfc.georgia.gov/hope)
It's a real thing.
I know it changes a bit from year to year but it was fairly generous when it first came out.
As for kids not trying, when I was in public school from 7th to 12th grade, I noticed that a very large proportion of the white middle class kids in school didn't apply themselves. Very many of them did the absolute minimum necessary to get by. Quite a few couldn't even be bothered to do even that.
I've seen nothing in popular culture that has led me to believe anything has changed for the better. In fact, people of my generation who were parents made it worse because a lot of them attacked the teachers instead of disciplining their kids.
That's my take. That's not "old geezer saying the youngsters are worthless." That's old geezer saying a lot of his own generation were slackers at learning life's lessons and probably still are. And that a lot of his own generation were lousy parents, too
My wife is a university professor. A lot of her students don't bother to read the material. They do the minimum necessary amount of work to get by. And, quite a few of them can't be bothered to do that either. That's pretty much the consensus among a lot of teachers and professors I've known over the years.
We don't have a millennial problem when it comes to education or working hard, we have an American born and raised problem. (That's because immigrants haven't picked up our bad habits yet.) If I remember The Millionaire Next Door correctly, it showed that the longer an ethnic group had been in the USA in significant numbers, the lower the percentage of millionaires it had.
Wow, SwordGuy, I have noticed that trend as well. I can't seem to overcome it with one of my own teenagers. I find it very disturbing. One of his friends is an Indian immigrant. He made Eagle Scout at a very young age. I was a part of his board interview. I specifically asked him about what he did to prioritize scouting in the way he did. His answer was that when he arrived home from school, he scheduled 30 minutes each day to work on scouting. He then moved on to schoolwork . . .
I guess I can't switch kids . . .
Your generational comment about immigrants made me think of this kid. He has extremely high grades as well.
My son is naturally bright but extremely lazy, constantly getting 0% grades for failing to turn stuff in (hey, no problem, they let him re-do it, which I think is part of the problem). I started grounding him to his room until he gets the zeroes cleared up, but he seems to prefer suffering grounding for several days rather than clearing them up right away. Very frustrating, and I worry for his future. Bright, lazy people do not do well in life. The real world does not allow constant "re-dos" and failure to meet deadlines.
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Young whipper-snappers these days are what the problem is with this country. Young folks are worthless these days. Get off my lawn! I'm pretty sure that has been said about every generation by their parents or grandparent.
The article is about the fact that the economy is better than it ever has been, but only half the population has felt it. Wealth distribution is moving back into where it was in the robber baron era. Maybe some of that is just deserts for people that don't apply themselves, but there are a lot of factors working against younger folks now. Outsourcing is not helping wages for workers in the developed world, although it seems a little sad to begrudge some truly poor guy in Bangladesh or Honduras a job. Also nobody begrudged paying for giving your grandparents a free high school education. Now that a college degree is the new high school diploma, though, everybody thinks young folks need to pull themselves up by their boot straps. Then not everybody is cut out to be a degreed professional. For the last two centuries the economy has managed to shift unskilled labor to new positions as technology has eliminated jobs. Will that still be the case in the future as automation just keeps accelerating?
The one thing that is silly, though, is that most people are still doing at least as good as their grandparents. My grandparents had a nice house even though it would be considered small now. They could go to the grocery store and buy what they needed to eat even though they didn't eat out much. My great great grandparents would have considered that the lap of luxury. If people now could learn to live with that definition of luxury, most (although not all) would be doing just fine.
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As for kids not trying, when I was in public school from 7th to 12th grade, I noticed that a very large proportion of the white middle class kids in school didn't apply themselves. Very many of them did the absolute minimum necessary to get by. Quite a few couldn't even be bothered to do even that.
I've seen nothing in popular culture that has led me to believe anything has changed for the better. In fact, people of my generation who were parents made it worse because a lot of them attacked the teachers instead of disciplining their kids.
That's my take. That's not "old geezer saying the youngsters are worthless." That's old geezer saying a lot of his own generation were slackers at learning life's lessons and probably still are. And that a lot of his own generation were lousy parents, too
My wife is a university professor. A lot of her students don't bother to read the material. They do the minimum necessary amount of work to get by. And, quite a few of them can't be bothered to do that either. That's pretty much the consensus among a lot of teachers and professors I've known over the years.
When I was in high school, I wasn't really aware that everyone didn't try in school, but I suppose it was true. I was at the top of the class and really thought everyone was doing his or her best; I thought some people's best just wasn't very good.
I've been teaching almost 20 years now, and in that time I have seen a marked decrease in what our low-level students will do. Used to be they'd show up to school and were pleasant and would do the easy work, balking at the more difficult assignments. Today our lowest students -- when they can be bothered to come to school -- do absolutely nothing, in spite of lowered requirements and multiple choices. It's all about the soccer trophy for every kid.
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This thread reminded me of a show I just watched the other night -- Master of None. It's a Netflix original comedy starring Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreation) as Dev, a 30-ish commercial actor struggling to find his way, personally and professionally, in New York City. Anyhow, episode 2 ("Parents") is about Dev and his friend Brian learning to appreciate their immigrant parents. The series as a whole is worth watching, in my opinion, and episode 4 ("Indians on TV") is probably my second favorite of the ones I've seen so far.
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As for kids not trying, when I was in public school from 7th to 12th grade, I noticed that a very large proportion of the white middle class kids in school didn't apply themselves. Very many of them did the absolute minimum necessary to get by. Quite a few couldn't even be bothered to do even that.
I've seen nothing in popular culture that has led me to believe anything has changed for the better. In fact, people of my generation who were parents made it worse because a lot of them attacked the teachers instead of disciplining their kids.
That's my take. That's not "old geezer saying the youngsters are worthless." That's old geezer saying a lot of his own generation were slackers at learning life's lessons and probably still are. And that a lot of his own generation were lousy parents, too
My wife is a university professor. A lot of her students don't bother to read the material. They do the minimum necessary amount of work to get by. And, quite a few of them can't be bothered to do that either. That's pretty much the consensus among a lot of teachers and professors I've known over the years.
When I was in high school, I wasn't really aware that everyone didn't try in school, but I suppose it was true. I was at the top of the class and really thought everyone was doing his or her best; I thought some people's best just wasn't very good.
I've been teaching almost 20 years now, and in that time I have seen a marked decrease in what our low-level students will do. Used to be they'd show up to school and were pleasant and would do the easy work, balking at the more difficult assignments. Today our lowest students -- when they can be bothered to come to school -- do absolutely nothing, in spite of lowered requirements and multiple choices. It's all about the soccer trophy for every kid.
Mrs. Pete, is there pressure to pass them anyway?
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As for kids not trying, when I was in public school from 7th to 12th grade, I noticed that a very large proportion of the white middle class kids in school didn't apply themselves. Very many of them did the absolute minimum necessary to get by. Quite a few couldn't even be bothered to do even that.
I've seen nothing in popular culture that has led me to believe anything has changed for the better. In fact, people of my generation who were parents made it worse because a lot of them attacked the teachers instead of disciplining their kids.
That's my take. That's not "old geezer saying the youngsters are worthless." That's old geezer saying a lot of his own generation were slackers at learning life's lessons and probably still are. And that a lot of his own generation were lousy parents, too
My wife is a university professor. A lot of her students don't bother to read the material. They do the minimum necessary amount of work to get by. And, quite a few of them can't be bothered to do that either. That's pretty much the consensus among a lot of teachers and professors I've known over the years.
When I was in high school, I wasn't really aware that everyone didn't try in school, but I suppose it was true. I was at the top of the class and really thought everyone was doing his or her best; I thought some people's best just wasn't very good.
I've been teaching almost 20 years now, and in that time I have seen a marked decrease in what our low-level students will do. Used to be they'd show up to school and were pleasant and would do the easy work, balking at the more difficult assignments. Today our lowest students -- when they can be bothered to come to school -- do absolutely nothing, in spite of lowered requirements and multiple choices. It's all about the soccer trophy for every kid.
Mrs. Pete, is there pressure to pass them anyway?
I taught in an inner city Chicago school and I'll say that there wasn't exactly pressure to pass them, but there was definitely a culture of just moving them along, whether or not they were really ready. Do that enough times and it becomes basically impossible to teach grade appropriate curriculum, when most of the class is several grade levels behind. The better teachers I knew would scale way back and spend time on the basics they should have mastered years before along with life skills that might not even be part of the curriculum (how to apply for a job, how to find an apartment, etc.). Sadly, that's often the best you can do at a high school level in those districts. I wouldn't say most of that was the kid's fault though.
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My son is naturally bright but extremely lazy, constantly getting 0% grades for failing to turn stuff in (hey, no problem, they let him re-do it, which I think is part of the problem). I started grounding him to his room until he gets the zeroes cleared up, but he seems to prefer suffering grounding for several days rather than clearing them up right away. Very frustrating, and I worry for his future. Bright, lazy people do not do well in life. The real world does not allow constant "re-dos" and failure to meet deadlines.
You are taking away his internet access when grounding him... right? I think that's the most effective punishment for a modern teen by a long shot.
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I'm excited to see scholarships like GA's hope mentioned here (I wrote a Ph.D. thesis about them about a decade ago). Indeed they DO make college cheaper for about the 35% of HS graduates who qualify. But many of these would be attending college anyway (usually about 70% of HS graduates attend some type of post-secondary education, perhaps half of those complete a BA).
more than twenty other states have something like this program. But it's often tied to need (like in Indiana).
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\The concept of "lazy kids in this generation" is interesting. My 27 Y.O son is an engineer and in senior management for an oil field services company. He has a very difficult time recruiting and retaining the most low skilled workers. The positions are for unskilled laborers. The pay is $16/hr to start. You work as many twelve hour days as you want, in a week, and overtime is guaranteed. Full medical and a matching 401 are included. With a modest effort, it turns into a $70K + a year job, and it's typically far from back breaking. That said, he eliminates a significant portion of the applicant pool, once the drug test results come in, and loses more to random testing on the worksite. He recently fired a young guy after drill site management caught him watching a movie on a smart phone, while hiding n a company truck. He has repeatedly had new employees quit, within hours of starting their first shift. They have to be removed from job sites immediately, often in very remote locations. He will grill them as he drives them back to the shop, and often it's a case of the job being "not what they expected". Not sure what they "expect", but he expects a reasonable amount of productivity from a totally uneducated, inexperienced employee, in exchange for an unusually high wage,and a job with a potential to move up. Some of these guys admit that they are happy to return to leaching off their parents, or working at a retail job for half the pay, since it's a hell of a lot easier that being hot, cold, or having to do a moderate amount of shoveling during a shift.
Interestingly enough, while trying to find laborers, he got a lead on pair of brothers, Mexican nationals with legitimate paperwork, who specialized in oil field labor. They were new to the area, and had great references. He though had a deal with them, but literally got outbid. Now, I'm well aware that anecdotes are not evidence, and his small company has several extremely talented and hard working millennials.
I do find it interesting that, given a decent opportunity, with zero training, or experience required, many young totally unskilled guys either can't get their shit together enough to qualify, or don't want to work, once they are given a chance.
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Try finding a teenager to shovel snow or cut grass. Either they want $50 - $80 for an hours work or they just can't be bothered.
It isn't the teenagers' fault. It is their parents' fault.
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I'm excited to see scholarships like GA's hope mentioned here (I wrote a Ph.D. thesis about them about a decade ago). Indeed they DO make college cheaper for about the 35% of HS graduates who qualify. But many of these would be attending college anyway (usually about 70% of HS graduates attend some type of post-secondary education, perhaps half of those complete a BA).
more than twenty other states have something like this program. But it's often tied to need (like in Indiana).
The US don't need more people in college, it needs middle class careers for high school graduates. There are enough dumbasses in college already, let's not keep diluting that pool.
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As for kids not trying, when I was in public school from 7th to 12th grade, I noticed that a very large proportion of the white middle class kids in school didn't apply themselves. Very many of them did the absolute minimum necessary to get by. Quite a few couldn't even be bothered to do even that.
I've seen nothing in popular culture that has led me to believe anything has changed for the better. In fact, people of my generation who were parents made it worse because a lot of them attacked the teachers instead of disciplining their kids.
That's my take. That's not "old geezer saying the youngsters are worthless." That's old geezer saying a lot of his own generation were slackers at learning life's lessons and probably still are. And that a lot of his own generation were lousy parents, too
My wife is a university professor. A lot of her students don't bother to read the material. They do the minimum necessary amount of work to get by. And, quite a few of them can't be bothered to do that either. That's pretty much the consensus among a lot of teachers and professors I've known over the years.
When I was in high school, I wasn't really aware that everyone didn't try in school, but I suppose it was true. I was at the top of the class and really thought everyone was doing his or her best; I thought some people's best just wasn't very good.
I've been teaching almost 20 years now, and in that time I have seen a marked decrease in what our low-level students will do. Used to be they'd show up to school and were pleasant and would do the easy work, balking at the more difficult assignments. Today our lowest students -- when they can be bothered to come to school -- do absolutely nothing, in spite of lowered requirements and multiple choices. It's all about the soccer trophy for every kid.
Mrs. Pete, is there pressure to pass them anyway?
I taught in an inner city Chicago school and I'll say that there wasn't exactly pressure to pass them, but there was definitely a culture of just moving them along, whether or not they were really ready. Do that enough times and it becomes basically impossible to teach grade appropriate curriculum, when most of the class is several grade levels behind. The better teachers I knew would scale way back and spend time on the basics they should have mastered years before along with life skills that might not even be part of the curriculum (how to apply for a job, how to find an apartment, etc.). Sadly, that's often the best you can do at a high school level in those districts. I wouldn't say most of that was the kid's fault though.
My son's 4th and 5th grade teachers both told me about this. In one classroom of 30 students, math and English levels range from grade 2 to grade 9.
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Young whipper-snappers these days are what the problem is with this country. Young folks are worthless these days. Get off my lawn! I'm pretty sure that has been said about every generation by their parents or grandparent.
cue Joe Friday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZo2hhvvlpw)
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I'm excited to see scholarships like GA's hope mentioned here (I wrote a Ph.D. thesis about them about a decade ago). Indeed they DO make college cheaper for about the 35% of HS graduates who qualify. But many of these would be attending college anyway (usually about 70% of HS graduates attend some type of post-secondary education, perhaps half of those complete a BA).
more than twenty other states have something like this program. But it's often tied to need (like in Indiana).
The US don't need more people in college, it needs middle class careers for high school graduates. There are enough dumbasses in college already, let's not keep diluting that pool.
Right, but speak at career day about how there are great opportunities as a welder, electrician, plumber, carpenter, etc. and it's like you just lit the building on fire. "My son's going to be a lawyer!" No, no he isn't.
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Snip
To me this is less a millennial problem and more a recruitment or cost/benefit problem. You can't hire any random unqualified person and expect them to be super productive in a hard physical job and have stellar work ethic. This is where an interview, CVs, and references comes in. The fact that the "good" employees were whisked away highlights that the issue is pay and/or recruitment not birth date or nationality.
Another issue is that not everyone is willing to work a hard physical job or lots of hours for incremental additional pay. For instance, I would not work an additional 4 hours per day even If you paid me 75% more.
Finally, the employer is trying to pay their employees as little as they can get away with. The corollary is that the employee will (or should) try to work as little as they can get away with. That is just the outcome that you get in the system that we are in.
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I do find it interesting that, given a decent opportunity, with zero training, or experience required, many young totally unskilled guys either can't get their shit together enough to qualify, or don't want to work, once they are given a chance.
In my experience, the VERY reason people are "TOTALLY UNSKILLED" is because they have never gotten their shit together and/or were never willing to work.
Anyone with a 10th grade education (and I don't mean breathed air for 10 years and was passed for social reasons) is way better educated than most Americans were for the first 150 years of our country. They do not qualify as totally unskilled because:
(1) they can do basic math.
(2) they can read and write at a 10th grade level. (Many materials in the real world are written for an 8th grade level.)
(3) they have learned how to learn.
(4) they have worked to learn.
Those are all very useful skills for a host of jobs.
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Snip
To me this is less a millennial problem and more a recruitment or cost/benefit problem. You can't hire any random unqualified person and expect them to be super productive in a hard physical job and have stellar work ethic. This is where an interview, CVs, and references comes in. The fact that the "good" employees were whisked away highlights that the issue is pay and/or recruitment not birth date or nationality.
Another issue is that not everyone is willing to work a hard physical job or lots of hours for incremental additional pay. For instance, I would not work an additional 4 hours per day even If you paid me 75% more.
Finally, the employer is trying to pay their employees as little as they can get away with. The corollary is that the employee will (or should) try to work as little as they can get away with. That is just the outcome that you get in the system that we are in.
Wow. Would it be fair to say that you are highly educated, well compensated, and have no real familiarity with uneducated, working class folks? First, in the instance I reference, there is no random anything. As the hiring manager, my son has little interesting in wasting his time, and a great deal of pre-placement training and safety certification expense, by "Randomly hiring unqualified persons". Your assumption that there is no interview, review of references, or attempt at extracting a resume from somebody who has no idea WTF a "CV" is, is way off base. Try to get your head around a group of applicants who could only hope to generate a resume if they sat down with a career counselor at a government unemployment office, AND may very well be the first person in their family to ever have needed one. For most of these folks (and yes, I AM one, working class, no post secondary ed.) the closest they will ever get to a "resume" is filling out the column marked "previous job history" on a preprinted application that was torn off of a pad full of them. The fact that good laborers, with a long work history in this specific industry, get to name their price means nothing other than they are an anomaly. These were guys who not only had verifiable experience, but had relocated to better themselves, which is rare. They have nothing in common with those "short timers" who bailed to return to mom's basement, or grovel for their job back at the auto parts store, making 1/2 as much, since working moderately hard, or in unpleasant conditions, is not "what they expected"
As for not being willing to work long, or hard, how does it work in your world, for those with no experience, no skill set, no training, and no post secondary education? I know many, many guys who are everything from highly paid execs. in the construction industry, to company owners, who started at the bottom. Shit hours, shit conditions, and a broom in their hand. I guess I would have to add myself to this list of success stories, the list of guys who started at the bottom and didn't value being a quitter as much as you do. When your are in my son's position, and you have seen a new employee perform for a year or two, being reliable, dependable and willing to be a team player, you know the answer when that guy approaches you and says, "I hear you are looking for equipment operators, how do I move up, and stay with this company". You do what it takes to keep him, and get him trained to climb the ladder. That's how the world works outside of degrees, certifications, linkedin profiles, job coaches, head hunters, and multiple interviews before being offered a position.
Your final comment is ironic. Once value my kid's company has is, "we pay better than average, and expect better than average". In this case, they start unskilled laborers at 25% higher than competitors. They also walk away from jobs where their customers want them to cut costs, and the only way to do it is to battle with competitors that use minimum wage employees, or even undocumented workers. They don't want the bottom of the barrel on high risk job sites, wearing their company uniforms. Other companies wouldn't hesitate to hire monkeys, if they could make it work, and pay them a few bucks less. I'm not sure where your head is at when it comes to what unskilled, uneducated and untrained new hires are worth, out there in fly-over country, but there are millions of men and women that would kill to make $16/HR with great health care and tons of overtime, if it was offered. The median family income in the region we are discussing is $43.4K a year. So with no college education, no trade skill training, and no prior experience, you could end up making the median family income for the area, working four 12 hour shifts a week. Yet it is a constant battle to find and retain qualified entry level help.
As you clearly state, this is an obvious case of an employer paying as little as possible, and as a result, when given that chance, the employee should try to do as little as possible to "stick it to the man". I gotta' give you credit here, you sure see the world a bit differently than I do. But then, I started at the bottom, never got a degree, operated two companies I founded, retired 15-20 years before my peers, and have more than I'll ever need, so don't ask me.
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I'm excited to see scholarships like GA's hope mentioned here (I wrote a Ph.D. thesis about them about a decade ago). Indeed they DO make college cheaper for about the 35% of HS graduates who qualify. But many of these would be attending college anyway (usually about 70% of HS graduates attend some type of post-secondary education, perhaps half of those complete a BA).
more than twenty other states have something like this program. But it's often tied to need (like in Indiana).
The US don't need more people in college, it needs middle class careers for high school graduates. There are enough dumbasses in college already, let's not keep diluting that pool.
As I already mentioned upthread, the Georgia Hope scholarship/grant is available for students to use at a variety of public, private, and technical schools. https://www.gafutures.org/media/113484/hope-scholarship-eligible-institutions.pdf
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Wow. Would it be fair to say that you are highly educated, well compensated, and have no real familiarity with uneducated, working class folks? First, in the instance I reference, there is no random anything. As the hiring manager, my son has little interesting in wasting his time, and a great deal of pre-placement training and safety certification expense, by "Randomly hiring unqualified persons". Your assumption that there is no interview, review of references, or attempt at extracting a resume from somebody who has no idea WTF a "CV" is, is way off base. Try to get your head around a group of applicants who could only hope to generate a resume if they sat down with a career counselor at a government unemployment office, AND may very well be the first person in their family to ever have needed one. For most of these folks (and yes, I AM one, working class, no post secondary ed.) the closest they will ever get to a "resume" is filling out the column marked "previous job history" on a preprinted application that was torn off of a pad full of them. The fact that good laborers, with a long work history in this specific industry, get to name their price means nothing other than they are an anomaly. These were guys who not only had verifiable experience, but had relocated to better themselves, which is rare. They have nothing in common with those "short timers" who bailed to return to mom's basement, or grovel for their job back at the auto parts store, making 1/2 as much, since working moderately hard, or in unpleasant conditions, is not "what they expected"
Take a deep breath. Ok, ready to discuss now?
Maybe the problem is trying to recruit unskilled people in 2016 for a job that requires above average work ethic and effort. That is literally picking from the bottom of the discard barrel and expecting stellar performance. Yeah, success rate won't be very high.
Nowadays, everyone and their dogs have a college degree. There is a reason that unskilled workers are exactly that. You know that they say about chicken sandwiches right?
As for not being willing to work long, or hard, how does it work in your world, for those with no experience, no skill set, no training, and no post secondary education? I know many, many guys who are everything from highly paid execs. in the construction industry, to company owners, who started at the bottom. Shit hours, shit conditions, and a broom in their hand. I guess I would have to add myself to this list of success stories, the list of guys who started at the bottom and didn't value being a quitter as much as you do. When your are in my son's position, and you have seen a new employee perform for a year or two, being reliable, dependable and willing to be a team player, you know the answer when that guy approaches you and says, "I hear you are looking for equipment operators, how do I move up, and stay with this company". You do what it takes to keep him, and get him trained to climb the ladder. That's how the world works outside of degrees, certifications, linkedin profiles, job coaches, head hunters, and multiple interviews before being offered a position.
1st bolded part: There is a difference between a 1980's unskilled worker and a 2016 unskilled worker. The 1980's person might not have had a choice but, in 2016, only people that want to remain unskilled stay unskilled. You can draw your own conclusions on what happens when you draw from that pile (hint: you don't get good value).
2nd:On me being a quitter? Lol. I guess you have to resort to insults when you don't have factual arguments?
Your final comment is ironic. Once value my kid's company has is, "we pay better than average, and expect better than average". In this case, they start unskilled laborers at 25% higher than competitors. They also walk away from jobs where their customers want them to cut costs, and the only way to do it is to battle with competitors that use minimum wage employees, or even undocumented workers. They don't want the bottom of the barrel on high risk job sites, wearing their company uniforms. Other companies wouldn't hesitate to hire monkeys, if they could make it work, and pay them a few bucks less. I'm not sure where your head is at when it comes to what unskilled, uneducated and untrained new hires are worth, out there in fly-over country, but there are millions of men and women that would kill to make $16/HR with great health care and tons of overtime, if it was offered. The median family income in the region we are discussing is $43.4K a year. So with no college education, no trade skill training, and no prior experience, you could end up making the median family income for the area, working four 12 hour shifts a week. Yet it is a constant battle to find and retain qualified entry level help.
1st: If the company paid better than average, their prospects wouldn't be poached by the competition. Ergo, the company is (justly) trying to minimize the amount that they pay out to employees. Ask yourself this "If they paid 100$/hour, would they have trouble recruiting competent employees?" They wouldn't?! Well this comes back to an issue of market economics, not people being lazy.
2nd: Well, maybe they shouldn't pick from the bottom of the pile then.
3rd: Where are these millions of people when it comes time to fill the position? Elsewhere? Not interested? Why do you think that is (hint: compensation is not in line with work expectations) ?
As you clearly state, this is an obvious case of an employer paying as little as possible, and as a result, when given that chance, the employee should try to do as little as possible to "stick it to the man". I gotta' give you credit here, you sure see the world a bit differently than I do. But then, I started at the bottom, never got a degree, operated two companies I founded, retired 15-20 years before my peers, and have more than I'll ever need, so don't ask me.
1st: It's not about "sticking it to the man" it's about business sense. Who would willingly sell their time for less than the maximum (or what they think is the maximum) that they can get for it? Businesses relocate out of the country, robotize the workforce, and minimize benefit so that they can maximize their profit. Why would it suddenly become unsavory for a worker to do the same?
2nd:So you did all that by working hard and then everything fell in your lap? No, you worked hard AND you tried to maximize your payout by capitalizing on opportunities. This is exactly what I am arguing for. You won't get a lot of these people by picking from the discard pile.
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The fact that good laborers, with a long work history in this specific industry, get to name their price means nothing other than they are an anomaly. These were guys who not only had verifiable experience, but had relocated to better themselves, which is rare. They have nothing in common with those "short timers" who bailed to return to mom's basement, or grovel for their job back at the auto parts store, making 1/2 as much, since working moderately hard, or in unpleasant conditions, is not "what they expected"
<snip>
Yet it is a constant battle to find and retain qualified entry level help.
Hmm. Can you afford to draw from the left side of the bell curve?
The reason I ask is because I found an amazing demographic, and by cultivating them as customers I've made a respectable amount of money renting out rooms in my home. In my case, I cater to people with mobility impairments and minor disabilities. Obviously I still have to screen my tenants, but I've found that by going after this demographic I've gotten more reliable, happier tenants who stick around for the long term by drawing from this specific pool of people. Not many places are physically easy to live in for, say, the veteran who's missing a leg, or a wheelchair user, or a person with a developmental disability that keeps him from being able to read well. When they get into a situation where they're treated fairly and rewarded for their work, they tend to want to keep it. I'd venture to guess that it's the same for a job as it is for a living situation.
It may depend on the kind of work you've got, but maybe you can do something similar.
It seems to me that motivated and qualified entry level workers from the right side of the bell curve seldom stay entry-level forever. When they move up, either within your company or outside it, obviously it creates an opening behind them. You'll have to keep hiring just to backfill.
It's a rare person who is on the right side of the bell curve in terms of potential but who is genuinely satisfied enough with the lower pay scale associated with entry level work to keep that work long-term and not look for a better dollar return on their time. Most of the folks I've met who meet that description have a minimalist lifestyle-- like an offset press operator I used to know-- and have no desire for higher pay or a higher level of consumption. They're willing to do their fair share at work, and then they're satisfied. That's a pretty rare bird in our consumer society but they are out there. I see them sometimes in the enlisted military. Hiring them away from what they've got isn't going to be easy for you because they won't respond to your ads or job listings.
I've met a few people who identify so strongly with their jobs that they'd take advancement as some kind of self-betrayal. They are generally not from American or Western European cultural backgrounds. They take a lot of pride in their work, they value craftsmanship, and sometimes they own the business but most of the time they'd rather not because it would mean less opportunity to, say, put paint on walls. They get a feeling of satisfaction simply from doing the work and doing it well. Most of the folks I know who think this way are in the skilled trades. If unskilled labor is what you need the pickings are going to be slim unless you luck out and scoop up some people who follow oilfield or other kinds of labor... and there's a better-than-even chance they will continue to follow work and leave you for a better opportunity during the next boom. A person who relocates to your area for a better opportunity is also likely to relocate away from it for something better still.
Then of course there are people who have a lot of potential but also a bad situation that keeps them from moving up. That bad situation may make them too much of a liability to hire in the first place, and I find they move around a lot because they're bright enough to resent that they can't move up, and instead of dealing with their addiction or untreated mental illness or whatever, they blame the lack of advancement on other people. That's just toxic. I screen for that attitude when I look for tenants and would expect you already screen for it too.
Anyway, is there a chance that you can do as I do and cultivate the left side of the bell curve? If you don't need a lot in terms of brains and brawn, you can still find plenty of people with a work ethic and a desire for the kind of respect that comes from having long-term, full-time employment.
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Wow. Would it be fair to say that you are highly educated, well compensated, and have no real familiarity with uneducated, working class folks? First, in the instance I reference, there is no random anything. As the hiring manager, my son has little interesting in wasting his time, and a great deal of pre-placement training and safety certification expense, by "Randomly hiring unqualified persons". Your assumption that there is no interview, review of references, or attempt at extracting a resume from somebody who has no idea WTF a "CV" is, is way off base. Try to get your head around a group of applicants who could only hope to generate a resume if they sat down with a career counselor at a government unemployment office, AND may very well be the first person in their family to ever have needed one. For most of these folks (and yes, I AM one, working class, no post secondary ed.) the closest they will ever get to a "resume" is filling out the column marked "previous job history" on a preprinted application that was torn off of a pad full of them. The fact that good laborers, with a long work history in this specific industry, get to name their price means nothing other than they are an anomaly. These were guys who not only had verifiable experience, but had relocated to better themselves, which is rare. They have nothing in common with those "short timers" who bailed to return to mom's basement, or grovel for their job back at the auto parts store, making 1/2 as much, since working moderately hard, or in unpleasant conditions, is not "what they expected"
Take a deep breath. Ok, ready to discuss now?
This is a fascinating, and at some level, a very MMM forum specific problem. If there was a metric for "group think" regarding forum discourse, this place would be at the very high end of the chart. If everybody is of the same mindset and keeping in the herd, it's all good. If you have a different opinion, or strongly disagree with another poster, well that just doesn't work. Your input is either branded as a "rant", or you are get hit with comments like yours. Personally, I find it childish and silly, and stunningly thin skinned. It's nothing personal, you may be a great guy, and we would get along swimmingly when we meet, who knows. But the "Take a deep breath" act is condescending, and unnecessary.
This is a simple situation. I spent many decades, until very recently, employing a total of hundreds and hundreds of the kind of folks we are discussing, from laborers, and helpers to highly skilled tradesmen. My son is now doing the same. The issue is that nothing you claim, your facts, your economic theory of labor, or anything, can be found in my long history in the field, my discussions with others in my profession, or any current economic discussion on the topic. Be it as diverse as the continual hand wringing from the economic chattering class as they pontificate on why exactly, labor participation rates are at an all time low, or from the other end of the spectrum, real life accounts on how this segment of the population actually thinks, like the outstanding work of J.D. Vance in "Hillbilly Elegy".
Maybe the problem is trying to recruit unskilled people in 2016 for a job that requires above average work ethic and effort.
There is no "maybe" about it. This IS the problem, and it is a very serious one. The specific issue is that you and I define "Above average work ethic and effort" based on our experience, and the measures we are familiar with in determining what is acceptable performance and output, based on being inside an organization that is succeeding, with you as a part of it. Unfortunately, many at the bottom of the pool have wildly unrealistic expectations of what is reasonable, and quickly are viewed as suffering from entitlement delusions when you can actually pin them down as to what, in their opinion, is fair and reasonable. BTW, I have watch this build for decades, it's not, IMHO, a recent development, and it largely a result of cultural forces, not inherent laziness, or a lack of education.
That is literally picking from the bottom of the discard barrel and expecting stellar performance. Yeah, success rate won't be very high.
Once again, totally assumptive on your part, and lacking any factual basis. I am discussing how difficult it is to recruit, and retain, entry level workers. YOU are the one that continually claims that this involves no legitimate vetting of candidates, and then attributes this to being one of the reasons for a lack of success.
Nowadays, everyone and their dogs have a college degree. There is a reason that unskilled workers are exactly that. You know that they say about chicken sandwiches right?
Maybe I'm wrong, but there seem to be two ways to view this comment. The most charitable would be to write it off as an "off the cuff", trying to be funny, moment? The other, assuming you are serious, is to ask if you can be any more elitist? You are aware that roughly a third of American Adults have degrees, right? As you might of guessed, in rural America this number drops by quite a bit, and it's more like one in four, at best. You are incredibly dismissive of the majority of your fellow men and women.
As for not being willing to work long, or hard, how does it work in your world, for those with no experience, no skill set, no training, and no post secondary education? I know many, many guys who are everything from highly paid execs. in the construction industry, to company owners, who started at the bottom. Shit hours, shit conditions, and a broom in their hand. I guess I would have to add myself to this list of success stories, the list of guys who started at the bottom and didn't value being a quitter as much as you do. When your are in my son's position, and you have seen a new employee perform for a year or two, being reliable, dependable and willing to be a team player, you know the answer when that guy approaches you and says, "I hear you are looking for equipment operators, how do I move up, and stay with this company". You do what it takes to keep him, and get him trained to climb the ladder. That's how the world works outside of degrees, certifications, linkedin profiles, job coaches, head hunters, and multiple interviews before being offered a position.
1st bolded part: There is a difference between a 1980's unskilled worker and a 2016 unskilled worker. The 1980's person might not have had a choice but, in 2016, only people that want to remain unskilled stay unskilled. You can draw your own conclusions on what happens when you draw from that pile (hint: you don't get good value).
Having entered the workforce in the 80's and having hired employees until recently, I guess we just don't agree on this. I had access to far cheaper secondary education, and a great deal of apprenticeship opportunities that are far more limited today. Maybe it's an anecdote VS. data argument, but there were a hell of a lot of opportunities available to high school grads when I entered that labor pool. Once again, your comments about remaining unskilled are sounding awfully elitist. One of the main issues I see in my rural area is the mistaken belief that following in your parent's footsteps is the right thing to do. " They did well, and I see no reason why I can't expect the same sucess, if I do the same thing". You and I know exactly how this logic is flawed, but I have seen it happen all too often to kids who threw a bring future away, since the family couldn't see the value of pushing their children to move out, and up. .
2nd:On me being a quitter? Lol. I guess you have to resort to insults when you don't have factual arguments?
Not an insult at all. It's a comment on your logic. Remember this?
"Finally, the employer is trying to pay their employees as little as they can get away with. The corollary is that the employee will (or should) try to work as little as they can get away with."
So with no evidence that this situation involves THIS employer paying as "little as they can get away with" (in fact quite to the contrary, as the reality is a base rate of 133 to 220% of what some competitors are paying, the highest base rate in the region, but why be swayed by facts, eh?) You council that an employee should use their inflated sense of self worth to justify doing as little as they can get away with. Fuck doing your job well, or being a valuable employee, or getting ahead in a company that is doubling in size, with tons of opportunity, just try to fuck them over by trying to do as little as you can get away with. Sorry, but that pretty much DEFINES a quitter to me. When I say that many of us became quite successful by starting with shit hours, shit pay, and a broom in our hands, it wasn't hyperbole. I had some real nasty jobs, and got my first real paycheck at 13 Y.O. Thankfully, I not only failed to follow your advice, I passed my values on to my kid. He started washing dishes in the local diner at 14 Y.O. His mom and I recently got to speak to the owner of the diner. When I told him that our boy was an engineer who was a division head for large construction company, the guy actually got chocked up. He sat down a minute, and then told us that our son was the hardest working kid he ever had in the kitchen. It was gratifying to hear, but it also confirms that at many levels the issue is cultural, and family based, not if you have a degree, or see yourself as superior to those that don't.
Your final comment is ironic. Once value my kid's company has is, "we pay better than average, and expect better than average". In this case, they start unskilled laborers at 25% higher than competitors. They also walk away from jobs where their customers want them to cut costs, and the only way to do it is to battle with competitors that use minimum wage employees, or even undocumented workers. They don't want the bottom of the barrel on high risk job sites, wearing their company uniforms. Other companies wouldn't hesitate to hire monkeys, if they could make it work, and pay them a few bucks less. I'm not sure where your head is at when it comes to what unskilled, uneducated and untrained new hires are worth, out there in fly-over country, but there are millions of men and women that would kill to make $16/HR with great health care and tons of overtime, if it was offered. The median family income in the region we are discussing is $43.4K a year. So with no college education, no trade skill training, and no prior experience, you could end up making the median family income for the area, working four 12 hour shifts a week. Yet it is a constant battle to find and retain qualified entry level help.
1st: If the company paid better than average, their prospects wouldn't be poached by the competition. Ergo, the company is (justly) trying to minimize the amount that they pay out to employees. Ask yourself this "If they paid 100$/hour, would they have trouble recruiting competent employees?" They wouldn't?! Well this comes back to an issue of market economics, not people being lazy.
2nd: Well, maybe they shouldn't pick from the bottom of the pile then.
3rd: Where are these millions of people when it comes time to fill the position? Elsewhere? Not interested? Why do you think that is (hint: compensation is not in line with work expectations) ?
As you clearly state, this is an obvious case of an employer paying as little as possible, and as a result, when given that chance, the employee should try to do as little as possible to "stick it to the man". I gotta' give you credit here, you sure see the world a bit differently than I do. But then, I started at the bottom, never got a degree, operated two companies I founded, retired 15-20 years before my peers, and have more than I'll ever need, so don't ask me.
1st: It's not about "sticking it to the man" it's about business sense. Who would willingly sell their time for less than the maximum (or what they think is the maximum) that they can get for it? Businesses relocate out of the country, robotize the workforce, and minimize benefit so that they can maximize their profit. Why would it suddenly become unsavory for a worker to do the same?
2nd:So you did all that by working hard and then everything fell in your lap? No, you worked hard AND you tried to maximize your payout by capitalizing on opportunities. This is exactly what I am arguing for. You won't get a lot of these people by picking from the discard pile.
You are somehow fixated with YOUR theory that offering more pay will somehow energize the millions of those sitting on the sidelines. Those that simply will not engage in the labor force. I imagine that if you really research the issue, you will realise how flawed this logic is, for so many reasons. However, it doesn't matter if it's my deep experience on this topic, my son just starting to dive in, and learning to deal with all the headaches of attempting to successfully hire from the unskilled, entry level pool, or the thousands of HR pros. that try to keep everything from warehouses full of stock pickers, to asses in truck seats, you would hear the same response. Money is NOT the primary issue here. The unskilled, semi-skilled and entry level labor pool has got a ton of issues, and money is far from the biggest, and certainly isn't a magic cure that, as you beleive, will solve everything.
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Hmm. Can you afford to draw from the left side of the bell curve?
<snip>
Anyway, is there a chance that you can do as I do and cultivate the left side of the bell curve? If you don't need a lot in terms of brains and brawn, you can still find plenty of people with a work ethic and a desire for the kind of respect that comes from having long-term, full-time employment.
Thanks for the fascinating observations, and sharing your experiences with tenants, and those you know who are "employable outliers" LOL. Fortunately, I'm FIREd, and happily done with having employees. The initial post was of my son's recent foray into the field, and his education regarding the fact that offering relatively high pay for entry level positions, and his personal standards of performance, reliability, and even a basic desire to want do anything productive in exchange for a paycheck, are a hell of a lot less universal than he first assumed, LOL.
He will be fine in the end. Once he weeds through the ones that fail the drug tests, or wash out in the first few hours, he generally ends up retaining the majority for a reasonable tenure. Outliers are interesting though. The few ex-military guys he managed to recruit are outstanding, particularly when asked to take the new hires and get them up to speed. He also has a very young, probably genius level guy who had an interesting story. He grew up on "wild cat" rigs that his father operated, by 18 YO he was operating his own rig. As the industry consolidated, and smaller played washed out, he was out of work. Nobody from the corporate world could wrap their heads around a kid, with no education, who claimed that he could drill multi-million dollar holes with the best of them. He is now teamed up with my son, and they have done some impressive, and off the wall stuff together. When they get tired of dealing with things like rented equipment with reliability issues, IE. big industrial pumps. They team up, tear them apart and figure out how to build better ones, then get it done. It's actually entertaining to follow their antics. A few years ago we were brainstorming about not being able to afford specialized equipment for a process that one company had quite a lock on. I told him of how the Chinese famously reverse engineer product then become experts in manufacturing their own. He and his buddy then devoted major effort to getting the specialty contractor to tell them as much as they would divulge, then got that company's suppliers to fill in the blanks. They then built the machinery and can do the process on their own. Sorry but I can't get more specific than that. Yep, there are some real interesting people out there............
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paddedhat, you have greatly increased the value of this thread to those reading.
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In my anectodal experience the handful of mellenials I've hired seem up to the task. I do work in the public sector though, not sure if that matters. My personal experience has been that the worse someone's physical ailments and the worse off their personal life is (or just busy) their work and maybe work ethics becomes worse.
I have almost 15 years experience and manage a small team of about 20 now. Age and generation has nothing to do with it. The big difference is playing with phones older staff can't stand seeing youguns playing with phones, I couldn't give half a shit as long as they do the work.
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This is a fascinating, and at some level, a very MMM forum specific problem. If there was a metric for "group think" regarding forum discourse, this place would be at the very high end of the chart. If everybody is of the same mindset and keeping in the herd, it's all good. If you have a different opinion, or strongly disagree with another poster, well that just doesn't work. Your input is either branded as a "rant", or you are get hit with comments like yours. Personally, I find it childish and silly, and stunningly thin skinned. It's nothing personal, you may be a great guy, and we would get along swimmingly when we meet, who knows. But the "Take a deep breath" act is condescending, and unnecessary.
Condescension? No, you verbally assaulted me because of my opinion. I think I can tell you to take a deep breath without feeling self conscious about it.
This is a simple situation. I spent many decades, until very recently, employing a total of hundreds and hundreds of the kind of folks we are discussing, from laborers, and helpers to highly skilled tradesmen. My son is now doing the same. The issue is that nothing you claim, your facts, your economic theory of labor, or anything, can be found in my long history in the field, my discussions with others in my profession, or any current economic discussion on the topic. Be it as diverse as the continual hand wringing from the economic chattering class as they pontificate on why exactly, labor participation rates are at an all time low, or from the other end of the spectrum, real life accounts on how this segment of the population actually thinks, like the outstanding work of J.D. Vance in "Hillbilly Elegy".[/color]
Anecdotes.
There is no "maybe" about it. This IS the problem, and it is a very serious one. The specific issue is that you and I define "Above average work ethic and effort" based on our experience, and the measures we are familiar with in determining what is acceptable performance and output, based on being inside an organization that is succeeding, with you as a part of it. Unfortunately, many at the bottom of the pool have wildly unrealistic expectations of what is reasonable, and quickly are viewed as suffering from entitlement delusions when you can actually pin them down as to what, in their opinion, is fair and reasonable. BTW, I have watch this build for decades, it's not, IMHO, a recent development, and it largely a result of cultural forces, not inherent laziness, or a lack of education.
Earlier, you agreed that this was a generational issue. Now you say it's cultural. I was responding to the former assertion.
Once again, totally assumptive on your part, and lacking any factual basis. I am discussing how difficult it is to recruit, and retain, entry level workers. YOU are the one that continually claims that this involves no legitimate vetting of candidates, and then attributes this to being one of the reasons for a lack of success.
A previous poster addressed this better than I could already. By definition, all entry positions have high turnover. Why would you stick in an entry job as you gain experience? You market value increase and you find a better paying job. This has nothing to do with entitlement.
Maybe I'm wrong, but there seem to be two ways to view this comment. The most charitable would be to write it off as an "off the cuff", trying to be funny, moment? The other, assuming you are serious, is to ask if you can be any more elitist? You are aware that roughly a third of American Adults have degrees, right? As you might of guessed, in rural America this number drops by quite a bit, and it's more like one in four, at best. You are incredibly dismissive of the majority of your fellow men and women.
Not trying to be funny. Not elitism. Just a realist. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/)
Having entered the workforce in the 80's and having hired employees until recently, I guess we just don't agree on this. I had access to far cheaper secondary education, and a great deal of apprenticeship opportunities that are far more limited today. Maybe it's an anecdote VS. data argument, but there were a hell of a lot of opportunities available to high school grads when I entered that labor pool. Once again, your comments about remaining unskilled are sounding awfully elitist. One of the main issues I see in my rural area is the mistaken belief that following in your parent's footsteps is the right thing to do. " They did well, and I see no reason why I can't expect the same sucess, if I do the same thing". You and I know exactly how this logic is flawed, but I have seen it happen all too often to kids who threw a bring future away, since the family couldn't see the value of pushing their children to move out, and up. .
There has never been a time, in human history, where knowledge is more accessible than now. I don't believe what you are saying is a relevant trend looking at employment holistically. Maybe it is factual where you live, but that does not really help in a broad discussion of an entire generation.
So with no evidence that this situation involves THIS employer paying as "little as they can get away with" (in fact quite to the contrary, as the reality is a base rate of 133 to 220% of what some competitors are paying, the highest base rate in the region, but why be swayed by facts, eh?)
Just going on what you said yourself. Why were the good employees poached? Salary? Then I guess they don't pay 130-220% more than the competition.
They pay more than some other company? So what? They still pay less than the competition (i.e., those poaching the employees).
You council that an employee should use their inflated sense of self worth to justify doing as little as they can get away with. Fuck doing your job well, or being a valuable employee, or getting ahead in a company that is doubling in size, with tons of opportunity, just try to fuck them over by trying to do as little as you can get away with. Sorry, but that pretty much DEFINES a quitter to me.
First, I don't council anything. Second, I don't care about your specific anecdote. I am talking about the employment trends across several generations.
When I say that many of us became quite successful by starting with shit hours, shit pay, and a broom in our hands, it wasn't hyperbole. I had some real nasty jobs, and got my first real paycheck at 13 Y.O. Thankfully, I not only failed to follow your advice, I passed my values on to my kid. He started washing dishes in the local diner at 14 Y.O. His mom and I recently got to speak to the owner of the diner. When I told him that our boy was an engineer who was a division head for large construction company, the guy actually got chocked up. He sat down a minute, and then told us that our son was the hardest working kid he ever had in the kitchen. It was gratifying to hear, but it also confirms that at many levels the issue is cultural, and family based, not if you have a degree, or see yourself as superior to those that don't.
Thank you for this anecdote.
You are somehow fixated with YOUR theory that offering more pay will somehow energize the millions of those sitting on the sidelines. Those that simply will not engage in the labor force. I imagine that if you really research the issue, you will realise how flawed this logic is, for so many reasons. However, it doesn't matter if it's my deep experience on this topic, my son just starting to dive in, and learning to deal with all the headaches of attempting to successfully hire from the unskilled, entry level pool, or the thousands of HR pros. that try to keep everything from warehouses full of stock pickers, to asses in truck seats, you would hear the same response. Money is NOT the primary issue here. The unskilled, semi-skilled and entry level labor pool has got a ton of issues, and money is far from the biggest, and certainly isn't a magic cure that, as you beleive, will solve everything.
My theory is factual and backed by real data that show significant decline in real wages to "entry" level workers.
If you are aware of all those issues in the entry level pool. WHY THE FUCK are you still picking from that pool?
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Guses, You make it quite clear, to the point of absurdity, that you need to be correct, regardless of any real world experience, or useful knowledge of the subject. Since you obviously need to be a winner, I can clearly say that you are. Economic realities, and frustrations when hiring are easily resolved by just applying your vast knowledge. How did we slip so far, as a nation, without you? All of us that have, and will continue to struggle, while hiring the entry level and unskilled are obviously clueless morons, and could be superstars by applying your logic. Obviously, if any of us were smarter than a bag of rocks, we would immediately start to vet our prospects instead of randomly hiring idiots laying in the gutter, and we would increase their starting salaries by huge multipliers, since that's the REAL problem. Hopefully you are white, and a billionaire, since the Trump administration desperately needs you to help us reach the dream of making America great again. Go get 'em Tiger, YOU are the man.
Oh, let me guess what's next. Why not respond with some drivel about "calming down" or " dude, why the rant?" then drone on, as you pick and twist every word? Hurry...... Everybody from the DOL on down, awaits your next valuable contribution...................
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As for kids not trying, when I was in public school from 7th to 12th grade, I noticed that a very large proportion of the white middle class kids in school didn't apply themselves. Very many of them did the absolute minimum necessary to get by. Quite a few couldn't even be bothered to do even that.
I've seen nothing in popular culture that has led me to believe anything has changed for the better. In fact, people of my generation who were parents made it worse because a lot of them attacked the teachers instead of disciplining their kids.
That's my take. That's not "old geezer saying the youngsters are worthless." That's old geezer saying a lot of his own generation were slackers at learning life's lessons and probably still are. And that a lot of his own generation were lousy parents, too
My wife is a university professor. A lot of her students don't bother to read the material. They do the minimum necessary amount of work to get by. And, quite a few of them can't be bothered to do that either. That's pretty much the consensus among a lot of teachers and professors I've known over the years.
When I was in high school, I wasn't really aware that everyone didn't try in school, but I suppose it was true. I was at the top of the class and really thought everyone was doing his or her best; I thought some people's best just wasn't very good.
I've been teaching almost 20 years now, and in that time I have seen a marked decrease in what our low-level students will do. Used to be they'd show up to school and were pleasant and would do the easy work, balking at the more difficult assignments. Today our lowest students -- when they can be bothered to come to school -- do absolutely nothing, in spite of lowered requirements and multiple choices. It's all about the soccer trophy for every kid.
Mrs. Pete, is there pressure to pass them anyway?
Pressure on me? No.
They're pulled out of mainstream classes 2-3 weeks before the end of the semester and put into a special program where they finish their classwork online. They don't even have to read the questions to pass -- they just go through and answer A for every question, make a little list of the ones they missed, then go through and answer B, and within 15-20 minutes they've passed a unit. They're allowed to work together too.
I don't pass them; in fact, the whole question of passing is removed from my workload. This special online program passes them. We have some students who have passed all their core academic classes through this online program.
Why? Because if X % of our students don't pass, we look bad in terms of Race to the Top and other stats. Yes, these students are still required to take their state exams (some fail them, some pass) ... but they have all As from their online program (the grades I give prior to the online program "disappear" when they're taken out of my class, as do their absences) ... so those As average in with the failing state test grade, and the students end up with a passing grade. Incidentally, our state also just lowered the minimum passing grade from 70 to 60.
No, things aren't good here.
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As for kids not trying, when I was in public school from 7th to 12th grade, I noticed that a very large proportion of the white middle class kids in school didn't apply themselves. Very many of them did the absolute minimum necessary to get by. Quite a few couldn't even be bothered to do even that.
I've seen nothing in popular culture that has led me to believe anything has changed for the better. In fact, people of my generation who were parents made it worse because a lot of them attacked the teachers instead of disciplining their kids.
That's my take. That's not "old geezer saying the youngsters are worthless." That's old geezer saying a lot of his own generation were slackers at learning life's lessons and probably still are. And that a lot of his own generation were lousy parents, too
My wife is a university professor. A lot of her students don't bother to read the material. They do the minimum necessary amount of work to get by. And, quite a few of them can't be bothered to do that either. That's pretty much the consensus among a lot of teachers and professors I've known over the years.
When I was in high school, I wasn't really aware that everyone didn't try in school, but I suppose it was true. I was at the top of the class and really thought everyone was doing his or her best; I thought some people's best just wasn't very good.
I've been teaching almost 20 years now, and in that time I have seen a marked decrease in what our low-level students will do. Used to be they'd show up to school and were pleasant and would do the easy work, balking at the more difficult assignments. Today our lowest students -- when they can be bothered to come to school -- do absolutely nothing, in spite of lowered requirements and multiple choices. It's all about the soccer trophy for every kid.
Mrs. Pete, is there pressure to pass them anyway?
Pressure on me? No.
They're pulled out of mainstream classes 2-3 weeks before the end of the semester and put into a special program where they finish their classwork online. They don't even have to read the questions to pass -- they just go through and answer A for every question, make a little list of the ones they missed, then go through and answer B, and within 15-20 minutes they've passed a unit. They're allowed to work together too.
I don't pass them; in fact, the whole question of passing is removed from my workload. This special online program passes them. We have some students who have passed all their core academic classes through this online program.
Why? Because if X % of our students don't pass, we look bad in terms of Race to the Top and other stats. Yes, these students are still required to take their state exams (some fail them, some pass) ... but they have all As from their online program (the grades I give prior to the online program "disappear" when they're taken out of my class, as do their absences) ... so those As average in with the failing state test grade, and the students end up with a passing grade. Incidentally, our state also just lowered the minimum passing grade from 70 to 60.
No, things aren't good here.
I completely believe you.
About 30 years ago we had a friend in Alabama who was involved in a state program to train long term unemployed how to get a job. The curricula was highly focused on things like "Um. Take a bath and wear clean clothes for the interview." Yes, that basic. This was a program attempting to train the bottom of the bottom to get jobs. And these were apparently hard lessons to learn, too.
The program had a 90% failure rate.
90 out of every 100 people who went thru the program failed to get a job.
Even in state government, a 90% failure rate is considered awful. So they got together and changed how they did things. A year later, they now had a 90% success rate.
Pretty awesome turnaround, eh?
Care to learn what they did to turn things around?
They instituted a "training pre-test". Anyone who failed the pre-test was considered, by definition, to be un-educatable. Since those people were un-educatable no one could reasonably expect them to be trained, so they were not admitted to the program.
So, let's go thru the numbers.
The old program:
100 students.
10 jobs.
New program.
100 applicants.
10 students.
9 jobs.
Yep, 90% success rate and 10% fewer people had jobs. But the program was now successful.
Our friend, who worked there, was not very happy about it.
I completely believe that many of our public education systems are chock full of this kind of deceit.
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I completely believe you.
About 30 years ago we had a friend in Alabama who was involved in a state program to train long term unemployed how to get a job. The curricula was highly focused on things like "Um. Take a bath and wear clean clothes for the interview." Yes, that basic. This was a program attempting to train the bottom of the bottom to get jobs. And these were apparently hard lessons to learn, too.
The program had a 90% failure rate.
90 out of every 100 people who went thru the program failed to get a job.
Even in state government, a 90% failure rate is considered awful. So they got together and changed how they did things. A year later, they now had a 90% success rate.
Pretty awesome turnaround, eh?
Care to learn what they did to turn things around?
They instituted a "training pre-test". Anyone who failed the pre-test was considered, by definition, to be un-educatable. Since those people were un-educatable no one could reasonably expect them to be trained, so they were not admitted to the program.
So, let's go thru the numbers.
The old program:
100 students.
10 jobs.
New program.
100 applicants.
10 students.
9 jobs.
Yep, 90% success rate and 10% fewer people had jobs. But the program was now successful.
Our friend, who worked there, was not very happy about it.
I completely believe that many of our public education systems are chock full of this kind of deceit.
Yes, while your details vary from mine, I see this concept all the time.
I also have no problem believing that some adults as so poorly-aware of job skills that they genuinely don't know they should take a bath and wear clean clothing to job interviews. It makes me think of a story I heard from a friend about a teenager who was going to have to go to court for something. His probation officer prepped him for the day, explaining to him and his mom that he should get a haircut, take a shower, wear clothes that were neat and presentable. He showed up in a brand-new tee-shirt emblazened with a pot symbol on the front. His mom couldn't understand how that shirt hurt him and why things had gone against him in court: It was a brand-new shirt, and isn't that what the probation officer had counciled?
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Mrs. Pete,
Your post (responding to my question) is so depressing.
I have heard somewhat similar stories to yours from teachers here in my state (although not quite as extreme as what you wrote, more of a "pressured to pass them"). Frankly, that is fraud. I am wondering how so many get away with such systematic fraud? Are there no whistleblowers? Even the teachers that have spoken to me locally will never speak publicly for fear of career repercussions.
How do we fix this?
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I have a similar story to share. It is close to home.
One of my children is extremely bright, gifted classes, but lazy. I hate to admit that, but it is true. He quite simply refused to learn algebra (he was in the "gifted" algebra class). I did not know there was a problem until several weeks in, and I did what I could to rectify the situation. I purchased an old textbook, I had him work online, and so on . . . we spent several hours a day going over things.
He was fighting me every step of the way.
He failed the class.
When I told him he was going to have to retake the class, he smiled and confidently asserted that he had not failed the class. As I explained his dismal grade to him, he countered with a statement that "they" told him his is going to take a test online, and it will bump his overall test score by 20 points so that he passes (maybe this is something similar to what Mrs. Pete was describing?).
My anger burned within me, but I tried to stay calm as I told him that would not be happening. He seemed shocked and did not understand, telling me this is the way the school does it.
So over the weeks off at Christmas we spend two hours daily in the algebra textbook, starting at page 1.
On the first day of school, when there was somebody available to answer the phone, I calmly informed them that they would give my son only the grade he had earned and deserved, which is an F. This started a three week long fight with the administration. They quite simply did NOT want to fail him but pass him on as if he had learned the stuff in the course. I explained over and over that the Christmas break had taught me that my son did not know even the most basic algebra concepts at the beginning of the book.
Finally they agreed to fail him and put him in another algebra class (the "advanced" instead of "gifted," whatever that means).
But the lady who did the assignments held a grudge and waited until the class was a month old before my son could start, and even this was only because of my daily pestering and working my way up the chain of command.
Thankfully, the delay did not hurt him, as I continued working with him in the textbook daily so that he was ahead of where the class was when he started.
The shock of failing woke him up. He, all of a sudden, was getting straight As in the course and actually studying. Unfortunately, this lasted only for the first half of the semester, when he figured out his grade was so close to 100 that he could just "cruise" the rest of the semester. His grade started a long, slow slide until the end of the class, when he ended up with a B still (due to rampant grade inflation).
Even now, he turns in classwork late constantly. The teachers grade it even three weeks late and give him a score of 100%. What the hell is that lesson going to do for him later in life?
He gets pretty much straight Bs with no effort. If a grade drops to a C he tries a little harder for a while until it is a B again and then starts coasting. He will not try hard enough to get an overall A. It seems when a course does have an A grade he starts coasting in that course. It's like an A is a signal to start being lazy again.
The punishments I have created seem to have no effect. Only the F had an effect, and even that lasted only for the first half of the next semester, until he figured out he could pass with an above average score without really trying (hey, EVERYBODY is above average).
For my son, if they would grade things without grade inflation and hold students accountable for late scores, I think he would perform to a much higher standard.
Having run into such animosity, however, for insisting that they fail him in algebra, it made me scared to insist that these teachers hold students to a higher standard. I truly fear they would resent it and take their resentment out on my son in whatever petty ways they could.
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<snip>
So, let's go thru the numbers.
The old program:
100 students.
10 jobs.
New program.
100 applicants.
10 students.
9 jobs.
Yep, 90% success rate and 10% fewer people had jobs. But the program was now successful.
Our friend, who worked there, was not very happy about it.
I completely believe that many of our public education systems are chock full of this kind of deceit.
I have to think about this when people talk about success in education - things like how *great* charter schools are, etc.
Now, while the rules vary location to location and school to school - OFTEN private schools and charter schools are able to *select* their students.
So, it is no surprise when charter schools succeed and do better than public schools, if they are able to select their students based on an entrance exam, ability to volunteer a certain # of hours a week, etc. Public schools, for the most part, can not turn away students.
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I have a similar story to share. It is close to home.
One of my children is extremely bright, gifted classes, but lazy. I hate to admit that, but it is true. He quite simply refused to learn algebra (he was in the "gifted" algebra class). I did not know there was a problem until several weeks in, and I did what I could to rectify the situation. I purchased an old textbook, I had him work online, and so on . . . we spent several hours a day going over things.
He was fighting me every step of the way.
He failed the class.
When I told him he was going to have to retake the class, he smiled and confidently asserted that he had not failed the class. As I explained his dismal grade to him, he countered with a statement that "they" told him his is going to take a test online, and it will bump his overall test score by 20 points so that he passes (maybe this is something similar to what Mrs. Pete was describing?).
My anger burned within me, but I tried to stay calm as I told him that would not be happening. He seemed shocked and did not understand, telling me this is the way the school does it.
So over the weeks off at Christmas we spend two hours daily in the algebra textbook, starting at page 1.
On the first day of school, when there was somebody available to answer the phone, I calmly informed them that they would give my son only the grade he had earned and deserved, which is an F. This started a three week long fight with the administration. They quite simply did NOT want to fail him but pass him on as if he had learned the stuff in the course. I explained over and over that the Christmas break had taught me that my son did not know even the most basic algebra concepts at the beginning of the book.
Finally they agreed to fail him and put him in another algebra class (the "advanced" instead of "gifted," whatever that means).
But the lady who did the assignments held a grudge and waited until the class was a month old before my son could start, and even this was only because of my daily pestering and working my way up the chain of command.
Thankfully, the delay did not hurt him, as I continued working with him in the textbook daily so that he was ahead of where the class was when he started.
The shock of failing woke him up. He, all of a sudden, was getting straight As in the course and actually studying. Unfortunately, this lasted only for the first half of the semester, when he figured out his grade was so close to 100 that he could just "cruise" the rest of the semester. His grade started a long, slow slide until the end of the class, when he ended up with a B still (due to rampant grade inflation).
Even now, he turns in classwork late constantly. The teachers grade it even three weeks late and give him a score of 100%. What the hell is that lesson going to do for him later in life?
He gets pretty much straight Bs with no effort. If a grade drops to a C he tries a little harder for a while until it is a B again and then starts coasting. He will not try hard enough to get an overall A. It seems when a course does have an A grade he starts coasting in that course. It's like an A is a signal to start being lazy again.
The punishments I have created seem to have no effect. Only the F had an effect, and even that lasted only for the first half of the next semester, until he figured out he could pass with an above average score without really trying (hey, EVERYBODY is above average).
For my son, if they would grade things without grade inflation and hold students accountable for late scores, I think he would perform to a much higher standard.
Having run into such animosity, however, for insisting that they fail him in algebra, it made me scared to insist that these teachers hold students to a higher standard. I truly fear they would resent it and take their resentment out on my son in whatever petty ways they could.
Ugh. I don't know what to tell you. My 10 year old is very bright and a *little* lazy. I hope it doesn't come to this.
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Ugh. I don't know what to tell you. My 10 year old is very bright and a *little* lazy. I hope it doesn't come to this.
I don't know if it works the same way in the sates, but here in Canada, the size of classes went up significantly over time and the variance of intellectual capacity within a class is also fairly wide. They call it "nivellement vers le bas".
Students that are fast learners often get bored because the class pace is not enough to keep them interested. I can see how "laziness" could come out in such an environment.
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I also have no problem believing that some adults as so poorly-aware of job skills that they genuinely don't know they should take a bath and wear clean clothing to job interviews. It makes me think of a story I heard from a friend about a teenager who was going to have to go to court for something. His probation officer prepped him for the day, explaining to him and his mom that he should get a haircut, take a shower, wear clothes that were neat and presentable. He showed up in a brand-new tee-shirt emblazened with a pot symbol on the front. His mom couldn't understand how that shirt hurt him and why things had gone against him in court: It was a brand-new shirt, and isn't that what the probation officer had counciled?
I had a friend who basically had parents who were completely absent from his life.
He didn't realize things like this either, because for the first 20 years of his life he had nearly no positive "how to work in a middle class environment" experience.
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Ugh. I don't know what to tell you. My 10 year old is very bright and a *little* lazy. I hope it doesn't come to this.
I don't know if it works the same way in the sates, but here in Canada, the size of classes went up significantly over time and the variance of intellectual capacity within a class is also fairly wide. They call it "nivellement vers le bas".
Students that are fast learners often get bored because the class pace is not enough to keep them interested. I can see how "laziness" could come out in such an environment.
This and what Malum Prohibitum describes is how I was/am. I didn't have scaling (well except in AP courses, and college), and was required to get mostly A's, but I basically figured out what I needed to do to get a 90, then get that, and no more. It annoyed my father to no end. "But you can get 100's in these classes!" What's the benefit to me? It was sort of the mustachian in me, it's wasted effort to get 100s when I could spend a quarter of the time and get 90s and get the same gpa.
I spent my first 5 years or so in my career, working to get that 100, but people barely passing were getting the same raises. So now, I spend a quarter of my effort, and get that 90, and have a better work-life balance because of it. I still get great reviews, all my customers say I do good work, and still get the same raises.
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Guses, that makes sense.
It's simply nature to put in the minimal amount of effort to get what you want. You could argue that going above and beyond is counterproductive as it means taking time and energy away from something else (opportunity cost).
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Our construction company really struggles with hiring. We badly need to hire and retain some good young people to bring down th average age of our workforce which is getting out of hand. We pay an average of $20 per hour with great benefits including; overtime opportunities, a hefty 401K match, health insurance, wellness program, paid vacations & holidays, uniforms, travel pay and mileage pay, bonus opportunities, etc. We start out very green employees at $14 and try to work them up as quickly as possible.
You need to look decent, pass a drug test (also random), have some basic reading and math skills, show up on time every day and have a good attitude, and be willing to purchase your hand tools. We will teach the trades and you can go as far as you want with it, many make in excess of $70K annually, some supervision over $100K.
We struggle to find these young folks, the drug tests and interviews wash out a large percentage, and many just quit in first couple weeks for a variety of reasons. I've concluded that the biggest problems are poor parenting and never making children work and earn money, plus all of the government handouts that allow people to live pretty decently without working.
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I have a similar story to share. It is close to home.
One of my children is extremely bright, gifted classes, but lazy. I hate to admit that, but it is true. He quite simply refused to learn algebra (he was in the "gifted" algebra class). I did not know there was a problem until several weeks in, and I did what I could to rectify the situation. I purchased an old textbook, I had him work online, and so on . . . we spent several hours a day going over things.
He was fighting me every step of the way.
He failed the class.
When I told him he was going to have to retake the class, he smiled and confidently asserted that he had not failed the class. As I explained his dismal grade to him, he countered with a statement that "they" told him his is going to take a test online, and it will bump his overall test score by 20 points so that he passes (maybe this is something similar to what Mrs. Pete was describing?).
My anger burned within me, but I tried to stay calm as I told him that would not be happening. He seemed shocked and did not understand, telling me this is the way the school does it.
So over the weeks off at Christmas we spend two hours daily in the algebra textbook, starting at page 1.
On the first day of school, when there was somebody available to answer the phone, I calmly informed them that they would give my son only the grade he had earned and deserved, which is an F. This started a three week long fight with the administration. They quite simply did NOT want to fail him but pass him on as if he had learned the stuff in the course. I explained over and over that the Christmas break had taught me that my son did not know even the most basic algebra concepts at the beginning of the book.
Finally they agreed to fail him and put him in another algebra class (the "advanced" instead of "gifted," whatever that means).
But the lady who did the assignments held a grudge and waited until the class was a month old before my son could start, and even this was only because of my daily pestering and working my way up the chain of command.
Thankfully, the delay did not hurt him, as I continued working with him in the textbook daily so that he was ahead of where the class was when he started.
The shock of failing woke him up. He, all of a sudden, was getting straight As in the course and actually studying. Unfortunately, this lasted only for the first half of the semester, when he figured out his grade was so close to 100 that he could just "cruise" the rest of the semester. His grade started a long, slow slide until the end of the class, when he ended up with a B still (due to rampant grade inflation).
Even now, he turns in classwork late constantly. The teachers grade it even three weeks late and give him a score of 100%. What the hell is that lesson going to do for him later in life?
He gets pretty much straight Bs with no effort. If a grade drops to a C he tries a little harder for a while until it is a B again and then starts coasting. He will not try hard enough to get an overall A. It seems when a course does have an A grade he starts coasting in that course. It's like an A is a signal to start being lazy again.
The punishments I have created seem to have no effect. Only the F had an effect, and even that lasted only for the first half of the next semester, until he figured out he could pass with an above average score without really trying (hey, EVERYBODY is above average).
For my son, if they would grade things without grade inflation and hold students accountable for late scores, I think he would perform to a much higher standard.
Having run into such animosity, however, for insisting that they fail him in algebra, it made me scared to insist that these teachers hold students to a higher standard. I truly fear they would resent it and take their resentment out on my son in whatever petty ways they could.
Wow that's awful. My guess is that it has something to do with new incentives for teachers and schools. You get more money for your district, or you're a teacher and you get a personal bonus for student performance. Seems like a really great way to increase teacher performance. Except what you're describing is the unintended consequence.
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Having run into such animosity, however, for insisting that they fail him in algebra, it made me scared to insist that these teachers hold students to a higher standard. I truly fear they would resent it and take their resentment out on my son in whatever petty ways they could.
I have a solution to your algebra problem. I was the EXACT same way in high school - bright enough for A's with no effort, but lazy enough that my grades were B's (or C's, and I'd pull them up with AP exams - our school had a policy that if you passed an AP exam, even with a score of 3 out of 5, you get an A for the semester in the class)
What woke me up QUICK was college (university). When the entire population is at least as smart as you, and the laziness that previously got you a B now is not enough even for a D grade, you fail FAST and learn to study FAST.
If you want to bring this "down" to high school or middle school, most high schools allow you to take classes off-campus at a local community college, free. When it comes time for Calculus, or Advanced Calculus, instead of doing the class on-campus at school, talk to the councilors about letting your kid take the class at the local community college.
- NO tolerance for late homework. 10 mins late - grade of 0
- NO curvnig. 89.99% grade in the class is a B. Not a B+, not an A-, no extra credit. You get a fat, solid B
- NO retaking for a better grade - in HS, I did not like a C grade I got once. I retook the course, coasted through it, and got an A, this replaced the C on my transcript. In community college, they average the two. If you take the class once and fail, take it again and get an A, your average grade is a C.
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Our 17 year old was much the same when he was younger. All of his friends are trying to get into 'good' universities & the entrance requirements are pretty competitive. He's been working harder every year because he doesn't want to be left behind.
On the down side he's pretty stressed about it. His study habits are only so so after years of coasting.
Better now than later.
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After 9/11, The American DreamTM was claimed to be dead for any legal immigrant holding a permanent resident card or foreign graduate students on student visas. And yet, when I and many of my engineering college alumni get together annually, we toast to America. Most of us are from various parts of Africa and Central & South America. We had to to take shitty first jobs, work our way up through hard work, fur ther study, etc. But we've made it, and we're still here.
(My engineering grad school was full of "imports", they're the only suckers willing to work for $10/hour for 20 hours a week and free tuition.)
I've seen this shit before, I ain't falling for it again. Fuck you, MainStreamMedia. All about chasing them eyeballs and $$$.
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I'm excited to see scholarships like GA's hope mentioned here (I wrote a Ph.D. thesis about them about a decade ago). Indeed they DO make college cheaper for about the 35% of HS graduates who qualify. But many of these would be attending college anyway (usually about 70% of HS graduates attend some type of post-secondary education, perhaps half of those complete a BA).
more than twenty other states have something like this program. But it's often tied to need (like in Indiana).
We have a similar program here in Buffalo -- http://sayyesbuffalo.org/ (http://sayyesbuffalo.org/). Students who graduate from public or charter high schools in the city can go to state universities (or a sampling of privates that have signed on) for free.
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It sounds like it's pretty hard to find unskilled entry level employees who can pass a drug test.
I suppose the next question would be -- why do you care if they can pass a drug test? If you're not screening for alcohol or tobacco use, why are you screening for marijuana? It seems like a restriction to the hiring pool for no good reason.
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We have a similar program here in Buffalo -- http://sayyesbuffalo.org/ (http://sayyesbuffalo.org/). Students who graduate from public or charter high schools in the city can go to state universities (or a sampling of privates that have signed on) for free.
Well, not exactly "free", it's paid for by money that is forcibly removed from taxpayers, right?
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It sounds like it's pretty hard to find unskilled entry level employees who can pass a drug test.
I suppose the next question would be -- why do you care if they can pass a drug test? If you're not screening for alcohol or tobacco use, why are you screening for marijuana? It seems like a restriction to the hiring pool for no good reason.
Liability for one. If someone is driving a company vehicle and causes major property damage or kills someone, the insurance company would much prefer that that person wasn't a drug user and the company could produce records that they did their due dilligence. I'd imagine the company pays lower insurance premiums if they drug test.
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We have a similar program here in Buffalo -- http://sayyesbuffalo.org/ (http://sayyesbuffalo.org/). Students who graduate from public or charter high schools in the city can go to state universities (or a sampling of privates that have signed on) for free.
Well, not exactly "free", it's paid for by money that is forcibly removed from taxpayers, right?
No.
The organization helps students apply to colleges, fill out their FAFSA, apply for standard scholarships, etc. Any remaining financial obligation is covered by the Say Yes organization, which is privately funded by donors.
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It sounds like it's pretty hard to find unskilled entry level employees who can pass a drug test.
I suppose the next question would be -- why do you care if they can pass a drug test? If you're not screening for alcohol or tobacco use, why are you screening for marijuana? It seems like a restriction to the hiring pool for no good reason.
I had a conversation with someone who teaches trade schools. Same problems with a sizable number of the students. Drugs.
Her said many of them have jobs waiting for them if they want then but they can't keep their lives in order.
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Wow that's awful. My guess is that it has something to do with new incentives for teachers and schools. You get more money for your district, or you're a teacher and you get a personal bonus for student performance. Seems like a really great way to increase teacher performance. Except what you're describing is the unintended consequence.
I'm getting sick of this "participation trophies for everyone! everybody's a winner, regardless of the results you achieve!" shit
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No.
The organization helps students apply to colleges, fill out their FAFSA, apply for standard scholarships, etc. Any remaining financial obligation is covered by the Say Yes organization, which is privately funded by donors.
Well that's not too horrible then (except for the FAFSA part)
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We have a similar program here in Buffalo -- http://sayyesbuffalo.org/ (http://sayyesbuffalo.org/). Students who graduate from public or charter high schools in the city can go to state universities (or a sampling of privates that have signed on) for free.
Well, not exactly "free", it's paid for by money that is forcibly removed from taxpayers, right?
In the quoted context, "free" is the proper word to use.
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I have a similar story to share. It is close to home.
One of my children is extremely bright, gifted classes, but lazy. I hate to admit that, but it is true. He quite simply refused to learn algebra (he was in the "gifted" algebra class). I did not know there was a problem until several weeks in, and I did what I could to rectify the situation. I purchased an old textbook, I had him work online, and so on . . . we spent several hours a day going over things.
He was fighting me every step of the way...."
Mine figured out that he could just slide by all year and then take summer school that was so damn easy he could do it with his brain tied behind his back. He was the star worker at his summer job but something about his school - or the kids - or the teachers there - that has crushed any urge to make good grades.
They let the students turn in work weeks late, retake tests or quizzes, and more or less make life easy.
Contrast that to DW and my education in the 80s where there were no second chances and frankly not much help except from your parents at night when we were doing our homework.
I have a professor friend and he tells how these same students reach college with expectations that there will be second and third chances, flexible deadlines, etc.
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I have a professor friend and he tells how these same students reach college with expectations that there will be second and third chances, flexible deadlines, etc.
That's what I'm worried about.
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I'll just ignore the flame wars with bold and red letters and add a few notes:
1) "The cost of college" is not any one thing. Kids with good grades can go for nearly free in many states. Kids who go to state college and pick up community college credits pay a crap ton less than kids attending Prestige University. Also, many people lump in the cost of housing, food, and transport into this number, all of which are partly choice. So "the cost" is anywhere from zero to maybe $100k/y depending largely on one's choices.The question is, why not choose the lower cost?
2) Has no one yet noticed the irony of griping about young people's work ethics on a site dedicated to finding ways not to work? Are young people supposed to be highly motivated to work $10/h jobs so they can lease luxury SUVs? But not us? Perhaps the reality is Millenials are less wasteful than previous generations, which allows them to work less. Perhaps we wouldn't go back and trade the adventures, romances, and freedom we experienced in our 20s for $10/h.
3) Academic success is not motivated by visions of being successful in some vague future, it's motivated by daily praise and encouragememt from parents, teachers, and family. It's motivated by personal pride and a sense of identity. You have to be taught to think "YES!!!" when you get an A, rather than just seeing an alphabet character. As a parent, you'll never make the case for why writing the best report on the 30 Years War the teacher has ever seen will lead to a lifetime of riches. But you can teach your kid to take pride in their acheivements.
4) Grade inflation and the passing of poor students is a direct result of misinformed parents. Parents shop for schools with the highest grades and lowest dropout rates, which are the grade inflators. Parents raise hell when their kids get the crappy grades they deserve. Parents reward politicians who threaten "failing" schools with principled principals. Finally, parents are the ones who fail to ensure their kids show up ready and eager to learn. They think they can outsource all that. Hell, our day care teachers say the parents expect them to potty train toddlers, with zero parental involvement!
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
It will be hard for millennials to make more than me unless they benefited from nepotism. I had to work full time to get my BA in accounting and then 10 years later with 2 kids get my MBA at night. I worked 12 hours a day and commuted two hours a day for 43 years. Yeah I made a lot of money but what Millennial is willing to work as hard as I did.
You could not be any more stereotypical and you response lacks an understanding of economics and the changing reality of labor versus capital over the last 30 years. Oh but I guess since you did it that means everyone else is lazy and you are just super special. Thanks for being so amazing while all us lazy millennials hangout and post selfies...
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I have a similar story to share. It is close to home.
One of my children is extremely bright, gifted classes, but lazy. I hate to admit that, but it is true. He quite simply refused to learn algebra (he was in the "gifted" algebra class). I did not know there was a problem until several weeks in, and I did what I could to rectify the situation. I purchased an old textbook, I had him work online, and so on . . . we spent several hours a day going over things.
He was fighting me every step of the way...."
Mine figured out that he could just slide by all year and then take summer school that was so damn easy he could do it with his brain tied behind his back. He was the star worker at his summer job but something about his school - or the kids - or the teachers there - that has crushed any urge to make good grades.
They let the students turn in work weeks late, retake tests or quizzes, and more or less make life easy.
Contrast that to DW and my education in the 80s where there were no second chances and frankly not much help except from your parents at night when we were doing our homework.
I have a professor friend and he tells how these same students reach college with expectations that there will be second and third chances, flexible deadlines, etc.
During my PhD, I was TA for some undergraduate physics classes in a southwest state university. The math and science aptitude of so many students was so low, I used to wonder how they got to college in the first place. On one lab exam I graded (my first time in US), I practically gave everyone 0's. Then all the students complained to the course instructor and he had to explain to me that in US students expect a C just for turning their answer sheet in! Teaching science to undergraduates was no fun because very few came with the required minimal training.
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Really? A C just for submitting something?
Is it now like this at all US universities?
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Really? A C just for submitting something?
Is it now like this at all US universities?
No, but the prestige of the university does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of this behavior. Indeed, many of the most prestigious American universities are notorious for grade inflation.
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I have a professor friend and he tells how these same students reach college with expectations that there will be second and third chances, flexible deadlines, etc.
That's what I'm worried about.
Most of the department for the HS my Dad taught at decided to be remedial level adjunct part time professors after they retired. They seem to truly enjoy telling students no you can't retake the test. The solution to you not passing this class it to take it next semester. I'm guessing they could not say these things at the end of their HS teaching careers but really wished they could.
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It sounds like it's pretty hard to find unskilled entry level employees who can pass a drug test.
I suppose the next question would be -- why do you care if they can pass a drug test? If you're not screening for alcohol or tobacco use, why are you screening for marijuana? It seems like a restriction to the hiring pool for no good reason.
The marijuana test is to screen out the people with such shit impulse control that they can't stop smoking for a couple days even though they're told in advance that there will be a drug test. It doesn't discriminate against all smokers, just the stupid ones.
Coincidentally, I have a certain amount of THC in my body right now. Many highly successful people do too.
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Our construction company really struggles with hiring. We badly need to hire and retain some good young people to bring down th average age of our workforce which is getting out of hand. We pay an average of $20 per hour with great benefits including; overtime opportunities, a hefty 401K match, health insurance, wellness program, paid vacations & holidays, uniforms, travel pay and mileage pay, bonus opportunities, etc. We start out very green employees at $14 and try to work them up as quickly as possible.
You need to look decent, pass a drug test (also random), have some basic reading and math skills, show up on time every day and have a good attitude, and be willing to purchase your hand tools. We will teach the trades and you can go as far as you want with it, many make in excess of $70K annually, some supervision over $100K.
We struggle to find these young folks, the drug tests and interviews wash out a large percentage, and many just quit in first couple weeks for a variety of reasons. I've concluded that the biggest problems are poor parenting and never making children work and earn money, plus all of the government handouts that allow people to live pretty decently without working.
Hell, I want to come work for you lol. I'd kill to get paid to learn trades.
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No, but the prestige of the university does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of this behavior. Indeed, many of the most prestigious American universities are notorious for grade inflation.
It's a bit more complicated than that. I attended a prestigious T10 university for my Masters and talked to a couple professors about undergraduate grade inflation. Generally the professors said that the problem is when you take a pool of the "best and brightest" students and have well defined requirements for what mastery of a subject is (i.e. an A or A- grade) having a lot of students getting A's is to be expected. In short, they were arguing that it's not grade inflation if the students are actually earning their grade. At that point you are starting to get into pedagogical philosophy for if you should strict curve (i.e. grades are based upon overall class performance) for grades, or if grades are based upon individual performance.
This is also part of the reason why grades start to get meaningless in graduate school for PhD students. The professors pretty much assume you can learn the material to a satisfactory point - what you are actually learning is how to do research which can't really be taught in a class. So as long as you are hitting the department standards for coursework grades (ex. "B's make PhD's!") nobody really cares about your grades. In some cases your transcript might just be a string of A's since grades lower than that are a signal that you need to rethink your enrollment. In other cases, it's just a string of P's (Pass) since they want you focused on research, not mastering coursework.
This is true at some institutions but also only one data point. I assure you grade inflation is a very real thing at others. In the course of my job I have interacted with professors and grad students at a decent number of top tier universities and many of them openly admit their curriculum is less rigorous and/or grading more generous than it should be due to political pressure from campus leadership/mega donors.
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It sounds like it's pretty hard to find unskilled entry level employees who can pass a drug test.
I suppose the next question would be -- why do you care if they can pass a drug test? If you're not screening for alcohol or tobacco use, why are you screening for marijuana? It seems like a restriction to the hiring pool for no good reason.
The marijuana test is to screen out the people with such shit impulse control that they can't stop smoking for a couple days even though they're told in advance that there will be a drug test. It doesn't discriminate against all smokers, just the stupid ones.
Coincidentally, I have a certain amount of THC in my body right now. Many highly successful people do too.
Companies also use it to get rid of employees without as much paperwork. I know at least two companies that do this(not officially of course). Somehow a "rumor" of upcoming drug tests gets mentioned to the good employees, but not to the undesirables. Voila, these employees failed the "random" drug test, and now can be canned at will.
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It sounds like it's pretty hard to find unskilled entry level employees who can pass a drug test.
I suppose the next question would be -- why do you care if they can pass a drug test? If you're not screening for alcohol or tobacco use, why are you screening for marijuana? It seems like a restriction to the hiring pool for no good reason.
The marijuana test is to screen out the people with such shit impulse control that they can't stop smoking for a couple days even though they're told in advance that there will be a drug test. It doesn't discriminate against all smokers, just the stupid ones.
Coincidentally, I have a certain amount of THC in my body right now. Many highly successful people do too.
Depending on the type of test (urine vs hair), THC can stay in your system for far longer than a few days, but yeah if it is a one-time pee test than it is just stupid that they either can't go without for a few days (heck save up for stash for a celebration once you get the job) or buy some synthetic/fake urine.
In addition to weeding out (see what I did there) applicants that lack motivation or drive, having employees that are on drugs can cause problems with insurance/liability. A guy in my warehouse smokes and could easily get a job with a few trucking companies but won't stop smoking. The pay there is much better than it is here plus they have greater benefits and stability, but he won't do it and it is his choice (I'm happy to have him here). If it were a one-time test I'm sure he would do it, but the company can test you any time they want. A good friend is a driver with USPS and says they can test you on the spot without any warning, and that if you get an a collision of any kind a drug test is automatic.
My two cents: drug testing for week is silly when an employee with an alcohol problem is likely going to cause more issues at work. But of course, I can't think of any ways for a workplace to test that.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
It will be hard for millennials to make more than me unless they benefited from nepotism. I had to work full time to get my BA in accounting and then 10 years later with 2 kids get my MBA at night. I worked 12 hours a day and commuted two hours a day for 43 years. Yeah I made a lot of money but what Millennial is willing to work as hard as I did.
I feel like that's a little condescending. I worked two jobs one night and the other a six hour midday, while biking 2-10 miles to and from. Joined the army to pay for school. So here's one millennial.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
It will be hard for millennials to make more than me unless they benefited from nepotism. I had to work full time to get my BA in accounting and then 10 years later with 2 kids get my MBA at night. I worked 12 hours a day and commuted two hours a day for 43 years. Yeah I made a lot of money but what Millennial is willing to work as hard as I did.
I feel like that's a little condescending. I worked two jobs one night and the other a six hour midday, while biking 2-10 miles to and from. Joined the army to pay for school. So here's one millennial.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Generalizations on millennials are harsh. I know hard working ones and slackers too. Every generation has these. Just because you don't see millennials busting ass doing manual labor doesn't mean they don't work hard. They may be writing code, working in digital marketing chasing customers, healthcare data analytics, or a nascent technology. Many are in the military working on cyber defense projects. Joke about it, but these young kids are smart with novel ideas.
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They let the students turn in work weeks late, retake tests or quizzes, and more or less make life easy.
I'm a teacher in a good (and expensive) school (not in the US). I do all of the above. I HATE it. I think we're doing our students a huge disservice for all the reasons people are mentioning. High school is the perfect time to let kids fail as a consequence of their choices because the stakes are so much lower than they will be later in life. But the trend in education right now is not to hold kids accountable. I am not allowed to give zeros and not allowed to penalize late work and the kids know this so of course they take advantage.
All of this makes a lot more work for me. Rather than grading all the homework at once I have to put up with it trickling in over the course of weeks and then a big surge right before the end of the trimester. Every time I give a test I need to write a retake test as well. It drives me crazy!
But I like my job. I'm not quitting over it. I complain and regularly mention I disagree with the grading policy (I'm hardly alone). I look for ways of getting around it (making sure retake tests are harder than the original test can help) or at least minimizing the impact on me personally. But it still drives me crazy.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
It will be hard for millennials to make more than me unless they benefited from nepotism. I had to work full time to get my BA in accounting and then 10 years later with 2 kids get my MBA at night. I worked 12 hours a day and commuted two hours a day for 43 years. Yeah I made a lot of money but what Millennial is willing to work as hard as I did.
I feel like that's a little condescending. I worked two jobs one night and the other a six hour midday, while biking 2-10 miles to and from. Joined the army to pay for school. So here's one millennial.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Generalizations on millennials are harsh. I know hard working ones and slackers too. Every generation has these. Just because you don't see millennials busting ass doing manual labor doesn't mean they don't work hard. They may be writing code, working in digital marketing chasing customers, healthcare data analytics, or a nascent technology. Many are in the military working on cyber defense projects. Joke about it, but these young kids are smart with novel ideas.
Criticizing the younger generation is an age old past time for older generations. I (Millennial) worked full time while going to college full time so I could graduate debt free. In addition to that I owned my own home and my son was born at the beginning of my junior year. Meanwhile, my dad and mom have plenty of friends (boomers) that smoked pot and drank beer their entire lives and "retired" in their 40s by being approved for disability. There are losers in every generation.
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This is true at some institutions but also only one data point. I assure you grade inflation is a very real thing at others.
So true. I thank my lucky stars that I ended up in a sub-college where washing out 10-15% of the freshmen class was a point of pride. Strict curve grading for the first 2 years. The super-geniuses still got A's and the rest of us got a quick wakeup that we weren't going to be able to sleepwalk through college like we did in high school.
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This is true at some institutions but also only one data point. I assure you grade inflation is a very real thing at others.
So true. I thank my lucky stars that I ended up in a sub-college where washing out 10-15% of the freshmen class was a point of pride. Strict curve grading for the first 2 years. The super-geniuses still got A's and the rest of us got a quick wakeup that we weren't going to be able to sleepwalk through college like we did in high school.
Yup. School I was at also rejoiced in a reputation for being relatively easy to get admitted too, but quite difficult to graduate from. (30+% attrition in my freshman dorm, though I think that was a statistical outlier.)
I was grateful to have gotten Bs and even the occasional C in HS, so I didn't have the same moral crisis as the folks who were used to getting straight As each and every semester before they got there.
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Every millennial at my company works 60-80 hours a week, and that's half the workforce.
They get fired pretty often for not doing things they don't even get paid to do, and grilled constantly about many things. Some suspect it's just so that management has something to fire them for. I don't understand why management in America has gone this way, but I'm talking about people growing sales not 5% or 10%, but 15%, 20%, 30% and getting written up over trivialities. An old vet got a trophy for employee of the year month 1 and was fired month 2 for not visiting, weekly, an account that ordered something once or twice a year (so he was told). Few expect to make a career out of their, uh, careers, at least in my age bracket, because "human resources" are so rampantly undervalued. I don't mean hard workers aren't desired. They get fired more slowly (after they burn out from being always demanded more more more irrespective of results). That's not the same as "valued," though. I greatly admire and respect everyone who started their own businesses with a goal of doing well by their employees. I wish, however, that was more common.
We also have a real problem passing people who shouldn't pass in schools, who learn that everything works out whether they try or not, and then many work environments are the opposite extreme. It's like being screamed at "YOU'RE AN INFINITELY SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE!" for 12-16 years and then being screamed at "YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL IN ANY WAY AND WE WILL REPLACE YOU LIKE A HURRICANE REPLACES COWS!" immediately thereafter.
Can you imagine how confusing it is to live life that way? How ill-suited the product of one is the for the other's world? Is this on the "lazy" kids or the adults teaching them? We say we don't want this environment but once Junior gets an F the parents climb into the Humvee and parallel park by the front door to lay down the rules about their perfect angels.
Then we have a real problem telling our hard workers they have no right to expect good rewards for hard work. It's great that tech pays well but not everybody is in tech. No, you can't just "switch to tech then" because the more switch to tech, the more who are trying will get rejected, and those still have bills to pay. It needs to be ok that not everyone is a tech genius.
The drumbeat of American schools is that you work hard and go to college so you don't work at Starbucks. Then you graduate and you're at a Starbucks and you're a bit confused, sad, scared maybe even, disappointed perhaps. It's not a horrendous job by any means, but yet, literally all your mentors said this was the terrible thing to work hard to avoid. It doesn't hurt to pick up a college salary, but no one talks about the unemployment rates of college grads. Then the "adults" mock these people for having no work ethic when they seem down about their Starbucks job that they worked hard to avoid by doing what they were told. These kids were taught to be down about the jobs they got.
So after years of 5 hours of homework a night, you may wind up pretty pissed about it all, or maybe you won't even do the work in the first place. Most on this forum get good returns from their labor, I would think, but it's myopic to not realize a merit scholarship won is 8-100 more students who didn't win who have to do something else. A business started and successful is one of many more that failed. Those people still exist and still have bills to pay.
There should be a searchable database with DoL figures showing how many job openings are estimated in a field, how many degrees were awarded that year IN THAT FIELD, and starter salaries for those fields, and a notice should be given with all college application paperwork on how to access that database. We would have far fewer philosophy and ancient history majors, and far fewer shellshocked graduates working at Starbucks. Then we could stop throwing lower-wage jobs under the bus in high-school, and teach finance and the risks and rewards of higher education (dependent on major), and decouple school funding from college-bound student-counts so we could occasionally mention carpentry or plumbing, too.
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The drumbeat of American schools is that you work hard and go to college so you don't work at Starbucks.
Then we could stop throwing lower-wage jobs under the bus in high-school, and teach finance and the risks and rewards of higher education (dependent on major), and decouple school funding from college-bound student-counts so we could occasionally mention carpentry or plumbing, too.
Agree and good post. Except when I was growing up in the 80s I was told to work hard and go to college or I would end up digging ditches. Anyone else hear that one? I am sure I was not alone. So you have a generation taught to go to college and get a REAL job and that blue collar work like construction, manufacturing, plumbing, carpentry means you were a failure.
And now are we surprised that millenials do not want to work blue collar jobs when they were told their whole lives what a disgrace that would be? So no I am not surprised that they are failing out at entry level even with good pay and benefits. It's not the work it's the stigma attached. Having to go and tell your friends that yes you in fact dug a ditch today. To tell your blind date that while she is a software engineer you spent your day working on septic tanks.
Millenials are no lazier or entitled than previous generations. It's just they were all told to go to college or be failures. So how do we reteach them that nope we were just kidding digging ditches is a perfectly fine vocation?
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The drumbeat of American schools is that you work hard and go to college so you don't work at Starbucks.
Then we could stop throwing lower-wage jobs under the bus in high-school, and teach finance and the risks and rewards of higher education (dependent on major), and decouple school funding from college-bound student-counts so we could occasionally mention carpentry or plumbing, too.
Agree and good post. Except when I was growing up in the 80s I was told to work hard and go to college or I would end up digging ditches. Anyone else hear that one? I am sure I was not alone. So you have a generation taught to go to college and get a REAL job and that blue collar work like construction, manufacturing, plumbing, carpentry means you were a failure.
And now are we surprised that millenials do not want to work blue collar jobs when they were told their whole lives what a disgrace that would be? So no I am not surprised that they are failing out at entry level even with good pay and benefits. It's not the work it's the stigma attached. Having to go and tell your friends that yes you in fact dug a ditch today. To tell your blind date that while she is a software engineer you spent your day working on septic tanks.
Millenials are no lazier or entitled than previous generations. It's just they were all told to go to college or be failures. So how do we reteach them that nope we were just kidding digging ditches is a perfectly fine vocation?
It's not a perfectly fine vocation. The day you slip a disk carrying a bag of concrete your employer fires you. Then COBRA runs out while you wait to get on disability. Then you're 35 with no marketable skills and a long term injury you can't treat. It's arguably worse when this happens at 55.
Some of us observed this as one of our parents' life lessons. Everyone is choosing the chronic, long-term injuries of office work instead of the acute, immediate injuries of physical labor.
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The drumbeat of American schools is that you work hard and go to college so you don't work at Starbucks.
Then we could stop throwing lower-wage jobs under the bus in high-school, and teach finance and the risks and rewards of higher education (dependent on major), and decouple school funding from college-bound student-counts so we could occasionally mention carpentry or plumbing, too.
Agree and good post. Except when I was growing up in the 80s I was told to work hard and go to college or I would end up digging ditches. Anyone else hear that one? I am sure I was not alone. So you have a generation taught to go to college and get a REAL job and that blue collar work like construction, manufacturing, plumbing, carpentry means you were a failure.
And now are we surprised that millenials do not want to work blue collar jobs when they were told their whole lives what a disgrace that would be? So no I am not surprised that they are failing out at entry level even with good pay and benefits. It's not the work it's the stigma attached. Having to go and tell your friends that yes you in fact dug a ditch today. To tell your blind date that while she is a software engineer you spent your day working on septic tanks.
Millenials are no lazier or entitled than previous generations. It's just they were all told to go to college or be failures. So how do we reteach them that nope we were just kidding digging ditches is a perfectly fine vocation?
It's not a perfectly fine vocation. The day you slip a disk carrying a bag of concrete your employer fires you. Then COBRA runs out while you wait to get on disability. Then you're 35 with no marketable skills and a long term injury you can't treat. It's arguably worse when this happens at 55.
Some of us observed this as one of our parents' life lessons. Everyone is choosing the chronic, long-term injuries of office work instead of the acute, immediate injuries of physical labor.
I do not dispute these claims, ChpBstrd (although we have many differences of opinion), but this is part of the narrative that lends our Mustachian lifestyle so much power: by establishing a lower baseline lifestyle, we shorten the career that produces the type of chronic injuries you describe.
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Some of us observed this as one of our parents' life lessons. Everyone is choosing the chronic, long-term injuries of office work instead of the acute, immediate injuries of physical labor.
Additional life lesson: we all grew up watching our parents' generation go through massive layoffs and thousands of people losing their jobs through no fault of our own. Then employers wonder why we're not "loyal".
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DH is a public high school teacher. He is absolutely under pressure from administrators to pass students, no matter how little work they do. Under his contract, if he doesn't pass them, the administrators can go in after he has assigned semester grades and change them themselves.
While this is immensely frustrating, I can understand where it comes from. There is a great deal of pressure on administrators to increase graduation rates and school funding is tied to graduation rates. High school dropouts are far more likely to be arrested and incarcerated than those who graduate.
Academic achievement is not just a school problem, it is deeply tied to social issues, something we don't want to address in the United States.
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hargrove i think captures how a lot of us, millennials, feel. and if you do take the entry level job you're over qualified for, there's little chance of advancing and if you try to apply to your education qualification it may actually be seen as a detriment. older workers seem to be staying in the workforce longer. and if you jump ship to a different company after doing your entry level drudgery, the office you left has the 'millennials are quitters with no loyalty, just trying to put in the minimum' reinforced.
why don't we ever hear anything about what the companies are doing to cause this? it's useful to learn the schooling that causes this or the lack of technical education for non-white collar jobs that fusses the supply of workers and applicants, but i think there must be something on the supply of jobs side that is messed up.
there may also be perception issues of what is a millennial asking for. i'm already running into the frustration. i took an entry level job i was over qualified for. in the year i've had the job, my responsibilities have ballooned while my pay hasn't. i had an unexpected flare up of a chronic illness and my productivity went down, def below my usual but still above those previously in my role. now i'm in a vat of hot water for it. what's the reward for working hard at your entry level job if doing so just means that more work will be expected of you but you don't advance or get any flexibility for things out of your control?
the other thing that makes advancement hard is that some fields have education thresholds. so while you might be able to get your undergrad cheap/free, it's unlikely you can get your master's cheaply. and the master's is what you need to jump payscales.
the research line that rebuts a lot of the MMM soothing words is this "Most importantly, the qualitative results do not change when we account for potential changes in the quality of goods and new product innovation." so even if you are trying to cut down your consumer desires, the advance of tech isn't actually enough to offset the loss of wages compared to your parents at your age. and if all of this comes with being seen as a replaceable and irresponsible cog with no hope of advancement or recognition as a person, then it makes sense that millennials would be resentful and worried.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
I don't want to join in this debate (as a millennial myself trying to find a job, it's too close to home), but I have to know- what on earth is an albatross house???
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
I don't want to join in this debate (as a millennial myself trying to find a job, it's too close to home), but I have to know- what on earth is an albatross house???
It's a reference to an incident from Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", in which the main character had a dead albatross tied around his neck as punishment. The albatross was a rotting, malodorous burden he couldn't get rid of. In the case of real estate, that would be a house that, for whatever reason, can't be easily sold and sits on the market for a long time.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/09/income-american-dream-kids/95190206/
I'm glad I finally learned that the 'American Dream' is making more than your Father. (Note, not Mother, as that wasn't 'polled' :S )
For a long time, owning an albatross house is what we were supposed to strive for. Well thankfully we have a much better target now!
If Dad started a successful company or similar, you're pretty much damned...
I don't want to join in this debate (as a millennial myself trying to find a job, it's too close to home), but I have to know- what on earth is an albatross house???
It's a reference to an incident from Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", in which the main character had a dead albatross tied around his neck as punishment. The albatross was a rotting, malodorous burden he couldn't get rid of. In the case of real estate, that would be a house that, for whatever reason, can't be easily sold and sits on the market for a long time.
Ah, thank you! Not quite what I was imagining, but that makes a lot more sense.
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why don't we ever hear anything about what the companies are doing to cause this? it's useful to learn the schooling that causes this or the lack of technical education for non-white collar jobs that fusses the supply of workers and applicants, but i think there must be something on the supply of jobs side that is messed up.
Oh it is definitely the supply side because this is what they are saying is the problem.
“The jobs are there, but the skills are not,” one executive said during meetings with White House officials that preceded a session with the president.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/factory-jobs-exist-ceos-tell-trump-skills-dont/
But this is actually what is happening:
The report, released last week by China Labor Watch, revealed worsening labor conditions at Pegatron, one of Apple's major iPhone factories based outside of Shanghai. The factory implemented excessive overtime hours that spanned up to 90 additional hours per month, according to the report, and overall wage cuts from $1.85 to $1.60 per hour on Pegatron workers over the past year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/09/01/as-apples-profits-decline-iphone-factory-workers-suffer-a-new-report-claims/?utm_term=.f3a53a10393a
These companies like Apple want to complain that there is no technical manufacturing skills in the US but somehow a chinese laborer making $2/hour has those sufficient skills? Bullshit! It's all about the almighty dollar and poor Apple only made $45.7 Billion in profits last year. Obviously they couldn't bring those jobs back and pay an American a livable wage because maybe the profits would only be $30 Billion. Oh the horror....
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It's not a perfectly fine vocation. The day you slip a disk carrying a bag of concrete your employer fires you. Then COBRA runs out while you wait to get on disability. Then you're 35 with no marketable skills and a long term injury you can't treat. It's arguably worse when this happens at 55.
Some of us observed this as one of our parents' life lessons. Everyone is choosing the chronic, long-term injuries of office work instead of the acute, immediate injuries of physical labor.
+100000000
I'm from a midwestern blue collar family and most of my generation is 1st gen. college. We've seen what our parents, aunts and uncles have gone through health-wise and want no part of it. I have uncles that are still trying to do trucking in their late 50's and their backs haven't been able to really handle it in years. Another is a lineman who took a horrible fall a few years ago and is disabled for life.
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There is a great deal of pressure on administrators to increase graduation rates and school funding is tied to graduation rates. High school dropouts are far more likely to be arrested and incarcerated than those who graduate.
Ugh. If these administrators were my students I would have to pull out my whole lecture on the correlation and causation, and even if there is causation determining and testing the DIRECTION of causation. People who vacation in Saint Barthélemy are more likely to have six figure incomes, but that doesn't mean the solution to increasing median household income is to start shipping people out to that island by the boatload.
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It's not a perfectly fine vocation. The day you slip a disk carrying a bag of concrete your employer fires you. Then COBRA runs out while you wait to get on disability. Then you're 35 with no marketable skills and a long term injury you can't treat. It's arguably worse when this happens at 55.
Some of us observed this as one of our parents' life lessons. Everyone is choosing the chronic, long-term injuries of office work instead of the acute, immediate injuries of physical labor.
+100000000
I'm from a midwestern blue collar family and most of my generation is 1st gen. college. We've seen what our parents, aunts and uncles have gone through health-wise and want no part of it. I have uncles that are still trying to do trucking in their late 50's and their backs haven't been able to really handle it in years. Another is a lineman who took a horrible fall a few years ago and is disabled for life.
There is also a mantra here that skilled laborers make bank, so everyone should encourage their kids not to go to college and go into the trades instead. The median salary in the US for plumbers and electricians is a little over $50K/year. That's not a terrible annual income, particularly if you don't have to pay a ton for college, but's not the guaranteed $100+K/yr that is often implied here.
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Skilled laborers have steady jobs and invest way less than people getting their unemployable PhDs in Obscurity. This is not at all to say colleges only offer PhDs in Obscurity, but they offer an awful lot of PhDs in Obscurity, which can make it look like an endorsement of many unemployable PhDs. College still benefits perversely from the noble sheen of academia that is just not what college is today.
I think the boards are anti-anti-skilled-trade. It's not quite the same as being all about skilled trade. I think there are just way too many people out there with degrees in Cuneiform and 16th Century Cobbling Techniques, and there are too many students feeling constant pressure to go to college for "whatever." Worse, it's not really something you can go on to reasonably just because Mom said so.
College costs (sticker price) - (aid) - (scholarships) + (opportunity cost in not working) + (opportunity cost in not getting meaningful raises) + (loan interest) + (compounding opportunity lost). It rewards graduates with jobs often, but many only pay 50k a year. Some even less. Some more. Sure, applied college students with job prospects, strong results, and growing fields will do overwhelmingly better than the average carpenter on a dollar-for-dollar basis. It's just that not everyone can be one of those.
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why don't we ever hear anything about what the companies are doing to cause this? it's useful to learn the schooling that causes this or the lack of technical education for non-white collar jobs that fusses the supply of workers and applicants, but i think there must be something on the supply of jobs side that is messed up.
Oh it is definitely the supply side because this is what they are saying is the problem.
“The jobs are there, but the skills are not,” one executive said during meetings with White House officials that preceded a session with the president.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/factory-jobs-exist-ceos-tell-trump-skills-dont/
But this is actually what is happening:
The report, released last week by China Labor Watch, revealed worsening labor conditions at Pegatron, one of Apple's major iPhone factories based outside of Shanghai. The factory implemented excessive overtime hours that spanned up to 90 additional hours per month, according to the report, and overall wage cuts from $1.85 to $1.60 per hour on Pegatron workers over the past year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/09/01/as-apples-profits-decline-iphone-factory-workers-suffer-a-new-report-claims/?utm_term=.f3a53a10393a
These companies like Apple want to complain that there is no technical manufacturing skills in the US but somehow a chinese laborer making $2/hour has those sufficient skills? Bullshit! It's all about the almighty dollar and poor Apple only made $45.7 Billion in profits last year. Obviously they couldn't bring those jobs back and pay an American a livable wage because maybe the profits would only be $30 Billion. Oh the horror....
Corporations do have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize earnings. If leveraging cheaper labor will improve the bottom line, that's what they do. They're not in the business of charity.
Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
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Right, but speak at career day about how there are great opportunities as a welder, electrician, plumber, carpenter, etc. and it's like you just lit the building on fire. "My son's going to be a lawyer!" No, no he isn't.
Yep, that's exactly what I hear all the time.
I hear it from kids who are not 'specically academic, don't like to read, have poor school attendance ... yet they think they're going to go to college, choose a competitive major, and get a high-paying professional job. These are the same kids who look down on our high school classes that prepare kids to step into entry-level trade jobs.
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Sorry, but I think your perspective is out of whack. I'll do my best to explain why.
hargrove i think captures how a lot of us, millennials, feel. and if you do take the entry level job you're over qualified for, there's little chance of advancing and if you try to apply to your education qualification it may actually be seen as a detriment. older workers seem to be staying in the workforce longer. and if you jump ship to a different company after doing your entry level drudgery, the office you left has the 'millennials are quitters with no loyalty, just trying to put in the minimum' reinforced.
People change jobs all the time. I've had (not counting part time work in college and high school) 10 employers.
3 of them bought out the firm I worked for so we'll count it as 7. If you're constantly changing jobs every year or two for a decade or two then it's a red flag. But changing jobs right out of school? Not a problem, especially if it's a step up.
If you've made friends with colleagues at the company who respect you and your work, keep in touch with them after you leave work there. It is THEIR opinion that will matter to a potential new employer far more than the bland, sanitized-for-legal-protection reference HR will give out.
why don't we ever hear anything about what the companies are doing to cause this? it's useful to learn the schooling that causes this or the lack of technical education for non-white collar jobs that fusses the supply of workers and applicants, but i think there must be something on the supply of jobs side that is messed up.
Because they have to, that's why. If they don't get more efficient and profitable their competition will. And then they will wither away or die off. Read the business news. You'll learn about major companies that just didn't change with the times and how they are dying off or retrenching big time.
there may also be perception issues of what is a millennial asking for. i'm already running into the frustration. i took an entry level job i was over qualified for. in the year i've had the job, my responsibilities have ballooned while my pay hasn't. i had an unexpected flare up of a chronic illness and my productivity went down, def below my usual but still above those previously in my role. now i'm in a vat of hot water for it. what's the reward for working hard at your entry level job if doing so just means that more work will be expected of you but you don't advance or get any flexibility for things out of your control?
Welcome to the real world.
Do you expect a corporation - a legal body without a soul - to give a damn about you? It can't, it has no soul.
Some managers nurture their staff to get the most value out of them, other managers exploit their staff to try the same result. If you have an exploiter for a boss, don't expect them to do you any kindnesses that will cost them - well - anything. This isn't some new thing that your generation is the first to experience. We've all had to put up with it.
When you get a job, you should view it as a stepping stone to a better one. That means you figure out what skills, contacts or credentials you can extract from that job and you manuever to get them. You don't expect your manager to do that for you. It's your responsibility. Right or wrong that's just the way it is. Put your priorities on those items that will help you move towards the next job you want - whether it's at your current employer or not.
In fact, if you want a big promotion or a big raise, your odds are significantly higher of getting them at a new employer. If your current employer is growing like crazy and money is rolling in then you've got a better than average shot at a big promotion and raise at your current employer. Otherwise, not so much. It is what it is.
So, your boss doesn't appreciate you, your skills and your hard work. Get a different boss at a different employer. Just make sure you actually have skills, work hard, do good work, and are personable...
the other thing that makes advancement hard is that some fields have education thresholds. so while you might be able to get your undergrad cheap/free, it's unlikely you can get your master's cheaply. and the master's is what you need to jump payscales.
Actually, if you've got a job at a decent sized company you might very well be able to get a higher degree paid for by your company. It's worth checking into. And making sure you know how long you have to stay after you get it without having to pay them back anything. Check with HR. A small business employer? Not very likely.
the research line that rebuts a lot of the MMM soothing words is this "Most importantly, the qualitative results do not change when we account for potential changes in the quality of goods and new product innovation." so even if you are trying to cut down your consumer desires, the advance of tech isn't actually enough to offset the loss of wages compared to your parents at your age. and if all of this comes with being seen as a replaceable and irresponsible cog with no hope of advancement or recognition as a person, then it makes sense that millennials would be resentful and worried.
Doesn't matter what your parents made or didn't make at your age. Simply doesn't matter. You just do your best in the situation you find yourself in. And the reality for people in the USA is that having a comfortable life and a profitable career isn't that hard to do.
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Corporations do have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize earnings. If leveraging cheaper labor will improve the bottom line, that's what they do. They're not in the business of charity.
Oh I agree completely. But they sure are in the business of accepting charity when their goals of maximizing earnings led to the Great Recession.
Most people think that the big bank bailout was the $700 billion that the treasury department used to save the banks during the financial crash in September of 2008. But this is a long way from the truth because the bailout is still ongoing. The Special Inspector General for TARP summary of the bailout says that the total commitment of government is $16.8 trillion dollars with the $4.6 trillion already paid out. Yes, it was trillions not billions and the banks are now larger and still too big to fail. But it isn’t just the government bailout money that tells the story of the bailout. This is a story about lies, cheating, and a multi-faceted corruption which was often criminal.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/07/14/the-big-bank-bailout/#4254d2c72d83
At some point the rubber will have to meet the road of the conflict between the corporate fiduciary duty to their shareholders and the need for available jobs just for society to function.
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Sorry, but I think your perspective is out of whack. I'll do my best to explain why.
hargrove i think captures how a lot of us, millennials, feel. and if you do take the entry level job you're over qualified for, there's little chance of advancing and if you try to apply to your education qualification it may actually be seen as a detriment. older workers seem to be staying in the workforce longer. and if you jump ship to a different company after doing your entry level drudgery, the office you left has the 'millennials are quitters with no loyalty, just trying to put in the minimum' reinforced.
People change jobs all the time. I've had (not counting part time work in college and high school) 10 employers.
3 of them bought out the firm I worked for so we'll count it as 7. If you're constantly changing jobs every year or two for a decade or two then it's a red flag. But changing jobs right out of school? Not a problem, especially if it's a step up.
If you've made friends with colleagues at the company who respect you and your work, keep in touch with them after you leave work there. It is THEIR opinion that will matter to a potential new employer far more than the bland, sanitized-for-legal-protection reference HR will give out.
except to qualify for most benefits or even accommodation like fmla, you have to be at a company for 12 months. and if you're going for the mmm advice, you may have to be at a job 3-5 years to meet requirements for a retirement contribution match.
why do companies "have to"? what caused the major shift that the competition/paradigm changed?
Welcome to the real world.
Do you expect a corporation - a legal body without a soul - to give a damn about you? It can't, it has no soul.
i mean, it's not a corporation that makes these decisions. it's an actual human who makes them. plus, my understanding is that most research shows that retention and education pays for itself over burnout and constant new hirings. like you say, a lot of places will pay for degrees. not to mention the previous question: what changed so much between generations that the adjusted income is so different? and the previous-previous question which is why would pursuing more education help if many millennials are already underemployed/overqualified?
also, i think millennials have a reputation for being job jumpers and irresponsible.
i'm not sure if you mean about caring that i was sick. i don't expect them to care or give me extra. i expect them to follow legal requirements. if i want more than that, i get involved in activism to change those laws. so i would agree, counting on the kindness of an employer for that kind of support is a bad idea.
i hope it doesn't sound like i'm merely complaining. in my own personal life, i'm doing what i can, filing the paperwork, looking at other jobs, reaching out to my supervisor and support offices. but that's something a lot of ppl can't do or won't know how to do. it's probably not something i could've done while i was sick, just a few weeks ago. it doesn't solve some of the problems that seem to be affecting so many ppl in the post 1984 generation that it can't just be individual failings.
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Listening to Millennials complain about the ways of the work-world exhausts you, until you start listening to companies whine about their “skills gaps.” Or “entitled Millennials.” Or “lack of loyalty.”
You have the cheapest capital in the history of mankind, you have the most advanced logistics in the history of mankind, you have the most educated workforce in the history of mankind, you have millions of undocumented workers and workers willing to work under the table (and you can outsource and subcontract if you don’t want to bring them on directly), you can offshore entire factories to new nations with the cheapest shipping rates in history, and businesses are still whining!
Talk about complainy-pants! Companies basically say the economy is about to collapse unless wages collapse even further and they get more giant tax breaks. Meanwhile Elon Musk revolutionizes entire industries and builds space rockets in his spare time.
The dream isn't dead, but there sure are a lot of complainers, be they consumers, laborers, capitalists, pensioners....
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I have a similar story to share. It is close to home.
.. awesome story here...
He gets pretty much straight Bs with no effort. If a grade drops to a C he tries a little harder for a while until it is a B again and then starts coasting. He will not try hard enough to get an overall A. It seems when a course does have an A grade he starts coasting in that course. It's like an A is a signal to start being lazy again.
Here is the secret that I learned early as an industrial engineer - you know, one of those horrible people looking at methods, holding a stop watch, and timing people and delays? Most of my work was with manufacturing and warehouse distribution (watching people select cartons for shipping or running a forklift)
I learned early that the employee that the supervisor was most upset about, was likely the one who was doing about average or above work. But working very slowly but often steadily, and looked lazy.
The brighter people are, the more that they will coast to the minimum, if there is no further gain to them. (such as curiosity, pay or recognition). Performance up by 10% for the week, and it is Friday at noon? Yep, take it to half speed the rest of the day. (We could only solve this one by rotating which day of the week was the "end" day by employee, so the ENTIRE workforce was not at 50% on the same day).
I learned to ask about the "lazy" employees, because they usually had figured out 15 shortcuts to the work, that I could study then implement for others to improve overall performance. I had to coach the supervisors to lay off the "lazy" people and let their results be the guide.
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Obviously you want the bar for Algebra to be an "A". Kid doesn't. (Neither does mine, BTW) It drives me nuts, but I can't change it, DD does not see herself as a math person now or ever in the future. At least my DD has four subjects that she loves and is getting a high A in. What can we possibly do?
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When you get a job, you should view it as a stepping stone to a better one. That means you figure out what skills, contacts or credentials you can extract from that job and you manuever to get them. You don't expect your manager to do that for you. It's your responsibility. Right or wrong that's just the way it is. Put your priorities on those items that will help you move towards the next job you want - whether it's at your current employer or not.
In fact, if you want a big promotion or a big raise, your odds are significantly higher of getting them at a new employer. If your current employer is growing like crazy and money is rolling in then you've got a better than average shot at a big promotion and raise at your current employer. Otherwise, not so much. It is what it is.
I've also found it useful to make it clear to your employers that you are interested in moving up within the company. When I got my job at my current company I made it clear that I was interested in growing myself professionally and wanting to move up in the company as I improved my skills\made myself more valuable. I asked my boss what skills they wanted\needed and then worked on those skills. When a higher position opened up I applied and got the job over people who had been there longer but had not taken the responsibility to find out what the employer wanted. For my new job and new boss I did the same thing. Low and behold a position is opening up this summer and I have been told its mine. Sure it hasn't happened yet but as the brand new guy in the dept I'll likely be getting it because I took the initiative and can show them that I check all the boxes that they are looking for.
Sorry, but I think your perspective is out of whack. I'll do my best to explain why.
hargrove i think captures how a lot of us, millennials, feel. and if you do take the entry level job you're over qualified for, there's little chance of advancing and if you try to apply to your education qualification it may actually be seen as a detriment. older workers seem to be staying in the workforce longer. and if you jump ship to a different company after doing your entry level drudgery, the office you left has the 'millennials are quitters with no loyalty, just trying to put in the minimum' reinforced.
People change jobs all the time. I've had (not counting part time work in college and high school) 10 employers.
3 of them bought out the firm I worked for so we'll count it as 7. If you're constantly changing jobs every year or two for a decade or two then it's a red flag. But changing jobs right out of school? Not a problem, especially if it's a step up.
If you've made friends with colleagues at the company who respect you and your work, keep in touch with them after you leave work there. It is THEIR opinion that will matter to a potential new employer far more than the bland, sanitized-for-legal-protection reference HR will give out.
except to qualify for most benefits or even accommodation like fmla, you have to be at a company for 12 months. and if you're going for the mmm advice, you may have to be at a job 3-5 years to meet requirements for a retirement contribution match.
Do you have a source for 'most benefits require 12 months'? i'm not saying its wrong but its certainly not what I have experienced and the state I live in was one of the worst hit by the recession so I would think they would be more likely to lengthen benefit qualification times if this was a common situation.
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Obviously you want the bar for Algebra to be an "A". Kid doesn't. (Neither does mine, BTW) It drives me nuts, but I can't change it, DD does not see herself as a math person now or ever in the future. At least my DD has four subjects that she loves and is getting a high A in. What can we possibly do?
Heh, I know I was a pretty horrible student for a long time for exactly this reason. Incentives were not aligned with good grades. I eventually worked hard enough and had enough AP/Honor classes to raise my ending high-school GPA to like 3.5, though not through any desire to get good grades: just was a bit more motivated to learn.
I don't regret that laziness. However, that carried over into college...where I stopped working on the Honors College programs because my professors bored the hell out of me, and never got an internship because "who needs one of those"? Those ended up being costly mistakes. Probably 200k in current net worth, and I'm only 30.
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Good companies offer benefits on the first day of employment, or MAYBE after a probationary period of 3 months if they're a little stingy. That's the deal with light-blue-to-white-collar work in America.
Having to wait 12 months is insane. Good luck finding employees worth having.
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Good companies offer benefits on the first day of employment, or MAYBE after a probationary period of 3 months if they're a little stingy. That's the deal with light-blue-to-white-collar work in America.
Having to wait 12 months is insane. Good luck finding employees worth having.
Pension benefits often kick in after 12 months, however... or for people on hourly work, that my not work enough hours, those companies base your benefits on how many hours you worked the prior year, to ensure it was 24 or 30 hours per week, on average...
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Good companies offer benefits on the first day of employment, or MAYBE after a probationary period of 3 months if they're a little stingy. That's the deal with light-blue-to-white-collar work in America.
Having to wait 12 months is insane. Good luck finding employees worth having.
I had a job where the 401k was not available until 3 months, matching did not start until 6 months, and vested at 1%/yr. To get fully vested matching, I would have had to stay with the company 2.5+ years. This company's policy proved indicative of the general esteem in which they held their employees, so I wound up leaving after ~9 months. That doesn't stop them from continuing to do it, and complaining all the while about how impossible it is to find good, young employees.
The problem seems to be that many companies no longer feel it is necessary to be a GOOD company, when they can make more profit by cutting benefits to their workers.
Safeway (USA) was 5 years until vested in the matching / pension amounts. Now they actually put in 5% without needing the employee to match it, but still. 5 years to vest seemed insane to me.
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As much as I love a good 401(k) plan, I don't consider quality of the 401(k) matching provisions to be essential benefits. My earlier comment was mainly targeting medical coverage.