What happens when the most entitled generation ever hits a recession

[stacey]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

If you were 45, got laid off and couldn't find a decent job in your profession for years then you weren't very good at your job in the first place.

if all else fails you could always be a cowboy...

[ma-skis.com]

Originally Posted by Bagor

You deviate from what I would consider clever. Again speed or efficiancy does not equate to cleverness. The individual is not responsible for the efficiancy, the machine/software (or the individuals that designed it) are. Comprehension equates to cleverness IMO. Just because someone like Phanuthier (an individual) can help to provide a tool that makes a task quicker does not make the end user himself cleverer. They exercised significantly less brainpower to obtain the same result.

And what make you think that people that plotted graphs on pen and paper stopped short of the interpretation process?

Technology IMO no doubt has huge benefits. It's also responsible IMO for a lot of dumbing down of society.

I think you missed what I meant about the cleverness and the tools, I believe that the end user who saved time by using those tools can now apply that brainpower and time on different problems. Consider the advent of the computer, did the workweek really get shorter because of it, or did we just find more things to do in a workday, thereby forcing people to developer broader skillsets.

I would imagine the work asked of administrative secrataries of the 60's or 70's are much different than those today because of their ability to utilize new tools and are forced to maintain wider skillsets to be employable.

Stopping short of the interpretation process has more to do with the time involved, I would stop because I was tired of spending 3 hours solving some graph, take a break and then work. With technology, the graph is made in 10 minutes (with rendering time, it's a big graph) and spend the remaining 2 hours and 50 minutes figuring out what to do with that information.

Your opinion of technology dumbing down society is also interesting. I would imagine many people would have forgotten how to add fractions properly since they probably haven't executed that skill in a long time. However a quick reminder would most likely be all it would take to relearn and perform fraction operations again.

Is being clever exemplified because someone can do it without the use of technology, or being able to learn how to do it in the first place? Regardless of whether or not they have forgotten it.

Have some people allowed technology to do things for them that they shouldn't... probably, but it is hard to say those individuals makes an entire society lazier, less capable than a previous.

Consider us having this conversation? is this dumb because Internet makes it easier to have this conversation? Or rather than me sitting here watch Harry Potter without doing anything, someone is forcing me to reconsider my views.

Perhaps it is how individuals utilize tools that decide what is clever and what is not... I can think of a bunch of ways the internet would make me dumber. That thread on gelinas coming back is one.

[ma-skis.com]

Oh, here's a scary thing on student entitlement.

Working in China, it was common practice to pass students in University regardless of grades. I had about 2/3 of my class fail, I spoke with the dean and he said that they would probably end up passing regardless of what mark I gave them.

After speaking with other colleagues, the message was pass them or deal with a bowl of crap.

I left a week later.

How does that make you feel about the next up and coming superpower in our world.

[pepper24]

I am coming up on my 30's and this is how I see my generation......

We live in a credit generation. Our parents if they wanted to buy a TV or car saved up and then bought in cash. Today, we have credit cards to buy spontaneously then figure out how we'll pay back our credit cards. The majority of my generation have homes, cars, toys etc. that our parents never dreamt of at that age. The reality is that since the 1980's the average salary has stayed fairly flat after inflation and that our disposable income has declined in half over that same period. It's a huge crisis that is being exploited now that we're in a recession and many of my generation are being exposed.

Hopefully this is a wake up call and we learn from our mistakes. It's ugly.

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by ma-skis.com

I think you missed what I meant about the cleverness and the tools, I believe that the end user who saved time by using those tools can now apply that brainpower and time on different problems. Consider the advent of the computer, did the workweek really get shorter because of it, or did we just find more things to do in a workday, thereby forcing people to developer broader skillsets.

I take your point but respectfully disagree. I agree that it allows them to multi-task but does that make them smarter? You could say Jack of all trades, master of none. The debate is endless as there are too many variables that could be used to measure cleverness.

What I think would be an interesting little experiment would be e.g. to manipulate software to give significantly wrong results.

e.g. A statistics package and say a stress engineering package (which I know nothing about) just to see how many individuals would question the software and how many would actually go ahead and represent the results.

Originally Posted by ma-skis.com

Have some people allowed technology to do things for them that they shouldn't... probably, but it is hard to say those individuals makes an entire society lazier, less capable than a previous.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that they are lazier or less capable. I'm just saying that I'm far from convinced that just because they have more resources and tools that they aren't neccessarily more clever.

Is university education in China free or is it basically a commodity too?

[redforever]

Originally Posted by Calgaryborn

My experience in B.C. has been the opposite. Hospitals and operating rooms have closed down. All the specialists have been moved to the largest cities. All but, the most simple procedures require a 5 1/2 hour drive through the mountains. Often it is months before you get an appointment with a specialist. They order tests and then you wait another couple months for a second appointment. The driving is hard on the elderly and the waiting sometimes kills.

We are saying exactly the same thing. Perhaps I never explained myself fully.

In Saskatchewan, as soon as Medicare came in under Tommy Douglas, followed through almost till the end of Grant Devine's premiership, hospitals and schools were built with reckless abandon. They were built in isolated areas, in towns so small they they could not attract the doctors or nurses to service them. The town 10 miles from where I grew up has 650 people now, I think maybe 450 when the hospital was built. And this was only an hour from Regina. A town that small simply can not attract 2 doctors and support nurses to keep a hospital open. That is the primary reason so many were either closed and abandoned or converted to small medical clinics. You need a certain population to support doctors and nurses, let alone specialists. And especially in today's financial situation, you simply can not afford to operate in that manner, it is not financially prudent to do so. Now a lot of the lineups you speak of are because of the general shortage of doctors period. And unfortunately, that shortage will impact the people in isolated areas the most. It is not fair, but it is fact.

It is the same with schools. And this is pretty well right across Canada. It is not financially prudent to build a highschool in every small town. Nor is it the best alternative for educating. When children are in the lower grades, it will not impact their education as much. But once they enter highschool, those small highschools simply can not hire enough staff or offer enough programs to turn out students that have the kind of diverse education that is needed today.

[redforever]

Originally Posted by pepper24

I am coming up on my 30's and this is how I see my generation......

We live in a credit generation. Our parents if they wanted to buy a TV or car saved up and then bought in cash. Today, we have credit cards to buy spontaneously then figure out how we'll pay back our credit cards. The majority of my generation have homes, cars, toys etc. that our parents never dreamt of at that age. The reality is that since the 1980's the average salary has stayed fairly flat after inflation and that our disposable income has declined in half over that same period. It's a huge crisis that is being exploited now that we're in a recession and many of my generation are being exposed.

Hopefully this is a wake up call and we learn from our mistakes. It's ugly.

It is not that we never dreamed, we did. But as you previously said, we bought as we could afford. And most of us still are of that mentality.

And while today's generation might think they are the ones who came up with the slogan "renew, recylce, reuse", nope, we were brought up that way. We were not and are not a throw away generation. And the best recylers of all were those who came out of the great depression of 1929. They are the ones who completely understood the true value of work.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by ma-skis.com

I think you missed what I meant about the cleverness and the tools, I believe that the end user who saved time by using those tools can now apply that brainpower and time on different problems.

Before writing was invented, all knowledge had to be passed down by memory alone; pre-literate peoples could perform amazing feats of memorization because *they had to*. The technology of writing made it so that a literate person doesn't need to remember every tiny detail of a process, poem or panegyric, because these things can be written down once and then "remembered" by reading as many times and by as many people as necessary.

All technology seeks to augment the possible; there is no point in the bulk of younger people learning skills that are better performed by a machine or a tool, whether or not such skills were recently valuable when done by humans instead. I always make the joke at work that anyone could do my job if they just learned how to use Google; that doesn't mean I yearn for the days when it was just you, your brain, and whatever help you could cadge from any gurus you knew.

Give it twenty years and you will have the entirety of human knowledge accessible immediately no matter where you are through "smart" agents, wearable computers and omnipresent wireless access - which should and probably will change the structure of education to something unrecognizable today. By then all the 20-somethings of today will be bitching about how the kids of 2030 all have it easy because they no longer have to learn the things that *they* found boring and useless during their educational years, and so it goes.

[rubecube]

My dad is giving me a bunch of money to go travelling around Europe for a year or two and when I come back I can go work for him and probably take over his company in five years when he retires (if I want to). Eat it, bitches.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by ma-skis.com

Oh, here's a scary thing on student entitlement.

Working in China, it was common practice to pass students in University regardless of grades. I had about 2/3 of my class fail, I spoke with the dean and he said that they would probably end up passing regardless of what mark I gave them.

After speaking with other colleagues, the message was pass them or deal with a bowl of crap.

I left a week later.

How does that make you feel about the next up and coming superpower in our world.

There is a good reason why degrees from China/India/etc are considered to be nearly worthless in the West.

I guess I'm lumped into that list of millennials being 26. I've been in the work place for about 4 and a half years total including my time on internship. I've never bothered to work in a menial position when it comes to my career. Of course I've done the terrible jobs during my youth, but since I've been working, I've always taken on more responsibility than people initially wanted to give me.

My first job was designing and implementing algorithms for GPS receivers. I built software to perform signal acquisition, tracking, data decoding. It was a start up company, so I basically was thrown into the fire.

When the company was no longer offering me anything to do, and there was a lot of conflict with the owners, I started looking for a more stable work environment. I then found my current job. They started me off as a technician basically, but I quickly tired of how little work that offered me so I asked for more, and took on more responsibility.

I do view myself as a pretty intelligent individual. I know my strengths and I apply them to the best of my ability. I've done the weeks on end of working 12-16 hour days, and I'll never do that again. It ruined two relationships, made me terribly unhappy, and stressed me out waaaayy too much. So I don't know if I'm different from others in my generation or not. I think I'm entitled to what I have in life, but I've worked hard for it.

I do however find it kind of funny hearing some of the things Phaneuthier is talking about... as much technology as he has at his fingertips and the spell checker is still so foreign. That's the common criticism of engineers, and they're lazy about it because they think that it's expected of them to suck at that stuff.. minor details right?

[ma-skis.com]

Originally Posted by Bagor

Is university education in China free or is it basically a commodity too?

From what I could tell, it was a commodity, but that is based on my one experience at one school. I am not sure about grade school education though, perhaps it is free, but many families were so poor children had to work instead of go to school in order to help out.

Sorry to be off topic.

[ma-skis.com]

I think what is deceptive about this topic is that we are generalizing the entire generation as feeling entitled. Many of the "entitled" generation are not coming from families that could create feelings of entitlement and are capable of understanding what it means to save, make good choices and work hard to get through lean times.


I think what happens to the individual comes down to how the previous generation raised them. Were they taught how to make sound financial decisions growing up, or was it too easy for them growing up.

[Ozy_Flame]

I think the sense of "entitlement" we speak of comes from our generation growing up with constant reminders of "do what you want to do and be happy", and less encouragement to work hard. Parents were preparing our generation avoid the troubles they had at their age, and as such, did what they could to invest in music lessons, university educations, sports teams, and all the other resources and circumstances we needed to thrive.

Now, we expect those same privileges to be available, and not really have to do the behind-the-scenes work to get it all done.

If anything, I think our generation is suffering from being given too much optimism, and becoming disappointed with what reality actually is. Therefore, our sense of entitlement and life mismanagements are a way to bridge that gap, unfortunately.

[LChoy]

Originally Posted by ma-skis.com

Oh, here's a scary thing on student entitlement.

Working in China, it was common practice to pass students in University regardless of grades. I had about 2/3 of my class fail, I spoke with the dean and he said that they would probably end up passing regardless of what mark I gave them.

After speaking with other colleagues, the message was pass them or deal with a bowl of crap.

I left a week later.

How does that make you feel about the next up and coming superpower in our world.

What kind of university were you teaching at?
From what I heard from my relatives and friends in Asia, Asian univeristies are among the most competitive anywhere. People study their hearts out just to get in. Everyone in China is expected to be able to speak fluent English is they are pursing any degree with International implications. Moving over to India and Malaysia, the standards are also insanely high. India keeps churning out highly educated university grads that they are taking jobs away in Europe. The India Insititute of Technology is among one of the best tech schools in the world (and where Asok from Dilbert apparently graduated from)

[octothorp]

Some great discussion in this thread. Better discussion in the thread than the points made in the original article, actually.

I don't see the sense of entitlement as that new a thing, although in previous generations, unions played a greater role in perpetuating this sense of entitlement: the one requirement in achieving an ever increasing level of income and personal security was staying at the same job. Union structure took care of the rest. Of course, because unions care about their own self-preservation, they worked harder for achieving greater salaries more than any other benefit. Even amongst non-unionized positions, this idea of 'paying your dues' in a job was still prevalent.
Now, we're seeing a post-union mentality, where individuals are much more responsible for their own negotiations and setting their priorities. Do they really have that much of a sense of entitlement? Is bouncing around from job to job really a sign of a sense of entitlement, or merely self-interest over allegiance to a company? Is the young individual who simply doesn't work hard and apply themselves and as a result cannot find a high paying job not just someone who's chosen a lack of responsibility and less effort over financial security?

I just don't hear some great number of 20-somethingers complaining about their current situation. Most are aware that their path (whether it's to slack through life or to ruthlessly jump from one opportunity to the next) is their own choice and has repurcutions. What I do see is an older generation who is seeing these choices and assuming that they are choices made in ignorance; some are, but certainly not all.

[flamesfever]

Originally Posted by shermanator

Once you get laid off, you lose that sense of entitlement pretty quick...
(Speaking from experience being part of this entitlement generation)

While I agree the article is bang on, I agree with you. I think humans have a tendency to adapt pretty quickly, and the younger generation have a distinct advantage in that they have a long timeline to learn by their mistakes and eventually get it right.

Also, it's true the younger generation have many more tools at their disposal with which to gather information, analyze etc., however I just hope they don't confuse knowledge with wisdom.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

If you were 45, got laid off and couldn't find a decent job in your profession for years then you weren't very good at your job in the first place.

Do you honestly believe this?

[Burninator]

This book, SHAM: How The Self-help Movement Made America Helpless is very much in line with this topic.

SHAM demonstrates how the self-help movement’s core philosophies have infected virtually every aspect of American life—the home, the workplace, the schools, and more. And Salerno exposes the downside of being uplifted, showing how the “empowering” message that dominates self-help today proves just as damaging as the blame-shifting rhetoric of self-help’s “Recovery” movement.

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/...e+salerno%2527

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by Lchoy

What kind of university were you teaching at?
From what I heard from my relatives and friends in Asia, Asian univeristies are among the most competitive anywhere. People study their hearts out just to get in. Everyone in China is expected to be able to speak fluent English is they are pursing any degree with International implications. Moving over to India and Malaysia, the standards are also insanely high. India keeps churning out highly educated university grads that they are taking jobs away in Europe. The India Insititute of Technology is among one of the best tech schools in the world (and where Asok from Dilbert apparently graduated from)

Why do I find so many duncetards in IT that are from China, India then?

Seems to me they churn out morons just as well as us...

[Flashpoint]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

If you were 45, got laid off and couldn't find a decent job in your profession for years then you weren't very good at your job in the first place.

Phhhh... tell that to Chris Chelios.