

The Idled Young Americans - startuup
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/sunday-review/the-idled-young-americans.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

======
com2kid
As someone who is in his 20s (for another year!) and dating of the same age,
my belief is because the current generation has a real lack of motivation.

I think it is something those of us on sites like this one, and in our field
in general do not notice, we tend to surround ourselves with highly driven and
motivated people, but we really are the exception to the rule.

Roughly 60% of the young women I have dated (generally aged 22 and up, college
graduates) had no real future focus. They weren't looking forward to or
striving for any sort of goal. They were just sort of existing.

Switching tracks a bit, I remember having a conversation with a man about my
age, he had an undergraduate degree in psychology and a masters in a related
field. He was talking about how poorly developed the social skills of many
young adults in this area is (true, Puget Sound is a tech haven and a lack of
social skills go along with that) and how much he would love to start up a
program to teach social skills to engineers. And hey, I agreed, that is a
great idea, there is a large market for that in the area, he would have
customers lining up around the block!

So I asked him why he hadn't done it yet. "Because the government has cut
funding to social programs and there is no way I could get money for it."

He then proceeded to spend the next 20 or so minutes complaining about how it
was the governments fault that he couldn't achieve his dream.

When I recommended a small business loan, or even writing up a business
proposal and seeking private funding, he brushed my suggestions aside and went
back to complaining about how he needed government help to get his idea up off
the ground.

Everyone on this site knows that if he really had aspirations, he would find a
way to make them happen. He's living in an area surrounded by people with 6
figure income and plenty of 7 figure incomes a few miles away, private fund
raising alone would easily pay for his minimal expenses to get started.

But he wasn't passionate enough to actually do anything, and he is one of the
few people I have encountered who have any passion at all.

I have had friends (my age group) tell me that I need to stop being so
aggressive, stop being so perfectionist, stop working so hard. "Why do you try
to do such a good job at everything you do? There is no need for that."

Then I walk over to my friends who are in the tech sector. We strive for the
best, we talk about what we want to happen in the future, what our dreams our,
what we are working towards, what house we want to buy (if any), what projects
we want to work on.

And we are the lazy ones who don't have enough initiative to found our own
start up! (And we all feel guilty about it, we damn well know we should)

Then of course there is the Y Combinator crowd, who are fueled by nothing but
drive and passion.

So, going back to the beginning.

A lot of the young adults who have "given up hope" never had any hope to begin
with. They sort of wanted a job somewhere, but they didn't want it more than
anything else. They didn't desire it, they didn't need it, and they sure as
heck didn't make a plan of how exactly to get it.

~~~
scarmig
Oh, Christ. Start-up wankery has its place, but something to keep in mind:
there's nothing that makes working for a start-up the be-all, end-all of a
meaningful life.

You complain about people just wanting to exist and live and enjoy time with
their friends and family? And that they don't have grand dreams of starting a
business, running it, doing a bunch of shit that's secondary to their actual
interests?

Here's the thing: no one should have to start their own business to be
successful in life. Not all people are cut out for it. And just because you're
a 20-something guy who's willing to spend 60-80 hours a week working to change
the world with a social networking site for cat photographers so that some VC
can make bank doesn't mean that other people are somehow inferior because they
don't want to.

Not everyone can be a special snowflake, and that's fine. Some people want to
work a 9 to 5 job and then head home to cook dinner with their loved ones. In
the past that's been possible, but increasingly for our generation it's
becoming harder and harder. And that's a societal failure.

~~~
laughfactory
Oh, come now, scarmig. All he was saying is that many in our peer group don't
have a plan. And they blame others for their lack of a job and for their lack
of a life they find meaningful--rather than going out and doing something
about it.

I, for one, agree with him because that's what I've observed: numerous
20-somethings working at dead-end, menial jobs after graduation because they
didn't adequately prepare for something more demanding. And many of them
aren't thrilled to be merely subsisting. They want more, but they don't know
how to get it, and they don't really own the responsibility for doing so
anyway.

Somehow at some point they got the mistaken impression that if they got a
degree they'd graduate, and be instantly awarded with that six-figure 9-5 job.
And they'd live happily ever after.

So yeah, for that group they're a little disappointed to graduate and discover
that the median income of someone with a bachelor's degree (as I recall) is
$40,000/yr. And if they have an especially common degree and especially
mediocre academic performance perhaps they can't even get that job. Oh, and
they are surprised to discover they have to work their butts off to find ANY
job, and then that most jobs are just "work" not "play."

I have no aspiration to necessarily work for a start-up or work 60 hours a
week. But I do have a plan, and I do take responsibility for making my life
what I want it to be. I have goals and aspirations and a long-term plan how to
accomplish them. Most of our peers do not.

My hope is to be able to make a decent living (say $50,000/yr) working 25-30
hours a week so I can spend lots of time on my own interests and with my
family. So I didn't hear him saying that we all have to want to work for
start-ups or work 60 hours a week or anything. He was merely pointing out that
many of our peers don't know what they want, or how to get it on top of being
unemployed or underemployed...and they blame others for their situation rather
than taking responsibility for their life.

~~~
waps
> And many of them aren't thrilled to be merely subsisting. They want more,
> but they don't know how to get it, and they don't really own the
> responsibility for doing so anyway.

If you mean by that "aren't willing to do anything -at all- to achieve, well,
anything really" then I agree with you.

> My hope is to be able to make a decent living (say $50,000/yr) working 25-30
> hours a week so I can spend lots of time on my own interests and with my
> family.

That's certainly achievable I would think. However, be prepared for a lot of
rejection. 40 (not 60) hour weeks + actual effort (dare I say it ... drive) is
not just a requirement at startups.

------
aridiculous
I'm always perplexed by the (possibly rhetorical) surprised tone of these
kinds of articles. As if it wasn't glaringly obvious that young people are
getting screwed because of their lack of employment histories combined with an
ultra-competitive job market (for most industries).

The discussion then usually turns to how young people have useless degrees or
are lazy or entitled, or some other monday morning quarterback commentary. The
reality is that prior generations goofed off and made blind decisions just
like this one. They just had more of cushion to rebound from.

I'm steadily employed in a fantastic job but have been on the other side of
the fence as well. One thing is obvious: most white-collar, educated people
who already had jobs before 2008 are doing just fine, haven't noticed a thing,
and don't give a neuron to thinking about unemployed people.

This is just another indication to me that there is a growing class divide and
there will be plenty of losers (and no, the rising tide doesn't help
undeveloped, inexperienced college grads with nondischargable debt). The means
of production are now more abstract than owning factories -- they're owning
the information networks. We have yet to see anything close to the sufficient
political will or desire in DC to bust up these modern day trusts (like Teddy
Roosevelt did with the industrialists a century ago). By design, they're
harder to identify and harder to educate the public about. And with mass media
stomping out thoughtful journalism due to basic economics and a civically
uninterested public, where's the opposition going to come from?

If you happen to be in a line of work that helps those in power (like most
programmers), you'll probably thrive. If you don't, you're going to have a
tough road ahead: our public institutions are behaving more and more like
results-driven board-run corporations. They're misappropriating improved
efficiency to matters that benefit more from longer-term strategies ("Instant
Dashboards! Metrics! Data-Driven Decisions!"). I fear most the speed at which
the consolidation of power could take place (aided by the speed of
technological progress).

Have a great weekend :)

~~~
paganel
> One thing is obvious: most white-collar, educated people who already had
> jobs before 2008 are doing just fine, haven't noticed a thing, and don't
> give a neuron to thinking about unemployed people.

I remember reading an article around 2008 (in the Economist, I think) based on
a (then recent) research paper that showed that people who graduated during a
recession had a lot more to lose in the long run (smaller wages etc) compared
to people who graduated during "normal" times.

We're 5 years later, the "recession" supposedly ended three or four years ago
(I'm talking about the US here), and yet things don't seem to have reverted
back to normal. Unless maybe this is in fact the new normal.

~~~
nicholas73
I read the same article. It said graduates during a recession may take up to a
decade to have their wages catch up to what it might have been had they
graduated during normal times.

------
ljd
I know from personal experience much of the last 5 years worth of work for me
(software / algorithm design) has been building automation. Helping companies
that were struggling push forward by replacing human workers with software.

Perhaps in the recent down years companies were pressured to become more
efficient and now that the economy is picking up they are reluctant to go back
to hiring people versus paying for software and automation.

/completeSpeculation

I can think of two companies I've consulted with since 2008 where the CEO's
told me they were picking up a new contract(s) that would represent massive
growth (200-300%) but that they wanted to keep their same labor force without
having to hire.

------
gcv
Because too many of them are busy looking for other people to give them
employment (which has been difficult for employers to do), instead of figuring
out how to create wealth on their own. If more created their own businesses,
they would probably be able to hire the rest — you know, the ones working in
coffee shops and retail. See [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/what-
the-fate-of-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/what-the-fate-of-
one-class-of-2011-says-about-the-job-market.html?pagewanted=all), for example.

~~~
aridiculous
It's an odd thing: the startup community often has all of the smug traits of
the out-of-touch, old-money elite, but has none of their gifts for enjoying
leisure. It's a particularly awful combination in my opinion.

------
ChrisLTD
Because the U.S. economy hasn't yet recovered from the 2008 recession.

Low demand on the consumer side has meant that businesses don't need to expand
and hire people.

------
woodchuck64
> The official unemployment rate for 25- to 34-year-old college graduates
> remains just 3.3 percent.

So this article should be titled: "Why are Uneducated Young Americans
Jobless."

~~~
aridiculous
Underemployment is the key metric for 25-27 years olds at the moment. Very
difficult to measure.

------
aspensmonster
Buzz words like "entitled" in 3...2...1...

Anyway.

>Average wages are no longer trailing inflation.

And wages as a whole have diverged from productivity since the 70s. That we're
happy that wages are once again keeping pace with inflation --another way of
saying "well, at least we're no longer losing money"-- is depressing in this
context.

>What might help? Easing the parts of the regulatory thicket without societal
benefits. Providing public financing for the sorts of early-stage scientific
research and physical infrastructure that the private sector often finds
unprofitable. Long term, nothing is likely to matter more than improving
educational attainment, from preschool through college (which may have started
already).

So... we socialize the substantial costs of doing business (infrastructure and
research), cut back on "the parts of the regulatory thicket without societal
benefits," --whatever that means-- and just keep pumping people through
college. Has Leonhardt being paying attention at all?

We already subsidize infrastructure and research costs. Hell, it's become
standard policy that no corporation shall break ground anywhere unless the
host promises it special favors and decreased (or absolutely no) taxes.
Regulations are more industry specific. The big ticket ones however typically
revolve around finance and environment. Perhaps we should ask --well, damn
near anyone-- how the year 2009 was for them financially. Perhaps we should
ask the Chinese just how "without societal benefits" all of those
environmental regulations are. And college? We're putting more students
through than ever before. And they are predictably finding that, as the number
of people with degrees rises, the value placed on their own degree decreases.
And what does the hiring company look for? Experience.

>Many business executives and economists also point to immigration policy.
Done right, an overhaul could make a difference, many say, by allowing more
highly skilled immigrants to enter the country and by making life easier for
those immigrants already here. Historically, immigrants have started more than
their share of new companies.

AND we need more H-1B's? This guy's a real piece of work. We already have the
ability to bring in extraordinary talent. We don't need 50,000 more outsource
firm slots.

==========

Here's the thing: businesses will hire exactly as many employees as they need.
No more. Perhaps less, if they can get away with it. And if they run the
remaining folks at break-neck pace long enough, that level will become the new
"need" level. No amount of policy or regulatory finagling is going to make a
lick of difference. By bending over for Corporate America, all you're doing is
throwing taxpayer money at them with the vague and unsubstantiated hope that
they'll take on a few more employees. This is beyond stupid. As business
becomes more automated --not mechanized, automated, as in no human required--
you can expect fewer jobs to remain and for the employment rates to level off
or decline.

~~~
com2kid
> AND we need more H-1B's? This guy's a real piece of work. We already have
> the ability to bring in extraordinary talent. We don't need 50,000 more
> outsource firm slots.

Being on the hiring side of things, America needs all the talent it can get.
Hiring good software engineers is seriously hard.

Maybe the problem is just connecting people with jobs, but given the low
unemployment rate in the tech sector, I really doubt it.

Having to interview 5 candidates before finding one who just knows how malloc
works isn't fun.

Indeed, one of our high quality engineers had to be sent back to his home
country after his work visa expired, we are hoping to get him in on H-1B, and
I believe he got approved, but now we have to sit and wait for government
wheels to churn.

America should make it as easy as possible for highly motivated and talented
individuals to come here. Jobs, heck, entire new industries will be created.

Isn't that the entire lesson from start-up culture? Get talented highly
motivated people together, let them achieve their dreams (with someone who
knows business and finances overseeing things!), and the economy will grow.

~~~
aspensmonster
Hiring top talent is certainly expensive. And if you're searching for the best
of the best, it will always be hard by virtue of the fact that you're looking
for people at the extreme of a bell curve, no matter how large the sample set
is.

As for knowing how malloc works: fewer and fewer universities are even
touching C. It's all C++ or, better yet, Java (no need to understand memory
management _at all_ in that case). The only guys left that are into
reimplementing malloc are the minority of Computer Science or Computer
Engineering graduates that are into embedded work or HA scenarios.

And just to quench my own personal curiosity, since you're on the hiring side
and I'm not: why is it that every company absolutely must find someone who
fits the bill exactly? What is with this aversion to spending any amount of
time training people?

~~~
com2kid
> And just to quench my own personal curiosity, since you're on the hiring
> side and I'm not: why is it that every company absolutely must find someone
> who fits the bill exactly? What is with this aversion to spending any amount
> of time training people?

We don't have an aversion to training, but when someone has supposedly 8+
years of development experience and cannot answer simple questions, well, on
to the next candidate.

I personally do always look for potential, I believe it is the most important
aspect when hiring. But potential means having a drive to learn independently.
I really do understand why a lot of employers are just saying "screw it" and
not hiring anyone who isn't on Stack Overflow, or has a tech blog, or some
sort of presence that said "I am passionate about this field."

(I'd be doomed by that metric, I don't have a github or Stack Overflow
account! I'm on this site and /r/programming, however I do have a somewhat
maintained tech blog.)

> As for knowing how malloc works: fewer and fewer universities are even
> touching C. It's all C++ or, better yet, Java (no need to understand memory
> management _at all_ in that case). The only guys left that are into
> reimplementing malloc are the minority of Computer Science or Computer
> Engineering graduates that are into embedded work or HA scenarios.

Ugh I know. My college still teaches native, and in fact the majority of the
curriculum (last time I checked, its been a few years) was native, but they
are unfortunately the exception to a general trend.

The thing is, managed languages are pretty damn nice for teaching software
engineering principles in, but bad for hands on "this is how it works"
explaining.

Covering how the JVM or CLR does stuff on a PowerPoint slide isn't the same
thing as having students write an allocator. Which sort of sucks when they go
on the job and have to write an allocator!

~~~
peterwaller
Honest question: what field are you in which means your candidates are going
to need to write custom allocators on a regular basis?

What problems need custom allocators? I'm a fan of lower level details and
all, but surely you can get away with one of the many existing allocator
implementations when the problem to be solved isn't "sudo make me an
allocator"?

~~~
com2kid
> Honest question: what field are you in which means your candidates are going
> to need to write custom allocators on a regular basis?

Embedded. :P

> What problems need custom allocators? I'm a fan of lower level details and
> all, but surely you can get away with one of the many existing allocator
> implementations when the problem to be solved isn't "sudo make me an
> allocator"?

Memory is being counted in kilobytes. Processing time in cycles.

I'm loving it, but finding others who feel the same, and who are serious about
software engineering, isn't easy!

~~~
bicknergseng
>who feel the same, and who are serious about software engineering, isn't
easy!

So what you're saying is that you have a hard time finding people experienced
and passionate about your extremely small niche? I'm sure I'd have a hard time
finding qualified child neurologists willing to work for < 200k as well.

~~~
aspensmonster
I'd hardly call embedded work an extremely small niche. Now, what he's doing
on them may or may not be. But microcontrollers on the whole are a much bigger
industry than personal computing. You'll find many more 8-bit and 16-bit
microcontrollers in any given house than you will Intel or AMD 32/64 bit
general purpose microprocessors. Last I checked approximately half of all CPUs
sold globally were 8-bit.

------
hbnyc
As a 23 year old working in tech, I can say that much of my graduating class
had no immediate plans to start a career and even more had no desire to
relocate to a place that jobs were more plentiful. How do we fix this? We stop
telling everyone that they are gifted and things will work out from an early
age. We get far more out of constructive feedback as to why our project wasn't
the best or why we lost than being told we're great in the face of defeat,
getting a trophy, and going home with no fuel to better ourselves.

------
enraged_camel
Like many people here, I work for a software company. We develop business
automation software. Perhaps unlike most though, I'm closer to the bottom line
(Sales Engineer), and are more closely tuned in to the types of business
conversations our customers have when they are thinking about whether to buy
our software.

Often times, the conversation revolves around the fact that the software we
sell makes the average worker so ridiculously productive that often times they
start being able to do the work of two people. They no longer have to spend
time searching for important documents or worry about replacing lost/damaged
ones, or pushing paper documents from one department to the other, or waiting
for a certain supervisor to come back from a business trip so that they can
sign off on stuff. For most knowledge workers this translates to at least a
couple of hours of productivity gains everyday, if not more.

What do businesses do with these productivity gains? From what we have seen,
the overwhelming majority use the opportunity to lay off workers they no
longer need. The reason is simple: their company addresses a certain amount of
customer demand, and if they can meet that demand with half the workforce then
why not lay off the rest and become more profitable?

Over the years, this phenomenon has led me to the conclusion that the main
problem with the economy is lack of consumer demand. If consumer demand was
increasing, then companies would hire more employees _despite_ the efficiency
gains they get from automation. Or, at the very least, they would be less
prone to lay people off, because their existing workforce would be more able
to handle the demand by becoming more productive.

Traditionally, the main source of consumer demand in America has been the
middle-class. If we find a way to bring that back, everybody wins.

~~~
svachalek
Ironically, the middle class isn't coming back until the employment situation
improves, with consequent improvements in salaries etc.

Soon we're going to be seeing low-skill jobs go almost entirely to machines,
while higher-skill work gets more and more levered up. I expect at the pace
we're going (on both technology and economy), that will happen before we ever
recover from the current crisis. A large percentage of workers are not going
to have much to offer, economically, and I'm not sure where we go from there.

~~~
goostavos
>A large percentage of workers are not going to have much to offer,
economically, and I'm not sure where we go from there.

I wonder about this all the time. My primary interest is in fields like
Computer Vision, with an ultimate goal of contributing to the self driving car
scene. As excited as I am by that and want to see that future as a reality,
there's a side of me that wonders what the workforce will do as automated
system continue their steady march forward. Once we 'automate away' driving,
things like truck drivers (of which there are 3.5 million) will be a thing of
the past, probably cabs too given enough time.

Where do they go?

~~~
super-serial
They go home to their robo-housing condo, eat meat grown on sheets in massive
labs run by robo-farmers, and any supplies they need are transported by robo-
truckers. When they get sick, they just go to the robo-hospital.

All these things are completely free and not staffed by any humans... because
the billionaires who live in cities in the sky feel guilty about the pathetic
insignificant lives of the idiot masses below. So we give them the necessities
they need, and poison their food so they don't procreate too much.

~~~
aspensmonster
You just conjured up imagery of the Pangu and Tai Yong Medical from Deus Ex:
Human Revolution in my mind. Lower Hengsha is indeed a place I would rather
not live :) I think more people could do with reading, watching, and playing
dystopic sci-fi media. Keeps everyone cognizant of the fact that technological
advancement isn't an inherently good thing.

------
Swisscoder
Because most Human Resource workers are a..h...s, im speaking from the
experience. Not surprised by those results.

