SpuriousLogic writes "I work as a senior software engineer, and a fair amount of my time is spent interviewing new developers. I have seen a growing trend of what I would call 'TV reality' college graduates — kids who graduated school in the last few years and seem to have a view of the workplace that is very much fashioned by TV programs, where 22-year-olds lead billion-dollar corporate mergers in Paris and jet around the world. Several years ago I worked at a company that did customization for the software they sold. It was not full-on consultant work, but some aspects of it were 'consulting light,' and did involve travel, some overseas. Almost every college graduate I interviewed fully expected to be sent overseas on their first assignment. They were very disappointed when told they were most likely to end up in places like Decater, IL and Cedar Rapids, IA, as only the most senior people fly overseas, because of the cost. Additionally, I see people in this age bracket expecting almost constant rewards. One new hire told me that he thought he had a good chance at an award because he had taught himself Enterprise Java Beans. When told that learning new tech is an expected part of being a developer, he argued that he had learned it by himself, and that made it different. So today I see an article about the growing narcissism of students, and I want to ask this community: are you seeing the sorts of 'crashing down to Earth' expectations of college grads described here? Is working with this age bracket more challenging than others? Do they produce work that is above or below your expectations of a recent college grad?" We discussed a similar question from the point of view of the young employees a few months back.
Unfortunately, many bosses are equally out of touch with reality. Some even a bit more. Anyway, you get what you teach. Many are taught that capitalism is all and that anything comes at a price. Would it then be strange that the same person puts a price on his/her ability (whether deserved or not is immaterial to the principle).
"Everything comes at a price" is a consequence of capitalism, not the goal. The principle is that if I value your skills more than I value X dollars per year, then that's what I'll be willing to pay you. If you won't work for less than X + 10000 dollars per year and that's more than I value your skills, we don't have a deal and I'll keep my money.
If you want something without giving anything in return, what you are talking about isn't capitalism.
>>>If I value your skills more than I value X dollars per year, then that's what I'll be willing to pay you. If they won't work for less than X + 10000 dollars per year, we don't have a deal and I'll keep my money.
Given the current economy I was considering standing at the local interstate on-ramp with this sign:
"Engineer - Will work for food or minimum wage."
Ironically this is the technique our local politicians use to get elected - "Smith for State Senate".;-) - I visited my alma mater recently, and I was stuck by how much changed in just ten years time. The students are doing "cool" projects that I can only dream of doing in the real world. (Example - Programming a robot to swim across a lake and collect trash.) It makes me wonder if they will be disappointed with their first jobs, which will mostly consist of sitting at a cubicle all day and writing documents.
In the effort to "sell school" I think some engineering programs are giving students the wrong impression of what the engineering career is really like.
I'm dealing with a manager who exhibits a high degree of narcissistic personality traits. In filling a recent vacancy for a software developer he interviewed two candidates. One a highly friendly and right noise-making guy and one a very professional, modest and highly competent person with a lot of direct experience in exactly the technology we use. It was no surprise to anyone when he appointed the one that threatened his sense of superiority least, i.e. the less capable one.
A month after appointing this person, he's shown little work ethic - bugging me with useless chatter repeatedly and not engaging with the simple orientation tasks he's been give and when after a month to work on this task he presents his work, he crumbles at the simplest baby questions. He's been hired to work on your standard PHP / MySQL combo. When asked to write a basic query to select a row from a single table, he couldn't do it. He didn't even understand the principle of a foreign key after it was explained to him multiple times. I later asked him to update the contents of a row and he couldn't even come close to that. And I find it even more dumbfounding that he tries to bullshit his way out of this.
The manager's reaction? He finds it hillarious. He's little focused on the actual success of the team and mainly focused on his relationships with people. I'm currently training this new developer in the basics of SQL and database design (we reached JOINs last week) but I might decide to kill him in the hopes of getting a replacement that can code.
....mom and dad always told them they were incredibly special, and would do amazing things.
It never occurred to them that there's a hell of a lot more jobs that are sheer drudgery than are a thrill a minute.
In the almost seven years since I graduated from college, I've never been sent overseas for work. I have been sent exciting places like Indianapolis.
But I always had a job during college, too. And because of that, the only thing I expected after graduation was a better salary (but not amazingly better).
Yeah, it was over fifteen years into my career before I was sent anywhere interesting. And even then, you end up spending so much time actually working that I got very little time to actually go look at the historic European city I was sent to.
What most new college grads don't seem to understand is that everyone in the industry wants to do the fun stuff and go the fun places, and as a college grad, everyone in the industry has more experience than you do. You have to pay your dues like everyone else.
While I think you're right about the attitudes of many parents, a greater contributor to this problem is in academia. If I had a dime for every skill that the Career Services department told me was instant top-of-the-stack material... well, I wouldn't have had to spend months searching for a job below my level of education.
Universities are still businesses, and one major source of income is bright-eyed young freshman who believe they will be able to conquer the world in four years, if only they invest $120,000 in a bachelor's degree. It doesn't benefit the universities (in the short run) to dispell that illusion.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday March 15 2009, @04:41PM (#27203065)
Business travel is awful. You fly somewhere really exciting and interesting - work your ass off, have zero social life, feel incredibly lonely as you wonder around your hotel, then you fly home. The important thing is to make up lots of stories of how great it was, all the crazy people you met, what a great bunch of lads your customers/colleagues are etc..
Too true. I don't think the whipper-snappers realize that business travel is for business, not pleasure. The times I have flown overseas, the work is so non-stop because of the expense of doing going overseas, that all I want to do is get the hell out of there and go home so I can get some sleep.
I agree with you almost completely except for who to blame. It wasn't Mom and Dad who told everyone they were special, it was that evil, evil man Mr. Rogers [poetv.com].
The trick is to work for a company that's gigantic, and has a workforce all over the place. Then get yourself inserted in to the most international team you can find there. Some team that works on a disproportionately foreign open-source project for instance ( like KDE, or for that matter just Linux ). Then you need to do a bit of extra work to warrant your being sent places ( write papers for conferences, etc )
Technical marketing is another mostly-technical field that involves a lot of international travel ( though you'll find you spend an inordinate amount of time in SFBay ) since you need to keep your ear on the buzz of the industry and make sure your company has a showing at various trade shows.
If international travel is high on your list of job satisfaction goals, you can achieve it. You may need to do extra work or take a bit of a salary cut to get it, but you can do it.
Well said. I'm a contractor, so that means I move from place-to-place. Utah, Oklahoma, Michigan, South Carolina, New York, Virginia, Maryland, Jersey. My job as a contractor means I live inside hotel rooms, which doesn't bother me at all, but it also means I can't "settle down" because I'm always moving.
If you want to get married and raise a family, you need to stay in one spot with a permanent job.
If you want to travel to "exotic" places like I have, don't do it through work. Do it through vacation using your own money, and take the wife & kids with you.
This is probably true. The reason being, is that students recently graduating who are around my age are children of the baby boomers. The baby boomers were a rather prosperous generation, so in general their kids had a lot of comforts and opportunity that they take for granted. Almost everybody I knew in college didn't know the value of hard work, and expected their privilege and excellence to be rewarded at face value, probably because they never HAD to work hard, because their baby boomer parents had provided them with everything they need. I really do blame the baby boomers. They grew up in a sort of fantasy world, where they could preach peace, love, and not war, and ignore the realities of the world. And so, their children will most likely have the same attitude.
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint" - Hesiod, 8th century BC
Almost everybody I knew in college didn't know the value of hard work
Look at the world around you and show me where 'hard work' is getting the best results for the worker.
The best ways to a life of comfort and excitement are luck, corruption, parental privilege, or a combination of all three. Good ideas might also get you somewhere, but only with a dose of luck attached. Sometimes, but certainly not always, these might need to be coupled with a workload that's maybe equivalent to that of a nurse or a teacher. Notice how said nurse and teacher are putting in equally hard work for a relative pittance?
The way monetary value is measured has become almost completely abstract, so it's unsurprising that those growing up in this system have different ideas to the older generation.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday March 15 2009, @05:01PM (#27203271)
I really do blame the baby boomers. They grew up in a sort of fantasy world, where they could preach peace, love, and not war
Right. You're living in your own fantasy world where it has become convenient to blame the baby boomers. I'm a baby boomer and lived through those times. We had to fight to "preach peace" in opposition to Johnson and Nixon and their wars - and those fights were sometimes, perhaps often, bloody.
But it has become the accepted truth (and as such never to be questioned by those who accept it) that the baby boomers are responsible for all that is evil and horrible today. You might try pulling your head out of your butt and read some history - you'll find that nothing is as simple as you would like it to be, nor is it necessarily simple enough for you to understand it without work (which, I suspect, you're unwilling to do).
No, I think Apple has nothing to do with it. Frankly, I don't think any corporation does. The reason is that a corporation exists to make money, and thus to market to the people whom they want to make money from. Once a corporation comes on the scene and starts doing things a certain way, it's because it's *already figured out that that's what's going to appeal to people of that demographic*. TV, Radio, Apple., etc. They're not causing the problem - they're a product of the problem. The worst that can be said for them is that because of the power of their machine, they take what could have been an easily managed problem that already exists and throw it all out of proportion.
No. It's the parents. If parents would parent responsibly, make sure their kids did stuff that benefited them rather than damaged, held their teachers' feet to the fire to do the same thing... we wouldn't be hearing about any of this.
Apple., etc., only has an inroad into the psyche of children because there's a parent shaped hole that isn't filled.
Perhaps I'm just more realistic than the average college graduate, but I'd really just...like a job. I knew, coming in, that whatever I learned in college was just the tip of the iceberg; if getting a BS in Computer Science really prepared you for everything you might see in the "real world" then why are there Masters and Doctorate programs? I will admit that a lot of my fellow college students thought that they are geniuses for one reason or another, but I'm under no such delusions. Hell, in this economy, I'd just like a steady IT job; but it has been remarkably hard to find one with the market flooded with more experienced individuals.
You know, Masters and Doctorate programs have nothing to do with the "real world" of non-academic jobs. There IS a lot that you don't learn in college, but you are expected to learn it on the job.
This may be true in the U.S. but its not true everywhere else. In many European countries, like my own home Sweden, a master's degree in engineering is not at all uncommon. In fact, for most engineering jobs a master's degree is required.
I graduated with a CS bachelors a few years ago thinking I would have a good shot at doing some compiler design or maybe kernel hacking.. despite the fact that I had only done these kind of things in a sterile learning environment that did not at all simulate the level of complexity involved in modern languages and operating systems.. So when I got out of school, I found out that, rather being able to get a job doing these kinds of things, I was lucky to get a web app programming job.
I'm not bitter. I should have realized this from the beginning. But I really wish someone would have pointed out to me that this was what the job market was actually like, so that I could have gone the EE route instead.
Clearly you misunderstood his post. Working for free for a "decent chance" of it paying off "eventually" is not good business sense in any way, shape, or form.
I assumed that if he really wanted to work on compilers or kernels, then it must be a personal interest.
If he would view working on open-source compilers/kernels as an unpaid chore for "the man", then it's probably a good thing that he didn't get a job working on such software in the first place.
There was no special trait about Bill Gates that led him to the riches he has today, unless hard work (like it or not, the guy has spent a lot of time and effort to get where he is today) and knowing when a good opportunity was passing his way (hello, QDOS!) are somehow special traits.
A virtuous man ensures fairness of opportunity, not fairness of outcome. Attempting to create a fairness of outcome--in other words, creating the expectation that the world owes you something--is the first step toward a terminally fucked society.
I have seen a growing trend of what I would call 'TV reality' college graduates â" kids who graduated school in the last few years and seem to have a view of the workplace that is very much fashioned by TV programs, where 22-year-olds lead billion-dollar corporate mergers in Paris and jet around the world.
They just don't realize that the show is, "The Office".
My mum's a primary school teacher, so I got to hear all about the crazy fads that sweep through the education system as regularly as forest fires.
Education fads are a bit like management fads, or the hype-waves that sweep IT; some self-important tosser somewhere in academia comes up with a stupid idea, some government pinheads buy into it, and before you know it, it's all over like a bad rash.
The movement to boost pupils' self-esteem was a recent big one, which according to a recent piece on the BBC, took off in America. The idea, is that kids get praised all the time as a means of positive reinforcement -- with the obvious drawbacks.
But then again, it could be the Dunning-Kruger Effect (where the incompetent are unable to see their own incompetence), which is as strong now as it always has been.
They've been systematically lied to. Western youth has been aggressively fed a vision of fun, laid back jobs that inexplicably pay huge amounts, coupled with an excessive consumer lifestyle.
Remember the apartments they lived in in Friends? Remember what they did for a living? Exactly.
Its why there was so much consumer debt - people thought they were entitled to a lifestyle beyond their means, and were willing to take loans to get it.
Remember the apartments they lived in in Friends? Remember what they did for a living? Exactly.
I seem to recall that the apartment in Friends was rent-controlled at a level that had been set some time in the 60s, and they were illegally subletting it from a elderly relative who had long since moved away. Also, the show had some good stories about the financial issues of people living in Manhattan.
Nitpicks aside, though, you're right about Friends (most of the time) and TV in general. But then, TV has always lied about a lot of things: everybody is good looking and has no weight or fitness issues (unless they're evil or they're somebody's funny sidekick). Bad people always suffer for their badness, and good people are always rewarded. Nobody is ever at a loss for clever thing to say. All complicated issues get resolved one way or another after 48 minutes of interaction. Etc., etc.
So today I see an article about the growing narcissism of students
Might as well replace "students" with "people". The whole concept that this is somehow limited to graduates of whatever reeks of the "dirty intellectuals" cultural revolution mentality.
It's not graduates that are getting narcissistic, it's much of our society that's changing this way, of which they are but a subset. If you think that the people who don't finish high school and suckle on the NYC welfare tit for much of their life are any less narcissistic, you've got a dose of reality coming...
Our society has removed a system of intrinsic rewards that involve satisfaction from doing one's job well, and providing for one's family, and replaced it with a money-grabbing race for being buried with the most stuff. But make no mistake about it - this phenomenon has far less to do with education, and far more to do with the destruction of family as a concept.
Students find that the real world does not match their ideals and expectations!
I think no matter what age bracket you fit into, you or someone you knew as a post-student entering the workforce for the first time had their expectations shattered.
It's neither shocking nor news, and it certainly doesn't make you narcissistic. It makes you inexperienced, which is kind of the whole thing, isn't it?
On the other hand, there are more young people succeeding that do make it that far that quickly nowadays, so maybe you could say that the variance is increasing - more people expecting greatness and being shocked, but also more people going directly to greatness.
Furthermore, the example of one prospective employee thinking that what were in reality fairly standard and expected skills made him a unique snowflake doesn't mean he and every other post-student is narcissistic. More likely, in school he WAS cream of the crop, teaching himself new skills and so on. What he doesn't realize is that the people he's comparing himself to are now working at McDonald's; he now needs to compete against the much smaller group of people like himself. Depending on the school, he may have never met anyone else from this group.
Anyway, not narcissism, not egotism... just a mix of inexperience, naivete, and optimism/idealism.
Every new generation is bound to feel superior to the previous, being fresh and inexperienced and self-confident in their sparkling new standards. Every previous generation will feel that the new children are annoying little pests wearing too-big boots. This is to be expected, and the attitudes usually fade over time as the new generation gets hit with reality and the older ones come to stand them. Of course, this really is the one of the first times that it comes up in the software fields, as the field is relatively new.
The article is based on nothing but anecdotal evidence. The person who wrote the slashdot summary (named, strangely enough, SpuriousLogic) relates some more anecdotal evidence. Now slashdotters are requested to supply even more anecdotal evidence.
I teach physics at a community college. Any generalization you can make about my students will be true about some of them and false about some others. Yes, I have encountered some students whose self-esteem seems unrealistically high. Yes, I have also encountered some other students whose self-esteem seemed to me to be unrealistically low.
If you want to show a trend over time, like increasing narcissism, you need quantitative data from two different times, and you need the random and systematic errors on those two data-points to be small enough that they can be shown to be unequal with a high level of confidence.
My default hypothesis about any educational reform movement is that it will have absolutely no effect on anything. I'm only persuaded to the contrary if solid quantitative evidence shows up to the contrary. My default hypothesis is that the self-esteem movement has had absolutely no effect on students' self-esteem, or on their achievement, or on anything else. Students tend to be pretty realistic. They look and compare themselves with other students. They know if they got an F on their physics exam and their lab partner didn't.
...are you seeing the sorts of 'crashing down to Earth' expectations of college grads described here?
I see a little of that 20-something narcissism here and there, but it's not universal. What I see more of is what I would call intellectual stubbornness. Every so often I'll interview someone I think has potential and, even if they don't get hired for that job, I'll keep them on a short list for future openings. Along with that give them some suggestions for areas of focus that would give them an edge on the next interview. Do this, this and this and the next time we have an opening I don't have to advertise it, just hire out of the pool. Saves me sorting through the resume slush pile.
At first I was subtle about the suggestions, but very few would pick up on them. Even when I would contact them quarterly to see how they were doing, trying to show them they really were on the short list. I finally had to quit being subtle and just give them the right answers. But even when I did that, it's amazing how few would give me that answer back. One I suggested they get familiar with a non-MSFT development framework. Any one. Zend, Cake, Rails...anything. They didn't have to develop an app, just learn about one. An hour of reading. And the next time we talked they were in another.NET class. Then acted surprised when they didn't get that job, either. ????
That I do see that a lot in young people. They're convinced they have the right answers and won't budge or take a suggestion. There's no curiosity or willingness to explore. they seem really regimented in their thinking. Something I found profoundly saddening personally and, as hiring authority, really freaking annoying.
When the delta cost between an modest office and a cube is around $2k/year, I frankly have a hard time seeing why a $50k professional shouldn't have one if he wants it. If he asked you for $2k additional salary to work for you, you'd give it to him. So why not a $2k office?
That he's expected to settle for a cube is almost pure PHB. It says that the organization is more interested in the petty politics of oneupmanship than the are in their employees' comfort and productivity.
On the other hand, my eyes head for the ceiling when the guy who has been there two weeks starts explaining the half dozen major changes we should make to the business. Spend six months learning how to do it my way you greenie! When you're fully trained on the job, I'll be interested in your opinions on how to improve it.
The older generation always scoffs at the younger generation. There is always a large component of kids-these-days to these types of arguments. That being said, as a 40 year old college professor who's been doing this for 8 years, I do see a shift in the behavior of students, primarily the average-to-below-average student. The bright students who are motivated and mature don't seem to suffer from the problems I'm about to describe. One big problem is that many students simply are unwilling to do more than a fixed amount of work that they don't want to do. In college they place aspects of their lives which are not academic at a higher priority and get annoyed when their performance reflects this. I see more and more of this. The main things are: socializing, work, and family. It's not that I didn't have those thing when I was in college, it's just that academics always came first. Many students simply refuse to dedicate the time they need to do well; it's not that they're dumb.
A lot of students really do have the precious-snowflake chip on their shoulders. A junior faculty member in my department who has only been teaching for a couple of years and who is very student-focused told a student who was struggling in one of his classes that her main reason for not doing well was that she was not working hard enough (and he was right). How did she take it? She went to the dean and filed a complaint against the professor. This same student is always passing notes and talking to another student in one of my classes. I have confronted them in class and they will shoot me dirty looks, shut up for a while, and start back up again the next class. The professor I mentioned above has spent hours and hours with another student trying to help her with the subject material and to show her appreciation, she accused him of "destroying her passion" for her major.
The precious-snowflake syndrome is strongly tied to the immaturity problem which plagues a lot of college students. I think students are simply putting off growing up, and I am regularly dealing with high-school crap in, for example, sophomore-level science classes (courses in the students' major even!) which I simply never had to deal with before.
When I am in one of my more cynical moods, I take great pleasure in the idea that these kids are in for a really rude awakening after they graduate in the current economic climate. Maybe it will be the splash of cold water in the face that they need to grow the f*ck up and realize that the world does not exist solely for their own entertainment, and that simply gracing me with their presence in class does not get them an automatic B.
But you are doing exactly what the article predicts that you would do - it's everyone's fault but your own. Yes, yes, they do share blame, of course they do. And I know as much as anyone that children are not at truly fault for how they're raised. But at some point, it may be their fault - but placing blame really doesn't fix the situation. Only you can fix the situation, and it doesn't really matter whose fault it is.
I'm speaking as someone whose parents really messed him up in many different ways - but ultimately, they are not going to fix it, I have to. And placing blame really does nothing but remind me of the past, instead of looking to the future.
Put shortly and bluntly, who gives a fuck whose fault it is, I care more about what you do with your life and who you are *now*.:-)
I'm not saying it's easy. But doing the not easy stuff is what differentiates one from the rest. At least in the beginning, who knows, you might have to sacrifice pay for experience. But the investment will pay back.
Unless your parents are abusive, they are only there to guide you - your motivation and your willingness to step out on your own to figure stuff out is what's going to really give you what you need. Ultimately, parents and teachers are only there to tell you how to stick your foot in the door. What happens once it's there is entirely up to you.
I don't think I'm saying this right. Oh well. It's Sunday.
Maybe I'm just cynical, but does it really matter? If they want to sit there on their asses and bitch and moan about how bad their lives are, that's their problem - and it makes it just that much easier for people like you and I to make something of ourselves.
I'm not saying I wish it on them, really... but I'm not responsible for them, I'm responsible for me. You see what I'm saying? You can lead a horse to water...
It only becomes my problem when they expect me to support them...
I think the web contributes. You can find websites with ready-made "communities" for any absurd group. Facebook, Twitter and the like feed on the inherent ego-centrism & narcissism of the age group - as if people really CARE what you're doing minute to minute. It all fosters a false sense of importance and belonging that just doesn't exist in the real world. On the other hand, shifting the blame to anyone but yourself is another issue. Sure, your parents told you you were special, but you believed it.
We do kids a disservice by constantly telling them how wonderful they are. Fact is, people build a real sense of self-worth by working hard to overcome challenges, not by being given prizes.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday March 15 2009, @04:21PM (#27202835)
Well, I've seen an awful lot of situations where two guys are doing exactly the same job but one guy is getting paid a whole lot more because of "seniority". That really doesn't seem fair to me...
While I understand where you're coming from, this argument is very disingenuous at best. Basically, you're saying there's no value to someone having more work experience in a field (or several fields). I can't count the number of times I've seen a problem arise (or even a request for suggestions) where the younger people throw out solutions that are quite simply moronic. Or they'll cost a ton to implement. Sure, it happens with "senior" staff, too, but oftentimes their answers tend to be on the more practical side. And it's largely because they're more familiar with the myriad aspects involved. Or they are a major part of the institutional knowledge that is required to competently resolve the situation. Unfortunately, many people never seem to realize this. And they're often the ones pulling the group down as a whole. So is it any surprise that they're the ones who tend to make less?
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday March 15 2009, @04:47PM (#27203121)
I will always remember the smack down that a young programmer in our office received at the hands of a senior programmer. The young programmer was talking to the rest of us about how certain network environments work, making a rather loud argument about one particular aspect. The senior programmer, who was well respected by the rest of us, overheard the conversation and offered a quiet opinion... "that's not how it works". The young programmer spoke up quickly, saying he had managed a network of this type for 2 years and that he knew it worked this way. At this point the senior programmer grins and says... "Well, that's not how I wrote the specification". He then gave a 20 minute lecture on how it actually works.
This idea that people have to work for years before moving up the ladder and it's all based on experience and not actual skill is bullshit and it needs to stop.
Uh, guy? I think you're the one they're talking about in the article.
Oh they'll crash all right (Score:5, Interesting)
... until the bosses have the same mindset, at which point we're all screwed.
Re:Oh they'll crash all right (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, many bosses are equally out of touch with reality. Some even a bit more.
Anyway, you get what you teach. Many are taught that capitalism is all and that anything comes at a price. Would it then be strange that the same person puts a price on his/her ability (whether deserved or not is immaterial to the principle).
Parent
Re:Oh they'll crash all right (Score:5, Insightful)
"Everything comes at a price" is a consequence of capitalism, not the goal. The principle is that if I value your skills more than I value X dollars per year, then that's what I'll be willing to pay you. If you won't work for less than X + 10000 dollars per year and that's more than I value your skills, we don't have a deal and I'll keep my money.
If you want something without giving anything in return, what you are talking about isn't capitalism.
Note: By you, I don't mean you, I mean them.
Parent
Re:Oh they'll crash all right (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>If I value your skills more than I value X dollars per year, then that's what I'll be willing to pay you. If they won't work for less than X + 10000 dollars per year, we don't have a deal and I'll keep my money.
Given the current economy I was considering standing at the local interstate on-ramp with this sign:
"Engineer - Will work for food or minimum wage."
Ironically this is the technique our local politicians use to get elected - "Smith for State Senate". ;-) - I visited my alma mater recently, and I was stuck by how much changed in just ten years time. The students are doing "cool" projects that I can only dream of doing in the real world. (Example - Programming a robot to swim across a lake and collect trash.) It makes me wonder if they will be disappointed with their first jobs, which will mostly consist of sitting at a cubicle all day and writing documents.
In the effort to "sell school" I think some engineering programs are giving students the wrong impression of what the engineering career is really like.
Parent
Re:Oh they'll crash all right (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm dealing with a manager who exhibits a high degree of narcissistic personality traits. In filling a recent vacancy for a software developer he interviewed two candidates. One a highly friendly and right noise-making guy and one a very professional, modest and highly competent person with a lot of direct experience in exactly the technology we use. It was no surprise to anyone when he appointed the one that threatened his sense of superiority least, i.e. the less capable one.
A month after appointing this person, he's shown little work ethic - bugging me with useless chatter repeatedly and not engaging with the simple orientation tasks he's been give and when after a month to work on this task he presents his work, he crumbles at the simplest baby questions. He's been hired to work on your standard PHP / MySQL combo. When asked to write a basic query to select a row from a single table, he couldn't do it. He didn't even understand the principle of a foreign key after it was explained to him multiple times. I later asked him to update the contents of a row and he couldn't even come close to that. And I find it even more dumbfounding that he tries to bullshit his way out of this.
The manager's reaction? He finds it hillarious. He's little focused on the actual success of the team and mainly focused on his relationships with people. I'm currently training this new developer in the basics of SQL and database design (we reached JOINs last week) but I might decide to kill him in the hopes of getting a replacement that can code.
Parent
Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Insightful)
....mom and dad always told them they were incredibly special, and would do amazing things.
It never occurred to them that there's a hell of a lot more jobs that are sheer drudgery than are a thrill a minute.
In the almost seven years since I graduated from college, I've never been sent overseas for work. I have been sent exciting places like Indianapolis.
But I always had a job during college, too. And because of that, the only thing I expected after graduation was a better salary (but not amazingly better).
Re:Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Funny)
I have been sent exciting places like Indianapolis.
Oh, I used to lie awake at nights, dreaming of being sent to Indianapolis. Or was it nightmares.
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Re:Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, it was over fifteen years into my career before I was sent anywhere interesting. And even then, you end up spending so much time actually working that I got very little time to actually go look at the historic European city I was sent to.
What most new college grads don't seem to understand is that everyone in the industry wants to do the fun stuff and go the fun places, and as a college grad, everyone in the industry has more experience than you do. You have to pay your dues like everyone else.
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Re:Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Insightful)
While I think you're right about the attitudes of many parents, a greater contributor to this problem is in academia. If I had a dime for every skill that the Career Services department told me was instant top-of-the-stack material... well, I wouldn't have had to spend months searching for a job below my level of education.
Universities are still businesses, and one major source of income is bright-eyed young freshman who believe they will be able to conquer the world in four years, if only they invest $120,000 in a bachelor's degree. It doesn't benefit the universities (in the short run) to dispell that illusion.
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Re:Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Informative)
Business travel is awful. You fly somewhere really exciting and interesting - work your ass off, have zero social life, feel incredibly lonely as you wonder around your hotel, then you fly home. The important thing is to make up lots of stories of how great it was, all the crazy people you met, what a great bunch of lads your customers/colleagues are etc..
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Re:Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Funny)
I agree with you almost completely except for who to blame. It wasn't Mom and Dad who told everyone they were special, it was that evil, evil man Mr. Rogers [poetv.com].
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Re:Yeah, well, you know what? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, well -- if you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!
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Re:Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a uk based software engineer
There's the difference right there. As a European, travelling internationally is not all that different than domestic travel in the US.
The nearest foreign territory to me (Bermuda), is an hour plane ride, or several hours on a boat.
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Re:Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Interesting)
The trick is to work for a company that's gigantic, and has a workforce all over the place. Then get yourself inserted in to the most international team you can find there. Some team that works on a disproportionately foreign open-source project for instance ( like KDE, or for that matter just Linux ). Then you need to do a bit of extra work to warrant your being sent places ( write papers for conferences, etc )
Technical marketing is another mostly-technical field that involves a lot of international travel ( though you'll find you spend an inordinate amount of time in SFBay ) since you need to keep your ear on the buzz of the industry and make sure your company has a showing at various trade shows.
If international travel is high on your list of job satisfaction goals, you can achieve it. You may need to do extra work or take a bit of a salary cut to get it, but you can do it.
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Re:Precious Snowflakes (Score:5, Insightful)
Well said. I'm a contractor, so that means I move from place-to-place. Utah, Oklahoma, Michigan, South Carolina, New York, Virginia, Maryland, Jersey. My job as a contractor means I live inside hotel rooms, which doesn't bother me at all, but it also means I can't "settle down" because I'm always moving.
If you want to get married and raise a family, you need to stay in one spot with a permanent job.
If you want to travel to "exotic" places like I have, don't do it through work. Do it through vacation using your own money, and take the wife & kids with you.
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Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not until we all started working and actually failed at something that we got knocked back down to reality.
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Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint"
- Hesiod, 8th century BC
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Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
And what happened to the future of the ancient Greek people? Conquest by Alexander the Great and annexation by the Romans.
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Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Let me translate that from the original Greek for you: "Hey, you kids get off my lawn!"
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Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the world around you and show me where 'hard work' is getting the best results for the worker.
The best ways to a life of comfort and excitement are luck, corruption, parental privilege, or a combination of all three. Good ideas might also get you somewhere, but only with a dose of luck attached. Sometimes, but certainly not always, these might need to be coupled with a workload that's maybe equivalent to that of a nurse or a teacher. Notice how said nurse and teacher are putting in equally hard work for a relative pittance?
The way monetary value is measured has become almost completely abstract, so it's unsurprising that those growing up in this system have different ideas to the older generation.
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Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I really do blame the baby boomers. They grew up in a sort of fantasy world, where they could preach peace, love, and not war
Right. You're living in your own fantasy world where it has become convenient to blame the baby boomers. I'm a baby boomer and lived through those times. We had to fight to "preach peace" in opposition to Johnson and Nixon and their wars - and those fights were sometimes, perhaps often, bloody.
But it has become the accepted truth (and as such never to be questioned by those who accept it) that the baby boomers are responsible for all that is evil and horrible today. You might try pulling your head out of your butt and read some history - you'll find that nothing is as simple as you would like it to be, nor is it necessarily simple enough for you to understand it without work (which, I suspect, you're unwilling to do).
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Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I think Apple has nothing to do with it. Frankly, I don't think any corporation does. The reason is that a corporation exists to make money, and thus to market to the people whom they want to make money from. Once a corporation comes on the scene and starts doing things a certain way, it's because it's *already figured out that that's what's going to appeal to people of that demographic*. TV, Radio, Apple., etc. They're not causing the problem - they're a product of the problem. The worst that can be said for them is that because of the power of their machine, they take what could have been an easily managed problem that already exists and throw it all out of proportion.
No. It's the parents. If parents would parent responsibly, make sure their kids did stuff that benefited them rather than damaged, held their teachers' feet to the fire to do the same thing... we wouldn't be hearing about any of this.
Apple., etc., only has an inroad into the psyche of children because there's a parent shaped hole that isn't filled.
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As a young college graduate... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps I'm just more realistic than the average college graduate, but I'd really just...like a job. I knew, coming in, that whatever I learned in college was just the tip of the iceberg; if getting a BS in Computer Science really prepared you for everything you might see in the "real world" then why are there Masters and Doctorate programs? I will admit that a lot of my fellow college students thought that they are geniuses for one reason or another, but I'm under no such delusions. Hell, in this economy, I'd just like a steady IT job; but it has been remarkably hard to find one with the market flooded with more experienced individuals.
Re:As a young college graduate... (Score:5, Informative)
You know, Masters and Doctorate programs have nothing to do with the "real world" of non-academic jobs. There IS a lot that you don't learn in college, but you are expected to learn it on the job.
This may be true in the U.S. but its not true everywhere else. In many European countries, like my own home Sweden, a master's degree in engineering is not at all uncommon. In fact, for most engineering jobs a master's degree is required.
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They give you a false impression in school.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not bitter. I should have realized this from the beginning. But I really wish someone would have pointed out to me that this was what the job market was actually like, so that I could have gone the EE route instead.
Re:They give you a false impression in school.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You do have a shot:
If you do a good job at one of those for a while, I think there's a decent chance of turning it into a paying job eventually.
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Re:They give you a false impression in school.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I assumed that if he really wanted to work on compilers or kernels, then it must be a personal interest.
If he would view working on open-source compilers/kernels as an unpaid chore for "the man", then it's probably a good thing that he didn't get a job working on such software in the first place.
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Re:They give you a false impression in school.. (Score:5, Insightful)
There was no special trait about Bill Gates that led him to the riches he has today, unless hard work (like it or not, the guy has spent a lot of time and effort to get where he is today) and knowing when a good opportunity was passing his way (hello, QDOS!) are somehow special traits.
A virtuous man ensures fairness of opportunity, not fairness of outcome. Attempting to create a fairness of outcome--in other words, creating the expectation that the world owes you something--is the first step toward a terminally fucked society.
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A question for the submitter (Score:5, Funny)
It IS like TV (Score:5, Funny)
They just don't realize that the show is, "The Office".
Education fads (Score:5, Insightful)
My mum's a primary school teacher, so I got to hear all about the crazy fads that sweep through the education system as regularly as forest fires.
Education fads are a bit like management fads, or the hype-waves that sweep IT; some self-important tosser somewhere in academia comes up with a stupid idea, some government pinheads buy into it, and before you know it, it's all over like a bad rash.
The movement to boost pupils' self-esteem was a recent big one, which according to a recent piece on the BBC, took off in America. The idea, is that kids get praised all the time as a means of positive reinforcement -- with the obvious drawbacks.
But then again, it could be the Dunning-Kruger Effect (where the incompetent are unable to see their own incompetence), which is as strong now as it always has been.
It isn't their fault. (Score:5, Insightful)
They've been systematically lied to. Western youth has been aggressively fed a vision of fun, laid back jobs that inexplicably pay huge amounts, coupled with an excessive consumer lifestyle.
Remember the apartments they lived in in Friends? Remember what they did for a living? Exactly.
Its why there was so much consumer debt - people thought they were entitled to a lifestyle beyond their means, and were willing to take loans to get it.
Re:It isn't their fault. (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember the apartments they lived in in Friends? Remember what they did for a living? Exactly.
I seem to recall that the apartment in Friends was rent-controlled at a level that had been set some time in the 60s, and they were illegally subletting it from a elderly relative who had long since moved away. Also, the show had some good stories about the financial issues of people living in Manhattan.
Nitpicks aside, though, you're right about Friends (most of the time) and TV in general. But then, TV has always lied about a lot of things: everybody is good looking and has no weight or fitness issues (unless they're evil or they're somebody's funny sidekick). Bad people always suffer for their badness, and good people are always rewarded. Nobody is ever at a loss for clever thing to say. All complicated issues get resolved one way or another after 48 minutes of interaction. Etc., etc.
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People, not "students" (Score:5, Interesting)
Might as well replace "students" with "people". The whole concept that this is somehow limited to graduates of whatever reeks of the "dirty intellectuals" cultural revolution mentality.
It's not graduates that are getting narcissistic, it's much of our society that's changing this way, of which they are but a subset. If you think that the people who don't finish high school and suckle on the NYC welfare tit for much of their life are any less narcissistic, you've got a dose of reality coming...
Our society has removed a system of intrinsic rewards that involve satisfaction from doing one's job well, and providing for one's family, and replaced it with a money-grabbing race for being buried with the most stuff. But make no mistake about it - this phenomenon has far less to do with education, and far more to do with the destruction of family as a concept.
This just in! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think no matter what age bracket you fit into, you or someone you knew as a post-student entering the workforce for the first time had their expectations shattered.
It's neither shocking nor news, and it certainly doesn't make you narcissistic. It makes you inexperienced, which is kind of the whole thing, isn't it?
On the other hand, there are more young people succeeding that do make it that far that quickly nowadays, so maybe you could say that the variance is increasing - more people expecting greatness and being shocked, but also more people going directly to greatness.
Furthermore, the example of one prospective employee thinking that what were in reality fairly standard and expected skills made him a unique snowflake doesn't mean he and every other post-student is narcissistic. More likely, in school he WAS cream of the crop, teaching himself new skills and so on. What he doesn't realize is that the people he's comparing himself to are now working at McDonald's; he now needs to compete against the much smaller group of people like himself. Depending on the school, he may have never met anyone else from this group.
Anyway, not narcissism, not egotism... just a mix of inexperience, naivete, and optimism/idealism.
Every Generation (Score:5, Interesting)
Every new generation is bound to feel superior to the previous, being fresh and inexperienced and self-confident in their sparkling new standards. Every previous generation will feel that the new children are annoying little pests wearing too-big boots. This is to be expected, and the attitudes usually fade over time as the new generation gets hit with reality and the older ones come to stand them.
Of course, this really is the one of the first times that it comes up in the software fields, as the field is relatively new.
anecdotal evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
The article is based on nothing but anecdotal evidence. The person who wrote the slashdot summary (named, strangely enough, SpuriousLogic) relates some more anecdotal evidence. Now slashdotters are requested to supply even more anecdotal evidence.
I teach physics at a community college. Any generalization you can make about my students will be true about some of them and false about some others. Yes, I have encountered some students whose self-esteem seems unrealistically high. Yes, I have also encountered some other students whose self-esteem seemed to me to be unrealistically low.
If you want to show a trend over time, like increasing narcissism, you need quantitative data from two different times, and you need the random and systematic errors on those two data-points to be small enough that they can be shown to be unequal with a high level of confidence.
My default hypothesis about any educational reform movement is that it will have absolutely no effect on anything. I'm only persuaded to the contrary if solid quantitative evidence shows up to the contrary. My default hypothesis is that the self-esteem movement has had absolutely no effect on students' self-esteem, or on their achievement, or on anything else. Students tend to be pretty realistic. They look and compare themselves with other students. They know if they got an F on their physics exam and their lab partner didn't.
I've seen a little of that (Score:5, Interesting)
I see a little of that 20-something narcissism here and there, but it's not universal. What I see more of is what I would call intellectual stubbornness. Every so often I'll interview someone I think has potential and, even if they don't get hired for that job, I'll keep them on a short list for future openings. Along with that give them some suggestions for areas of focus that would give them an edge on the next interview. Do this, this and this and the next time we have an opening I don't have to advertise it, just hire out of the pool. Saves me sorting through the resume slush pile.
At first I was subtle about the suggestions, but very few would pick up on them. Even when I would contact them quarterly to see how they were doing, trying to show them they really were on the short list. I finally had to quit being subtle and just give them the right answers. But even when I did that, it's amazing how few would give me that answer back. One I suggested they get familiar with a non-MSFT development framework. Any one. Zend, Cake, Rails...anything. They didn't have to develop an app, just learn about one. An hour of reading. And the next time we talked they were in another .NET class. Then acted surprised when they didn't get that job, either. ????
That I do see that a lot in young people. They're convinced they have the right answers and won't budge or take a suggestion. There's no curiosity or willingness to explore. they seem really regimented in their thinking. Something I found profoundly saddening personally and, as hiring authority, really freaking annoying.
Why not an office? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the delta cost between an modest office and a cube is around $2k/year, I frankly have a hard time seeing why a $50k professional shouldn't have one if he wants it. If he asked you for $2k additional salary to work for you, you'd give it to him. So why not a $2k office?
That he's expected to settle for a cube is almost pure PHB. It says that the organization is more interested in the petty politics of oneupmanship than the are in their employees' comfort and productivity.
On the other hand, my eyes head for the ceiling when the guy who has been there two weeks starts explaining the half dozen major changes we should make to the business. Spend six months learning how to do it my way you greenie! When you're fully trained on the job, I'll be interested in your opinions on how to improve it.
More than just kids-these-days (Score:5, Insightful)
The older generation always scoffs at the younger generation. There is always a large component of kids-these-days to these types of arguments. That being said, as a 40 year old college professor who's been doing this for 8 years, I do see a shift in the behavior of students, primarily the average-to-below-average student. The bright students who are motivated and mature don't seem to suffer from the problems I'm about to describe. One big problem is that many students simply are unwilling to do more than a fixed amount of work that they don't want to do. In college they place aspects of their lives which are not academic at a higher priority and get annoyed when their performance reflects this. I see more and more of this. The main things are: socializing, work, and family. It's not that I didn't have those thing when I was in college, it's just that academics always came first. Many students simply refuse to dedicate the time they need to do well; it's not that they're dumb.
A lot of students really do have the precious-snowflake chip on their shoulders. A junior faculty member in my department who has only been teaching for a couple of years and who is very student-focused told a student who was struggling in one of his classes that her main reason for not doing well was that she was not working hard enough (and he was right). How did she take it? She went to the dean and filed a complaint against the professor. This same student is always passing notes and talking to another student in one of my classes. I have confronted them in class and they will shoot me dirty looks, shut up for a while, and start back up again the next class. The professor I mentioned above has spent hours and hours with another student trying to help her with the subject material and to show her appreciation, she accused him of "destroying her passion" for her major.
The precious-snowflake syndrome is strongly tied to the immaturity problem which plagues a lot of college students. I think students are simply putting off growing up, and I am regularly dealing with high-school crap in, for example, sophomore-level science classes (courses in the students' major even!) which I simply never had to deal with before.
When I am in one of my more cynical moods, I take great pleasure in the idea that these kids are in for a really rude awakening after they graduate in the current economic climate. Maybe it will be the splash of cold water in the face that they need to grow the f*ck up and realize that the world does not exist solely for their own entertainment, and that simply gracing me with their presence in class does not get them an automatic B.
Re:Blame the parents teachers (Score:5, Insightful)
But you are doing exactly what the article predicts that you would do - it's everyone's fault but your own. Yes, yes, they do share blame, of course they do. And I know as much as anyone that children are not at truly fault for how they're raised. But at some point, it may be their fault - but placing blame really doesn't fix the situation. Only you can fix the situation, and it doesn't really matter whose fault it is.
I'm speaking as someone whose parents really messed him up in many different ways - but ultimately, they are not going to fix it, I have to. And placing blame really does nothing but remind me of the past, instead of looking to the future.
Put shortly and bluntly, who gives a fuck whose fault it is, I care more about what you do with your life and who you are *now*. :-)
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Re:Blame the parents teachers (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source? Internships?
I'm not saying it's easy. But doing the not easy stuff is what differentiates one from the rest. At least in the beginning, who knows, you might have to sacrifice pay for experience. But the investment will pay back.
Unless your parents are abusive, they are only there to guide you - your motivation and your willingness to step out on your own to figure stuff out is what's going to really give you what you need. Ultimately, parents and teachers are only there to tell you how to stick your foot in the door. What happens once it's there is entirely up to you.
I don't think I'm saying this right. Oh well. It's Sunday.
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Re:Blame the parents teachers (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe I'm just cynical, but does it really matter? If they want to sit there on their asses and bitch and moan about how bad their lives are, that's their problem - and it makes it just that much easier for people like you and I to make something of ourselves.
I'm not saying I wish it on them, really... but I'm not responsible for them, I'm responsible for me. You see what I'm saying? You can lead a horse to water...
It only becomes my problem when they expect me to support them...
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Re:Blame the parents teachers (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the web contributes. You can find websites with ready-made "communities" for any absurd group. Facebook, Twitter and the like feed on the inherent ego-centrism & narcissism of the age group - as if people really CARE what you're doing minute to minute. It all fosters a false sense of importance and belonging that just doesn't exist in the real world. On the other hand, shifting the blame to anyone but yourself is another issue. Sure, your parents told you you were special, but you believed it.
We do kids a disservice by constantly telling them how wonderful they are. Fact is, people build a real sense of self-worth by working hard to overcome challenges, not by being given prizes.
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Re:The real issue: "seniority" based pay (Score:5, Insightful)
While I understand where you're coming from, this argument is very disingenuous at best. Basically, you're saying there's no value to someone having more work experience in a field (or several fields). I can't count the number of times I've seen a problem arise (or even a request for suggestions) where the younger people throw out solutions that are quite simply moronic. Or they'll cost a ton to implement. Sure, it happens with "senior" staff, too, but oftentimes their answers tend to be on the more practical side. And it's largely because they're more familiar with the myriad aspects involved. Or they are a major part of the institutional knowledge that is required to competently resolve the situation. Unfortunately, many people never seem to realize this. And they're often the ones pulling the group down as a whole. So is it any surprise that they're the ones who tend to make less?
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Re:The real issue: "seniority" based pay (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:First Bonus Post (Score:5, Funny)
I made millions selling karma futures, back before the economy turned bad.
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Re:oh really? (Score:5, Funny)
Uh, guy? I think you're the one they're talking about in the article.
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