Millennials Are Obsessed With Side Hustles Because 'They're All' They've Got (qz.com) 351
Quartz ran an article over the weekend which captures a growing trend among millennials: to have a side job -- or as many of them call it, the "side-hustle." One of the reasons that people need this other gig is obviously money, but there are other factors at play as well. From the article: The side hustle offers something worth much more than money: A hedge against feeling stuck and dull and cheated by life. This psychological benefit is the real reason for the Millennial obsession, I'd argue, and why you might want to consider finding your own side hustle, no matter how old you are. Now one might say that this "side-hustle" is not a new phenomenon at all. People have since forever have had multiple jobs to make the ends meet. But the author argues that in the post 2008-crisis, we have witnessed a whole generation where one gig would simply not cut it all for many. The article adds: Previous generations have also coped with such semi-tragedy; probably every human ever has been a sort of actor-waiter at some point. In any case, those of us who are employed generally understand ourselves to be lucky. Working as a benefits administrator, an ad-sales rep or even a Facebook engineer might not be the dream job. But your side hustle can keep you from feeling pigeonholed. It's the distraction from your disappointment, a bridge between crass realities and your compelling inner life. In the best-case scenario, your side hustle can be like a lottery ticket, offering the possibility -- however remote -- that you just might hit the jackpot and discover that holy grail of gigs. The one that perfectly blends money and love. The one that's coming along any day now.
Free time (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, my free time is worth more to me than a second job.
Re:Free time (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody needs a hobby, is what this article boils down to. For the people in question, part time job is hobby.
Re:Free time (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody needs a hobby, is what this article boils down to. For the people in question, part time job is hobby.
I would agree with this, but phrase it as: "Millennials try to turn their hobbies into part-time jobs." I think part of this trend has to do with the desire to eventually turn a "side-gig" into a job that can offer full financial support, and the Internet has made it possible for a lot of people to at least make a fair shot at doing that.
Re:Free time (Score:5, Insightful)
I think part of this trend has to do with the desire to eventually turn a "side-gig" into a job that can offer full financial support, and the Internet has made it possible for a lot of people to at least make a fair shot at doing that.
I really don't think "the Internet" has a lot to do with this, nor do I think it's a "trend." Everybody acts like entrepreneurship was invented in the past couple decades. But how do you think people "got ahead" in previous centuries? How do you think we had a "rise of the middle class" that moved us out of the dark ages of feudalism, then led the charge for the Industrial Revolution, etc.?
A lot of those people were folks with ideas about what they'd prefer to do, and they kept working at a day job to make money to fund what might start as a "hobby" but then lead to a new business or a new invention or whatever. By the 20th century, big business had grown to the point that more people were employed in large corporations, so this idea of "hobbies" or "side jobs" leading to lead to bettering your life shifted instead to "night school" and credentialing/formal study on the side to convince an employer that you're qualified for something better.
The only thing the internet has done is "disrupt" some large corporations and their control in certain sectors, which perhaps makes it a little more likely for an individual to take the "hobby" route instead of the "night school" route again. But let's not kid ourselves -- the number of such people who eventually convert some online hobby to dayjob may be larger than similar entrepreneurs of the past couple generations, but as a percentage of people who dream of doing so... it's vanishingly small.
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Re:Free time (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody needs a hobby, is what this article boils down to. For the people in question, part time job is hobby.
Actually, it's about more than "hobbies." Basically, TFA is about conflating a bunch of things that used to have different terms and corralling them under a new fancy appellation, i.e., "side hustle," which sounds like a really stupid dance people do at weddings.
A few things that are conflated here and had perfectly good terms before:
(1) "Hobbies" -- these are things that basically make you no money. Nominally, they might bring in a little income, but it's so small you don't really pay attention to it at all. You're more interested in the activity than the income. You might only sell some of your work to try to make the expenses "balance out" a little, not really to make a profit.
(2) "Dream jobs" -- these are things that people would like to do with their lives, but they can't "make a living" at it. So they have what used to be called a "day job," and then they work as a musician some evenings or on the weekends. It's more than a "hobby," because they actually would prefer a job as a musician, but the income isn't enough to make it work.
(3) "Second jobs" -- these are what poor people do to survive (i.e., put food on the table and make rent), and what middle-class people do to afford some desirable luxury or send their kids to a nicer private school. (The latter sometimes use the word "side job" too, avoiding the "electric slide" and the "side hustle.") Often they are menial part-time gigs, but they are distinct from the above categories because people generally would prefer NOT to do them.
The author of TFA seems to confuse all of these categories, which used to be straightforward in previous generations. Moreover, he adds his extra "first world problems" twist to his examples:
Maybe that's because many people assume the side hustle is just financially oriented, simply another adaptive response to recession-era economics. Google "side hustle" and you will find thousands of stories, but they are all focused on the how. As in, Dear internet, how can I make another $200 a month to cover my Verizon bill?
If you are struggling financially because of your Verizon bill, maybe your financial priorities are a little screwed up.
Last year, writing for the internet earned me a grand total of $415 before taxes, or about the price of two hotel nights on the outskirts of Manhattan or San Francisco. To say I'm not in it for the money would be understatement. Not because I'm above such earthly considerations. There's just very little money in it to be for.
The side hustle offers something worth much more than money: A hedge against feeling stuck and dull and cheated by life. In fact, given all the hours I've devoted to it, there's no question in my mind that I've lost more than I've made, if only in terms of my Starbucks spend.
If your metric for your side job is that you're spending more money than you're making at Starbucks, you don't have a "side job" or even a "side hustle." You have a hobby. And you have enough disposable income to not give a crap that you're spending that much money on coffee. Good job! Now stop meditating on your first-world problems and trying to conflate them with things real people do to survive or to get things that will really make their lives better.
If your writing hobby gives your life meaning, by all means, keep doing it. But please stop acting like most other people who have to work a second job on the side might also just throw away all their proceeds at Starbucks. Or... well, is that really what a "millennial" budget looks like these days? $200/month Verizon bill, $100/month coffee bill... but can't make rent or afford a car so you still live with your parents?
I really don't want to give into Millennial stereotypes (which I think are often inaccurate), but TFA is just BEGGING for it.
Re:Free time (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't want to give into Millennial stereotypes (which I think are often inaccurate), but TFA is just BEGGING for it.
Don't. Create a new category like "self-entitled" or "dumb as a brick" (which fits most people with a $200 a month phone bill). These are traits that cut across generations.
re: Original article mixing up terms? (Score:3)
Dunno... I think I have to cut the author of the original article a little more slack than the parent poster is doing.
I'm not here to argue for the term "side hustle" as the best choice of words. But traditionally, you had a lot of people who worked one full-time or "career job". And then when situations arose where that wasn't cutting it for them to maintain whatever lifestyle they were used to, they'd take on a second job. Sometimes we called this "moonlighting".
The thing is, this "side hustle" seems to m
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My hobby is working on electronic musical things. Some people know about this and will bring me busted guitar amps and ask if I can fix them. I make money every time I do it for anyone that isn't me, which means it pays for itself plus a bit of extra for some tasty adult beverages.
I never thought of it as a side hustle, or even a second income. It's something I do that is fun, but will be much less fun if I have to rely on it for living or if people think they can bring me their busted junk and I'll fix it
Re:Free time (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, my free time is worth more to me than a second job.
When you are unable to afford food, housing, and defaulting on your student loans you quite likely will reconsider this stance.
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defaulting on your student loans
Winner, winner chicken dinner. This right here.
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When you are unable to afford food, housing, and defaulting on your student loans you quite likely will reconsider this stance.
Let me guess, majored in Medevil History?
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Let me guess, majored in Medevil History?
Umm, "Med-evil History"? Is that where you learn about blood-letting, curses and their effects on the body, and misuses for leeches?
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For at least the last 10 years, that student yoke (sorry... loan) was a bad financial deal. That and every other lottery ticket we're being sold today is going largely unexamined critically.
The "kids" have become lemmings. Not their fault really. It's what they were trained to be.
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Re:Free time (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck you.
For decades they have been telling kids to work hard and achieve all they can. To get a good job you need a degree, they said. And she enough, all the good jobs list a degree as a requirement.
Degrees used to be free of course, or at least quite cheap. And there were good jobs that paid the debt off.
Millennials made the decision to get an education based on the advice they had at the time. They were 18, younger even. And it worked out well for their parents.
But oh, sorry, we broke the economy and well, someone's gotta pay... And it won't be us, we've got ours.
Re:Free time (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck you.
For decades they have been telling kids to work hard and achieve all they can. To get a good job you need a degree, they said. And she enough, all the good jobs list a degree as a requirement.
Degrees used to be free of course, or at least quite cheap. And there were good jobs that paid the debt off.
Millennials made the decision to get an education based on the advice they had at the time. They were 18, younger even. And it worked out well for their parents.
But oh, sorry, we broke the economy and well, someone's gotta pay... And it won't be us, we've got ours.
I pity the H/S graduating classes of 2007 and 2008, who didn't really know any better but weren't in a position to change course. Anyone afterwards knew damn well that they had to think carefully about their major, about getting a job, and about vocational schooling as an option.
Anyone before then should have remembered the echo from the dot-com implosion and recession, and/or was old enough to know that their degree in Religious Studies and Art History was not going to pay the bills. I remember telling people that, but they continued anyway. That was a *conscious* choice for them that they had plenty of time to reconsider their huge incoming student loan debt -- and with a decent job market, they had options.
Re:Free time (Score:4, Interesting)
To a lot of employers a degree was proof that you would be able to get up in the morning, turn up for work and be able to figure out what to do with simple paperwork. The actual content didn't matter a lot for non-technical jobs until there were so many unemployed around that recent graduates had a lot of competition.
Some people who did those degrees you are contemptuous of some years ago see those of us who completed degrees based on science and technology as "the little people" who were "not taught people skills" and are working as management. So while it may seem a stupid idea to do such courses now it was not in the past, may not be in the future and possibly isn't really that much of a stupid idea now. What was stupid in hindsight was what I did - an engineering degree with a tight focus on manufacturing inspired by an approaching obvious manufacturing boom. It was stupid because the boom happened in China while engineers were laid off elsewhere.
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While there was certainly some lying to kids going on here, it was no secret that you won't get a job with a Grievance Studies degree. People who chose a worthless degree to pursue did indeed bring their problems on themselves.
For the rest, it will keep getting worse until the Tuition Bubble pops. With a STEM degree there will be a job eventually, but college debt has gotten out of hand.
Re:Free time (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest flaw I see in my cohorts is that they try to take on the entire world's problems and blame their personal issues on the rest of the world. The internet makes us so connected that people instantly try to relate themselves into movements and jump to conclusions about a complex problems that really have no bearing on them whatsoever. I think Han Solo said it best... Delusions of grandeur. And when it comes to reflection on where they are today, where they want to be in the future, and the inevitable disappointment; the blame game starts, It might be with their parents, or the school/teachers. or the banks, or the government, etc. There is always some institution to blame for their shitty low income life. It's never their own fault.
Student loan debt is a problem. Maybe you should have chosen a different degree or a less expensive university, as the number of jobs for people with liberal arts degrees doesn't match up the the number of people graduating each year. Similarly, banks charge high fees. But you can always put your money in a credit union.
These are the kind of things I deal with too, but I have found that I deal a lot better with them (i.e. they get resolved sooner) once I take the onus upon myself, instead of blaming everyone from my grandparents to Obama for my lot in life. There was a graduation speech a couple years back where the speaker talked about one subject... "You are not special." I think more people aged 18-34 should listen to that speech and take the lesson to heart before trying to blame their problems on institutions.
Re: Free time (Score:5, Informative)
Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia and it was free. Contrary to popular belief the founders were not in fact opposed to the notion of there being benefits for living in a society.
The California public university system was free until Ronald Reagan got elected governor and ended that. His rationale: college students were opposed to his policies. Reaganomics brought exactly that much thought on a national scale and over 30 years of it has ruined this country.
I went to college in the late 80s/early 90s. Paid for it with savings from working through high school, working summers, and the occasional job during school though I tried not to work when school was in. Graduated with zero debt, and near zero fun too but such is life. Got married in 2000 and my wife had to finish school that she'd interrupted when she was younger. We paid for that in cash too. It was hard but we did it.
College inflation brought on by Republican education cuts and privatizing student loans while letting the loan companies have essentially zero risk (thanks, 'free market' conservatives) have made either of those feats mathematically impossible today.
I literally couldn't do what I did were I to try now. I don't blame the millenials for what was done to them, unlike so many dipshits out there. The conservative fallacy that everything that happens to you is your own fault it's just excuse making for the utter failure of their entire philosophy.
We need something better.
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Your sig may be out of date....
It reads, "When will Slashdot support HTTPS?", and I'm seeing 'https' in the URL as I write this. Perhaps your dream has come true! :)
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Sounds like one of those entitled Baby Boomers.
When you are young, you have the energy to do these jobs, keeping busy is exciting when you get older doing too much weighs you down, as your life begins to expand beyond just work.
Re:Free time (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like one of those entitled Baby Boomers.
As a BBer, I have had a "second job" for most of my life. I have stacked hay, renovated houses, and done lots and lots of contract programming. TFA offers no actual evidence that 2nd jobs are more common today. It is all just conjecture and opinion.
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It's not that my free time is worth more to me, it's that I NEED that free time to ensure that I stay very good at and thus keep my first job. I get 5 hours of R&R every evening, double that on the weekend, and about 8 hrs of sleep daily. If I didn't have both the R&R and sleep, I'd suck a lot more at my job. It's not a dream job, but it's a good paying, stable job, that doesn't suck too much.
Good on everyone who shoots for more, but don't come bitching when it bites you in the ass.
We used to call that "Volunteering" (Score:2)
You young whipper snappers get off my lawn!
Day job (Score:5, Informative)
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No, no, no! Millennials invented this. If you think your generation had something similar, then you are wrong.
You might have waited tables while you waited for auditions, but you were never a true lumberjack-barrista.
You might have "dated" using Craigslist while you trained to dance, but you were never a true birdkin-phemynist.
You might have fixed PC's or designed websites during the evenings, but you were never a true unicorn-brogrammer.
Millennials invented this.
Re:Day job (Score:4, Interesting)
This sums things up perfectly. I keep seeing "news stories" about things that have been going on since mankind first drug itself out of whatever cave it was living in being rebranded as something that these newfangled kids are doing.
I don't get it.
The current generally has virtually no historical awareness for anything pre-2005. This is beyond the "normal" cyclic view of history and re-inventions, many of them have only the barest knowledge of life before YouTube. I grew up well after the '70s, but somehow I had cultural awareness of the Vietnam War and its influence on the then-present-day as I was a teen and into my twenties.
The current generation (I don't like the term "Millennial" since I find it to be too broad ... let's say the "Digital Natives" (vs. Generation Y, which was roughly born 1980-1992)) is living in the eternal present, unable to re-contextualize current events. Gen Y and Gen X are doing this too, but at least we're doing it ironically. We still remember the critical thinking thought processes we were raised on, whereas they never really got that to begin with.
Re:Day job (Score:4, Informative)
The current generally has virtually no historical awareness for anything pre-2005.
Don't use such a broad brush. It's not "the millennials" who are doing this - it's just a tiny subset of millennials who are trying to turn their blogs and/or their unknown websites (e.g. qz.com) into a paying gig.
I'm in my 50s, and while I tend to view "millennials" as rather self absorbed and lacking in perspective... I don't think they're any more so than my generation was, back when we were in our early 20s.
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The difference is that they having multiple steady jobs. The Day Job was meant to be your Primary Income.
Servants (Score:2)
That's what they are... servants.
Re:Servants (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course they are! Even servants have servants these days!
People keep telling me folks should all just get better jobs instead of being burger flippers. This comes up a *lot* because I talk a lot about alternatives to minimum wage [wordpress.com], because minimum wage increases concentrate wealth at the expense of jobs (no, your hamburger won't be $15; your $8 value meal will cost 13 cents more, multiplied by 31 billion sales per year, which takes enough of the *same* *total* *income* to make wage for 281,000 minimum-wage jobs--that's the maximum number of jobs that go away). One of the common answers is just "they should get better jobs instead." The other is some magical handwaving about money falling out of the sky (some people don't realize that the wages come out of the consumer's spending, and think that raising wage means more money magically appears in the paycheck, and so it can be spent and create even more jobs--a concept that would indicate infinite money and infinite jobs at all wage levels).
My more recent response has been pointing out that these people can bother feeding themselves, since those wage workers are your grocery baggers and burger flippers. People expect a register operator, stocked store shelves, bagged groceries, and a hot meal ready for them for two dollars; then they complain that somebody actually did all the work involved, and demand that guy stop mooching and go get a real job. It's ludicrous.
Really, I shouldn't talk about this on Slashdot. Bashing concepts like Basic Income is front-page material [slashdot.org], but supporting positions are spam [slashdot.org].
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recognize the source of the increased payroll must be reduced dividends, since all other business operating expenses remain either constant or increase slightly
That may have been true in a different era, but increasingly (and specifically in the fast food industry GP was discussing), the source of an increase in wages would be:
Cost savings realized in automation + paying fewer employees more to work with/manage the robots.
Dividends don't have to go down, in fact they'll probably go up. And wages will go up too, but not enough to offset the lost jobs. This evolution might be hastened by minimum wage hikes, but MW is not fundamentally the cause. The cost of t
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Yes... Unfortunately, not increasing the minimum wage only delays the automation by a year or so, as the cost of automation keeps falling.
Defending the status quo in minimum wages is a losing game, because the other side isn't standing still no matter what you do. Even if you cut the minimum wage automation will continue increasing, because there are some jobs that can already be done for considerably less than a person can live on that haven't yet been automated.
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Aren't we all?
I mean if we are not Serving someone(s) else, than what is the point of having a job?
Sure some jobs people have more authority and power than others, but they are still responsible to serving others in their own way.
aka a "side job" (Score:5, Insightful)
These have been around for awhile. Usually it's a change to
a) Get a little extra cash
b) Do something you enjoy a bit more than your day-job
c) Build skill/experience/clientele
It's not a bad thing to have, especially in your "day job" goes south. I know some people whose side-jobs became a fledgling business and grew from there.
Also, hustle? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll add to my comment that I've *NEVER* heard this called a hustle, and it seems like a terrible term to use because classically "hustle" has been a term for a scam, con, or some other way of shady way of making cash.
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Trust me, driving for Uber is indeed a scam. "Hustle" definitely applies, it's just the driver getting scammed, not doing the scamming :-) But it's better than selling Herbalife...
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Now jobs have employment contracts with anti-moonlighting clauses. Seems the 1%ers want to hire me for 16 hours/week and demand that I make myself available to them 24/7 on my own dime, then tell me I'm a lazy good for nothing bum for not breaking their contract and getting a second job to make ends meet. Or I break the contract and get a second job, then they call me at my other job and tell me I have 30 minutes to drop everything and present myself to them because of an emergency "rush" or don't bother
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Now jobs have employment contracts with anti-moonlighting clauses.
With 20+ years of experience in IT support, I've never seen an employment contract that prohibits me from moonlighting. Especially since all my contracts also prohibits me from working more than 40 hours per week.
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If you worked for a agency (development, advertising, marketing, etc), any non-compete clause could essentially be anti-moonlighting clause.
I use to work for a development company that would take on pretty much any type of work. The non-compete they wanted me to sign said I couldn't work for any company that could be a competitor of the business. That meant other development agencies, but also even companies that possibly would want my employer's service some day. I declined signing that agreement.
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I didn't sign it. I was a lowly developer and have a right to earn a living, so the non-compete was very likely not enforceable and I wasn't going to sign it. I pointed that out and my boss/owner of the company and he flew off the handle. He said it hurt a lot that I didn't trust the company and that they would never use it to prevent me from working. I said it hurt just as much that they wouldn't trust me to go "work for the competition" and if they did indeed trust me, there was no for the non-compete in
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If you worked for a agency (development, advertising, marketing, etc), any non-compete clause could essentially be anti-moonlighting clause.
I've worked for a East Coast firm with an employment contract so restrictive that I laughed out aloud, signed the contract, and returned it to HR. When I pushed back against a micro-managing manager who got on my nerve, he threatened me with the contract. I told him to review the contract with a CA labor attorney. The manager backed off in a hurry and I finished the contract without further incident. That contract was unenforceable in CA.
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Anti moonlighting clauses are generally unenforceable unless you are salaried and there is a reasonable probability of conflict of interest.
Side jobs come in waves. I had engineering co-workers that were waiters and bartenders in the early 90's recession, but it became uncommon until ~2008 and the downturn.
Generally everyone should have a side job of some scope-- it is how you become a "1%er", but more importantly it is how you diversify mentally and financially. It doesn't have to be much; I have some fr
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Generally everyone should have a side job of some scope-- it is how you become a "1%er", but more importantly it is how you diversify mentally and financially.
I guess I am in that position. I will help my brother-in-law out with his business as apparently finding someone who can solider 2 pipes together and have them not leak who is also dependable is almost impossible. So once a month I work a weekend for him so he as the owner and only real worker (like I said I work for him 1 weekend a month) can have a weekend off. I'm on call 24x7 and he pays me $5 bucks and hour to have the phone on and then I get $30/hr min 1hr to go fix something.
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I'll add to my comment that I've *NEVER* heard this called a hustle, and it seems like a terrible term to use because classically "hustle" has been a term for a scam, con, or some other way of shady way of making cash.
Also known as multi-level marketing. I used to have a roommate who was really big into being an entrepreneur that he was a member of four or five MLM programs. Coming up with the rent every month was a major hustle for him. He barely got by as it was it. He blew off anyone who suggested that he get a regular job and focus on one MLM program. I don't know what happened to him after the dot com bust. It wouldn't surprise me if he was working on another hustle or two.
THey're called hobbies (Score:5, Interesting)
And most of us have them. We leave work and work on something we're passionate about, but might not pay enough. Or might not pay at all. Or we volunteer at a charity. Or at our kid's school. This is nothing new, the number of people looking to make money from them is just increasing. Maybe. Its not like doing side jobs was ever that rare.
It used to be called (Score:3)
"moonlighting"
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Quelle surprise - That's because that's called theft.
Music (Score:5, Insightful)
I do it for the love of music, but the extra cash doesn't hurt either.
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Same here man, although it gets harder and harder just to break even where I am, but that's the nature of the beast I'm afraid.
If you can still do it and turn a profit, more power to ya.
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Some markets pay much more for live music than others I imagine.
Re:Music (Score:4, Informative)
I think the term "making money" refers to the amount of money in relation to the hours put into "making music" versus you would make if you worked at McDonalds.
If you practice twice a week and on top of that once with the band per week, lets say 2 hours ever time, that is 6 hours practicing per week. Assuming normal vacations and other causes, you do that only 45 weeks per year we come to 270 hours per year practicing. Now lets assume you play in a small band, just 3 people (Bass, Drums and Piano) and have a gig every month, lasting lets say 3 hours? And you let a hat go around, you make $150 per evening, divided by 3 that is $50 per gig or $600 per person per year.
Total hours worked is 270h practicing and 36h gigging, so you "make money" of $2 per hour.
That is by no definition "making money", it is a "waste of time". No lets factor in your gasoline and guitar strings and we are very quickly in the negative.
Actually, that was a no brainer, sorry that it took so much writing to point it out to you.
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I'm not buying it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm not buying it (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also instability (Score:5, Insightful)
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In California, you'd better have pretty good documentation of the times you reprimanded those employees before firing them, or you could still be subject to a wrongful termination suit.
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California is an at-will employment state. As long as the employer is okay with taking the insurance hit they can and will at-will you out the door for no cause whatsoever.
Re:It's also instability (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the Great Recession... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Depressing... (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's see, 8 hours to sleep at night, 8 hours for your main job, travel time to and from job, less than 8 hours left in the day for living, and you want to fill that with more work beyond the stuff you need to do like cook and feed yourself/family, taking care of your home/apartment, etc?
Fuck that, where's that extinction-event asteroid when we need it?
I though all these computers and automation was supposed to make us need to work less...
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Exactly! I only have one job, and with 9 hour days + lunch + commute, I'm away from home 10-11 hours. Side job? Who the hell has TIME for a side job???
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I though all these computers and automation was supposed to make us need to work less...
Yeah, but the people who own shares in the corporations realized that instead of letting the people creating all that productivity benefit from it, they could funnel that value to themselves and make even *more* money for doing nothing. Then, it occurred to them that people's productivity had become *so* high that even if they made employees work just a few hours a week more, in any reasonably large corporation that would result in significantly *more* money in their pockets, for which, again, they'd have t
Re:Depressing... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's always been this way ... and when I first got into the "work world" after college, the whole thing depressed me too. I spent a lot of time asking, "Why? What's the point of all of this, and how did my parents stand it?!"
But the elephant in the corner of the room that everyone likes to ignore is this: People with these "side jobs" are often working smarter, not harder. For example, say you want to start a side business selling something online? You may have to burn a few of those precious weekends working on the setup -- but once the e-commerce site is running, it sells to visitors 24 hours/7 days without you having to do much with it. Your role is probably only going to be in the packing/shipping of products ordered, and handling returns as needed. Granted, that can take some time, but you get to choose when you do it and for how long. You could box up a few items right before bed, perhaps? Or knock some of it out while you're watching some show on TV at night, relaxing. If it does well enough? Now you can afford to pay some teenager to do the hands-on stuff for you, making the operation completely hands-off.
And same kind of thing with people who really do find a way to make their second job a sub-set of their hobby. I know a guy in town, for example, who is really into history. Since he was interested in digging up everything he could find about local history in our city anyway, he decided to start compiling it into books. He's got 3 of them out now that he sells via Facebook and occasionally at a local flea market table, or in other people's shops. He was going to hang onto all of those notes and photos and copies of historical documents anyway ... so putting them into book format didn't take a whole lot of extra effort, really.
It's Blinkered Perspective Time! (Score:3)
Could the people who write about millenials' employment habits please go to a state other than California for just one fucking day?
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When I was younger, it was called a hobby (Score:3)
Are Millienials Karflegening Too Many Vizbogs? (Score:5, Funny)
Quartz ran an article over the weekend which captures a growing trend among millennials: to have a side job--
Oh, boy, sounds like somebody's written another article that describes twentysomethings doing normal, everyday things as if they were members of a completely alien species having incomprehensible interactions with the fabric of the fifth dimension.
I wonder how out-of-touch and annoying this particular article is going to be? All right, I'm taking a deep breath. How bad could it possibly be? Here we go, let's do this.
--or as many of them call it, the "side-hustle."
Oh, God, my eyes! I wasn't ready!
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Lipstick on a pig (Score:2)
Just because you dress up your poverty as a plus (e.g. "Being unable to afford food has helped me lose 90 lbs!" or "I'm in the best shape of my life, because I walk 10 miles a day. How did I find the motivation to exercise t
Got a side hustle through my plug (Score:2)
Millennials are obsessed with side hustles solely so they can use the phrase "side hustle".
You can't blame them. (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the older generations, up front they actually know what they are getting into and need to prepare for a life where you can't take anything for granted and you need to fight tooth and nail to keep what you have. So I'm not surprised by the whole multiple job thing increasing.
Feel bad for us old fucks, we bought into the American Dream because that's what our parents told us to do. Go to college, get a job somewhere for 30 years, buy a house, have some kids etc. But then we found out the hard way that even when you do the right thing your job loyalty means nothing. Your house can be taken away in a minute flat and you can lose a huge amount your retirement savings over the whims of greedy idiots on Wall St. Oh and don't have a serious medical issue or you will lose job/house/saving all in one.
So why I can't promise an easy life for the younger generations, at least you know up front the American Dream is a total lie and to change your thinking accordingly. Newsflash right?
Mind you I'm talking about the Middle class here. The "Lower" class has always been fucked and always will be. Working 2-3 jobs has always been the norm.
Again as always a BIG fuck you to all the scumbag companies who pushed our jobs overseas because they had to "stay competitive" and manufacturing in the USA was too expensive. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
we need single payer health care to make this (Score:2)
we need single payer health care to make this work good. Be for people get to the braking bad level just to pay there doctor bills off. Or letting the jail / prison system take up the slack at a much higher cost.
2008 crisis? (Score:2)
This part interested me:
It’s true, the 2008 crisis forced plenty of people to look for additional sources of income, not least of all the recent graduates who, with little experience and limited networks, were confronting the job market for the first time.
Really? I thought the 2008 crisis was when the housing bubble burst. Are people who are "confronting the job market for the first time" really looking to get home loans? Or was it just that their first jobs didn't pay all that great?
Statements like this one just reinforce in a lot of older people's heads the idea that Millennials, as a group, are the "everyone deserves everything" generation. What did these people expect when they had "little experience and limited networks"? Did the
Re:2008 crisis? (Score:4, Informative)
Where the hell were you? The housing market crashed, but so much more went with it. Lots of folks got laid off. The lucky ones who got a new job often found that they were deep underwater in their house, even if they put 20% down.
Being part of an interlinked economy means that nobody is an island. Crappy loan products peddled to suckers can blow up a bank and take down everyone else with it. Young folks hitting the job market at that time were SOL. Colleges are not subsidized nearly like they used to be, so the same degree you have costs a lot more (usually necessitating student loans). Companies shipped all the lower end jobs overseas, taking away entry level jobs to gain experience. So the few open positions of any consequence for a few years after 2008 all required 5-10 years experience and super specific job skills.
We littered the country with a whole heap of well educated debtors that really struggled to get a decent job. Many of them did get crap jobs, and many had to go live with their parents due to the crushing debt they got that could not be serviced on a service job.
We need laws so that worker misclassification stop (Score:2)
We need new laws so that worker misclassification stops or that places that call someone an 1099 do not have the level of control that they have right now.
Right now we have uber that is pushing the limits of 1099's.
Amazon Prime Now Delivery Drivers where they controlled there routes / uniforms / training / geographical boundaries / etc but they called them 1099's to get out of overtime / minimum shift pay for people required to report to work / fuel, insurance, maintenance, tolls and other vehicle expenses
Woody Allen moonlights (Score:2)
My wife has a male second cousin who married two years ago right out of college to a women also just out of college. They now live in a large metro area of ~3 million and both have responsible jobs in secure industries. They have little or no college loans to pay off and were able to buy a nice, 2 BR condo in a go
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Re:"Millennials" (Score:5, Insightful)
Old people are annoyed by what young people do.
On the contrary, I'm definitely "old" by most definitions and I feel for young people. They have it harder than I did in so many ways. You are only young once, and not for long; you deserve to enjoy it.
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Dag Nabbit those lazy Mellennials who are working multiple jobs. Why don't they settle in one good paying job!
No we will not retire (We are going to stay at our high paying jobs until we die), we will not train you to take our position. We will tell them to work hard, when they do we will show them that life isn't fair and hard work isn't the case but just luck.
We want America like it was when the rest of the world was bombed out and rebuilding from WWII. To show how special we were because everyone happen
Re: "Millennials" (Score:2)
Actually I m cutting back to three days a week, for 90k ayear, and mentoring two replacements. One is Chinese, she'll probably work out. The other one seems a bit useless, !ike most wasp engineering graduates these days. Get off that fucking phone.
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The number of Pokemon you have collected is not suitable for a line on your resume.
Never mind that my job site has TWO Pokemon gyms.
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I've never met a software developer, musician, or artist who didn't have a side project of some sort in addition to their "day job".
What?!?
You're putting software developer in the same category as musician or artist?!?
Which one of these things doesn't belong?
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He's a Rust programmer. The elegance and beauty of his code speaks for itself.
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I've never met a software developer, musician, or artist who didn't have a side project of some sort in addition to their "day job".
What?!?
You're putting software developer in the same category as musician or artist?!?
Which one of these things doesn't belong?
Writing software is considered a creative act.
I was one of the participants in the Department Of Labor study that decided that,
Jobs that are more than 50% creative are exempt from overtime pay requirements. Software engineering, unless you are job-shopping it as a contractor is considered more than 50% creative. Which means that if you are salaried, you don't get overtime pay.
Personally, when I write software, it's being processed in the part of my brain that processes music. Meaning I literally can't wr
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Most software developers believe "coding" is an art. /. is full with posts of "such believers".
Most software developers I know don't have a second job ... However I work sometimes on several projects as a consultant simultaneously. I hate it to sit a customer site and have a 40h/week when I only have work for 15 or 20 hours.
So I rather honestly bill them less and have a second project.
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