You're Screwed!

I disagree with the article's sentiment that ANY productive work will "pay off" for young people.

That's just another cruel delusion to mislead the young.

The criminalization of the financial industry is where their futures lie. Don't bother with small potatoes, ripping off the elderly paving their driveways, or selling them aluminum siding.

Go to Wall Street or Bay street.
Work for a big bank, or an investment firm.
Steal every last dime possible.
Loot their accounts, RSPs and IRAs.

The gangsters running the banks OWN their governments.
You will be immune from prosecution.

At the job interview wear a nicely tailored navy suit, and at some point steal the interviewer's wallet.
They recognize financial talent when they see it.

I know whereof I speak.

Ah, but Captain Capitalism, without the girls with Spanish degrees from California State, Long Beach, how will the gringos learn to beg for their lives in Spanish before the Aztlan gangs kill them for sport?

A line from the article "No longer can you get a job at some company and expect to stay there for three decades"
So true. I was able to do just that and am now comfortably retired. I despair for my two young adult kids, I am pessimistic about the economic future.

They like, like totally, like look hot, like all the time, anduummm, like are girls, and like HUEHUEHUE.

Am I close to the mentality? Or missing the point.

"Kids" these days screw themselves over with an inability to speak anything but gibberish.
I'm not even that old, and I can communicate to someone 25 years older that me without using duhhh,like? in a sentence.

dwright

I have 2 daughters, young still but not too young to start instilling the knowledge necessary to succeed later on in life. That is why they will learn how to maintain a house, construct a chair, perform an oil change, catch a fish and shoot a deer and get a summer job on any of my friends farms as soon as they are old enough(picking rocks out of the fields or collecting dead chickens, who knows). Since I am in the trades, my daughters will be known and educated as a tradesman offspring. My wife and I have also discussed to maybe encourage them into military service as their first post-high school enrollment, but that is still a ways off yet.

They will be girls of the feminine variety, but wimps and losers they will not.

I know of too many peers who believe a piece of paper is their key to success, and I have met too many parents who believe the trades are for idiots. That time has come to an end.

Dystopian Optimist; this is the sort of comment I hear from seniors who have gone through the union thingy in their life of employment.
My response: who do you think owns the Banks? Where does YOUR Pension check come from? Who pays taxes on top of taxes (taxed earnings plus taxed dividends plus taxes on employee salaries)? Name a Bank YOU can't buy a share of the profits in?

What about degrees in Aboriginal Financial Band Management.

Real shortage of honest, competent workers in that field.

From TFA:

We need you gals to learn how to build software in equal number with your male peers. They are no smarter than you, and they are definitely way less organized and far less attentive to detail.

What a load of p*ssy-whipped BS. I work in IT departments, and I rarely see female coders. Sys admins, sure. Content providers, absolutely. But hard core coders?! Hardly any. What kind of a wimp says women are more organized and more attentive to detail than the guy who writes a 5,000 line program with 20 different modules, drawing data from many different sources, and keeping everything integrated? I get so sick of these freakin' apologists who believe women are naturally better than men. They are not. Women are better at some things, and men are better at others, but as we've discussed here, at the margin - the people who are five SD's from the mean - it's almost always men.

The key to great code is to understand explicitly every step of what you're doing, which means breaking everything down into its most painstaking, atomist steps. I've learned watching my two bright daughters struggle with code that this is not easy for women; they want to apply their intuition, and that doesn't work with software.

Again, I'm not saying NO women can write great code; I'm saying most can't, and the wimp that wrote the article is full of it.

I found that nothing in life ever worked as planned or predicted. In my case it was a matter of adapting to new opportunities and constant upgrading as the situation required. Always shunned dead end jobs and quit 2 good ones because the boss was a jerk. Life's too short to work for jerks. There will always be opportunity for those that go to where the jobs are and are willing to work for it but the ability to adapt and put your dreams on the back burner, temporarily at least, is essential. I kept it simple for my 2 kids. If you want security get a trade. If you want a job where you will be replaced by a computer someday, go to university. One is working in the patch and is making more money than I would have ever dreamed of at that age and the other one is managing a restaurant chain. No university degree required. Just hard work and a can do attitude. The criteria for success has not changed since I was young. What has changed is the unfounded notion that a higher education guarantees anything at all and that somehow you are entitled to a lifestyle you never had to work for. Pity that common sense and work ethics can't be taught in university. I hire summer students every year. The cream of the crop always seem to be kids with a farming background. Why would that be ? (Phil ?)

What do fossil hunting, motorcycle riding, salsa dancing, tornado chasing economists make?

This is sort-of right. However, I disagree with his solution. Software jobs have been getting less and less attractive for many years. These days, most software jobs are the equivalent of production-line assembly jobs. Even worse, most of that production-line work is being outsourced, either sent to overseas production lines, or bringing in foreign workers to man those production lines.

Not too long ago, I visited a large telecoms company (you may well have one of their phones in your pocket) in New Jersey. At lunch time I went to the canteen to eat. It was packed, probably close to 1,000 people in there. As I sat there munching on my lunch, I looked around, and suddenly realized that mine was the ONLY non-Indian face in the place. Then it dawned on me that everyone I had been talking to, all morning were also Indian.

They ship these guys over on three month visas, put them in shared apartments, pay them very well by Indian standards, then ship them out as their visas expire and roll in a new batch. It works because of the production-line system.

Of course, they don't call it a production line, they give it a fancy name like "Extreme Programming" or "Agile Programming", but that is what it is.

My suggestion is to look for training in areas that are at least somewhat immune to outsourcing to a foreign country. But take care, because as technology changes, so does the range of jobs susceptible.

Currently, jobs requiring a physical presence are safest (but not entirely safe) such as HVAC engineer, medical delivery (nurse, operating room tech etc.) are relatively safe. Higher paid jobs are being attacked, reading of medical images is being outsourced as is some diagnosis work. Dr. House did well to get out when he did.

While I agree with most of the article, I concur with KevinB about the low probability of women becoming coders. Hacking seems to be almost a universally male activity. I've never worked with a female programmer and the very few that I have come across didn't have the same drive that male programmers have. When I get into a programming project I'll find a week has gone by, I've hardly slept at all, there are vague memories of meatware refueling episodes but almost the whole time has been spent entirely immersed in a virtual reality of my own creation where I've made the computer do what I wanted it to do. Women, I think, are too social and can't get as absorbed into a solitary activity. I have been told that some people program in groups but for me the most productive coding has been working completely alone.

The truth is out there - get into an occupation where you either make things or fix things. I'll also disagree with the articles denigration of becoming a physician. I'd never work in a large city again, but if someone is the type of person who doesn't mind attempting to deal with things on ones own, do rural medicine or at least work in a small town. Meatware breaks down and someone needs to fix it. In large cities one is competing with reflexologists, colon therapists, naturopaths and other assorted quacks who make way more money than doctors but in the country people know BS when they run into it and competent doctors do very well.

Another attribute that helps get jobs is the combination of intelligence and determination. A friend of mine got a job for which she was totally unqualified for on paper but was smart enough to very quickly learn what was necessary and put in the hours to do so. She did very well at it.

Which brings up one of the major complaints I have about the current educational system - it doesn't teach people how to learn. With jobs changing so quickly, the best education one can have is a crash course in learning how to learn. In programming, this seems to come naturally as I've breezed through a 2000 page microprocessor manual for a machine I've never programmed before in a weekend and had a working project on monday morning. This ability is very useful in medicine such as coming into a hospital and being confronted with 30 very sick patients and at the end of 24 hours being intimately familiar with their medical histories and current medical issues. The downside of this downloading huge amounts of information into short term memory and then flushing it to make room for new information is that I will have absolutely no recollection of patient I took care of in hospital a month ago if I run into them on the street. The present-centeredness that one needs to make it in todays society suggests we should exempt historians from the denigrated useless arts degrees as someone has to keep track of what happened last month.

The big difference between a few generations ago and now is that 50 years ago, one could learn how to do something and never have to worry about learning again. True, people gain experience in a trade dependent on the amount of time they've worked it it, but there's no way now that one can become say a garage door repairman and assume to work at that trade for 50 years. A good mechanic should be able to deal with anything mechanical whereas a poor mechanic might just be able to deal with one particular machine.

I suspect that there's going to be another evolutionary change happening as humans become neotenous children. Children are curious about everything and in a lot of people that curiousity seems to vanish with age. Scientists can be viewed as neotenous humans as they continue to play with things for their whole lives and never stop trying to figure things out. The big problem will be what to do with the ancient humans who figured that curiousity could be junked after about age 20 when they had learned everything that was necessary in life. These are the people who figure that when they retire they can now do absolutely nothing and they develop Alzheimer's at far higher rates than the people who view retirement as a chance to start a new career at something different.

I think the key sentiment is "learn how to make something" and "have the drive to make it". That's what being an entrepreneur is about. My Gr9 daughter is damn bright at school and talented at things like art and piano, but I'm most proud of her when she volunteers at the stable she rides at, comes home sweaty and stinky and covered in manure, with cut and blistered fingers from fixing fences and hauling water buckets, and is happy as all hell because her 40 hrs of effort earned her a "free" 1 hr ride. I think her talents would be useless without the latter and I'm glad there aren't more kids like her because she's gonna own their asses in the future.
/brag off

who-haw to all the nay-sayers, (including me)

just started the 2012 tax return. with much humble-ness learned the wife EARNED 6 figures to my measly 5. way, schwing!

THANK-YOU ALBERTA TAR-SANDS......

Oh whoops, did I forget to "check my privilege"?

I'm a bad, bad CIS male (whatever the heck that means)

Post Normal is post sanity, in my opinion.

I agree with Kate. "praying to the San Andreas fault"

And if it takes Vancouver, bonus point. All the fruits and nuts can drown IMHO.

dwright

Posted by: north_of_60

I'm a Heinlein fan myself. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?
Good quote, anyways, my favorite "ideal" from Heinlein is that all Lawyers belong on the cold side of an airlock. Civil advocates are allowed.

dwright

Posted by: syncrodox

Nailed it, that beta needs to get some game.

(I just went for a smoke run, had the very pretty clerk eating out of my hand. French women love it when I talk slow and don't yell, for some reason 0)

drwight

syncrodox

I forgot +10 Internets to you, sir; well played.

dwright (LOL)

I would note that a significant number of these comments merely seem to reaffirm that "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". That book is worth re-reading on a regular basis to make sure you understand what is going on with the OTHER side. And it ain't just for relationships, nor is it just for adults. Those predilections start when they are very young kids, and should be accounted for over their entire life. In fact, the refusal to account for those differences would seem to be a major reason for the ADHD epidemic. What percentage of people diagnosed with ADHD are male? Yes, there may be SOME who really have such an affliction. But the overwhelming situation would seem to merely be boys being boys, if you let them. Society USED to have ways of getting that under control.

But the overwhelming situation would seem to merely be boys being boys, if you let them. Society USED to have ways of getting that under control.

I got involved in a long discussion over at slashdot about this. I'm a firm believer in segregating boys from girls after about grade 2 until university. Boys are full of wriggling, squirming energy, and they need frequent breaks to let some of this out. Girls, not so much. So boys get mis-diagnosed with ADHD/whatever and pumped full of drugs because some school marm wants them to keep still.

I went to an all-boy high school. Our classes were short - only 35 minutes long, compared to 45 minutes at the public system. The reason was the boys couldn't focus that long, and that they needed to get up and move frequently. The all-male teaching staff was reasonably lenient about wisecracks and minor disruptions; certainly more so than any of the teachers at my co-ed jr. high, where I was sent to the principal's office frequently for cutting up in class. We had a recess in the morning and an hour for lunch, all so that we could get out and run around, which most of us did, playing ball hockey, basketball, soccer, etc. I'm still convinced that my professional success has been more grounded in the fact that my high school was an excellent learning environment, compared to the public schools, simply because it catered to boys being boys. If I'd been in the stultifying public system, I have no doubt that I would have turned to drugs, as so many others did, out of sheer boredom.

Until young men learn to control the vast new amounts of testerone rampaging through their bodies, they need to be segregated from polite society. While anyone viewing the mad dash of boys through the halls as we stampeded to the lunch room, or back to class, might be taken aback, the school's profound tolerance for our male adolescence allowed us to develop naturally. No one was ever diagnosed with ADHD, even at the prep school (grades 2-8).

My wifes niece is drop-dead gorgeous, married a handsom American ex-marine, has two cute kids and is a top-notch welder-fabricator.

Offhand, I'd say she did everything right.

My niece is also a looker with a great bod, has a degree in some obscure ancient form of Greek and works in the deli department of a grocery store. Her education is a total waste. Luckily her parents are well off and paid for it.