Baby Boomers Don't Have a Stronger Work Ethic Than Later Generations, Says Study (sciencedaily.com) 326
A team of U.S. researchers from Wayne State University in Detroit have published research in Springer's Journal of Business and Psychology that dispels the popular belief that baby boomers have a greater work ethic than people born a decade or two later. Science Daily reports: The economic success of the United States and Europe around the turn of the 20th to the 21st century is often ascribed to the so-called Protestant work ethic of members of the baby boomer generation born between 1946 and 1964. They are said to place work central in their lives, to avoid wasting time and to be ethical in their dealings with others. Their work ethic is also associated with greater job satisfaction and performance, conscientiousness, greater commitment to the organization they belong to and little time for social loafing. The media and academia often suggest that baby boomers endorse higher levels of work ethic than the younger so-called Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) and Millennials (born between 1981 and 1999). [Keith Zabel, the lead U.S. researcher, and his team] compiled a dataset of all published studies that have ever used a U.S. sample to measure and report on the Protestant work ethic. Studies included in the meta-analysis had to mention the average age of the people surveyed. In all, 77 studies and 105 different measures of work ethic were examined using an analysis method stretching over three phases, each phase offered more precise measurement of generational cohorts. The analysis found no differences in the work ethic of different generations. These findings support other studies that found no difference in the work ethics of different generations when considering different variables, such as the hours they work or their commitment to family and work. Zabel's team did however note a higher work ethic in studies that contained the response of employees working in industry rather than of students.
Yeah... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Youth have always been lazy and disrespectful of their elders. This has been commented on for about 4 thousand years; its a wonder kids these days do anything at all.
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And get off my lawn! :P
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Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every generation thinks their kids are huge slackers, and nearly every successful person attributes his success to admirable qualities he has only in average quantities, when in fact it's usually a combination of luck and *consistent* work over a long period of time.
Except in my case. I derive my success from a sculpted physique and massive charm and cunning with the opposite sex.
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Honestly a lot of it comes from circumstance of birth too. One thing I consistently find with wealthy clients, is their folks where wealthy too. They often had family help establishing their first businesses and had access to old money when it came to capital. Of course there are exceptions to that rule, but not a lot.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
I came from a working family in a poor neighborhood in Chicago's Little Italy. My dad came home from WWII and worked his ass off. My mom parlayed a "Rosie the Riveter" gig into a great job. They both retired with terrific pensions.
Yet there are fungi that have greater work ethic than me. I made it through grad school on charm and bullshit and ended up university faculty (with a nice pension). My daughter takes after her Mom and is an incredibly hard worker (she's a PhD candidate in Math and teaches kick-boxing). I will bet that right now she's busting her ass trying to get numerical simulations of viral infections working in some arcane programming language and hasn't stopped since early this morning. She's working hard because she seems to genuinely love working hard. God bless her, but I don't feel that way.
Hard work has almost no correlation to success, I've found. The ability to convince people you work hard is more important than actually working hard.
The idea of a "work ethic" is nothing more than left-over propaganda from the Protestant assholes that first settled this country. We're supposed to see "hard work" as somehow morally superior to idleness. It's just a way that the people in the very top economic strata convince the rest of us to kill ourselves for their benefit. I'm glad I was able to see through that bullshit early on. My life was much nicer due to that revelation, and I was still able to accomplish a full and happy existence and even be able to leave something to my kid without really breaking a sweat. Luck, and the ability to know which corners to cut.
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Hard work has almost no correlation to success, I've found. The ability to convince people you work hard is more important than actually working hard.
My own experience is somewhat limited, mostly working in office environments and people having a degree, but I have largely found that most employees treat their work seriously, will put in the extra effort when needed, and are generally keen to do a decent job. Of course they will also goof off at times, take personal days, or sneak out early to run a personal errand. Here is where things start to be about appearances: most people do not really know what their colleagues are actually doing, but they can
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard work has almost no correlation to success, I've found. The ability to convince people you work hard is more important than actually working hard.
It's actually built right into the word. "Success" means to come soon after. The core meaning of success as it pertains to life is inheritance. The first son was the one to succeed the father, so he was a success. And lo and behold, the best predictor of economic success is in fact your genetic succession: who are your parents?
People with wealthier parents tend to have not only superior access to education and nutrition (even here in the USA, a staggering percentage of children go to bed hungry and malnourished — affecting their brain development!) but they also likely get less of a bullshit song about fairness from their parents. Mine sold me a whole line of bullshit about hard work, because they were still operating under the impression that their failure to succeed was based on their own behavior. But when you can't get a fair shake simply because of how people view your upbringing, it makes it more difficult to remedy your situation.
the people in the very top economic strata convince the rest of us to kill ourselves for their benefit. I'm glad I was able to see through that bullshit early on. My life was much nicer due to that revelation, and I was still able to accomplish a full and happy existence and even be able to leave something to my kid without really breaking a sweat.
And your kid is statistically assured to do much better for it, because success typically results from succession.
Re: Yeah... (Score:2)
Funny, you don't sound all that happy to me.
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That's Gates' story. He was born on 3rd base as the saying goes.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
That was always the criticism of the Baby Boomers. That they didn't have the same work ethic as their parents.
Exactly what I came here to say. I'm a boomer, but I've never heard anyone lauding us for our work ethic... that was always our parents, members of the "Greatest Generation" - the people who lived through the Great Depression and fought World War II.
Now I have heard the complaints about the millennials... but it was always in the context of "they're even worse than their parents" rather than "why aren't they as diligent as their parents?"
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Ain't that the truth. Baby boomers were not a hard-working generation. It seemed that way during the "Wall Street", "greed is good" 1980s, but that was only because of all the cocaine.
The millennials I know (some of whom are my students) are actually a pretty
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You're not teaching in a college in the US, are you?
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Not any more.
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Not any more.
Ah well you see, the kids THESE days as in since about 20 minutes after you left are the REAL slackers. They're so dreadfully awful in every conceivable way that it makes me really feel much better about myself.
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Only after they finally croaked. Because until then they'll do what they can to squeeze the last drop of blood from their successors.
Frankly, the most despicable people whose only reason to continue existing is that they ain't worth a nanosecond of jail time, they were (almost) all Boomers.
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T
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Boomers don't have a patch on millenials, but they're a direct consequence of boomers redefining of child rearing(go stand in the corner jimmy, you only burned down a park) and education(what do you mean you they can't read or write? Pass them anyway!). Whether it be the push of participation trophies or the rampant ego-stroking and response that you see through various forms of social media in order to gain acceptance. Or their push of anti-speech platforms which were an anathema to boomers who fought a
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Boomers should be lauded for one thing only, they are selfish pricks, aptly named the "me generation". Thanks to the rise of the more populous and much more selfless generation of millenials we'll hopefully stop and reverse the damage the Boomers have done to this country.
Are you kidding me? The millenials are so full of themselves that they take selfies ten times a day and post them to social media. Now that's the me generation.
Re: Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you kidding me? The millenials are so full of themselves that they take selfies ten times a day and post them to social media. Now that's the me generation.
Boomers: fucked over the millennials by massively overspending and burdening the younger generations with huge debt, impoossibly high housing prices and vast retirement programs to find.
Millenneals: take selfies
Conclusion: fucking millennials are the "me" generation.
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Well if you cant blame a generation for their policies that were instituted while they could vote and the next generation could not, then who else? You can blame the uber rich politicians creating those tax cuts but who voted for them time and again? Who allowed them to continue to do the tax cuts while saying nothing?
With that indisputable logic, the millenials should have fixed it all by now!
Re: Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is generational provincialism. The fact is most people act like selfish pricks, but each generation succeeds the last, becoming precisely the things they despised in their parents' generation.
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Of course you aren't "loyal", and you'd be an idiot if you were. Loyalty is like respect: It's earned, not given. Earn my loyalty and respect and you will have it. Until then, I reserve it for someone who deserves it.
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Err...that's what Bosses and Managers do my friend....welcome to the pecking order.
New guys start at the bottom.
The drug doggies of the 60s (Score:5, Insightful)
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And, lo and behold, it's the same idiots that blew their head away with drugs that are now going to tell you that drugs are bad, mmmkay?
Usually while swinging about their beer belly and throwing the butt of their cigarette your way so their mouth is free for some more Rogain and Viagra.
What changed? (Score:5, Interesting)
What took a good educated 10% of the population is now a US brand as a front company with 1% needed. Even that is a global workforce invited in.
Designed in the USA, made anywhere cheap.
Everything of value that was good is gone. More new low wage jobs selling coffee, wine, beer, security every day and night?
Working for the gov/mil or been a mil contractor who enjoys no bid gov/mil work is not a long term solution given the private sector tax rates.
The US needs to rediscover good private sector jobs for its own citizens. Only the US private sector can create the kind of quality, reward and advancement that grows a nation.
Illegal workers have been allowed to flood the lower end of the jobs market to counter unions and be replaceable if any work place issues arise.
Student loans are based on every entry consideration but real merit and academic ability. Creating vast amounts of average graduates with safe, soft degrees in been "fun" years later is not what any advanced work force needs.
Good people still want to learn, study, work, better themselves, move up in society, do better than past generations when asked as always. But the option to do that has been reduced.
The few top university options based on years of hard work are been lost to very average students with no academic considerations.
Local jobs to even support a local college education are few and far between as older workers have to stay on and illegal workers are allowed to fill in.
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The boomers are in power now and they are fucking everyone younger. Tuition and housing prices have skyrocketed. Wages have stagnated. The rich pay the lowest taxes they ever had. They have skewed the system in their favour to enrich themselves at the expense of their children and grandchildren. They need to die.
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Actually, it's Ronald Reagan you have to thank for all the things you're bitching about. Many of us at the tail end of the Boomer generation have had the same shit-sandwich experience as you later generations; at least those of us who didn't become bankers.
So, how did Reagan become president? Wave a magic wand? How's about we thank you for electing him?
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Given exactly the same problem exists in the UK, do you mind explaining how Ronald Reagan achieved that? On the other hand it might just be down to what the baby boomers did both sides of the Atlantic.
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Good people still want to learn, study, work, better themselves, move up in society, do better than past generations when asked as always. But the option to do that has been reduced.
Correct. It's not that we're not willing to work. It's that we're not willing to work as hard as the boomers for less reward, especially when they're the ones telling us that we have to. They can fuck off and die... please.
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Odd way of looking at it.
The 50s were boom times because the world has been ravaged by war. Japanese and European factories were reduced to rubble and they were putting all their resourced into rebuilding. By the 80s Japanese products were better than US ones for the most part, and sure enough those well paid manufacturing jobs for life were mostly gone.
The same thing then happened to Japan, with the rise of Chinese manufacturing. In both cases, Japan and the US sought to cope with it by becoming more and m
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How are you going to find good paying jobs when robots and automation in general are taking away all the jobs?
Are American consumers willing to pay more for goods produced in the U.S. by humans?
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Yes that expected interest rate to cover a few decades is looking interesting.
Wat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wat? Since when is there a popular belief that 'boomers had a stronger work ethic? Say "boomer" and I'm more likely to think "protest" than "Protestant work ethic". AFAIK the more generally held view is that as long as they weren't traumatized by the Vietnam War, they lucked into an optimal economic situation and that's why they did better.
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Boomers are the current generation who won't shut up about kids these days being lazy.
They seem oblivious to the fact that their parents said the same thing about them.
They also seem oblivious to the fact that their kids would be doing a lot better right now if they hadn't joined the cult of supply-side economics and shredded the safety net.
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Gen-X doesn't count. We get crushed between the "gimme that it's mine" of the past and the special snowflakes of the present.
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Boomers are the generation that is currently in charge of most things, political and economical. They're on their way out, true, but they're still here, and almost hell bent on maximizing the damage before they have to go out.
And since contemporary history is always written by whoever happens to be in charge, guess who is the "hardest working" generation...
Umm? (Score:2)
Because if there is one word that comes to mind when one examines the period of history the baby boomers wrought it would definitely be 'ethical'...
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If you're a Boomer, it most definitely would. And since Boomers currently run politics, media and economy, guess who gets to set "what is being said".
Correlation to age (Score:5, Interesting)
This is purely anecdotal, but my experience is that there isn't so much a generational correlation to work ethic as there is an age-based one. Which is to say, a person's work ethic can vary significantly over the course of their adult life.
What I've seen in my own workplace is new entrants (whether at graduate or non-graduate level) entering the organisation but generally (and of course there are outliers) without making a full commitment to it and, particularly in the case of graduate entrants, trying to keep their student lifestyle running for a few more years. Over time, usually by the late 20s, this transitions into a much stronger work ethic; more time spent in the office and more "commitment" to the organisation. Eventually, somewhere usually in the 50s, this lapses into a degree of burnout. Now, all of the above is a huge generalisation and based on personal experiences only, but I've seen a couple of generations go through that cycle now.
Of course, there's a far bigger correlation between work ethic and social class. Behaviours liked to worth ethic, such as the ability to focus on deferred reward have a strong hereditary component, whether based on biology, culture or both. Again, there are exceptions, but this is where I've seen the strongest correlation. In the mid-2000s (at the height of the UK's New Labour touchy-feely period) I worked for an employer which took part in a Government-subsidised scheme to give placements to "disadvantaged" young people. This was actually a pretty cushy detail; the pay for those brought in through the scheme wasn't huge, but it was significantly above the minimum wage (almost £10/hour) and the work was white-collar administrative. Moreover, there was an expectation in place that if you did well, you would be able to turn it into a full-time job (this was in the land of silly-money before the big crash, when the UK economy appeared to be in full boom). Hell, there wasn't even much of a dress code beyond "use your common sense and don't wear anything that would actively harm our reputation".
I was involved with this scheme for three consecutive years, once as a mentor and twice as one of the "lucky" managers "given" one of the apprentices (yes, there was a degree of corporate arm-twisting). Across all three years, with an intake of 8-10 people per year, not a single one stuck with it for more than 2 months. The simple basics of being expected to get into the office at a sane time (we had a flexitime-within-reason system), to come into the office every working day and to follow the instructions of a manager once in the office were too much for the participants.
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You are looking at something totally different with a point of view distorted by a secure job while others from the outside would be looking at it as little more than a distraction from their search for a real job. During the tech crash around 2000 I saw a lot of that where engineers and programmers were supposed to be fanatically grateful for a couple of days a month putting junk mail in let
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Sorry, I might not have been clear enough about what this scheme was and who was on it. To be clear, this was not "a few hours temporary work" for "experienced and qualified professionals". This was full time work, on a 6 month contract, for young people from "disadvantaged" backgrounds. What "disadvantaged" meant was "school drop-outs with chaotic lives and, in most cases, some incidences of minor criminal activity (though no theft or fraud)". The work paid reasonably well for entry-level work (as much as
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What "disadvantaged" meant was "school drop-outs with chaotic lives and, in most cases, some incidences of minor criminal activity (though no theft or fraud)".
What does "chaotic lives" mean to you?
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Re:Correlation to age (Score:5, Insightful)
That work "ethics" correlate to age is a given.
At 20, you have no problem telling your boss to stick his job where the sun doesn't shine if it sucks because you can fairly easily switch (provided you have some marketable skills) and if you're unemployed for a while, so be it.
At 30, you usually have some small kids, so it gets harder to tell your boss that he's a leeching bastard, but you can still get by if it gets absolutely unbearable, and you'll still find a new job somehow.
At 40, you have teenager kids that can get quite demanding, also your prospects on the job market are dwindling, so you're more inclined to stay unless it's absolutely unbearable. You might even consider working unpaid overtime when firings are looming on the horizon in the hope that it will hit the other guy.
At 50, you are trying to scrape together what's left of your money to pay for your kids' college. Also you know that you will not be hired again if you get fired now. You WILL do what is necessary to keep this job.
In a nutshell, that's not work ethic. That's simple fear.
Re:Correlation to age (Score:5, Insightful)
What I've seen in my own workplace is new entrants (whether at graduate or non-graduate level) entering the organisation but generally (and of course there are outliers) without making a full commitment to it and, particularly in the case of graduate entrants, trying to keep their student lifestyle running for a few more years. Over time, usually by the late 20s, this transitions into a much stronger work ethic
I've observed the exact opposite. Graduates come in full of energy and eager to prove themselves, to apply their ideas and skills to the real world. After a few years they realize the truth, that their abilities are rarely properly appreciated and that actually a lot of their working life will be spent dealing with customers who don't know what they want or who demand things work a certain, usually stupid, way.
As they age they also tend to realize that the promises made when they took on student debt were lies, and that the cushy jobs and pensions that the boomers have are not on offer any more and neither are houses, and that working hard isn't the key to success, playing the game is. Switching jobs often, living a transient lifestyle, is the way to get ahead.
up to half of all studies are wrong, so... (Score:5, Informative)
Work ethic alternates with generations... (Score:4, Interesting)
The "Greatest Generation". A bunch of over-indulgent assholes whose failings brought about the "greatest" depression.
The "Silent Generation". Raised post-depression. Extremely hard workers. Why? Because their aging parents left them no legacy except for care for them, pay for the welfare state, and fight in at least two wars. Nice.
The "Baby Boomer" generation. Another over-indulgent, entitiled, asshole generation. Why? Because their parents (the silent generation) swore that they'd never make their kids go through what they themselves had to go through. So they gave them everything.
The "X" generation. Another hard-working generation. Why? Because their parents (the baby boomers) are too busy indulging their self-entitles asses to actually care about raising their kids. Gen X-ers have had to bear low wages. Outsourced industries. And an income gap that is worse that it has ever been since ancient Egypt.
The "Millenial Generation". Another over-indulgent, self-entitled, bunch of lazy assholes. Why? Because their parents (the X generation) swore that they'd never make their kids go through what they themselves had to go through. Millennials have been doted over, helicoptered, and are living with their parents as adults at levels not seen since the Great Depression.
There's clearly a pattern. The "Greatest Generation" fucked the country. The "Silent Generation" brought it back. The "Baby Boomers" fucked the country. The "X" generation will bring it back. The "Millenial Generation" will fuck up the country. And their children will bring it back. And so on... and so forth...
Re:Work ethic alternates with generations... (Score:5, Informative)
The "X" generation. Another hard-working generation. [... ] Millennials have been doted over, helicoptered,
So actually you mean that the X generation was a bunch of idiots who poured vast amounts of misplaced work into really terrible ways of raising kids, right?
You know, I think about all the things millennials see. They see the Boomers giving themselsves vast pensions ands benefits, they see those people pulling up the ladders they used to climb, they see pension funds getting raided by greedy corporate types and no one lifts a finger to stop them, the boomers have used their wealth to price them out of ever being able to own a home and so on and so forth.
Why should someone sell their soul to a coproration who would lay them off next quarter so they can what? Pay exorbitant rates to a landlord who's sole bit of business sense was being born 50 years earlier? Or keep on topping up that pension like a good little drone only for a Philip Green of the world to give the entire thing to his wife as a dividend? Well it's either that or enter the "gig economy" which seems to be determined to undo the last 150 years of hard earned worker's rights because App!
Re:Work ethic alternates with generations... (Score:5, Insightful)
Millennials are the most screwed generation since the silent generation had war inflicted on them. The boomers broke the economy, broke the planet, broke all the promises, made sure everything they had for free (like education) is now paid for and extremely expensive, and gold plated their pensions, made property unaffordable, left the EU...
Gen X is just kinda stuck in the middle, unable to effect change because the boomers all go out and vote to feather their nests. There will have to be a great correction at some point, maybe when enough of them die to allow the younger generations to take political control.
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Europeans might want to discuss that with you. Depending on their religion, they might want to bring blunt objects to the discussion...
Change the rules, change the game (Score:2)
I suspect they aren't looking at this quite the right way. Employers used to exhibit some degree of commitment to their employees. Ethical employees returned that commitment with loyalty and hard work.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Most employers these days are conscienceless vampires who would cheerfully burn their employees' children in an incinerator if it would put a few extra bucks on their bottom line. So why would a sane person feel they owed their employer one little bit more than th
It is nice to know what I always guessed (Score:2)
Fraid not (Score:2)
The zinger is in the last sentence of the summary "Zabel's team did however note a higher work ethic in studies that contained the response of employees working in industry rather than of students."
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The zinger is in the last sentence of the summary "Zabel's team did however note a higher work ethic in studies that contained the response of employees working in industry rather than of students."
That's not a zinger. People who have jobs think the system is working for them.
They produced a lot of bums too. (Score:2)
Most of them are now in politics and academia.
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Not lack of work ethic, lack of stability (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that in most cases, if employees felt safe in their jobs, they'd do better work. That Millennial who seems to be "slacking" because they won't put in 90 hour weeks for years on end just sees what's going on. SV startups live on fresh college kids who haven't experienced what it's like to work in an unstable environment or for a hostile employer. Older Millennials are more cynical, just like older people of other generations.
Restoring the balance of employer/employee loyalty would be a good start if employers want a more productive workforce. Smart people see employers who will replace them at the drop of a hat and don't put in the extra effort as a result. Previous generations had some employers who would employ you for life...IBM had a no-layoff policy for ages and there are legions of people who worked for large employers like this their entire careers. In return, their employees were loyal, worked hard, put in extra hours where needed, etc.
Unfortunately, I can't see this happening any time soon. Back in the 60s/70s, the US was quite different. Absolutely everything was manufactured domestically, there was very little foreign competition, only 3 car companies of note, etc. And, companies needed thousands and thousands of people just to move paperwork around the organization, all of whom had stable jobs. Now, we manufacture very little, offshore well-paid technical jobs, and companies just keep squeezing harder to get those pennies out of their operational processes.
WTF happened to gen Y (Score:2)
Baby boomers to Gen X to Millennials? I feel so disenfranchise, and angry that this study llumpsme in with those slacking Millennials.
GenY for ever.
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GenY are the Millennials. You might want to take a look [wikipedia.org].
What people see (Score:2)
In every generation there is a bell curve of workers. Half of all workers are worse than average and more than half are less than exceptional. As people get older, the less than exceptional workers tend to get replaced by younger and cheaper (not always more talented) workers. Thus those in the older generation that remain are often better workers, or very good a brown nosing.
I'm a boomer, my kids are millenials (Score:4, Interesting)
I dropped out of UC Berkeley in 1982 (was a Physics major) because I was too stupid to understand that while university wasn't what I had thought it was going to be, it was still the best way to discover the stuff that would interest you for the rest of your life. I stumbled through the first year there, barely matriculating due to an idiotic policy at the time (maybe still extant)- first come first served enrollment in courses - courses that were mandatory for my major. WTF is up with that ?, surely if they're mandatory, I am just automatically enrolled in them; why the fuck should I have to queue up for hours to enroll ?
Anyway, my kids are much more alert to this kind of thing than I was, they are somehow more used to negotiating these types of issues, and playing them to their advantage. They party less. They work with more enthusiasm for their jobs, which they have chosen because they are genuinely interested in them, rather than for the money.
I spent my youth in a cloudy, dream state - which wasn't bad, I'll admit - until I woke up at about age 20 and realized that I had better get my ass in gear and get something done with my life. Even then it took a 6 year stint in the US Navy to turn myself around and become anything like my children are at an earlier age.
Perhaps they have benefited from me explaining some more of the fundamentals of life to them better than my parents did me - although I don't think that's the case. None-the-less, they are certainly nowhere near as lazy as I was, and more conscientious about their place in society too.
Perhaps they're a bit special for their generation, but my experiences with their friends tells me they're not. I have high hopes that their generation will clean up a lot of the mess brought on by my parent's and my generation.
As a side note (Score:2)
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teenagers to early twenty-something are almost always a poor example of a generation's work ethic.
once people end up in their thirties and have mouths to feed, they tend to work as hard as their parents once did.
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OK, maybe they lasted longer too.
Yeah, like my Samsung washing machine! I've had that old thing for... wait, does anyone else smell smoke?
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Nah, I just threw the lithium in with the laundry. Like the detergent, you know? Why?
Re:Kids these days (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies printed circuit diagrams on the inside of their hardware. Go open your HVAC, there's probably a circuit diagram on the inside.
Ford used to publish "This is how you fix our cars" and give it away. The knowledge was there.
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Ford used to publish "This is how you fix our cars" and give it away. The knowledge was there.
They do still publish it, but you have to pay the cost of production. The Ford manuals tend to come in multi-volume sets and have a lot of data in them, so paying a couple hundred bucks is not out of line on that basis. Unfortunately, they are also poorly indexed, so actually finding things in them is frustrating beyond belief.
Better to buy a Nissan, which takes less fixing. They also come with a cheaper, better service manual.
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Hope for electrocution, for our lawyers will not be so kind when we find out you tried to hack our device and circumvent some patent!
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Did..did they never teach you how to shut off the main breaker in your house? lol
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The difference is, though, that nobody expected you to have the answer instantly. People expected that you knew a few things and would look the rest up, in the library behind you or even after a day or two when the relevant papers arrived at your desk. Today, you're expected to either know the answer or know where to find it. Now. Instantly. And if I don't have a reply mail from you in 10 minutes, you'll get a call asking if you dare to ignore me, you little twerp.
That's the difference.
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No energy. Your mom wore me out.
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No energy. Your mom wore me out.
I've never really understood this as an insult. I mean, my mum's what 75? Chances are, she got the better part of that deal.
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It can't be rape if money changes hands.
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Anecdotes? Whoa there, buddy, you're argument about a few people is clearly statistically significant! I guess we should discard what scientists say because it doesn't seem right to you.
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I had two who worked out well, and even one of those ended up moving to be closer to Mums and Pops.
Once upon an time in America... three generations of a single family would often live under the same roof. With baby boomers retiring and everyone else struggling to make ends meet, multi-generational homes might become the norm again.
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What do you mean "become"? They ARE the norm already in many cases. How many people actually have the money to move out? "Living in your mom's basement" may be the staple of nerd and neckbeard jokes, for some people it's the uncomfortable truth simply because they can't earn a wage high enough to afford their own apartment.
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Millenials ar ethe hardest working most selfless generation ever put on earth.
As pointed out somewhere above, oldsters have been complaining about "these kids today" for millennia. But equally so and for equally long, kids have regarded oldsters as no better than idiots. "Ayn chadash tachat hashemesh" --- there is nothing new under the sun.
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And yet I see people half my age bust their asses around the work place all the time.
Either way, anecdotal evidence is garbage.
If you're in a successful part of California though the combination of high property values and rents aggravate an already low unemployment rate which makes finding quality labor hard right now. There's other parts of the country where this is happening too. This is ultimately a good thing as we might see a bit of wage recovery for the middle class and *gasp* maybe a little growth i
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Unpaid trial periods are a thing for some places, but they just do not seem to get that they are selecting for people who can afford not to work and can behave like the characters the GP is describing. However each time they get disappointed they go out of their way to discourage the sort of people who will work hard and stick around.
The sort of employees they actually want look at the prospect of no money for a while and d
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Another thing is those employers who appear to try hard to give themselves problems.
Ain't that the truth...
Unpaid trial periods are a thing for some places,... However each time they get disappointed they go out of their way to discourage the sort of people who will work hard and stick around.
I'm passed the point in my career where anyone would ask me for an unpaid trial period. I do occasionally get called by people trying to recruit me. I have a decent track record in a reasonably niche field, so it's not
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Universities have spent many millions of dollars trying to give the snowflakes a crash course in becoming adults
That problem is solved now, universities get "safe spaces" and anti-microaggression lectures, lest some snowflakes melt.
I think next step would be to child proof the work places.
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You mean that we have the expectation that people we pay to work for us should, you know, work for us? What we need them to do? Yeah, I have to admit, we kinda do have that sort of expectation.
Maybe we're wrong and we should pay people to update their Facebook status, twitter their latest dump and instagram the junk on their work desk. Could you inform me how to monetize that, though? Because else we first of all have to get a new economy system in place, that model collides head on with capitalism.
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The millennials intrinsically know the game is rigged against them.
Wah!
Oh, and every generation invented sex too. The game is rigged, and has been for a long time. When I first entered the workforce, the "common knowledge" was that there was no point in saving for retirement, inflation and jeebuz chryste we were all gonna die when the bombs are a-flyin overhead. So our go-go generation largely screwed itself over by acting in their own worst interests down the road.
The only thing not in short supply for so many of you is self pity. My generation had it as well, with t
Re:success (Score:5, Informative)
Re:success (Score:5, Insightful)
It took several generations to recover from the war. All the way up to early generation X
There was more to be done than just building fallen buildings but get society back.
Because after WWII there was the cold war which Europe was under threat. So after the Cold War then the world was able to more or less restore itself.
But when each generation looks at the next they see people in different stages of life.
Boomers who are retiring are looking at gen X who are taking the mantle and see them making the mistakes they did when they took over from the previous generation.
Gen X are looking at melenals who are in the stage of their life where they are trying to find a mate and are acting rather stupid.
There are lessons that we have to learn by ourselves and the previous generation cannot teach it to us. No matter how hard they try.
The biggest threat I see is the inability for people to parse mass media of info. Stats says violence is down but we feel like it is worse. Because we see all the worlds problems in a one hour segment every day.
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That's the Great Generation that rebuilt the world after WWII. Baby boomers came later with their loud music, pot smoking and premarital sex.
Music and sex doesn't have anything to do with generational success, and drugs did not destroy the lives of the majority of us. The big difference between the generations is that while Greatests, whatever their political affiliation, were can-do believers in human progress, we went out into an optimistic working world circa 1965 and then proceeded to ruin it with our anti-technology attitudes. Today the Xers and millennials are struggling to escape from the world we made.
Yanks (Score:3)
...and very late to turn up to the fucking fight as usual.
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we did cross an ocean from the other side of the world to participate in your defense
That Atlantic voyage must have been hell. Funny that the British are usually criticised for crossing oceans too much, in 1775 for example.
Nit-picking, the USA was participating in attack, not defence. Good job, as US troops are notoriously poor in defence (except for the airborne regiments) - not being well trained for it as the US military culture places a lot of weight on elan. OTOH UK troops are generally good at defence, being well trained for it (think of colonial outposts surrounded by hostile nativ
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Well, yea. After all, nobody attacked us badly enough to make us want to fight until Pearl Harbor, then we just popped in and ended it in a relative flash. We may show up late, but we can pretty much guarantee a win no matter what.
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Ok, let's blame it on those that could have done a better job expanding our cities in the past couple years. Let's see, who would that be, who's in charge of politics, economy and media...