41–50 of 90 posts
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Also, though a lot of people won't admit to it, he's putting himself in danger by taking a mediocre job. He can very easily be typecast into that sort of role for a long time.
Is it a bigger danger to work in a mediocre job than to have a two year span of unemployment on his resume?
The American dream is about working your ass off and scrambling your way up the ladder. It's about entrepreneurism and opportunity. It's about hard work and determination paying off over time. Andrew Carnegie's first job earned lower wages than working at McDonald's would today, he became wealthy not because he sat around like a sad sack waiting for his pre-conceived dream job to come to him while he was sitting around in his parent's house, he became wealthy because he sought out opportunities and took advantage of what he could. Like many highly successful people he worked his way through several careers.
The American dream isn't about the guy in this article, it's about the guy down the street starting a lawn care business with a rented lawnmower who uses hard work and sound judgment to build it into a landscaping company with its own office and several employees. It's about the other guy who builds an online business in his free time and works days, evenings, and weekends in order to make his dream reality. It's about the opportunity to work your way from nothing up to a comfortable living if you're willing to put in the elbow grease. That dream is as alive as ever, and with the low-overhead of internet based businesses if anything it's seeing a rebirth.
I always thought that the American dream was about determination winning over "old money". I thought it was having fewer roadblocks in front of you. I thought it was about having opportunities to prove oneself regardless of wether or not you have a diploma.
Am I so disconnected from this kid's worldview that I can't understand why he didn't take up the 40k? I accepted my first job realizing that it wasn't so much about the money I was making as the chance to prove myself out there. Prove myself I did. I doubled my salary within the first 5 years and got more and more interesting jobs as time went by.
This guy just has sense of entitlement. He calls it the American dream but either he doesn't know what that means or I don't.
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I recall another story about a girl who attended NYU and has a mountain of debt and can't find work. At the end of the article it stated her major, and it wasn't something that was marketable in today's economy. Which sounds slightly arrogant. As a reader, I can see the mistakes made. The reality in any economy is that a womens studies graduate from NYU is going to have more difficulty finding work than say an engine…
I think there is much more pressure on young people today (me being one of them) that you must be doing what your love or working on your passion. While good advice, some young people don't realise that this is good long-term advice. It's something you should work towards over a number of years. It is a very big mistake to close doors that may not offer the perfect path. I have some friends like this who seem to want…
That does work, but the key is that you just start doing what you love, possibly in your free time (chances are that when you start out, you're not good enough yet to get paid for it :-). If you keep that up long enough, and you keep enjoying it, chances are that at some point you will be good enough to get a job doing it. Case in point...
What does NOT work is sitting around waiting for a job to come by that you might like (like the guy in the article seems to be doing). Nor is it a good idea to live off of someone else while you wait.
He's 24 and his parents are still paying his cell phone bill? Yikes.
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Is it a bigger danger to work in a mediocre job than to have a two year span of unemployment on his resume?
I'd say yes - I was pigeonholed as a Java Developer for 10 years...
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From the article: he doesn't want to be an entrepreneur or work in small-fish business. He is set for building a traditional career in a finance corporation. A yuppie born into wrong era.
Killer quote: "If you talk to 20 people," Scott said, "you’ll find only one in manufacturing and everyone else in finance Umm, no...
Political science with a history minor. I feel bad for him, but what did he expect?
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I'd say yes - I was pigeonholed as a Java Developer for 10 years...
Oh come on. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps if you don't like that. Find a hot new language and play with it in your spare time. Start an open source project with it. Contribute to the community. Then apply to jobs with that knowledge and skill set on your resume, and you'll break out of that role. Just have to want it.