"I made enough to live on, but only because I had moved back home with my parents and didn’t have to pay for rent or groceries."
No, no you didn't.
Growing-ups
31–40 of 80 posts
Re: Growing-ups
#32Let me know when they have a spouse, child, and mortgage. That's the dividing line, as far as I can tell.
What precisely is it about having a child and having a mortgage that qualifies someone as "grown-up"? (I'm speaking as someone who has a wife, a kid and a house bought outright).
It brings things which are considered grown-up sharply into focus. Nothing seems to encourage bringing home some money for food and housing like a child or two. At least that is my interpretation.
Re: Growing-ups
#33This is interesting to me because my brother and I (both in our later twenties), ended up taking two different paths. I knew what I wanted to do since high school (software engineering), unwaveringly pursued my 4-year degree with solid scholarships, got a good job the day after I graduated, and bought a house at 25 with a decent down-payment. My brother, on the other hand, did not have that kind of luck. He tinkered…
I feel the same way. My success as a programmer is some combination of luck and hard work, but it'd be unfair to judge others based on the kind of luck I've had. I was lucky to have been exposed to computing at an early age, stumble upon source code for qbasic games, like programming, major in it, and happen to have my graduation date align with a huge period of growth in our industry. Good luck magnifies the effect…
Definitely. When I started my degree, it was during a time when everyone was worried that all IT-related were going to India. However, I chose CS anyway because I enjoyed it. I just lucked out. The industry has been booming, my LinkedIn account blows up with recruiter emails, and I traded my stuffy corporate job for a startup position with a work environment heavily weighted toward employee comfort. I get into work at 10am wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and somehow I'm still a responsible adult. It's ridiculous. Hard work definitely helped, but I was also at the right place at the right time.
Re: Growing-ups
#34Only had time to skim the article, but the section on work caught my eye. Like a lot of people I was fairly dissatisfied with my early career, but, luckily, as a programmer my job had some future prospects worth obtaining. I now really like what I do, and I've learned a bit about the nature of work. A few things come to mind: 0. The more competent you are at something, the more interesting it becomes. Expecting your…
Perhaps I was fortunate in my career choices, but #2 is not my experience. Plenty of people are hiring for problems they don't fully understand and can't solve, or they wouldn't be hiring. Often enough, those are the interesting problems.
Re: Growing-ups
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an interesting observation. I had thought it was really more the result of the prevailing economic conditions, rather than the result of a strong, nurturing relationship. These are hypotheses that I would really like to see tested, that way I know whether to blame parents for causing economic crisis, or for babying their children (j/k).
It's interesting to look at the one time events that have happened in the last few (or several) generations. The destruction of farming/agriculture as the primary source of employment and the post war boom would be two big ones. I think the change in agriculture is interesting here because the decision making process for the child of a (relatively poor) farmer wouldn't have been very involved, they would be quite lik…
Great point about agriculture. Fortunately, telecommuting enabled me to stay on the farm, which couldn't support me by itself. Had I been born a decade earlier, moving away to a populous area would have been an almost certainty. If you have to move away from your family, the risk is already high, so what's a little more? Now, the vast majority of the population already live in urban areas, so we are back to not having to move very far from your family.
Re: Growing-ups
#36I really hate this term "emerging adults." Suddenly we're not full adults anymore, just because many people of my generation have failed to live up to the standard of adulthood? I really hope this isn't a trend/term which catches on and justifies continued ageism or the denial of rights. In general, I've always hated these "generational" descriptions. They're guaranteed to be woefully inaccurate for many people in th…
> The people who fail to do this are simply that: failures.
Yup, sounds 21 to me. Quick to anger and lash out, quick to judge, moral certitude, and lack of empathy.
For one, there's significant variance to how family units function across the human population. In many parts of the world, living together for far longer than 17 is the norm, and the model of how one generation financially supports the next, or families co-manage/pool their finances, works very differently. Often systems emerge that entrench this (e.g. the massive up-front down payments on rental apartments in the South Korean retail markets, which kids simply cannot afford because there's no time to make that kind of money).
So blanket statements like this reek of cultural superiority and lack of education, frankly. I get that you're pissed because you don't feel you're getting the respect you deserve for your accomplishments (or at least that's what I seemed to read there), but starting with some humility and respect for others might change how people respond to you.
(And yeah, I was financially self-sufficient at 21, too. Big deal. It's possible because I happened to enjoy doing work in an area and market that allowed for it. Many things worth pursueing, and of great contribution to society, don't make you money at 21.)
Re: Growing-ups
#37I really hate this term "emerging adults." Suddenly we're not full adults anymore, just because many people of my generation have failed to live up to the standard of adulthood? I really hope this isn't a trend/term which catches on and justifies continued ageism or the denial of rights. In general, I've always hated these "generational" descriptions. They're guaranteed to be woefully inaccurate for many people in th…
> For my part, I haven't lived at home since I was 17 and, at 21, have a very "serious" job (which definitely pays the bills). I'm certainly not an outlier in this regard. The people who fail to do this are simply that: failures.
Uni students are failures?
Re: Growing-ups
#38If you are an "emerging adult" at age 30, then there is a problem. Further, the author of this article claiming that these so called "emerging adults" are not lazy or self-entitled is ridiculous. It is clearly a case of "first world problems". The mere fact that these "emerging adults" have the luxury of living "on the dole" (whether parental or governmental) while they "figure out what they want to do with their liv…
Most survival work like that doesn't pay that well, so you would not be able to get shelter, food etc anyway.
A large majority of professional jobs in business, programming, accountancy, consultancy are filled with people who want to be there.
I am in a professional job, and I doubt I could afford a decent place to live without parental help other than a crappy flat in a dodgy area.
How people afford to live by themselves, on non-professional jobs I don't know.
Re: Growing-ups
#39Let me know when they have a spouse, child, and mortgage. That's the dividing line, as far as I can tell.
What precisely is it about having a child and having a mortgage that qualifies someone as "grown-up"? (I'm speaking as someone who has a wife, a kid and a house bought outright).
>What precisely is it about having a child and having a mortgage that qualifies someone as "grown-up"?
It's shorthand for assuming adult responsibilities. It's difficult to survive on your emotionally fulfilling but minimum wage job if you have a brood in diapers at home. Obviously you still have responsibilities, probably including property taxes, insurance, and utilities, if you own your house outright as opposed to having a mortgage.
BTW, it's a bit tricky to buy your home outright if you live, in, say Palo Alto, where I recall a bunch of YC-funded startups are based:
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2013/12/24/real-estate-ma... "In Palo Alto the median sales price for a home was $2.2 million..."
Re: Growing-ups
#40> They expect work to be fun, and if it’s not fun, they refuse to do it. That is a big difference and a good way to sum it up. Unfortunately, lots of jobs are both needed and full of drudgery.
>Unfortunately, lots of jobs are both needed and full of drudgery. I get the feeling millennials are calling that bluff: "If it's so needed, why won't they hire me for it/why doesn't it pay more?'
* why won't they hire me for it
Because "you" got a humanities degree and "it" is a tradesperson job which does not "make the world better". "You" chose to pursue "fun and interesting", and didn't run the numbers on "ROI", which only geeks, low-class people, and in-it-for-the-money people did.
* why doesn't it pay more?
Because experience counts a tremendous amount, far more than willingness to show up.
/me shrug
A lot of tradespeople jobs are done by immigrants willing to work many hours with low pay where natives are out looking for "rewarding" and "fulfilling" work. The Great Hand of Bettering Yourself By Hard Work will sort it out, more or less, more or less unevenly, in the end.