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The Idled Young Americans

nytimes.com

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Re: The Idled Young Americans

#51

Post by aspensmonster »

bicknergseng wrote: post #47
com2kid wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honest question: what field are you in which means your candidates are going to need to write custom allocators on a regular basis? Embedded. :P > What problems need custom allocators? I'm a fan of lower level details and all, but surely you can get away with one of the many existing allocator implementations when the problem to be solved isn't "sudo make me an allocator"? Memory is being counted in kilobytes. Proc…

>who feel the same, and who are serious about software engineering, isn't easy! So what you're saying is that you have a hard time finding people experienced and passionate about your extremely small niche? I'm sure I'd have a hard time finding qualified child neurologists willing to work for < 200k as well.

I'd hardly call embedded work an extremely small niche. Now, what he's doing on them may or may not be. But microcontrollers on the whole are a much bigger industry than personal computing. You'll find many more 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers in any given house than you will Intel or AMD 32/64 bit general purpose microprocessors. Last I checked approximately half of all CPUs sold globally were 8-bit.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#52

Post by john_b »

Riesling wrote: post #25
laughfactory wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@com2kid You're spot on. As a recent college graduate (at a non-traditional age: in my 30's) I saw a TON of exactly what you describe. Our peer group (not the Hacker News peer group, clearly, but the rest of the 20 to mid-30s group) is, by and large, listless. They simply don't have much drive or motivation. They're--as you put it so aptly--merely "existing." I attribute this to changes in "higher" education. High sc…

Why do people have to adjust to the economy? Shouldn't it be the other way around in an ideal world? Why has the economy been created in the first place? As an end in itself? Or was it to make life easier for everybody? In my opinion, if the system fails to enable a fullfilled life for the majority of the people, the system needs to be changed. It's easy to say people should not acquire worthless Film & TV degrees, w…

The degree of is/ought fallacy and outright naivete in your statements is truly astonishing.

> "Why do people have to adjust to the economy? Shouldn't it be the other way around in an ideal world?"

As Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." This has been and still is a basic truth of the world. Creatures that expect (much less demand) their environment or others to adapt to them always suffer. That's not to say that all suffering has its root here, but the economy was never "created" to do anything, especially make life easier for everybody. Economic forces emerge naturally from basic human interactions, and there is no single authority who can tweak the knobs on "the system" to change it for the betterment of everyone.

> "I would not want to spend the majority of my precious time on earth with something I do not like to do. And of course I think other people shouldn't either."

This is precisely the attitude that most older generations complain about when they belittle milennials. Many of these people worked in boring, sometimes pointless jobs to be able to pay their bills. They understood that work is called work because it is not necessarily fun. Fun is what you do when you get home from work, on your own time.

We are fortunate to live in an era where many people can find jobs that are inherently satisfying. We live in an economy that has many opportunities for creative minds and challenging problems for analytical minds. Most of these problems can be solved indoors, in an air conditioned room, without having to physically exert yourself or put yourself in any danger.

The economy will not adjust to you. The economy cares about what you have to offer it, and what you can purchase from it. It does not care what you demand from it without offering anything in return.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#53

Post by svachalek »

com2kid wrote: post #23
svachalek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not against H1 for other reasons, but I'm a little skeptical of the trickle-down benefits of software engineers. Civil engineers, industrial engineers, sure. But who else do we add to a company's payroll? A few sales, HR, here and there. A little business to local grocery stores, restaurants, etc. But I don't see software as a leveraged job-creation industry.

> I'm not against H1 for other reasons, but I'm a little skeptical of the trickle-down benefits of software engineers. Video Games are a great example. How many jobs has Halo created? Well there are all the various paraphernalia that goes along with the series. From artists hired to design custom Xbox face plates, to the sales person selling the t-shirts, to statues, action figures, etc. Then there are the advertiser…

Those areas are tech hubs. I've lived in Silicon Valley for 18 years, and most companies I've worked for are about half engineering. So, for every foreign engineer we bring in, perhaps the company can add one position on the other side of the house, in marketing, accounting, HR, etc. And then some small trickle-down effect as the engineer and his counterpart spend their salaries locally. It's good, better than nothing, but it's not like the old days of setting up a car factory and then bringing in thousands of relatively low-skilled new jobs.

The Halo example is good, but balance it out with things like Google's self driving cars. It's a relatively small team that will probably eliminate all of the taxi and truck driving jobs in the developed world. It will probably make vehicle sharing radically more efficient as well which will take a lot of cars off the road and eliminate more jobs there too.

All in all, I believe we're competing with foreign engineers no matter where they are so it makes sense to have them here. I'm just not seeing much evidence that we are creating jobs faster than we are eliminating them.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#54

Post by meej »

enraged_camel wrote: post #7

Like many people here, I work for a software company. We develop business automation software. Perhaps unlike most though, I'm closer to the bottom line (Sales Engineer), and are more closely tuned in to the types of business conversations our customers have when they are thinking about whether to buy our software. Often times, the conversation revolves around the fact that the software we sell makes the average work…

Do you read Paul Krugman at all? I cut his blog out of my information diet a while ago, but before I did, he was beating the "lack of demand" drum pretty loudly.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#55

Post by UVB-76 »

gcv wrote: post #6

Because too many of them are busy looking for other people to give them employment (which has been difficult for employers to do), instead of figuring out how to create wealth on their own. If more created their own businesses, they would probably be able to hire the rest — you know, the ones working in coffee shops and retail. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/what-the-fate-of-... , for example.

Yep, that's right. Fresh out of college in your early 20s, with tens of thousands of dollars of debt to your name, no income, no access to credit...

Starting a business is the obvious solution! Why didn't people think of it sooner?

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#56

Post by com2kid »

svachalek wrote: post #53
com2kid wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not against H1 for other reasons, but I'm a little skeptical of the trickle-down benefits of software engineers. Video Games are a great example. How many jobs has Halo created? Well there are all the various paraphernalia that goes along with the series. From artists hired to design custom Xbox face plates, to the sales person selling the t-shirts, to statues, action figures, etc. Then there are the advertiser…

Those areas are tech hubs. I've lived in Silicon Valley for 18 years, and most companies I've worked for are about half engineering. So, for every foreign engineer we bring in, perhaps the company can add one position on the other side of the house, in marketing, accounting, HR, etc. And then some small trickle-down effect as the engineer and his counterpart spend their salaries locally. It's good, better than nothin…

Think bigger than that.

How many stores have employees dedicated just to selling electronics? How many video game t-shirts get sold? Entire comic strips like Penny Arcade, and all the associated goods that go with it.

Just an anthology book of comics, the printers, the person who does the page layout, the binding, the paper mill that makes the paper for the book, the factory that makes the glossy ink, everything is connected together.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#57

Post by aridiculous »

woodchuck64 wrote: post #28

> The official unemployment rate for 25- to 34-year-old college graduates remains just 3.3 percent. So this article should be titled: "Why are Uneducated Young Americans Jobless."

Underemployment is the key metric for 25-27 years olds at the moment. Very difficult to measure.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#58

Post by aridiculous »

gcv wrote: post #6

Because too many of them are busy looking for other people to give them employment (which has been difficult for employers to do), instead of figuring out how to create wealth on their own. If more created their own businesses, they would probably be able to hire the rest — you know, the ones working in coffee shops and retail. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/what-the-fate-of-... , for example.

It's an odd thing: the startup community often has all of the smug traits of the out-of-touch, old-money elite, but has none of their gifts for enjoying leisure. It's a particularly awful combination in my opinion.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#59

Post by marssaxman »

aspensmonster wrote: post #13
com2kid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AND we need more H-1B's? This guy's a real piece of work. We already have the ability to bring in extraordinary talent. We don't need 50,000 more outsource firm slots. Being on the hiring side of things, America needs all the talent it can get. Hiring good software engineers is seriously hard. Maybe the problem is just connecting people with jobs, but given the low unemployment rate in the tech sector, I really dou…

Hiring top talent is certainly expensive. And if you're searching for the best of the best, it will always be hard by virtue of the fact that you're looking for people at the extreme of a bell curve, no matter how large the sample set is. As for knowing how malloc works: fewer and fewer universities are even touching C. It's all C++ or, better yet, Java (no need to understand memory management _at all_ in that case).…

As someone who has implemented a couple of mallocs, what on earth are "HA scenarios"?

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#60

Post by 108 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #43
Riesling wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people have to adjust to the economy? Shouldn't it be the other way around in an ideal world? Why has the economy been created in the first place? As an end in itself? Or was it to make life easier for everybody? In my opinion, if the system fails to enable a fullfilled life for the majority of the people, the system needs to be changed. It's easy to say people should not acquire worthless Film & TV degrees, w…

> I would not want to spend the majority of my precious time on earth with something I do not like to do. And of course I think other people shouldn't either. The world does not exist to provide you with enjoyment. If you can make a living doing what you love to do, like many of us here, that's a fantastic added bonus but realize -- it isn't the nature of life to be able to do what you enjoy 24/7 (or 8/5). This is wh…

@Domenic_S , This. Well said.
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