On those "Entitled" Twenty-Somethings

I would call it a surplus of skills, but a surplus of paper. The problem is that the paper you get at the end of your higher education isn't worth that much anymore. Experience is still worth something, though. So an employer is better of to take the experience indicator, since the education indicator isn't that useful anymore.

The problem isn't that there are a few hundred-qualified applicants. The problem is that an employer has no tool to filter those applicants, so the applicants can't do anything to be more qualified than the others and the process becomes quite random. My thesis is that given a good graduation result the next best thing is to learn socials skills and tricks in the interview process. In the end HR makes a gut decision.

Me too, graduated with a degree in the hard sciences, 1974. (They're called that for a reason.)

Then I worked as a fry cook, then a dishwasher, then a radio station librarian, then a DJ, then a lumberjack, then a carpenter. THEN I got a real job.

Don't misunderstand: kids graduating right now landed in the shit. You're right: the greedy bastards have worked us over good. But guess what kid: we're all in it, and it's always been that way.

Heard of anyone who worked all their life to build up a 500K retirement and just lost 60% of it? Two decades ago I listened to a guy tell me that he paid into a pension for 30 years, and when his company went down, it was ALL GONE.

Rodney Dangerfield: "It's a jungle out there." Bank on it.

Isn't it a bit sad that someone should have to work a 60 hour week (assuming you don't work weekends...), likely with no more than 2 weeks a year vacation, to earn a good living, though? Fair enough if you're doing what you love, but that is never, alas, going to be the case for most people.

I'm lucky enough to get to work on what I love, but I still think that we should endeavour to restrict the 'normal' working week to a lower number of hours. In Praise of Idleness is an interesting essay on the point: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html .

So let me get this straight... people told you to study hard and over achieve, and now you're upset because things aren't as easy as you were promised?

Welcome to the real world.

Sad Fact #1: Everything people tell you isn't true. Even your parents, religious leaders and teachers will tell you things that aren't entirely true, mostly because they have their own motivations.

Sad Fact #2: You can do everything the right way and still fail. Mostly because there are a lot of people who's parents also told them to study hard and overachieve, and by the nature of the system you can't all win big.

I had to learn these lessons the hard way, too. Everyone does, sooner or later. Some people respond by taking another look around and wondering what else they don't know. Other people start to demand the respect they were promised without having yet accomplished anything impressive. If you're in that second group you have what they call a "sense of entitlement", no matter what the previous generation told you.