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The Millennial generation

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    #26
    The Millennial generation

    Ditto.

    I'm also proper unemployed (ie not a student) for the first time in my life. Caught between elation and terror, i'm mostly coping by watching telly in my parents' house wearing boxers and eating smoked salmon. Mean Streets, innit?

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      #27
      The Millennial generation

      Just skim-reading this, this just comes across as more niche-marketing generation generalisation bollocks doesn't it? As Wyatt says, "businessmen generate, believe in, own bullshit" shocker! And of course it's completely in these people's interests for them to perpetuate the notion that there are no class divides anymore.

      Which would certainly be news to anyone who's read coverage of, say, the Shannon Matthews case.

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        #28
        The Millennial generation

        I missed this one before, but Reed, I love your work on this thread.

        I'm just envious of today's young "learners" and "jobseekers" and so forth, though.

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          #29
          The Millennial generation

          Thank you so much. That's very kind.

          They are so comfortable with on-line researching that they actively mistrust traditional guidance manuals, preferring - actively preferring - to be given the freedom to search for their own solutions to problems through a variety of media before deciding on a way forward.

          I had a job writing manuals about 8 years ago and found that people of all generations avoid manuals (but get mad if you don't send them one) and really just want somebody to tell them how to do it or do it for them.

          I find that older people are equally comfortable with online this or that, it's just that unlike younger people, they're comfortable using obsolete technology like pens, paper, fax machines, stamps, envelopes, paper documents and so forth because they can remember how to use those from the days when that was the only option.

          Idiotic articles like that imply that somehow preferring the latest technology is some kind of advantage or proves they are more "tech savvy" whatever that means. I find that people are usually most comfortable with doing something however they first learned to do it, it just so happens that young people learned it more recently so they are more "up to date." But they'll be behind the curve in 10 years like every generation before them.

          The rest of us don't want to go to a lot of effort to learn a new system for only a marginal gain in productivity. For example, my dad uses WordPerfect even though most of the rest of the world uses Word because the time it would take him to be totally comfortable in Word isn't really worth it. My mom still writes checks at the supermarket because she finds it easier to remember to bring the checkbook than to remember her pin number (I admit, I don't understand that).

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            #30
            The Millennial generation

            The rest of us don't want to go to a lot of effort to learn a new system for only a marginal gain in productivity.

            This is very true. The constant upgrading of applications is the bane of my existence. Not only because I have to learn the new unrequested and unrequired version, but also because I have to teach it to others. Mostly they're a waste of limited classroom time.

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              #31
              The Millennial generation

              That isn't to say that new technology doesn't improve productivity. But each marginal change from v.1.1 to v.1.2, isn't that helpful.

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                #32
                The Millennial generation

                From the page Gramsci links to:
                Ms. Terlecki says the only time she thinks about the generation gap is when her older colleagues tease her about how easy their jobs are now, with the benefits of the Internet and BlackBerrys.

                She doesn't mind. But she's already bristling at the entitled attitudes of a few of the new interns who complain about their low pay. When she was an intern, she tells them, they weren't paid at all and she had to work two jobs to make ends meet.

                "Oh you guys," she tells them with a world-weary sigh, "you don't appreciate what you have now."
                I don't even know what interns are (work experience kids with degrees?), but this sounds a bit fishy to me. In the decade since I graduated, I've been struck by how little you're supposed to be paid (if you get paid at all) if you want to get started in any kind of interesting job, how you're supposed to do another degree or course that takes another full-time year if you even want to get that un/low-paid work experience in the first place ("showing commitment" often seems to be the sum value of your qualification), and how there's no such thing as an apprenticeship anymore - just experience that may or may not come in handy, no guarantees.

                And if she's talking about kids straight out of uni now with £20,000 of debt hanging over them, of course they're going to want payback of some sort. That's the basis for getting in so much debt in the first place.

                Maybe that's a generational difference between me (aged 31) and them already: I'm terrified of debt, and unless I get a contract signed in triplicate guaranteeing that I'll have a secure, interesting job at the other end I'm not going to borrow a penny.

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                  #33
                  The Millennial generation

                  Interns are probably what you call "work experience." They may or may not have a degree yet. They may be paid or unpaid. It all depends. It does seem like kids are being asked to do a lot of non-paid or low-paid work to "get their foot in the door." That seems to be the case in journalism. It also may explain why so many young magazine writers, etc, seem to be trustafarians.

                  Having a college degree does not constitute an iron-clad garauntee that you'll get the job you want but the list of careers and jobs almost closed or completely closed to those without a degree is growing, I think.

                  That isn't necessarily good. Apprenticeship appears to be dead in most fields, which means the industries are shifting the cost of training their workers back onto the workers and/or the State.

                  Student debt is a problem because it compels students to only pursue fields where they can make a lot of money to pay off the debt. It doesn't bother me that plastic surgeons and corporate lawyers making massive wads of cash have to spend some of it to repay the cost of their education. But what about public defenders and people working in free clinics and so forth? How can they afford to take a low salary and pay off their debt?

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                    #34
                    The Millennial generation

                    WOM wrote: EIM, what are your thoughts on Generation Y?
                    After some consideration I have decided I have no strong opinion on it either way.

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