Late Stage Capitalism
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100% why I don't give advice.
Older people refuse to acknowledge that the world has changed and the younger generation is legitimately fucked by no fault of their own.
The more you give advice from a place of genuine compassion, the more you work out your empathy circuitry and thus the better you will be at understanding others' problems and communicating with them, not to necessarily give them a solution, but to help them how they need.
Yes, but I also see the flip side. I often went without luxuries, or even good food in the early 90s (like cutting mold off my bread to make a sandwich for work) so that we could save to buy our first house. While I see young family members complain that life is expensive and its a boomer problem, but they forget their 20k debt is because they are using Skip to order a milkshake, burger, sub etc. every day. There has been a conveniece culture created, besides capitalism running wild on house prices.
...yeah. The people commenting here have unrealistic expectations. I feel as though they're using old sitcoms and movies to make assumptions about the boomer generation.
The people alive today in the United States have an unsustainably high standard of living; we need to continue supporting international wars of conquest if we want to keep what we have. The international politics of the Boomer generation is the source of our wealth.
Personally, I think I have more than I deserve. I have no illusions regarding my worth.
There is a middle ground. A lot of younger people are legit shit at applying for jobs, like they don't even read the job description and put the the position title... they just throw up a wall of buzzwords and copy-paste it and call it a day, showing the application reviewers they have no legit interest in the job.
Also a lot of them are awful interviewers, again, focusing on vibes and buzzwords and demonstrating a lack of legitimate interest. And yeah that might work if you want a bullshit job for a bullshit company, but for more serious work it's a huge red flag.
Just having basic social skills to like, demonstrate that you know what the company does and that you'd be interested in it's mission, as basic as that is, sets your application above like 95% of the rest of them. You don't have to be fancy... you just have to demonstrate basic information processing and acknowledgement skills...
What, you mean the LLM that filters out everything without the bullshit and buzzwords before it ever gets to a human? 'Cause that's the only "reviewer" a carefully-written but not machine-optimized application is ever gonna see.
No.
Often the jobs being offered are opaque, confusing, or outright scammy. Often the people doing the applications are just bots testing the HR system for vulnerabilities or marketing reps looking to sell independent contractors.
I've lived on both sides of the hiring game, and in my experience just about the only way to get a job (outside of a job fair at a college or other meet-and-greet event) is via referral. The process of searching for and apply for jobs has become such a disorienting mess that simply spamming responses without bothering to read the job offer seems as reasonable a response as the HR method of throwing out hiring requests that nobody intended to read or respond to.
In a face-to-face interview, sure.
But in an entirely digital marketplace for labor, you're legit better off just throwing shit at the wall until you actually make contact with another human being.
You can't custom Taylor every job application, chances are it's fake anyways and you have to apply for a lot
Like I'm fucking "interested in the mission" after the first 400 applications that a human doesn't even see.
Same problem exists with dating apps. "You want me to personally tailor my first message to you based on what I can glean from your generic profile, and somehow still stand out from the hundreds of other messages you're getting based on that same profile? Do you realize how many hundreds of messages I have to send just to get one response? At least respond to "hi" first, and then I'll put more effort into it. That'll filter out the 90% of profiles that are fake or aren't even checked and just advertising their instagram, snapchat, OF, or crypto business."
I mean, I haven't used dating apps in years because they were bullshit. But man was that frustrating, especially cause it's basically taboo to approach anyone in person anymore...
I digress...
From the other side of the aisle, consider receiving a dozen messages that just say "hi" and a handful that are legitimate attempts at conversation. You only have so much time in a day to respond, so which ones would you most likely respond to?
In my experience of 2+ decades of dating across the gender spectrum (much of which was initiated online), the people who message "hi" often end up being bad conversationalists. I put effort into responses, just to get back something like "lol, that's great. wut u up to saturday?" Uh, probably looking for someone who'll respond as if they read what I wrote before attempting to meet me in person.
Though I'm the kind of person who likes deep conversations, and I know not everyone is. I make it very clear in my profiles that we need to both feel a connection, so I expect someone who messages me to at least comment on one thing I wrote. Some people don't bother at all, just going by pictures and spamming "hi" to whoever is attractive to them, without reading a word the person wrote.
Anyway, I think the point is that a lot of people don't put in the effort, whether man, woman, or nonbinary. People treat dating sites like it's a shopping website and they can just put people into their "cart," like we're just commodities that can be freely exchanged. If someone just says "hi" and nothing else, I assume that's the way they see me. I see no point in responding if the entire burden of conversation is going to fall onto my shoulders.
I mean, yeah you're probably inundated with crap and have to find the needle in the haystack. This side of the aisle is more like finding the hay in a needle stack. Both suck, but in different ways.
But when you have to like hundreds of profiles just to get a few matches, and message dozens of matches just to get a few replies, and then 80% of those replies turn out to be fake accounts trying to get you to buy crypto or follow on social media, and the other 20% are likely to ghost you for no fault of your own, it doesn't really encourage putting maximal effort into every conversation from the first message. Especially when the likelihood of the other person putting in equal effort is slim.
Besides, someone might be good at deep conversations but bad at smalltalk. How are they supposed to initialize a conversation? I'm incapable of witty banter, but I can dive right into walls of text on various topics. Only, that's seen as a red flag and gets immediately unmatched. So I have to tone down my personality, which basically leaves nothing left other than "hi, how are you." Or "I see you like books, what's a good one you've read recently?"
Which that last one seems to me like it would be a good one, but it still doesn't get a response. Am I just ugly? I know I'm bad at taking selfies. Or maybe it's impossible for me to write a description of myself without making it abundantly clear that I have no social aptitude whatsoever.
Like I said, I gave up long ago. I gave up trying to meet people in person long before that. I'll probably die alone, and a thousand years from now there will be no one in the world who can trace their existence back to me. But at least the dating app ceos are making bank, right?
Edit: Going to just bold 'vast majority' since people seem eager to ignore that part of what I wrote.
I strongly disagree.
Unless you're born into a wealthy zip code (and your zip code of birth correlates strongly with whether or not you become successful), you have four choices as far as I can see it: Crime, a lifetime of debt for a college degree, risk death in the military, or work a dead-end job until you inevitably can't afford to live.
That is what the vast majority of young people are facing. They want to work, but even if they get a job, it doesn't keep up with the cost of living and neither ruling party is going to lift a finger to help them.
The college degree also does not guarantee you're not working a dead-end job! I know graduates doing things like driving school busses, working as a barista, and just working in an apartment building office. No guarantee you'll find anything in your desired field
Good point. And even doctors and lawyers are finding it a struggle to live, because of the debt burden.
Or just be smart, hard working, and get scholarships by going to schools that offer generous aid packages.
And where does that leave the rest of us mere mortals, you know the 99% of us humans that don't enjoy the smell of their own farts
We attended the college scholarship presentations for my kids. A bunch of scholarship folk from the colleges spoke about "Just apply" that's all it takes.
Because millions in unclaimed scholarships are left on the table because nobody applied.
One guy got the women's sport scholarship because no women applied for it, so the school was like what the hell might as well give it to somebody.
Yeah but just apply implies a support system. Those kids dont just apply because they dont have parents who can force them to do it. And a ton of kids millions of them, did sit there and apply for the scholarships and now they're baristas and uber drivers. Because even if everyone went to college for free, not everyone can be a lawyer or a doctor, we need greater numbers of baristas and uber drivers than we need numbers of lawyers and doctors, the economics just doesn't work.
So again, what are the 95% of us who arent in the top 5% supposed to do, just be poor forever fuck us?
Also, uni doesn't have to be about career, it's personal growth. There is a good book, which I forget the title right now, about how countries that stop teaching the arts start to have less critical thinkers in society and just become factory minded workers with no questioning of the capitalistic nature their country is pushing onto them to only increase profit. So really we should all have free schooling to grow as a society, even if your passion is making the perfect latte
Trades is the best bet. I left Uni, and went into a trade. At 23 I had a house, wife, car, and baby on the way—Trades can be surprising lucrative, and can lead into other avenues via the variety of skills learned.
For example, now I train engineers how to use their software or how to solve the technical problem they face via the sequrnce of tools in the engineering program.
In some cases I'm earning more than the engineers. Their paper might open other oversea jobs though.
Dude we're not talking about personal advice, we're talking about policy, what's a good idea for one person to do cannot be a social policy.
You asked: What are the rest of us supposed to do LOL. If you don't like local policy, and in a country thwt isnt going to change, move to a country that has free Uni. There are many like Germany where as long as you show you are integrating you can get school paid.
Exactly "the rest of us" can't all go into the trades! And you're right the answer is to leave the country because it's going to shit, that's kinda my point -- if we don't change policy then the answer is just for people to give up on this country.
If you mean the USA, it appears to be by design. The ruling class wants productive workers, not a society with a healthy system
Join a union! Now my dead end job is a 'career' with benefits
I'm so glad you said that.
Because it's just that easy.
I don't think these are "four choices", as Crime and The Military are roughly interchangeable. Both of them are dead end jobs that only function if they give you a leg up into a degreed profession. I also have to say... you really don't need to go into a "lifetime of debt" to get a degree from a city college or community college. We're talking the cost of a car - too much, to be sure - but not every university is charging Harvard rates.
Beyond that, pretty much every job takes you along the path from entry level newb to valued technical master. What skills you develop and where they add that value can change with the shape of the economy and the technological frontier. But in the end, where you spend your time working trains you to do what you will be paid for in the future. There's not four choices, there's more like two choices - do what you're doing right now or change and start back at the bottom of the ladder.
The vast majority of young people have no experience and no background. So they're attacking what is a very opaque job market in the economic headwinds of an '06/'07 or '00/'01 financial meltdown. But you're not an entry level employee forever. Learning your profession is as much about learning how to get paid as how to do the work. Your income is ultimately predicated on your ability (and luck) when navigating between employers and across downturns.
But careers do improve over time. You're not the new guy forever.
The interest is in getting paid, not the work itself.
Great. then you can work for shitty employers
I mean yeah I do work for shitty employers cause they at least pay decent even if they don't do anything else right
right, because you're only there for the paycheck.
those of us who work for good employers are here for more than the paycheck.
Ain't their fault I value my time outside of work more than I'd ever value any job or the people there.
Why are you booing him? He's (kind of) right!
Lot of young idiots out there because of terrible parenting.
because the lemmy userbase thinks everything isn't their fault. they are hapless victims who should never have to learn or try or progress... clearly if only AI didn't exist... they'd be be making 300K a year and own 3 homes...
Yeah youre mostly spot on. I do despise ai used for anything other than data crunching. But its used for way more bad than good.
Now I made it pretty good because I'm not a minority and dont have health issues and I have a good work ethic and desire to learn. Not everyone is so lucky. So fuck all billionaires that blame the poor.
The downvotes are misplaced. I have seen this job seeking lack of skill first hand. Job wants a cover letter, work history, and notes about looking for a person with past volunteer experience to show that they are a community driven individual; since the employer donates profit to the community. Resume comes in and instead of cover letter, it has a long rant about they felt their upbringing was badly done by parents. No awareness about what was requested as the application process, and no self awareness about oversharing at a job interview.
And it's not isolated.
Had one guy answer all good answers to questions claiming to know this software package. 2 weeks in its looking odd that he hasn't finished the training package, turns out he was just on Instagram all day. Found out he had no clue about the software and why he was also canned at previous job. We have no issues training a good candidate, but if you just lie and hope to coast without doing anything...well there is the door.
Bro if everyone does this there's still 95% of people who wouldn't get a job, like it's good advice for an individual, try to be elite, but ultimately it's advice we ALL got in school(i.e. youre not telling anybody anything they dont already know) and we ALL try that and 95% have to be left out of that top 5% by definition.
Which the interesting thing about your comment is that you demonstrate a huge flaw of all conservative rhetoric actually -- what's good personal advice for an individual CANNOT be any kind of coherent social policy. It's confusing the micro and macro, it's nonsense, like confusing general relativity and quantum mechanics. Yes heisenberg uncertainty principle is absolutely real but you cannot use that to talk about planets and stars. Yes, being personally financially responsible and saving more than you earn is great advice for any individual but you cannot use that as general economic advice, it would literally crash the economy.
Back to your example, what happens when a company is looking to hire three people and they get 3000 excellent applicants? They're gonna reject 2997 excellent personalized amazing applications.