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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

You can always tell when someone grew up like this. They are always afraid of doing anything that might even remotely be considered outside the box. They lack that ability and drive to find things out for themselves, and instead rely on others for help and guidance to a fault. Professional occupations are full of these people who were coddled from birth, through college, and straight into a high paying job with zero understanding of how life actually works. It makes relating to someone like that almost impossible.

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The fact that they tracked into a high paying job despite their risk-aversion and limited ability to think abstractly seems to vindicate their parent's method of raising children.

Most parents aren't trying to raise the next brilliant artist, entrepreneur, or intellectual[1]. They just want their kids to have a stable, safe, happy life.

[1] And those that try often don't know what they're doing and end up inflicting emotional damage, so the best case: A successful but absolutely miserable adult.

I agree to a certain extent that if replicating an upper middle class lifestyle is the parenting goal this can be successful. The big concern I have with that parenting model is antedoctoally these seem to be the people I have seen fall the hardest when dealing with adversity.

For someone who had a long linear career progression a lay-off or temporary underemployment sucks and could cause a lifestyle downsizing but is manageable. For the person who’s entire existence expects xxx,xxx income that’s where foreclosures on very nice homes and bankruptcy happen.

It may vindicate the parent's method, but only up to the point where their child gets the job. It seems that the system will let the coddled individual get that far. I wonder what happens to the coddled people after that. Right now they probably have a hard time, but maybe the system is evolving to let those people, at least in some industries, stay in their bubble. (I hope not...)

>You can always tell when someone grew up like this. They are always afraid of doing anything that might even remotely be considered outside the box. They lack that ability and drive to find things out for themselves, and instead rely on others for help and guidance to a fault.

I would be careful there it can happen by other means too. I suffer from a fair bit of anxiety, so I show similar symptoms for different reasons; instead of not knowing how to act outside the box or being unable to not rely on others, I'm merely afraid of doing those things, although capable of them.

I think if you want to separate the two cases the easiest way is to give them alone time and a high level task to fulfill that requires initiative to solve. Those who have grown up overprotected will continue to seek guidance while those who are simply afraid of social missteps will be happily on their way the moment they are alone with a clear goal.

I was with you until the “alone with a clear goal” part.

What if you are left alone with an unclear goal?

Anxiety might kick in that I'm not sufficiently working towards the goal or solving the problem correctly.

...how do you know what I'm going through so well? How do I learn to cope with this? Have you figured anything out yet?

I was overly coddled and eventually got past it. However, like you mentioned, I have anxiety and it causes similar obstacles.

I’m interested to hear what you think helps?

Outside of proper therapy probably not much and I've never gotten around to do that. In my case it helps to make sure that I always have something to work on alone via issues on JIRA or other collaboration tools.

Can you? Or do you just have good selection bias? Or do you just like not liking people?

Reality is most people rely on others for help. And there isn't a damned thing wrong with that. Indeed, the implication of the problem there is that it is not right to help and guide others. How is that ok?

Would it be great if we were all more self sufficient? I think so, but I don't have anything to back that belief. Especially knowing we are social creatures. And, all evidence is we have succeeded in large because we are social creatures. Even the giants among us relied heavily on social influence.

Reality is most people rely on others for help.

Reality nowadays when a piece of lab equipment breaks down is that the kids call tech support, i.e. The Professor. You wish they'd consult documentation or their own brain, more experienced students in the lab, the tech support number on the business card that's stuck to the instrument &c p.p., but instead they immediately kick the matter upstairs instead of consulting peers or using the means at their disposal. Their childlike trust in authorities is too great.

I'd think that's more a cause of the blame that's put on people for going outside of their given rules. I'm sure if the student attempted to fix that machine and even if they didn't break it more, they'd be in a world of shit. You can't simultaneously expect people to be self sufficient and then punish them heavily if they try to be and anything goes wrong.

In the physical sciences you are simply expected to troubleshoot and perform basic maintenance on lab equipment. No, I wouldn't know where the helplessness amongst today's undergraduates comes from. Is it an unquestioning adherence to "the rules" that was beaten into them in school, or is it a desire to deflect potential liability? No idea!

Pre-undergraduate education is nothing like the University level. Some of the students have never been in a laboratory, some of them didn't have user-serviceable cars or bicycles or computers, even those who "have coded" might not really "be programming," and authority figures who could fix everything almost magically basically were their lives for 18 years. That's before you examine eccentricities and differences in upbringing. And, before addressing the "not not totalitarian" practice of 'Zero Tolerance' and its sizable human cost. As the other user said, that adds up. I wouldn't be surprised if kids doing gun violence in schools are reacting to a false image of society which they're getting from people for whom tardiness results in detention.

I still can't weld like some of my friends. They're so brilliant, it'd take me years to catch up.

Anyway: if you really want to sell students on becoming the complete Scientific Humanist Who Delicately Breaks Rules AND Can Fix Anything, which you seem to fancy, start off the laboratories with "LSD Synthesis: from Ergot to Your Homemade Blotter Art" and then break the thermal cycler before the next lab, with the phosphorescence plasmids.

And, yes, in the U.S. and elsewhere, I would expect some (perhaps milder than I imagine) difficulties with that; and, no, I don't really condone drug use but I think you can see where I'm coming from with this reasoning.

Even when I was in high school about 15 years ago, we were always punished for violating any procedures or rules. Zero tolerance policies weren't just for violent actions but for everything. Our society does not tolerate children who disobey authority and that doesn't magically switch off when we kick them off to college

I feel like there is a fine line between people like this and people who insist that documentation exists.

For me, maybe I know what the procedure is because I've done it a thousand times but it's still not written down step by step so what I know in my head is worthless once I leave the job for whatever reason [death, better deal, retirement, &c].

On the other hand, the person doing the job could just be sub-par. I'm not sure what there can be done about that.

If they ended in high paying profession and are reasonably happy then maybe their decision to follow advice given to them was right.

Until some minor setback happens. Then they have a mental breakdown.

Is this something that actually happens, in large? I'd be interested in studies that show this happens more. Meltdowns are far from a new thing in the world.

I mean, they make a nice narrative to shame people for overprotecting their kids. But this basically culminates in three of the major things that give me pause. a) Nice narrative, b) appealing argument without presented evidence, and c) shaming. Combine those and you typically have someone pushing or falling for an argument that has not been proven.

And yes, we all fall for those. All the time. I am not exempt.

> Is this something that actually happens, in large?

No, but it lets mediocre people feel good about themselves.

The mediocrity comes from the “everyone gets a trophy” mentality. Overprotecting your kids feeds into that mentality as well. If everyone gets a trophy, why should you try harder than anyone else?

So you are okay with people with no spine basically running this country? Because that's what high paying professionals typically do. It may not be politics, but they typically have a lot of power and their spinelessness impacts a lot more people than just themselves.

I don't think this is at all a good thing.

Luckily, these people rarely have enough confidence to stay in positions of real responsibility.

#silverlining

But I don't know how much that mitigates the damage. If good leaders spend all their time cleaning up the mess left behind, it goes pretty far in preventing anything really good from happening.

Part of being a good leader (IMHO) is realizing you’re going to be spending time mitigating the actions of others who derail progress, for whatever reason (intentional & unintentional). You are the tip of the spear, blocking the impediment of progress for those who report to you.

I do a whole lot of that. I have aspirations of someday getting paid for (some of) it.

Based on my limited knowledge of you from your HN posts and your history in corporate america, you’d be a great fit for a Chief Of Staff role, or any other executive role where you’re unblocking progress through mediating relationships (internally) and partnerships (externally).

This seems orthogonal. You project incredibly lot to parent description that basically described someone boring - your average worker that does his job and causes no problems to anyone. Not all that great innovative improvement either which seemed to be his complain.

People who don't follow advice and insist on going out of box all the time tend to generate even more mess behind. And are not great leaders either.

There is plenty of middle ground between those two extremes. It is not a given that someone who can take a stand will pathologically feel the need to make a stink about absolutely every little thing and refuse to ever listen to any advice at all.

>If they ended in high paying profession and are reasonably happy then maybe their decision to follow advice given to them was right.

Absolutely. These people make fantastic employees. But the world needs more than just employees.

Yes. The world also needs people who will promote the plentiful and great leaders already present in their society.

Maybe. Agreeableness is often very high among the coddled set and that is a trait associated with doing well in the business world, especially for women (sometimes negatively associated when the subject is a man). However, it's also possible that these people ended up in their job due to a number of other factors that are correlated with helicopter-parenting: ability to pay for school, ability to participate in unpaid internships, etc. . . .

As young millennials and gen z (or whatever the fuck we end up calling them) start to occupy management roles we'll be able to make a better call in this regard.

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