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Comment by acjohnson55 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think there's any evidence to indicate that the generations who worked through childhood are any better on average.

There are folks who turned that into habits that unlocked productivity and happiness in life. There are others who just got exploited.

To me, what's important is building the intuition for the connection between practice and achievement, which is a subtly different thing. It's not hard work for as a thing that's morally admirable. It's a means to an end.

I would add to that a sense of collective responsibility, tempered with self-assertiveness.

I think these things are the bright side of valuing "hard work", but without the dark sides of exploitation and workaholism.

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I disagree to a point. We see millenials/Gen-Z expecting promotions and large salaries for little to no work history and at most normal productivity. There is definitely a connection missed between effort and reward.

Can you show that this behavior did not exist in previous generations? I saw plenty of that with gen-x working its way through the lower rungs of the workforce.

I don't disagree Gen-X has had part of that, as one myself. I think it's a matter of scale.

We also see CEOs getting paid a ridiculous amount of money. They get incredible bonuses even when their companies underperform. The golden parachute is real. It's easier to blame the kids, but they see many examples from the top. Not to mention how their children - the nepokids - are being rewarded by their proximity to power and a network they had no hand in building.

No, I do not. No more or less than older generations. I feel this comment is just ageism.

That's because inflation, a generally increasing cost of living, and generational knowledge around how exploitative modern capitalism can be.

The whole "kids should work harder and enjoy it" take is entirely Western. Kids are working very hard in other parts of the world, for pennies, no health care, and have next to zero economic mobility. Kids should be willing to work for their own benefit, to enrich their own life, but that is not what we see in practice. Kids work to survive.

If they’re sometimes getting those things, maybe they should expect them.

I think, to some extent, there’s been a broadening of the set of people clued in that the connection between hard work and money isn’t just weak, but often nonexistent.

You don’t get real money doing farm work 7 days a week, after all. Real work, but not real money.

It sounds like what you're saying is that younger generations have more confidence and self-respect than previous generations.

If it was previously common for children to be exploited and lose their childhoods, then I can certainly see how that led the older generations to be such seemingly spineless adults with no self esteem. Abuse does that to people.

Fortunately, it sounds like they (well...most of them...) recognized the damage done by their upbringing and sought to raise their own children better than their parents raised them. Breaking out of the cycle of abuse is a hard thing to do; good on them.

That's simply because the labor market in some industries allowed for this to be commonplace as many millennials hit mid-career in the 2010s. People expect what's empirically common for them. There's nothing right or wrong about that.

If the current economy persists, people will have to adopt new expectations, eventually. Many people already have, as they experience a much tougher time finding new jobs.

Millenials are like 40 now. When do they finally get the promotion and salary?

Depends on the definition, but only the very oldest have hit 40, many in their 30s and some still in their 20s. It's too broad to be of use here, those entering the workforce in 2006 were in a different world from those doing so in 2020.

> millenials/Gen-Z expecting promotions and large salaries for little to no work history

Any time I see this I always wonder "what does the speaker consider a large salary?". Do you mean a living wage where one doesn't have to live with three other people in a rat/roach infested slumlord apartment?

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