Comment by Allocator2008 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Allocator2008 | Hacker News Reader

Being born in 1981, which according to wikipedia is the last year of Gen X, the following year, 1982, being the beginning of Gen Y, I consider myself more of a Gen X'er than a Gen Y'er. That said, just from the point of view of software, it is not fair I don't think to call Gen Y "entitled" because there is a lot more to know about technology than there was even 10 years ago. To keep up, people always need to be learning new things. So Gen Y has a burden unlike any previous generation of just the vast array of knowledge of different programming languages, etc. they need to be able to compete - a vast breadth of knowledge, if not depth. So it is really uncalled for to call Gen Y "entitled" as a whole group. Sure there are "spoiled brats" in every generation, but we cannot make these kinds of generalizations, especially in the technology sector. And even the whole notion of this article displays archaic thinking, regarding the job market, at least in technology. The whole "get a job" thing has been more replaced with "get a gig", i.e., people are more into independent contracting/consulting etc. than before, so Gen Y is not necessarily the same as Gen X in terms of trying to find a long-term employment, at least in technology. It is more a generation of independent consultants that is coming up. This article is wrong from top to bottom, wrong in calling Gen Y "entitled" and wrong to think that the ills of the job market are going to finally be all that damaging to them, since they are more independently minded than their predecessors. A response to this could be: What happens when deprecated purveyors of old technology get hit with web 2.0 and 3.0? The answer is they get replaced. By the same Gen Y they so despise.

What happens when deprecated purveyors of old technology get hit with web 2.0 and 3.0? The answer is they get replaced. By the same Gen Y they so despise.

That's not really true tho'. The skills of uploading a video to YouTube or making a website with PHP are insignificant compared to inventing TCP and wiring the entire planet with bandwidth. Could Gen Y bootstrap the Internet if it didn't already exist? That's an open question.

That's kind of a bullshit question. Of course we could. We don't need to re-invent Internet protocols (beyond fixing the mistakes of the previous generation -- IPv4 and DNS flaws, anyone?) at this point though.

Right now, it's more profitable to build on the platform we grew up with than to think about reinventing it. Programming talent and intelligence haven't suddenly declined in my generation thanks to the Internet and PHP. There have always been crappy programmers -- they just use PHP instead of BASIC now.

That's my point. You can be all like "yeah, we're fixing the mistakes of the previous generation". Everyone has 20:20 hindsight. But there simply isn't the supporting evidence that Gen-Y has technical skills that Gen-X doesn't or can't get. Gen-Y massively underestimates how much work had to be done for them to take all this infrastructure for granted.

I think you're missing the point. I'm not saying we're more or less intelligent or capable than the last generation, nor am I blaming them for things like IPv4 (I mean really, it sure sounded like enough address).

We grew up with different tools, ideas and starting points though. To say we take the work of previous generations for granted is ridiculous. For one, it's a sweeping generalization. But what's more, it could be said about every other generation. The old saying about "standing on the shoulders of giants" rings true here. We're all building on the work of others.

Sure, there's nothing about your age that physically stops you from learning new tools or adapting to the world. If you can't adapt, it's your mindset that needs fixing.

Our world has been shaped from an early age by the Internet, and that will have profound effects on what we do with it from here on out.

Every generation has its great engineering challenges. While you may have invented TCP and wired up the planet, Gen Y'ers are here inventing HSPA and wireless-ing up the planet. New technologies will always come along, and there will never be a shortage of difficult technologies to implement.

To think that because you guys started this whole internet thing means there's no difficult work left to do? That's absurd.

I have a feeling that most of the real engineering that happens today (including wireless as you said) are actually depending quite a lot on the generation before Gen-Y. Gen-Y can't take credit for much of anything really. The only exception is some of the "Web 2.0" stuff.

Well, give them some time. They're not all even born yet, from what I hear.

The same argument can be made for any other generation - the real engineering that happened back in the 70s for ARPANet was actually depending quite a lot on the generation before it (transistors, dielectric research, the ENIAC and computers that came long before them)...

My point still stands: every generation has incredibly difficult engineering challenges to overcome. Yes, it all builds on top of each generation, but there's no reason to denigrate the accomplishments of one generation or another.

Then why is Gen-Y all like, we have all these amazing Interweb sK1Lz that no-one else does? 'Cos I'm not seeing it.

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