Growing-ups
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Until the 1950s, young people in the west were expected to live with their parents until they married and settled down. Just crack open a Victorian novel. (A few HNers have noted that this is true in India, China and Japan; but it was also true in the west.)
This changed all at one and all of a sudden under the Baby Boomers. Young people left home earlier, travelled the world, experimented with drugs. Let's forget that the Baby Boomers were responsible for psychedelia, the protest movement and flower power.
Here's what I'm saying: The Baby Boomers were a blip, premeditated by the astronomical rise of the USA in the global economy. Money and jobs were everywhere all of a sudden, endowing people (and especially young people) with the new freedom to experiment. Something that is not true now: We're facing increased global competition from the East and the west's manufacturing base has been hollowed out.
In terms of global and Western culture they were a non-stereotypical blip, the result of very particular and unusual economic and social conditions, a few flicks of the second hand on the our cultural watch.
So, are the Baby Boomers justified in criticising this generation for returning to former cultural values and habits?
Personally, I don't think so. It's hard not to feel it smacks of myopia, of judging others through the wrong side of the binoculars.
I'm puzzled how people can make generalizations about a group people born over a range of 18 years. While the notion of "generation <foo>" is dubious in itself, claiming that someone born in 1946 has a whole lot in common with someone born in 1964 seems especially silly.
What I've found is most people, when talking about "boomers", really mean the subset of those who might have plausibly attended the first Woodstock festival.
My wife and I are "grown ups" in the sense that we both are done with grad school, have professional jobs, and have a kid. Yet, my mom lives with us during the week and we spend nearly every weekend at my parents' house in D.C. Not because they need our support, but because we need theirs'. This is a living situation that wouldn't be unfamiliar to my grandparents back in Bangladesh, where the expectation, back then, was that a young couple would move back into the husband's parents' home after marriage. It's novel relative to what I encountered growing up (in the U.S.), but it's not "new."
Various studies have shown that Millenials are closer to their parents than any generation in recent memory. They are not only likely to live with them after graduating college, but turn to them regularly for career advice, take them on job interviews for support. It's the opposite of the rebellious streak that characterized the baby boomers.
I live in Poland and I'm the first generation that grew up after the fall of communism. I have seen this transition first-hand. I grew up in a multi-generation home with my grandparents and parents sharing the same space. I have left at 19 to another city, but some of my family members have stayed and there are four generations living in the house right now. My parents share a floor with my mother's dad, my father's mom and my brother (in his twenties). On another floor lives my mom's sister with her family (husband, daughter and daughter's children). Houses built to accommodate two or three generations were common even 30 years ago. Many people, especially in small towns and villages have built huge houses with the assumption that each of their kids will stay there and needs a floor of their own. Then, suddenly, so many things have changed. We can - or have to - work abroad, or move halfway across the country to study and then find a job. Many of those large houses are so sad right now with just a couple of elder people using two rooms and the kitchen with hundreds of square meters of empty space, sometimes filled with stuff left behind by their children who can't take it all with them to their studio apartments.
I don't know of anyone from my generation who would event think of building a house with their future kids and grandchildren in mind. But I think we're trading an important aspect of our culture for... I don't know. Money, success, independence, all these western things. I don't think I have a point here, just wanted to share.
> I don't know of anyone from my generation who would event think of building a house with their future kids and grandchildren in mind. But I think we're trading an important aspect of our culture for... I don't know. Money, success, independence, all these western things.
Maybe somewhat ironically, for my wife and I our living situation has been driven by the pursuit of career success. My wife and I are at the stage of our careers where we're really putting in the hours, and sharing a household with my parents makes life a hundred times easier. We don't have to worry about getting home before the nanny has to go, we don't have to worry about taking a day off when the baby's daycare is closed. We come home to a hot meal. Meanwhile, my parents are thrilled to be so actively invoked in their granddaughter's life.
(By the way, I'm a member of the "moved across the country at 18 and never looked back" cohort, and I've occasionally had reason to wish I weren't; by placing myself far beyond any distance at which I could reasonably hope to receive the support of my family, I set myself up to blow a scholarship and drop out of school half a semester in. I've managed to make my way in the world reasonably well despite that, and have no real reason to be dissatisfied with my lot, but it certainly gives useful perspective on some of my fellows' declamations of narcissism and selfishness on the part of the generation following ours -- if I'd had some of that "narcissism" and "selfishness" when I was young, I'd have a doctorate now.)
I think the change in agriculture is interesting here because the decision making process for the child of a (relatively poor) farmer wouldn't have been very involved, they would be quite likely to do what they knew. There would also probably be quite some pressure on them to get to it.
The post war boom is interesting because there were substantial opportunities for every single 18 year old that went looking for them. That's probably still reasonably true today, but the opportunities are at least riskier (in a life trajectory sense) than getting a good paying job at a mill or factory.
(Which isn't contrary to anything you said, it's just another factor)
Hmmmm. That sentiment may be less unique than you realize.
No wonder my generation can't get a damn job.
My brother, on the other hand, did not have that kind of luck. He tinkered around in college, then joined the Navy. After a couple years, he was discharged early (but honorably) due to panic attacks while attempting one of their most difficult programs. Now he's back at my parents' house as he pursues his degree in environmental science (the closest thing he could think of that matched his interests) at a community college. My family noticed he seemed a bit depressed as his 25th birthday approached last month. Turns out he was pretty upset that at 25, he hadn't gotten anywhere in life.
I feel sorry for him because he's compared to me. I am not a better person. I just have a more studious, middle-of-the-road demeanor, and I know what I want to pursue. There was no moment where I was like, "Man, I need to settle down and pick a career." It just happened, and I was blessed enough to have had a straight path to the "American dream."
My brother isn't in that stage of emerging adulthood by choice. He wants to be viewed as a respectable adult. It's just that he was not gifted with well-defined, lucrative goals, and he doesn't want to do something he hates simply for a good paycheck. I wouldn't have either. It just worked out better for me, and now I look like I have my shit together.
Good luck magnifies the effect of hard work, bad luck can make it appear non-existent.
If its the former, i reckon ""with a huge period of growth in our industry" has a lot more to do with it than anything else you did. If you studied ancient greek instead, all the hard work in the world wouldn't have helped you.
I'm not saying give up on your dreams AT ALL. I'm saying it's just too hard to do both simultaneously; that is, to see the world pass you by while you attempt to pursue your interests with little to no income.
I find it's much easier to do it with as clear a head as possible. Get a nice, decently-paying, steady job and then figure out what it is you're really interested in. I'm sorry but it's just too damn physically and emotionally exhausting to be broke and checking FB only to see how "successful" most of your friends/family. The "success" is something simple, as you say, as just having a job that pays well enough for you to forget about money(that is if you can budget appropriately).
After that you'll be able to really focus on creating that path to your passions. Or maybe I'm just a total square.
0. The more competent you are at something, the more interesting it becomes. Expecting your first job to be interesting is setting yourself up for disappointment.
1. Autonomy, at least for me, is really important.
2. Nobody hires someone else to do the most interesting work available.
3. The best jobs aren't advertised. Visibility, or self-promotion, is important to some degree.
The awesome thing about computing is the capital costs are so low you can short circuit a lot of the career progression. You'll probably still make a mess of your first N years, which is why venture capital was invented ;-)
This is a social phenomenon being critiqued using self-reported social scoring without tying it back to either theoretical or applied economic models.
If large swaths are asked fairly banal "Will you get what you want out of life?" questions with waaaaaay more rigorous subjective and practical analysis a bigger picture can't be assessed.
Elders "ridiculing," which is really a cynical take on what people older than adult children are doing, are expressing some insight into the pitfalls of delayed productive income acquisition. This article also flies in the face of trends that HN loves.
We've seen articles questioning and advocating against ageism, as if this was somehow unique to HN-fields of interest. Whether it is pop music, high art, math, or technology (or many other fields), the people who "make a difference" and live those envious lives of freedom to walk the path to becoming all-stars in their field and/or lives... those are young people.
Sure, some fields require great levels of extended experience or knowledge only acquirable through time, but the people getting everything out of life most frequently start early with a passionate drive for exactly what they will become.
The ascendant efforts of the young from about 18-30 is vital, innovative, and disruptive. I dislike the "disrupt everything!" mantra that leads the naive into the ditch. Fail fast can easily lead to lost opportunities to establish strong financial and technical (or creative) foundations that enable the later bloomers their time in the sun.
It's tough at the top and there are only so many who can get there now or ever. For the rest, it's best to be able to get productive to start saving early to establish a life where you can get ENOUGH out of life to not hit some anxious or depressive state later when you see doors closing to attaining EVERYTHING.
It's efficient to be able to minimize suffering as you go versus rolling the dice that you will suddenly find a calling later.
Feast upon life to learn everything you can. Deconstruct suffering and you'll find ways big and small to constantly create a life that you wouldn't trade for some amorphous "everything." The destination (goals) is usually only a milestone in the journey you are already engaged in. "If you don't stop to look around once in a while, you might miss it."
It's important, but if you look out your window, the world that exists out there was designed and built mostly by people over 30. There are some geniuses that were most prolific in their 20's (Einstein's miracle year was at 26), but most people who are awarded the nobel prize do their most important work from 30-50 (http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111107/full/news.2011.632.ht...). Picasso started developing cubism around the age of 30, Braque at about the same time.
The young have particular relevance in the area of entertainment (pop music, Facebook), largely because so much entertainment is targeted at the young. They also have particular importance in the area of mathematics. But the kind of day-to-day innovation that makes the world go around is a process of stepping on the shoulders of those who came before. And it's experienced people who understand what came before who do that most efficiently.
The truth is, the laws of physics don't care about your age. You can make a product people want at any point in time. 99% of it is plumbing. That 1% brilliant insight is often just common sense applied to an intersection of two disparate domains. The majority of successful web companies have made this apparent. All they did was use the web as a platform to simplify some previously web-disconnected task.
As humans, we love the Heroic Myth above all else. That some are chosen by God to rule over us with their talents.
The reality is, if you learn to work within what the laws of physics allow, anything is possible. Just go out there and do it, and don't give up. Physics doesn't care how many times you try, or how long it takes. As long as you don't kill yourself in the process, you can always keep improving.
Don't get caught up in the hype. The tortoise wins the race 99% of the time.
1. http://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-pla...
That's a really fancy way to say long-term unemployment.
When my mom asks about my current job, I sometimes repeat that phrase, and she gets all huffy and annoyed that I don't view my current job as enjoyable. Sure, my job is satisfying in small ways, but ultimately I'd rather be doing something else.
I just mention it because my mom and dad show two sides of the generation mentality discussed in the article: the "buckle down and get a job" type, and the "you should do what you love" type.
From a management point of view, this is instructive - each employee is different and have different (vector of) motivations.
If you don't have a place to live, food to eat, and shelter ... you "emerge" as an adult pretty quickly and figure out what you "want to do with your life" by DOING WORK you don't want to do to get said food, and shelter (i.e., to survive).
What is the saying? An absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
Did you even read the article? First of all, you dismiss this people as leeches outright. Second, you claim that these people are inherently selfish and lazy with no evidence. Finally, you view receiving assistance as self-entitled at a time when a huge portion of people of all ages use some kind of assistance, governmental or otherwise, to survive. You are essentially the dismissive person that the author of this article was writing about.
> If you don't have a place to live, food to eat, and shelter ... you "emerge" as an adult pretty quickly and figure out what you "want to do with your life" by DOING WORK you don't want to do to get said food, and shelter (i.e., to survive).
According to the article, people in the 18-29 age range working an average of 10 different jobs over that period in their lives. These people do find work that helps them to get shelter and eat. Certainly some of those people rely on additional sources, like family, for some income. However, the point is that people do pursue this work even while wanting something better.
A large majority of professional jobs in business, programming, accountancy, consultancy are filled with people who want to be there.
I am in a professional job, and I doubt I could afford a decent place to live without parental help other than a crappy flat in a dodgy area.
How people afford to live by themselves, on non-professional jobs I don't know.
Then live in a the "crappy flat in a dodgy area".
>How people afford to live by themselves, on non-professional jobs I don't know.
Then don't live by yourself. I had 2 and 3 roommates over various times as a young person getting started. We split the rent in crappy small apartments.
Makes perfect sense given how the world had been changing...
That's the bar for onerous, now? And this is an attitude we, as parents and as society, are obligated to encourage, support, and indulge?
That's not attitude that's science
Space exploration is the point
No, no you didn't.
Credit is much harder to come by, jobs are more difficult to get without a college education (addressed in the article), and there are also changing attitudes to sex and relationships that are becoming more pronounced with millenials (specifically casual sex/relationships) that make it easier for men (probably women as well) to put off marriage and having children.
WRT to credit, when I got out of college back in 2003, I got a credit card with a $5000 limit in my mailbox which I started using immediately, I was talking to my brother who graduated last year and he says that those credit card offers are few and far between now, and that even when you get your hands on one, the credit limit is about $1000 ..... this blew me away. I couldn't have started my business without that $5000 credit card and much of what I have now revolves around the skills/experience I gained from my initial self-employment 10 years ago.
The economic realities have such profound implications that its giving rise to the "sharing economy" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-chea... and changing the way corporations are marketing some of their products to this demographic http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021715711_d...!
Lots more going on there than meets the eye IMO.
That is a big difference and a good way to sum it up.
Unfortunately, lots of jobs are both needed and full of drudgery.
I get the feeling millennials are calling that bluff: "If it's so needed, why won't they hire me for it/why doesn't it pay more?'
Because "you" got a humanities degree and "it" is a tradesperson job which does not "make the world better". "You" chose to pursue "fun and interesting", and didn't run the numbers on "ROI", which only geeks, low-class people, and in-it-for-the-money people did.
* why doesn't it pay more?
Because experience counts a tremendous amount, far more than willingness to show up.
/me shrug
A lot of tradespeople jobs are done by immigrants willing to work many hours with low pay where natives are out looking for "rewarding" and "fulfilling" work. The Great Hand of Bettering Yourself By Hard Work will sort it out, more or less, more or less unevenly, in the end.
Bettering yourself with hard work is a religious notion. It's not necessarily true, but it's good for people that own things that need to be worked on, like farmland. It keeps people working.
If the jobs are necessary, though, they should be paid with that in mind. They are not. Manufacturing production is up, but wages are stagnant. I don't think it's entitlement that makes people recognize that.
Most people that now trust in 'The Great Hand of Bettering Yourself By Hard Work' as you put it will be out of a job in 30 years; we've already started that trend.
Except that the "geek" industry in Silicon Valley bills itself constantly as all about "passion" and "disruption" and "changing the world" (with $0.99 in-app purchases).
In general, I've always hated these "generational" descriptions. They're guaranteed to be woefully inaccurate for many people in the generation, yet provide ammunition for ageists to discriminate against young people.
For my part, I haven't lived at home since I was 17 and, at 21, have a very "serious" job (which definitely pays the bills). I'm certainly not an outlier in this regard. The people who fail to do this are simply that: failures. (Though that failure isn't necessarily their fault.) Where does this fit in his theory of extended adolescence and infantilization?
Yup, sounds 21 to me. Quick to anger and lash out, quick to judge, moral certitude, and lack of empathy.
For one, there's significant variance to how family units function across the human population. In many parts of the world, living together for far longer than 17 is the norm, and the model of how one generation financially supports the next, or families co-manage/pool their finances, works very differently. Often systems emerge that entrench this (e.g. the massive up-front down payments on rental apartments in the South Korean retail markets, which kids simply cannot afford because there's no time to make that kind of money).
So blanket statements like this reek of cultural superiority and lack of education, frankly. I get that you're pissed because you don't feel you're getting the respect you deserve for your accomplishments (or at least that's what I seemed to read there), but starting with some humility and respect for others might change how people respond to you.
(And yeah, I was financially self-sufficient at 21, too. Big deal. It's possible because I happened to enjoy doing work in an area and market that allowed for it. Many things worth pursueing, and of great contribution to society, don't make you money at 21.)
This article and discussion seem to be pretty squarely focused on the west (and particularly the US). I've lived around the world and realize that the norms are very different elsewhere, but here at least the expectation is for adults to leave their childhood home in their 20s and we have policies in place to encourage that (ex. mortgage tax incentives).
> Yup, sounds 21 to me. Quick to anger and lash out, quick to judge, moral certitude, and lack of empathy.
I might be quick to judge (often a useful trait), but nothing about this made me angry. And, in case you missed it, my second point (that it's not necessarily their fault) was specifically because I emphasize with the situation of people who are adrift in their 20s. As a country, I think we've in many ways failed them by providing insufficient educational and employment opportunities. That it's not their fault doesn't change the fact that living at home at 28 is a failure of the normal American life.
> So blanket statements like this reek of cultural superiority and lack of education, frankly.
Interesting that you dislike blanket statements, yet that's exactly what I was objecting to in the article (the blanket characterization of people in their 20s as "emerging adults").
Did you just omit the second sentence so you could go on a little rant? Or did morgante edit his post?
I feel it's exemplary of an arrogance and myopia many of us programmers are possessed with. Our profession is undoubtedly high-impact, but it doesn't actually require all that much knowledge to be useful at it, nor is it that difficult or time-intensive to learn. It's relatively easy to be successful at it and make money even at a young age. Many other paths are much more difficult, take a lot longer, and are no less worthy. Ones that require much more knowledge, or experience and personal growth, for example.
If you try really hard you can chose to read that parenthesis as a passionate plea for society to recognize this and support them better, I suppose, but I'm not that optimistic.
At 21, I was pursuing a bachelors of science, and working two jobs. I was NOT paying my own way.
I'm now a VP at a startup working for a livable salary and commission. I pay my bills on my own (and have since shortly after graduating), and am paying my family for the money I borrowed. I have strong alternative job prospects in different roles in multiple industries, and have real experience in a variety of professional settings.
Could I have cut all my expenditures above what I was making at 21, enrolled in a different school, and paid my own way entirely? absolutely. Would I be more or less successful immediately upon doing so? What about now? Hard to answer either, but I am not worried in assuming I would be less successful in both time-frames.
You have a very narrow definition of success in your comment. You are welcome to your opinion, but that particular one will probably be misleading in understanding others. I think you've done very well for yourself if you are self-sufficient at 21, but to define this as success seems quite dismissive to me. As said in another comment, this is labeling all but a select few university students as failures which, as it seems to me, is a plainly bad assumption.
I like to think this is a fair assumption at 30 years old, though. I would imagine it is a source of shame if a person is not paying their own expenses at this age; it certainly would be for me. This term 'emerging adults' is describing those people going from adolescents at 17 to self-sufficient adults at 29+.
I think 'emerging adult' is a quite good description of a human growth stage. Having lived through that time period more completely than you, I know how much growing I've done since 21 both in my ability and acceptance of responsibility to sustain myself and in my understanding of others. I am also much more willing to accept happenstance as a contributing factor for my successes and others' failures, which is something I can suggest to you.
To old gray-hairs in the oil patch, management in tech companies, among VC lenders, or any other 50+year old 'successes', both you and I are still 'kids'. This is true regardless of whether we're paying our own way or not. That, to me, is a good working meaning of 'emerging adult'. The basic notion is that people still have some 'growing up' to do at 21 or even 25, which I agree with.
The shift isn't in expectations of university students, but in expectations of new graduates. That's what this article seems to be focusing on, and the group which is generally lampooned more broadly (graduates who are still living at home).
The term "emerging adult" does a lot of damage. Like you, I have a great role at a startup. But if our entire generation is lumped into a category of "emerging adults" who can barely hold down a job, our opportunities for advancement and appreciation are severely limited. People's experiences in their 20s are just too divergent (some people are still working temp gigs, while you're a VP) for any useful generations and labels like "emerging adults" only serve to discourage/diminish young achievement.
Suddenly we have to be 30 to considered an adult, even if we're entirely self-sufficient?
Uni students are failures?
I think trying to avoid that (like paying a rent for the rest of your days, or buying very cheap and sacrificing social sttatus) is actually seen as against the social norms, and a definitive "not one of us" move from the older generation's perspective.
Apart from the purely financial aspect of it, it's fascinating how the process goes will vary on your profession, your familial situation, overall background, years working in a stable company, the type of contract, how the seller sees you, if the banker trusts you. And if you pass the test, you get stamped as a home "owner" (though at the moment you only own the bank a lot of money, and you'll be out in the streets if you can't pay at some point), you pass through the ritual of sorting your health, life/death insurance and you get a warm look from your parents because you're now "one of them".
I think good or bad, this is the definition of a rite of passage.
(I'm speaking as someone who has a wife, a kid and a house bought outright).
It's shorthand for assuming adult responsibilities. It's difficult to survive on your emotionally fulfilling but minimum wage job if you have a brood in diapers at home. Obviously you still have responsibilities, probably including property taxes, insurance, and utilities, if you own your house outright as opposed to having a mortgage.
BTW, it's a bit tricky to buy your home outright if you live, in, say Palo Alto, where I recall a bunch of YC-funded startups are based:
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2013/12/24/real-estate-ma... "In Palo Alto the median sales price for a home was $2.2 million..."
But it does not follow that it's one's responsibility to marry and have kids. There have been plenty of people who contributed a lot to society without ever marrying or raising kids.
You're right that managing a family is shorthand for being responsible. My point is: why use a shorthand when you can simply ask "So what are you doing with all the extra time you get because of not having a family?".
Ask, don't presume.
(I am not even getting into the whole philosophical debate of whether "work == virtue". The subtext in comments like the above is: "Oh, you're living a comfortable life with no responsibilities? You should work hard and suffer like the rest of us!" )
One's responsibility is to do the right thing, to do one's duty. For some folks, that duty has not been to form a family, but for the vast majority of folks their duty has been to do exactly that: to repay their ancestors' millions of years of evolutionary investment by investing in their descendants.
There are some folks who have repaid that rather massive debt in other ways, but they are few and far between; far more these days simply renege on it.