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I saw a thread in one of the forums. A 25 year old was lamenting that he didn't have the sort of professional success he felt he should have at that age, and he didn't think he would be successful in his career. I thought to myself, exactly what sort of professional success are you supposed to have at 25, isn't having a job and getting decent performance reviews pretty good progress?
Then we have people like Elliot Rodgers who feel "entitled" to women, sex and relationships.
Other young adults think they are failures if they aren't millionaires by 27.
They have grown up in a time where regular joes become reality stars and millionaires for doing nothing remarkable. And other people become millionaires by posting videos of their lives and opinions on youtube.
This generation of young adults is the first to grow up in the the "everyone is a winner" culture, where everyone gets a trophy for showing up. They were scheduled and scheduled from school to play making them both sheltered from reality, dependent on their parents for entertainment and transportation, controlled by helicopter parents afraid to let them cross the street alone or play outside, and had limited "unstructured time" to develop opinions and self identity.
Essentially the young people of today have been both coddled and treated like they were exceptional from birth. On the up note they are both confident, motivated and high achieving. But maybe we have groomed these young adult to expect too much and expect that it will all come easily.
I saw a thread in one of the forums. A 25 year old was lamenting that he didn't have the sort of professional success he felt he should have at that age, and he didn't think he would be successful in his career. I thought to myself, exactly what sort of professional success are you supposed to have at 25, isn't having a job and getting decent performance reviews pretty good progress?
Then we have people like Elliot Rodgers who feel "entitled" to women, sex and relationships.
Other young adults think they are failures if they aren't millionaires by 27.
They have grown up in a time where regular joes become reality stars and millionaires for doing nothing remarkable. And other people become millionaires by posting videos of their lives and opinions on youtube.
This generation of young adults is the first to grow up in the the "everyone is a winner" culture, where everyone gets a trophy for showing up. They were scheduled and scheduled from school to play making them both sheltered from reality, dependent on their parents for entertainment and transportation, controlled by helicopter parents afraid to let them cross the street alone or play outside, and had limited "unstructured time" to develop opinions and self identity.
Essentially the young people of today have been both coddled and treated like they were exceptional from birth. On the up note they are both confident, motivated and high achieving. But maybe we have groomed these young adult to expect too much and expect that it will all come easily.
So have we failed our young adults?
For 'me and mine'...coddled? No. Treated like they were exceptional...only if they worked at it and could 'prove their salt'. No 'free rides', neither symbolically or literally.
I can't say for sure except to say that besides having reared my children not to count on anyone or anything but rather to work hard at whatever they were doing (jobs, schoolwork) invest in their education as far and to the utmost of their desires and abilities. If and when they chose not to do so they swiftly felt and immediately realized the consequences of their actions/behavior. Reality can be a cruel teacher and my typical response has always been, 'read 'em and weep'...'just deserts', as it were.
They have never been without employment and have continuously worked since they were young (12 years old and up). Everything from babysitting to bartending, off the radar (cash) fast food, lawn care, gas stations, car washes, and miscellaneous organization which were looking for seasonal help, temporary jobs, etc. If they ever complained about working hard I would tell them the harder you work, the luckier you will get.
They have always been aware that their destinies were dependent on their ambitions and work ethic (or, lack thereof)...and there are times when I question having instilled that in them. I sometimes feel as if I have created the new "worker bees' for corporate America. Don't get me wrong, nothing at all wrong with being a 'worker bee' as long as they acquire the savvy that will certainly compliment their hard work. To me, that is equally as important as having an excellent work ethic, maybe more so as long as it is not abused.
Anyway and unfortunately, I don't have a clear answer for you...the jury is still out but I do see all sides of our current 'crop' of young people. I am at once struck by both their ambition as well as their frustration/impatience as it really appears (to me anyway) that they are anxious to be self-supporting, accomplished, and successful adults. There may be slackers among their ranks but I personally and honestly have not met a single one of them.
I wholeheartedly and sincerely wish the very best for ALL of them, not just my own.
Sometimes people focus too much on those around them...
This 25 year old could be doing perfectly fine but maybe has friends and affiliates around him that make more money, do more things, have accomplished more, etc. etc. and he's feeling inferior to them. Thus, tricking themselves into thinking, "What am I doing wrong"?
Hell I've been lucky enough to be fully employed since college and I have friends/family around me who make far more money and do far more things and sometimes I get a little jealous when I can't participate in trips/events because it's out of my price range but.. hey.. guess what.
I'm 30... I'm fully employed... Married... have a 16 month old daughter... a dog... a house... a back yard... and loving friends and family all around me. So although I may not be making a 6 figure salary and doing all the glitzy things others can afford to do I think I'm doing pretty darn alright.
To answer the question more generally though I look at it this way...
It's up to us as parents that no matter how much we coddle our kids, or always tell them they're a "winner" and yada yada yada... in the end.. we need to be responsible to teach them that you have to EARN your way through life.
Earn your grades.... earn your college degree... earn that job... earn that money. We need to teach our kids responsibility... early on its all about chores and helping around the house and picking up after yourself.. teach them about love and respect... later it becomes learning about financial responsibility... getting a part time job as a teenager in high school and to save some money and to learn the basic necessities in becoming an adult. The harder you learn... the harder you work... the more effort you put into your life... your chances of being a successful adult should be pretty good.
I saw a thread in one of the forums. A 25 year old was lamenting that he didn't have the sort of professional success he felt he should have at that age, and he didn't think he would be successful in his career. I thought to myself, exactly what sort of professional success are you supposed to have at 25, isn't having a job and getting decent performance reviews pretty good progress?
Then we have people like Elliot Rodgers who feel "entitled" to women, sex and relationships.
Other young adults think they are failures if they aren't millionaires by 27.
They have grown up in a time where regular joes become reality stars and millionaires for doing nothing remarkable. And other people become millionaires by posting videos of their lives and opinions on youtube.
This generation of young adults is the first to grow up in the the "everyone is a winner" culture, where everyone gets a trophy for showing up. They were scheduled and scheduled from school to play making them both sheltered from reality, dependent on their parents for entertainment and transportation, controlled by helicopter parents afraid to let them cross the street alone or play outside, and had limited "unstructured time" to develop opinions and self identity.
Essentially the young people of today have been both coddled and treated like they were exceptional from birth. On the up note they are both confident, motivated and high achieving. But maybe we have groomed these young adult to expect too much and expect that it will all come easily.
So have we failed our young adults?
It depends on what he meant by progress in his professional career. By the time I was 25, I was a college graduate, completed 4 years in the Air Force, and worked probably a total of 5 other jobs in that time.
I started in cellular when I was 24 in Michigan. By the time I was 25, I had already received 4 pay raises and one promotion. By the time I was 28, I had earned a 10% pay raise for national performance, and had made a name for myself in the company. By the time I was 32, I became an RF Engineer pulling down near 6 figures for sitting at a desk all day.
Its all in the drive and what you do with it. Our young people have a unrealistic view of the job market and what the world has waiting for them. Only so many liberal arts majors we need in the world. If you go into Engineering, or a scientific research field of some kind, there is plenty of room for growth within your field. I believe that many younger Americans remember the 90's, and the economy and how things were booming then. That was 20 years ago, and we don't live in that world anymore. The world is becoming more and more electronically run, organized, and dependent. Unfortunately, many people do not have the skill, the drive, or the financial means of obtaining jobs in these fields. And yet, still others, are going to school to be lawyers and social workers. Only so many of those we need, and the field is full. Teaching is easy to get a job in, so is nursing, so is engineering, so are many other fields. But thats because people don't want to go into those fields, they want to be super rich yuppies that they grew up envying when they were 10 years old.
No we haven't failed our young people with the job market, what we have done, collectively, is taught our children that its ok to be anything you want in life. Unfortunately, that just isn't the reality of the world we live in.
I don't get why people always repeat the line that Millenials were "coddled and over-confident". Kids want approval from other kids-not adults-and kids have always been cruel. High school is still high school-even if they don't cut you from the sports team anymore (which I've never heard of before as my high school teams were very competitive) you still know if you suck. My parents were never over-bearing and I was able to pretty much do and go where I wanted-maybe because I am from a large family but still..
IMO Millenials are in no way "sheltered from reality"-we epitomize it. It is the older generations that live in a fantasy World of what once was with blinders on tight.
Personally, I think the biggest difference growing up today is that you the lives of those better than you are always in your face. The rich people are always in the news, the beautiful people are always on tv, the smart people are always being talked about, etc. There's so much more information available these days and there's always going to be someone better than you at just about any particular thing. The difference is that now, there's no avoiding that fact.
I could think that at 30, I'm doing pretty good... except I'm not because I didn't create Facebook. Well, maybe I'm happy with my wife? No, because she doesn't look like the airbrushed people all around. That's ok, I like my house... except the HG channel is always reminding me that I need to be updating every room in it. At least my kids are something... except there's a laundry list of reasons why everything I do is bad for them.
Reality is, those lists and those comparisons were always around, but now, they're in your face more than ever. I think that's why people feel like more of a failure.
I saw a thread in one of the forums. A 25 year old was lamenting that he didn't have the sort of professional success he felt he should have at that age, and he didn't think he would be successful in his career. I thought to myself, exactly what sort of professional success are you supposed to have at 25, isn't having a job and getting decent performance reviews pretty good progress?
Then we have people like Elliot Rodgers who feel "entitled" to women, sex and relationships.
Other young adults think they are failures if they aren't millionaires by 27.
They have grown up in a time where regular joes become reality stars and millionaires for doing nothing remarkable. And other people become millionaires by posting videos of their lives and opinions on youtube.
This generation of young adults is the first to grow up in the the "everyone is a winner" culture, where everyone gets a trophy for showing up. They were scheduled and scheduled from school to play making them both sheltered from reality, dependent on their parents for entertainment and transportation, controlled by helicopter parents afraid to let them cross the street alone or play outside, and had limited "unstructured time" to develop opinions and self identity.
Essentially the young people of today have been both coddled and treated like they were exceptional from birth. On the up note they are both confident, motivated and high achieving. But maybe we have groomed these young adult to expect too much and expect that it will all come easily.
So have we failed our young adults?
This is a refrain I'm hearing so often, I'm getting tired of it.
We have failed our young people in many ways, but the whole business about focusing too much on self-esteem (trophies) has very little to do with it. Its a systemic problem that older people are reluctant to face.
Also, I can state in it real simple terms without having to conduct any psychoanalysis.
The economy is in poor shape and there aren't the number of opportunities for young people that there have been in years past. There that's it. Its no deeper than that. I submit that's the only problem with young people. Elliot Rogers is one person. Making any blank statement about young people based on his behavior is pure silliness
College has become outrageously expensive. The cost of college has risen at a rate roughly 3X the rate of inflation. Borrowing money to go to college now means that a young person may end up owing $50,000 to a $100,000 to earn a four year B.S. degree. At the same time, job opportunities for college graduates have become fewer and far between. In a country with high unemployment rates, new workers often pay the greatest penalty. Employers will struggle to keep old workers on the job, but they often cut back on new hires and often fail to replace workers who retire.
Opportunity for those entering the labor force does not exist in this country on the level that it did in the 1960's, 1970's, late 1980's and definitely the 1990's.
There are two things we can do about it:
1. We can continue to suggest, as I think you have, that the problem is that young people have "the wrong attitude" and are not prepared for adversity in life; or
2. We can work harder to create an economy that produces more jobs and opportunities for young people.
No. #2 is more complicated than #1. Its going to require modifying our educational system to train young people for jobs that actually exist in the economy as opposed to simply focusing on teaching skills like reading, writing, and arithmetic. Programs may need to be eliminated from colleges that do not lead to eventual jobs. Perhaps, student loans should not be given to students in majors that are unlikely to lead to real employment. Tuition increases at state universities need to be rigidly controlled and rejected at times. Above all, we need to take a look at things like plumbing, electronics, welding, and trades. We need people who have these skills and we are doing a very poor job of directing young people into these areas. We have stigmatized some very valuable skills because they are not taught at a university. If we fix these things, we'll fix much of the problem with young people not having opportunities. But, first we have to realize that that is the problem and than we have to muster up the energy to do something about it.
Our HR department has had many problems hiring Millenials. Some work out just fine and have a strong work ethic. Many have started and we knew they wouldn't make it. There is a sense of entitlement...or, at least, an attitude that hard work isn't necessary to get ahead.
They seem to not want to put in the amount of hours necessary to prove themselves. Many quickly take vacation when they should be showing a lot more "face time". There will be plenty of vacation in the future. They wonder why they aren't automatically promoted when a position is open. They also seem to be more concerned about their social life. Many can't seem to break away from their cell phones at work and they need to know how to dress in a more professional manner. Keep the hipster stuff for the weekend.
I agree they have come into the workplace at a difficult time but they seem to not realize that this is the time to Double Down.
Our HR department has had many problems hiring Millenials. Some work out just fine and have a strong work ethic. Many have started and we knew they wouldn't make it. There is a sense of entitlement...or, at least, an attitude that hard work isn't necessary to get ahead.
They seem to not want to put in the amount of hours necessary to prove themselves. Many quickly take vacation when they should be showing a lot more "face time". There will be plenty of vacation in the future. They wonder why they aren't automatically promoted when a position is open. They also seem to be more concerned about their social life. Many can't seem to break away from their cell phones at work and they need to know how to dress in a more professional manner. Keep the hipster stuff for the weekend.
I agree they have come into the workplace at a difficult time but they seem to not realize that this is the time to Double Down.
They used to say that about us Baby Boomers!
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