Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Memory is important. Comes in handy for pub quizzes

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Memory is important. Comes in handy for pub quizzes

I don't memorize many things as a programmer especially if i am using them every single day. By that point it becomes a muscle memory. Not a 'memorization' but an idealized ability of understanding.

Unless of course, no jobs are really paying enough. I believe there has been some compelling arguments made on that front by Economists such as Klugman about unintentional wage collusion?

Granted, I am not an expert on the subject.....

 Easy E wrote:
Unless of course, no jobs are really paying enough. I believe there has been some compelling arguments made on that front by Economists such as Klugman about unintentional wage collusion?

Granted, I am not an expert on the subject.....

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wages-arent-growing-when-adjusted-for-inflation-new-data-finds-2018-07-17

https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2018/09/09/as-some-cheer-wage-growth-rate-median-income-is-only-up-by-5-1-since-2006/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2018/07/18/why-wages-wont-rise-when-unemployment-falls/

Heres some articles.

Inflation has a massive part, it effects before salaried and non-salaried workers.

Obviously having a large effect on middle and poor class workers

 Easy E wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
So what your saying is, all America needs to do to solve this generational problem is to bomb everyone else back into the stone age?

I think we have a new plan. Someone get the President on the line!

The internet also made it easier to start your own business and operate your own storefront without incurring the costs of a brick and mortar store. That's a good thing, lower costs and less gatekeeping helps increase entrepreneurship. However, those small business have to compete with industry giants like Amazon. That's why good economic policy and regulation is so important. Corporatism is not good and doesn't help a capitalist consumer based economy. It's counter productive in the long run for everyone except a small number of corporations. Capitalism thrives on opportunity. The opportunities to produce goods and services, opportunities to contract out your labor and opportunities to purchase goods and services. Corporatism stifles opportunity to benefit monolithic corporate entities dominating industries.

Good post Prestor Jon.

I just kept the last paragraph as it clearly points out the need for Trust Busting, Anti-Monopoly, and strong regulation to avoid Corporatism to strengthen Capitalism. This is a form of Protectionism that does not involve Tariffs. Probably getting too political....

Therefore to segway, if Millennials are the current "market" that needs to be expanded into it would seem many companies are doing it wrong. How many articles have we all seen about how "Millenials are killing Industry X"? Isn;t it more that Company X is not appealing to their needs?

There's a lot of factors that play a role. Often time a company in a given industry may not be agile enough to adjust to a new audience with different tastes/demands for the product. Sometimes it's easy to see this in hindsight or from a distance but within a company it can be very difficult getting established leadership to understand that the recipe for success that they've been following for years no longer applies and that they have a new customer base or new design criteria they need to meet. The music and film industries are both heavily invested in marketing, consumer trends, young demographics but both industries were gutted by the digital age and my kids are likely to be the last generation that uses CDs and DVDs. Apple's iTunes jumped into the digital music industry better and faster than the music industry itself. How'd the music execs let that happen? Some industries or products just become outdated and die off and even in the instances where companies have leadership that recognizes and acknowledges the decline can't do anything to change it. Millennials are an easy scapegoat for industries or companies that just aren't useful anymore but it's easier to just blame kids today for not wanting to buy a product they really don't need.

It's not personal, it's just math.

It's bad math. I can't count how many postings I see that are open for years. Some of them are basically always open because they're always looking for someone. Other times, I'm pretty damn sure they can't hire anyone because no one is that cheap. Employers like to complain left and right about how hard it is to find good workers, but they aren't remotely interested in paying for good workers.

If a job doesn't pay enough to be worth your time then don't bother applying for it.

I rarely see jobs advertise what they pay. You can certainly look it up cause there's statistics for every job, but I find those numbers to be mostly worthless for an individual. According to them average entry level pay in DC is $62,000. I've never been offered more than $39,000. One employer I talked to said "40s" but they never bothered talking to me again, I suspect because I dared to ask for a specific number before agreeing for anything. In fact for most jobs money isn't even discussed until they've decided to hire you, and then they try to guilt you into accepting whatever they offer with lines like "we already did all this stuff for you."

EDIT: Hell I'm not even sure most employers are actually hiring for the jobs they advertise for. I've had more interviews for "we think you're qualified for this job but we really think you're better suited for this one" because somehow some idiot read my resume and wants to quiz me on what I know about protecting computer networks from cyberattacks (there is absolutely nothing on my resume to suggest I know anything about this subject), and then they get disappointed when I say "no I've never stopped a hacker before."

There's no sense in taking it as a personal affront it'll just get you wound up over something that's not worth the anger and frustration.

I don't take it as a personal affront. That doesn't mean it's not something to be frustrated about. It's like it's impossible to express frustration in anyway without someone coming along and preaching about how wrong it is.

 LordofHats wrote:

EDIT: Hell I'm not even sure most employers are actually hiring for the jobs they advertise for. I've had more interviews for "we think you're qualified for this job but we really think you're better suited for this one" because somehow some idiot read my resume and wants to quiz me on what I know about protecting computer networks from cyberattacks (there is absolutely nothing on my resume to suggest I know anything about this subject), and then they get disappointed when I say "no I've never stopped a hacker before."

Some companies use unfilled positions as a means of arguing for increases to H1B quotas. Here's a Heritage Foundation article that attempts to convince you of their arguments: https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/increasing-the-cap-h-1b-visas-would-help-the-economy.

I'm not saying that the job you're referring to is just there to create that 2.1% but I'm damn sure it's included in the metric.

It's bad math. I can't count how many postings I see that are open for years. Some of them are basically always open because they're always looking for someone. Other times, I'm pretty damn sure they can't hire anyone because no one is that cheap. Employers like to complain left and right about how hard it is to find good workers, but they aren't remotely interested in paying for good workers.

AS an example there was a open post for an internship position for a UX design intern. you know an entry level position for a college student. Its be up there for a good... Two years. I can't say what company but I've applied to it numerous times by mistake thinking it was a new position but found out it was the same position but they haven't filled it... Ever. its Microsoft

 Asherian Command wrote:

It's bad math. I can't count how many postings I see that are open for years. Some of them are basically always open because they're always looking for someone. Other times, I'm pretty damn sure they can't hire anyone because no one is that cheap. Employers like to complain left and right about how hard it is to find good workers, but they aren't remotely interested in paying for good workers.

AS an example there was a open post for an internship position for a UX design intern. you know an entry level position for a college student. Its be up there for a good... Two years. I can't say what company but I've applied to it numerous times by mistake thinking it was a new position but found out it was the same position but they haven't filled it... Ever.

Yeah.

The best example I've ever seen is a job for a Curator for 37k.

In Orange County California.

When I first noticed it 3 years ago it was already 8 years old. It's still there.

I think some of what peolle are discussing above is based on bsuniesses wanting to justify bringing in foreign workers to do jobs in america for low wages by simply not hating an american to do it and claiming no qualified Americans want to do the job.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

It's bad math. I can't count how many postings I see that are open for years. Some of them are basically always open because they're always looking for someone. Other times, I'm pretty damn sure they can't hire anyone because no one is that cheap. Employers like to complain left and right about how hard it is to find good workers, but they aren't remotely interested in paying for good workers.

AS an example there was a open post for an internship position for a UX design intern. you know an entry level position for a college student. Its be up there for a good... Two years. I can't say what company but I've applied to it numerous times by mistake thinking it was a new position but found out it was the same position but they haven't filled it... Ever.

Yeah.

The best example I've ever seen is a job for a Curator for 37k.

In Orange County California.

When I first noticed it 3 years ago it was already 8 years old. It's still there.

I got a negative reply to an application a few weeks ago (they choose somebody else, standard polite reply and so on). Last week the same job is still available… and there's another—similar—one, just one link further down?

Another company that declined is still looking for somebody since November… of 2017.

Mario wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

It's bad math. I can't count how many postings I see that are open for years. Some of them are basically always open because they're always looking for someone. Other times, I'm pretty damn sure they can't hire anyone because no one is that cheap. Employers like to complain left and right about how hard it is to find good workers, but they aren't remotely interested in paying for good workers.

AS an example there was a open post for an internship position for a UX design intern. you know an entry level position for a college student. Its be up there for a good... Two years. I can't say what company but I've applied to it numerous times by mistake thinking it was a new position but found out it was the same position but they haven't filled it... Ever.

Yeah.

The best example I've ever seen is a job for a Curator for 37k.

In Orange County California.

When I first noticed it 3 years ago it was already 8 years old. It's still there.

I got a negative reply to an application a few weeks ago (they choose somebody else, standard polite reply and so on). Last week the same job is still available… and there's another—similar—one, just one link further down?

Another company that declined is still looking for somebody since November… of 2017.

I wonder if companies just do that to find cheaper labor or someone who has experience and / or someone they could abuse?

Well, as a hiring manager; sometimes the person you interview just isn't a good fit for business culture reasons rather than other reasons.

If one of your core tenants is Collaboration, but the person you interview is highly individualistic and competitive..... you might not hire them. Doesn't mean they couldn't do the job or have the knowledge, but they might not fit into the organization; and that will lead them to failure faster than skill gaps.

 Asherian Command wrote:

I wonder if companies just do that to find cheaper labor or someone who has experience and / or someone they could abuse?

I don't know how much cheaper it always is, but it's hard to get a more loyal employee than one who is tied to the job to stay in the country. Yeah, there's ways to stay in the country without that job, but the ones I know of are not easy or simple.

 LordofHats wrote:

EDIT: Hell I'm not even sure most employers are actually hiring for the jobs they advertise for. I've had more interviews for "we think you're qualified for this job but we really think you're better suited for this one" because somehow some idiot read my resume and wants to quiz me on what I know about protecting computer networks from cyberattacks (there is absolutely nothing on my resume to suggest I know anything about this subject), and then they get disappointed when I say "no I've never stopped a hacker before."

Where I work, a bunch of people's bonuses and progress towards promotions are based on how many people they interview. I don't think the quality of the candidates matters.

When I returned to the UK I had to find work.

Despite being English, having years of national insurance payments and having a 3 year old child with me I was classed as an immigrant and unentitled to claim any benefits to support my job search for the first three months in the country. Obviously that's a completely impossible situation and I had to take any job I could find. If we didn't have a social support network we'd have been on the streets, and the system really didn't care. Shameful.

With that in mind I failed an interview because I'd not elaborated on an experience relevant to the position that was neither mentioned on the job description and they didn't ask about in the interview; lone working.

I did actually briefly mention it on my CV, and it was how I'd been working the last 5 years or so. They just never bothered to ask.

I think this highlights a problem with vacancies; often the person writing job descriptions, reading resumes or hosting interviews doesn't have the skills, experience or training to do so effectively; they fail to identify suitable candidates. This is compounded by the fact that either salary is unmentioned or they offer salaries only suitable for unskilled, unqualified, inexperienced workers but expect more; this position was more or less minimum wage!

Fortunately, I was offered a job that was much more pleasant, local and with better benefits by the time they had got in touch to reject me.

It was a fun phone call; "hi, just getting in touch to say you were a great candidate, but you don't have enough lone working experience"
"You should probably have asked about lone working experience in the interview as that is how I've been working, sometimes in dangerous locations, for the past 5 years"
"... Oh ... I'll pass that on and we'll review your application"
"No thanks, I've found a more attractive job now"

I'm amazed how many 'trainee' positions are asking for 5 years of experience. I mean wtf?! This isn't 2008 anymore.

nareik wrote:


I'm amazed how many 'trainee' positions are asking for 5 years of experience. I mean wtf?! This isn't 2008 anymore.

It's illigal in the UK to ask for a set number of years exprince, yet I still see a lot of job adverts doing it.

 Steve steveson wrote:

nareik wrote:


I'm amazed how many 'trainee' positions are asking for 5 years of experience. I mean wtf?! This isn't 2008 anymore.

It's illigal in the UK to ask for a set number of years exprince, yet I still see a lot of job adverts doing it.

I'd wager this is like the laws on warranties - things changed at the top end but there was no serious investment in making people aware of that change so things kept going as before. I can appreciate many, esp mid and upper level, jobs requiring proven experience in the field. Adding a number would certainly seem logical to many writing a job prospectus and not reading the .Gov website on how to do it.
It's more of a pain when you're dealing with entry level jobs that require experience. Personally I tihnk they only get away with that because the market is so unstable that there are many who have years of experience who end up without a job (through no fault of their own). So your beginners are competing with a sizeable experienced block of people who already have a higher level of skill and are just back on the lower rungs again.



Warranties are now default 2 years not 1 and many goods have an expected lifespan warranty thing going on. Ergo a £1K Cooker has an expected lifespan beyond 2 years so its warranty should be longer. However most places still treat it as if Warranties are 1 year and most people only expect it to be 1 year. So 3rd party warranty sales are still a thing; esp when they are high profit sales and thus many sale staff are heavily encouraged to offer them.

On the topic of job listings going unfilled, I know that sometimes there isn't a pressing need to fill a vacant position but managers don't want to lose the budget and FTE slot that goes with the vacant position. In our department we have over 80 vacant FTEs but we're only really looking to fill maybe 60 or so of them and only a portion of those are going to be hired in the near future. If the vacancies that don't need to be filled right now were just taken away they couldn't be recreated in the future without first going through the arduous approval/justification process so it's easier to leave them empty.

Prestor Jon wrote:
On the topic of job listings going unfilled, I know that sometimes there isn't a pressing need to fill a vacant position but managers don't want to lose the budget and FTE slot that goes with the vacant position. In our department we have over 80 vacant FTEs but we're only really looking to fill maybe 60 or so of them and only a portion of those are going to be hired in the near future. If the vacancies that don't need to be filled right now were just taken away they couldn't be recreated in the future without first going through the arduous approval/justification process so it's easier to leave them empty.

i.e. the system incentives the wrong behaviors.

One reason tbat millennials are broke is that inflation doesn't affect all equally. A person with almited income spends most of his income on necessities, like food, medicines rent, etc. Even slight inflation pretty much rapes his budget.

Rising food prices don't really hurt rich people much. They spend a tiny speck of their income on food.

Ditto for gas prices. Rich peolle can afford to but a home so rent isn't an issue. When all increase even slightly the people with the least suffer the most.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
One reason tbat millennials are broke is that inflation doesn't affect all equally. A person with almited income spends most of his income on necessities, like food, medicines rent, etc. Even slight inflation pretty much rapes his budget.

Rising food prices don't really hurt rich people much. They spend a tiny speck of their income on food.

Ditto for gas prices. Rich peolle can afford to but a home so rent isn't an issue. When all increase even slightly the people with the least suffer the most.

You're overstating the number of "rich" people. Sure there are people like Jeff Bezos out there but the vast majority of wage earners in the country are on a limited income. The majority of homeowners aren't rich either. There is a tiny percentage of people wealthy enough to buy homes outright but the overwhelming majority of homeowners, even wealthy ones buying expensive homes, are using mortgages. Homeowners only own their home as long as they keep making their monthly mortgage payment, miss too many payments and you're homeless, just like renters not paying rent. The advantage of home "ownership" is that every month your mortgage payment builds equity for you. The downside is that you need a lot more cash on hand for a down payment on a home than you need to lease an apartment. So "rent" is absolutely an issue for homeowners because they have a monthly housing cost to pay just like renters. Renters can be harmed by the market more than homeowners because most leases are short term while mortgages are long term so homeowners can see a fairly consistent monthly cost for decades whereas renters can see costs go up by a significant portion annually.

Millennials really aren't that different from the rest of the 99% of wager earners that aren't the super rich 1%. They get scapegoated for a lot of gak that isn't their fault. While some economic and social factors are very different now than for previous generations, in broad strokes the Millennials are just as motivated as previous generations, want the same things and face similar struggles to get them.

If I can give my feelings as a Millennial.
I feel as if I was just funneled through a system that wants my money and nothing more. I was constantly told to go to college and get a degree. I went, got told to learn what I love, did that, left college with some debt(only 15000, not the 300000+ of some of my centemparies) that is paused because vi work for a non profit. I couldn't find anything after college. Got screws by temps. I'm just happy that now I work where I made double minimum wage.
But even if I work full time, I can't afford to live on my own. Like at all.
It's frustrating to go through all what the previous generation told me to do, but not come out even in the middle, it feels like I was led down the wrong path.

 Easy E wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
On the topic of job listings going unfilled, I know that sometimes there isn't a pressing need to fill a vacant position but managers don't want to lose the budget and FTE slot that goes with the vacant position. In our department we have over 80 vacant FTEs but we're only really looking to fill maybe 60 or so of them and only a portion of those are going to be hired in the near future. If the vacancies that don't need to be filled right now were just taken away they couldn't be recreated in the future without first going through the arduous approval/justification process so it's easier to leave them empty.

i.e. the system incentives the wrong behaviors.

Technological and social changes can happen at an ever increasing rate but large corporations/governments/any bureaucracy really, aren't nimble enough to quickly adjust on the fly. Technology moves like a sports car while business and government steer like cargo ships. That's one of the major flaws with corporatism it encourages companies to grow so monolithic that it's counter productive.

Industrial agriculture is a great example of this. The acknowledgment of the necessity of lagoons of hog feces should have set off alarm bells that we're raising livestock wrong. Same with needing to inject chickens with antibiotics because they're living in such filthy conditions they wouldn't be safe to eat without it. Industrial farming has brought back latifundium as a problem. Massive farms squeeze out competition while producing all kinds of harmful effects. Why do we have industrial farming that is focused on more efficient crop yields and greater automation? We already produce more food than we can eat, we don't have a bread shortage, more efficient farming is incentivized because the corporatized industry needs to make efficiency gains to high projected revenue goals and profit margins. With profits as the primary goal issues like migrant worker exploitation, wage suppression, livestock health, environmental impact, etc. become secondary concerns at best and the smaller businesses/family farms have to compete against such a system to stay viable.

We don't have to have a corporatist economy. It's possible to break up corporations and encourage more small business entrepreneurship and capitalist competition. Unfortunately corporations will always have a wealth advantage over small businesses/individuals and if a political system allows corporations to use that advantage to buy more influence than the constituency corporatism becomes entrenched and very difficult to break free from.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If I can give my feelings as a Millennial.
I feel as if I was just funneled through a system that wants my money and nothing more. I was constantly told to go to college and get a degree. I went, got told to learn what I love, did that, left college with some debt(only 15000, not the 300000+ of some of my centemparies) that is paused because vi work for a non profit. I couldn't find anything after college. Got screws by temps. I'm just happy that now I work where I made double minimum wage.
But even if I work full time, I can't afford to live on my own. Like at all.
It's frustrating to go through all what the previous generation told me to do, but not come out even in the middle, it feels like I was led down the wrong path.

Your not alone. Most millenials do not move out of their parents house til they are in their 30s.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If I can give my feelings as a Millennial.
I feel as if I was just funneled through a system that wants my money and nothing more. I was constantly told to go to college and get a degree. I went, got told to learn what I love, did that, left college with some debt(only 15000, not the 300000+ of some of my centemparies) that is paused because vi work for a non profit. I couldn't find anything after college. Got screws by temps. I'm just happy that now I work where I made double minimum wage.
But even if I work full time, I can't afford to live on my own. Like at all.
It's frustrating to go through all what the previous generation told me to do, but not come out even in the middle, it feels like I was led down the wrong path.

You were led down the wrong path. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom and established interests keeps pushing outmoded processes that were designed to get you to a place that doesn't exist anymore. The world isn't the same as it was 20 or 50 years ago but we're still preparing future generations the same way we were back then. If going through the typical K-12 school system in the US only qualifies you to work menial minimum wage jobs then that's essentially telling graduates that they really haven't learned any valuable skills in the past 12 years. If that's the case then we need to rethink the K-12 curriculum because we can't afford to have entire generations not get the education they need. This leaves students needing to learn their valuable skills via 4 years of college which is a short time, incurs a substantial cost that keeps increasing and colleges aren't incentivized to be vocational schools which means students often need even more graduate education at further cost. I'm a firm believer in the value of learning and that everyone's education should be well rounded and I believe that's a fairly widespread opinion but if becoming a HS graduate and a college graduate with a well rounded knowledge base doesn't help you get a decent paying job then we're just creating unhappy college graduates with a well rounded knowledge base working low paying jobs and what's the point of the whole system in that case?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If I can give my feelings as a Millennial.
I feel as if I was just funneled through a system that wants my money and nothing more. I was constantly told to go to college and get a degree. I went, got told to learn what I love, did that, left college with some debt(only 15000, not the 300000+ of some of my centemparies) that is paused because vi work for a non profit. I couldn't find anything after college. Got screws by temps. I'm just happy that now I work where I made double minimum wage.
But even if I work full time, I can't afford to live on my own. Like at all.
It's frustrating to go through all what the previous generation told me to do, but not come out even in the middle, it feels like I was led down the wrong path.

This hits a lot of notes for me. I'm pretty much in the same boat only I'm making minimum wage. It's just not possible for me to pay down my university and college loans with that kind of money, nevermind start a family or buy a house.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If I can give my feelings as a Millennial.
I feel as if I was just funneled through a system that wants my money and nothing more. I was constantly told to go to college and get a degree. I went, got told to learn what I love, did that, left college with some debt(only 15000, not the 300000+ of some of my centemparies) that is paused because vi work for a non profit. I couldn't find anything after college. Got screws by temps. I'm just happy that now I work where I made double minimum wage.
But even if I work full time, I can't afford to live on my own. Like at all.
It's frustrating to go through all what the previous generation told me to do, but not come out even in the middle, it feels like I was led down the wrong path.

This hits a lot of notes for me. I'm pretty much in the same boat only I'm making minimum wage. It's just not possible for me to pay down my university and college loans with that kind of money, nevermind start a family or buy a house.

Same here, outside of my tutoring I get paid minimum wage, and at Costco you have to work an ungodly amount of hours to even get top-step pay, which sucks when they push newer employees to work super efficiently (beyond what should be expected at least for a single person) but there's no real incentive to do so (as many of the full-time workers there know), I'm just lucky to have relatively good benefits in comparison to other minimum wage jobs.

 Grimskul wrote:

Same here, outside of my tutoring I get paid minimum wage, and at Costco you have to work an ungodly amount of hours to even get top-step pay, which sucks when they push newer employees to work super efficiently (beyond what should be expected at least for a single person) but there's no real incentive to do so (as many of the full-time workers there know), I'm just lucky to have relatively good benefits in comparison to other minimum wage jobs.

Is Costco (I'm assuming we're talking about the wholesale grocery chain, right?) that much different in Canada from the US??

Here in the US it is one of, if not THE best grocery chain to work for, they simply do not pay minimum wage (usually they start off at $12/hr, but if local min. is higher, they go up proportionally), and have a solid reputation of treating workers right.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

Same here, outside of my tutoring I get paid minimum wage, and at Costco you have to work an ungodly amount of hours to even get top-step pay, which sucks when they push newer employees to work super efficiently (beyond what should be expected at least for a single person) but there's no real incentive to do so (as many of the full-time workers there know), I'm just lucky to have relatively good benefits in comparison to other minimum wage jobs.

Is Costco (I'm assuming we're talking about the wholesale grocery chain, right?) that much different in Canada from the US??

Here in the US it is one of, if not THE best grocery chain to work for, they simply do not pay minimum wage (usually they start off at $12/hr, but if local min. is higher, they go up proportionally), and have a solid reputation of treating workers right.

Yeah. Costco at least in the US now has starting wage at $14 an hour(unless its required to be higher), with 2 50 cent raises a year assuming you are working full time.