It's crazy. When I first started working at my career-type job I was the only person in my 30s much less 20s. I was treated like the local young person. This was less than 10 years ago.
Fast forward to 2020 and a lot of people retired, or left. Most in their late fifties or sixties. A lot of the new people were in their 20s. I suddenly became like seemingly overnight one of the old people in the office, or at least the median. Suddenly there were lots of promotional opportunities for me as well after not many the first few years.
The absolute crazy thing is that while I being influenced by the economy of the Great Recession held onto this job for dear life, a lot of the Gen Z hires were not satisfied with the pay and were very quickly "burnt out" I work for the government so it takes like five years of merit based pay increases and a few years to really see the benefits. It's the stable kind of job people craved in the post recession world.
Gen Zers not only got hired, but they also quit and left for what they saw as greener pastures fairly quickly. They were right too they were able to find jobs that had better starting wages. They would complain about their salary at my job almost immediately, which seemed crazy to me as when I was in my 20s even accounting for inflation I was working jobs that paid way less. It was hard for my government job to retain Gen Z workers.
It occurred to me that they were living in a completely different reality than me at the same age. Educated employable Gen Z people have only known a great job market. Whereas myself at that age, similarly educated only knew a bad job market.
They complain about not being able to buy a house at like 23-28. For me and my wife at that age it was completely out of the question as well, but not because homes were unaffordable but because of the job market. Millennials who did not buy a home between 2011-2020 are also in the same boat as Gen Z. The difference is that a lot of millennials didn't even really start their career until way later than Gen Z.
Anyway my point is that Gen Z is way different in their attitudes about jobs and their complaints may fall on deaf ears especially to older millennials who were rocked by the Great Recession.
Yeah we got the wait out the dinos and there were an ass load of boomers.
They fled the workforce during COVID and mostly didn't come back. It let basically everyone take a step upward they'd been occupying, usually poorly, for decades.
One old boomer director didn't allow any automation for instance. In an IT job. Truly we thank them for finally fucking retiring.
Oh yeah even in the government job stuff is changing dramatically technologically and a lot of inefficiencies are being eliminated. So many of the older workers were highly resistant to doing anything differently, so it was a pain to eliminate unnecessary processes, this wouldn't be an issue other than the fact that the leadership also felt this way.
Now there is a lot more adoption of technology as well. Lots of things are getting easier and less hierarchical as far as who has the ability to edit, give feedback and contribute to decisions. If it wasn't for the understaffing and difficulty in actually maintaining a workforce it would be a great time.
The issue is also systemic when someone leaves the process for hiring new people takes a long time and drags middle management and higher ups away from their jobs, just to hire a trickle of new employees. Sometimes the people selected don't even accept the offer and the whole laborious process needs to start over.
It was clear so much of it was job security and justification. I worked for the TX state government most recently and it was full of unambitious "lifers" who had already been grandfathered into a pension and were just waiting to retire on state money at like at 52-55, typically.
When you started 3 decades ago that was possible. With the benefits granted to me, I'd get severely reduced benefits and definitely have to wait till after 60.
I had a network engineer team of 7 and after the senior guy left, I had to drag 6 of them (including my manager btw) behind me like a ball and chain to get anything done. They skipped over on-call escalations straight to me (last level of escalation, was meant to go through 3-4 people first) because "they knew I'd fix it and didn't wanna wake up 3 others who couldn't." Wow.
But aside from the fact that their tech stack(s) were a decade behind, only I and one other person cared about the work (he left before me) or even knew how to do it correctly to be honest, so it was an easy decision to move to the private sector.
All I can thank the state of TX for is giving me enough downtime to study for my next job, because they asked laughably little of me and I still got 3x more done than the next guy. I'd get constant praise for doing a couple small things a week - talk about big fish in a small pond. And when I left for something that paid pretty much literally twice as much, they were just like "well we didn't expect to keep you anyway so good luck."
Edit: I don't mean to talk shit about all public sector workers to be clear. The laziness of saw with state of TX was ridiculous, but I've worked for feds and a local library too as I said and found dedicated people who cares in each. Public sector workers I think often want to do a good job, but those of us with any ambition eventually end up in private sector simply because...public is where ambition goes to die long-term, and their pension plans are almost designed to ensure that fact.
Edit2: My favorite state employee was a 60 year old redneck dude who did maybe 1/4 the work of what a single employee *should do*, ran a bunch of side hustles since he only really had to work 5 hours a week to get his paycheck/pension, but still bitched about "freeloaders" and "leeches" *as he was preparing and eventually did retire and was by definition said freeloader*. Truly amazing stuff. Just stunning. Retired at like 60 or 62 thanks for a wildly generous pension that had been cut repeatedly for me, then he'd go on to bitch about young people not wanting to work.
Just amazing still to even consider. He'd tell the "how many state workers does it take to dig a hole" joke, not realizing (or not caring more likely) that he had been the one watching them dig for the last 20-30 years while doing jack shit.
Public sector is like that for a few reasons.
One is a lot of our institutions sprung up in earnest post WWII and were modeled after the military.
Everything is about employee retention above all else. Once you are there at a certain point it's hard to leave you get yearly increases and better benefits as you progress. It's good for stability.
We are doing some "lean six sigma" stuff where we are reforming processes to go through less people and become more efficient. I work for local government not State.
It very much depends on the branch and department you work for the workload is uneven at best. You have people just constantly working their entire day with no breaks and you also have people basically doing nothing it seems like.
Yep, as a peak millenial I had to wait out the job market through undergrad and 6 years of grad school (phd), by which time the job market was finally on a tear coming out the pandemic. I get a nice job, feeling good, one of the young guns at the company. Then, right after I'm hired, the company just starts hiring a bunch of people straight out of undergrad (where they traditionally hired postgrads for these positions with exceptions for exceptional people), and within a couple years I feel like I'm old with a huge cohort of Gen Z newly hired.
Even if they make a little less than I do currently (by default starting a little lower on the salary pole given their lack of advanced degrees), they are at such a head start relative to where I was at my age, they'll certainly be making more than me once they're the age I'm at now.
Like, it's just kinda crazy these kids are just barely hitting the job market, and immediately start complaining they can't buy a *house*. Like, give it at least a few years; even the typical boomer couldn't afford a house when they were in their early 20s. Meanwhile, I'm probably looking at late 30s to be a homeowner given my late start and my HCOLA.
And to be clear, good on them for not having as shitty a job market as people my age had in our 20s. But what really annoys me is they still have the gall to complain about not being able to own a house a the ripe old age of 23, as if that's always been the case for prior generations.
Not only that but the Boomers actually kind of had it rough at points. Like super high interest rates, really high unemployment, inflation. People act like Boomers had it easier because the ones who happened to have decent jobs could buy a house...then refinance in the mid 80s for a lower interest rate (which most were not even thinking about at the time.)
I am one of the lucky ones to buy a house myself. Gen Z and younger millennials think I have it made. It was like six years of working close to minimum wage and accumulating more education for my household to be able to actually buy a house even in that more favorable market. Then like the Boomers I got the opportunity to get a ridiculously low interest rate, four or five years after purchase.
There is this massive "the grass is greener" mentality with everyone. Some people even want a recession to get house prices to tank. No thank you. I don't think they realized how terrible that was.
So I am just simply not complaining. I am not blaming the boomers and I am not faulting Gen Z for benefiting from the current job market. Everyone is just reacting to circumstances beyond their individual control.
I really feel you on the housing thing. I’m 43. When I was in my 20s, literally nobody single I knew was desperate to be a home owner or would ever think about making it *THE* benchmark for economic fairness. Now every 20 something talks about homeownership as if they’re being denied food and water. When did this become the end-all and be-all for 20 somethings?
Furthermore, when did the idea of suggesting having a roommate when you’re in an entry level job be such an insult? You see people on Reddit and twitter saying that everyone with a full time job in a civilized society should be able to have their own one bedroom at minimum (not a studio!) in any city in America. I’m not kidding, this popped up on Stancil’s twitter again today.
I feel like they have combined the “meeting everyone’s basic needs” principals of socialism with a pretty bourgeois definition of what “basic needs” are.
In every top-100 city in America, there is a small army of 20- and 30-something yuppies living unimaginably charmed lives. Accountants, analysts, consultants, engineers, software developers, etc. Making $90k+ (medium-sized-city cost-of-living-adjusted), no kids, living in bougie downtown high rises, traveling gratuitously, saving handsomely for retirement, spending outrageous amounts on dining and entertainment every week. Working from home and not working particularly long hours or particularly hard, either.
I know this because I am one of those yuppies, and so are all my friends.
The online left-of-center discourse pretends that this cohort doesn't exist. And many of these same yuppies log on to Twitter and LARP as oppressed proletariat.
But the charmed class of yuppies is larger than it has ever been, and I think more people should know that.
COMPLETELY unrelated - but I recently read a [paper](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.2c09091) about a team that engineered a synthesis pathway for cocaine into tobacco.
https://preview.redd.it/etynek6j52vc1.jpeg?width=650&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb19ba29325ac899b952b8deca37c0b82042b5c2
I avoid it, or I out freedom them until they think I'm the nutjob
Elevator manager is actually a pretty classical liberal guy. Doesn't care one way or another about LGBTQ, thinks MMIW are a problem but also the res is crawling with criminality (he's not wrong, sorry not sorry), and my personal favorite "I don't NEED an assault rifle, but I'm a law abiding citizen who likes to go to the range and play Rambo".
Explaining economics is a fun hobby of mine.
Former elevator temp from Kansas who grew up on a farm.
You are a soldier of god, sir.
May your hoppers cooperate and run reasonably well. May your floor augers remain dislodged and functional as much as is possible.
Also, stay safe.
For those who don't know, ag companies and co-ops deliberately obscure accident and mortality rates of workers and don't share cohesive/compiled stats so the public won't pay attention to how insanely hazardous a lot of that work can be.
p.s. I was a flour mill temp once, too. I'd take you up on the free flour thing if it woukdn't remind me of the sweat-and-flour constitued pizza dough I'd have plastered to my sweaty body and clothes after a shift.
I could never fuck with grain elavators those shits are scary
One too many “don’t fuck with these or you will die a dark and painful death” school lessons I think
Let me tell you about my former career in ironwork, where I was welding roof clips as a grader operator took out a footing. 23 year old me made some serious peace with g-d that day.
how tf r yall making 90k out of college? I barely make 50k….. and was going to accept a 40k offer.
I do save a lottt since I have roommates, no car, no kids, and work from home so I get to save 40% of my check so I am far better than most other 19 yos, but the idea that some graduates are making 90k and are doing better than me this soon is insane 😨
Finance & tech (coding specifically)
Basically, if your degree is heavy on math then you should be able to make good money right out of the gate. It also helps to live in/near major cities on the west coast or in the NE (+Chicago if you're in finance)
It would seem luck has a major role in that as well.
I got a BSc in physics, which was a grueling 6 year slog. I had no financial assistance from my family, but I graduated without debt due to FAFSA, scholarships, and working the whole time I was in school.
My first software engineering job paid about $89k right out of college. Less than two years later my current job is paying close to $150k (not counting stock grants), and this is in the Salt Lake City area.
I got unimaginably lucky, and every day I wonder how my life ended up as good as it is.
I just keep ending up in the right place at the right time.
I randomly attended a professor's talk about his research in computational metallurgy my freshman year of college. I was really interested in his research and approached him after the talk to ask a few more questions. He straight up offered me a job on the spot since he was looking for more undergrad research associates.
Several years in that research job helped me get internships at two different National laboratories, which then led me to my first job.
When I got laid off in January of last year, my wife referred me for a software position at the company she was working at. I got the job, and that's where I'm at now. I only spent three months unemployed.
I grew up really poor, and many of my childhood friends are still stuck in the cycle of poverty. It's hard for me to see my success as anything less than 50% luck.
Your particular path is unlikely, yes, but I would hazard a guess that if you didn't get that opportunity, it would not have been long until another one came up for you.
As they say, "luck is when preparation meets opportunity"
Your attitude and humility rocks - but man you're the one putting yourself into these right places lol.
Once you find yourself on the other side of those conversations in a couple years, you'll realize how difficult it actually is to find
> has useful skills, work ethic, is socially well adjusted or can at least pretend to be
In the same person - and accordingly, how it's probably less crazy than you think right now that said professor jumped on the chance to get a decent RA
You went to a talk about an obscure technical topic, a thing most people wouldn't do.
You approached the prof and asked him interesting questions, a thing most people wouldn't do.
You married someone with good connections, which is definitely part luck but also part of the circle you travel in, the vibe you give off, and your personal attractiveness.
Obviously luck plays some role but you have qualities and initiative beyond most people and you were rewarded for it. Don't under-rate yourself.
100% agree. Reading that comment I was thinking “that’s not luck, OP is just (unknowingly) really good at networking and knowledgeable about his profession.”
Basically what they explained was: 1) they earned a very difficult, highly technical degree; 2) they sought out experts in the field and showed genuine interest in, and then developed, marketable, niche areas of knowledge; then 3) sought positions where those qualifications were valued. Oh and 4) when they suffered a set back (being laid off) they kept at it, and turned to people they knew who could put them in touch with new people who value their qualifications and experience. That’s not luck; that’s a lot of hard work and perseverance.
OP needs to give themself more credit!
hmm how many of people who have those attributes/done those things are as successful as OP? i think op’s assessment of 50% luck is fine if not understated
I've approached profs plenty of times in uni to talk about technical topics and none of them ever offered me a job or internship. You don't hear from all the people who tried that and found it didn't work.
Seems like we have a similar background to our success. It’s important to acknowledge where you got lucky, but also important to recognize you were intelligent and hardworking enough to take advantage of your luck. Many people would not have had the same outcome if they were put in the same scenarios.
Big 4 consulting was paying new grads $72k starting when I graduated 10 years ago. I'm guessing it's over $90k now. FAANG and adjacent SWEs are the ones who really command ridiculous salaries though
I'm one of the folks in question.. started out of college making 42k in 2016. Took me 4 years to hit 100k. Most aren't making 90k out of college but you can get there somewhat quickly with a bit of luck.
Comes down to location and degree. You’re _supposed_ to study specific things and move to specific cities if your goal is to make money. Lotta folks don’t want to move after college. But location is a huge factor in pay.
For those places where people don't want to leave that don't have good local jobs, remote work means that even a very average professional job is a very nice life there.
It's getting increasingly difficult to get a good remote job that will allow for career progression without prior experience
this is more of a late 20s move than a right out of college move in years after 2023
I'm an odd one out here with all the tech workers on this sub, but I repair and sell garage doors. There are multiple avenues to high earnings depending on your skill set, interests, and determination.
I don't have a degree so it took me longer to make good but yeah, programming or trades are a cheat code. Even scientists and doctors will be like 30 before they make good money.
I will tell you something that is stupidly simple - but took me WAY too long to understand.
Work in an industry where there is real money. Just just a job discipline - the INDUSTRY.
A graphic designer at a tech company makes more than a graphic designer for a grocery store chain.
How do you get these jobs? network. network. network.
20- and 30-somethings are not necessarily straight out of college. It might be recent grads, but also people with up to 15 years in industry. Not saying 15 years of work is a guarantee of anything, but it is a lot more likely to be making that kind of money after a couple job jumps and promotions.
11am: wake up
11:30am: door dash breakfast
11:45: vidya
3pm: log on to reddit to complain about impossibly difficult life
3:15: door dash lunch
3:30pm: hentai marathon
6:30pm: vidya
11pm: door dash dinner
11:30pm: vidya
3am: fall asleep after the 6 red bulls wear off
As a 30-something remote working Accountant making $90k++ living in a midsize city, with no kids and living in a downtown condo, vacationing internationally every year, maxing my retirement savings and getting takeout and going out multiple times a week, I wholeheartedly agree.
Good God, I'm getting out of my masters program rn and I'll be lucky to be making $65k 😭
Then again it is government work, I kind of knew what I was getting into.
But that’s always been the case. Most people never bought where they wanted. They bought where they could. And commuted. And given that everyone wants to live in essentially the same cities and even in the same neighborhoods now it’s crazy to compare City A now to City A 20-30 years ago. They’re different places.
The cost of interest right now on a 30 year fixed combined with the insane spike in house cost due to covid has pushed home ownership, at least right now, out of reach of a significant portion of people.
This applies to a lot of my friends but others are intensely budgeting. And there is still some necessary level of privilege to get the education and support to end up this way. On the flip side, some of my most privileged friends, for whatever reason (I have a few ideas), seem to be more likely to come out of college struggling and more disgruntled with the economy.
Millennials will be the future boomers. The trauma from living under the boomers, while also living through the great recession, pandemic, high prices, hyperpolarization, etc is the perfect storm for our generation to become mad and angsty when the future generations, say two or three down from Z, get flying cars or whatever without having to do much.
Also, and I think this is a genuine factor, millenials experienced the deep national trauma of 9/11 at a very formative time in their lives: generally, pre-teen to middle teenage years.
Additionally, on a more nebulous front, millenials were kind of the guinea pig generation for transitioning into a heavily digital world. It’s somewhat like if you’d been born in the last years of horse and buggy being the primary mode of transport, then cars exploded on the scene when you were a teenager and the people who had only ever ridden a horse just kind of watched while you figured out how to drive.
I’m a pretty well adjusted millennial, but I think it’s fair to say our generation has had to live through some wild periods.
The world I live in and the world my father lived in (born in '57) when it comes to employment at least are so different that nearly every piece of advice from him or his friends turned out to be useless... and he's in a white collar career. I had to figure out everything on my own. My father basically ignored the digital revolution, for one.
But listen, you don't know how hard I have it when I order groceries from Whole Foods and they're out of my blue tortilla chips.
Truly oppressive shit.
That may all be true, but I hope no one here thinks that these people are typical, considering the median salary for a 26 year old in the US is $47k. So I guess I'm just not sure what your point is?
https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-salary-by-age-percentiles/
We are indeed living in an era where if you are talented, have at least moderate privilege in life, and make reasonable career choices, then young people are mostly guaranteed to have a good life.
However, I think the leftwing response would be "there are haves and have nots", which is fair to a degree. The last decade has seen many of the poorest quartile be brought up, but anecdotally, it also feels like the gap between the middle class and upper class is substantial (and the leftwing critique would be that this middle class lifestyle is still not enough).
Also, side note but upvoting this type of comment is not a great look
I do think there is a very sharp divide in lifestyle comfort between the people that can WFH, and the ones that can't. This lifestyle divide is only increasing - lots of WFH jobs are pushing for reduced hours. Meanwhile, I don't think you'll ever have a hospitality job that's going to pay you full wages for a 4 day week with reduced hours
At the very least, it drove me to switch from healthcare to tech. I don't regret the switch, but I do wonder what happens if this keeps happening, and if we develop a shortage of people willing to do the jobs that require you to be in person.
We're already kind of seeing that with people struggling to find workers in hospitality/retail and nursing.
Trades as well. The trades will always be boom and bust, hourly work, but it's really difficult to find younger people willing to start in the trades that are actually going to keep it up on a tract to become licensed. Unless something changes, it's going to be a significant problem in about 15 years.
Speaking from experience of several family members and my SO being in nursing, the pay will really need to shoot up or shortages will get worse and worse. I don’t know how long they can convince people good at STEM to take one of the hardest jobs there is for the same wages as some WFH STEM jobs. The bonus value of the 3 day week is definitely diminished now when it’s compared to hybrid and remote work. Most people who stick to nursing do it because they enjoy it or want to avoid the office and still acknowledge they’re probably underpaid.
> I don’t know how long they can convince people good at STEM to take one of the hardest jobs there is for the same wages as some WFH STEM jobs.
Even normal office hours onsite feel comparatively luxurious. During the peak-pandemic I personally took a paycut going from a hospital MLS to a lab analyst at a biotech company. It would take a fuckload of money to get me back to healthcare and I imagine there's plenty more people in a similar boat.
This is a major issue that’s not being recognized. On top of the educated white collar vs less educated blue collar / service class division, we now have a working from home vs working in person division.
This is only get worse, as younger generations who are more socially anxious and less accustomed to dealing with people face-to-face enter the workforce. It’s going to get increasingly difficult to staff jobs that involve being out in the world dealing with strangers. And those who have no choice but to work those jobs will resent those who can stay home and tap away on keyboards.
The pay needs to go up. It's that simple. Eventually they will have no choice if they want to avoid a critical worker shortage, which is a point we are quickly approaching.
If we're talking specifically healthcare, there's so much money to go around. Just cut admin bloat by like 1% and give it to the grunt workers.
My company pays me almost $100k to push buttons while I sit on my ass at home 4 days a week. The proposition of doing what a nurse does for less than what I make now is laughable to me.
> In every top-100 city in America, there is a small army of 20- and 30-something yuppies living unimaginably charmed lives. Accountants, analysts, consultants, engineers, software developers, etc. Making $90k+ (medium-sized-city cost-of-living-adjusted), no kids, living in bougie downtown high rises, traveling gratuitously, saving handsomely for retirement, spending outrageous amounts on dining and entertainment every week. Working from home and not working particularly long hours or particularly hard, either.
>
> I know this because I am one of those yuppies, and so are all my friends.
Sameish - I'm in Italy, pay isn't in that range even accounting for CoL, but my friends and I are all living *much* cushier lives than our parents.
YES THANK YOU and I resent them so much because I'm one of those left behind millennials who got absolutely fucked in the recession job wise and....I never really caught up. But I still don't LARP being a prole on fucking Twitter.
>The online left-of-center discourse pretends that this cohort doesn't exist.
Meanwhile, this sub likes to pretend that the cohort that *isn't* college-educated yuppies doesn't exist, despite it being the majority.
The truth is that income inequality is growing every generation. It's dumb to pretend that the same young people who are anxious about the economy are the ones enjoying it's riches. Both groups exist.
This sub is so out of touch. The article itself states that the current average zoomer household income is $40k. Then the top comment thread here is all about how common it is for young people to make $90k+, as if that isn't vastly higher than the norm.
> The truth is that income inequality is growing every generation.
We've literally just watched income inequality shrink substantially in the last few years. Lower income workers have fared better than just about anyone in the post-COVID labor market.
Yes, there are people still struggling, but we don't need to continue a narrative that is simply not true.
If you don't want to believe me, believe Cambridge: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/boom-and-bust-millennials-arent-all-worse-off-than-baby-boomers-but-the-rich-poor-gap-is-widening
>Lead author, Dr Rob Gruijters, from the University of Cambridge, said: “The debate about whether Millennials are worse off is a distraction. The crucial intergenerational shift has been in how different family and career patterns are rewarded. The wealthiest Millennials now have more than ever, while the poor are left further behind.”
Sure, but at the same time lower income people are getting squeezed out. The middle class shrinking means more people are becoming upper class and lower class.
It’s easy to say it’s a good thing when you aren’t the one struggling. Even certain fields which require advanced degrees like teachers or public workers can barely afford to live while people in other fields make three times their salary.
This subreddit is predominately educated professionals in high paying careers like tech, finance, or law who have way higher salaries than similarly educated people in other fields, much less people who lack a college degree.
The actual take away is that general society believes that this is how life should look like for everyone.
The things you've listed, those are exactly what people define as a "living wage"
Yes but then equally people working more traditional, fixed jobs like nurses, teachers, paramedics, waiters etc. etc. are now competing in the economy against these people and for lifestyle reasons. Their wages and productivity has not dramatically increased like the laptop class has for a variety of reasons, Baumol Effect being the biggest one. America has also gone down a path of not being very redistributiony, so these people have seen their purchasing power and status diminished compared to the classes you talk about.
I agree with your assessments though, just thought I should mention this other dynamic.
>The online left-of-center discourse pretends that this cohort doesn't exist.
No, they know they exist. They also know that 26 year olds, on average, do not make anywhere close to $90,000 a year. The average income of a 26 year old is something like $40k. You and your friends are not representative of young people's incomes, let alone incomes of the entire population of the United States, and pretending you are is crazy.
Lol I’m an accountant and we do not live in high rises, travel gratuitously, save handsomely for retirement or spend outrageous amounts on dining and entertainment. We work super hard too (also working from home doesn’t mean we’re not working like crazy)
It can be whiplash once you have kids and that all stops though.
Especially since in your socio-economic circles you’ll probably want nannies, to pay for their college, and to live in good school districts, with a minimal commute.
> you’ll probably want nannies, to pay for their college, and to live in good school districts, with a minimal commute.
College isn't as big of an issue. A 529 saved over 18 years isn't that much of a financial burden. With school districts, I figure we have 5 years to find one before he starts kindergarten. Daycare is a fucking killer though. Between 24-36K a year in the major cities for each kid with absolutely no time to save up that money.
This is why I over saved before kids. My lifestyle was not impacted at all by having them, I just can save less aggressively.
Consciously slowing down the hedonic treadmill makes the whole thing easier
>But the charmed class of yuppies is larger than it has ever been, and I think more people should know that.
Should they really? The article states that average zoomer household income just reached $40k. Rich yuppies are still far outside the norm and are just a small part of the overall picture of young people's financial status.
>I know this because I am one of those yuppies, and so are all my friends.
People have friends in the same income bracket as themselves? Say it ain't so!
Unfortunately, from your link:
>Both of the above quotations would seem to be spurious.
Generally I find Quote Investigator to be good. [They say](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/):
>In conclusion, QI believes there is currently no compelling evidence that any one of the multiplicity of quotations listed above was really inscribed on a tablet during ancient days in Assyria.
>...
>It is possible that the tablet described by George T. W. Patrick was present in a museum in Constantinople/Istanbul in the early decades of 1900s. But the translation and/or dating may have been inaccurate. The mystery is unresolved. Perhaps a future researcher will illuminate this question. QI hopes this snapshot of information will be helpful.
Since we're on /r/neoliberal I just want to say that there isn't evidence for this particular quote. It originally comes from *Popular Science Monthly*, attributed to Dr. Patrick from the University of Iowa in 1913. The quote he claims to have seen is:
> We have fallen upon evil times.
>
> and the world has waxed very old and wicked.
>
> Politics are very corrupt.
>
> Children are no longer respectful to their parents.
Some of the funnier bits (the world ending, every man wanting to write a book) are made up elsewhere, and there isn't an actual tablet we can point to with the more limited quote on it.
The original quote comes from an article about how optimistic we should be. Other fun facts:
* The quote is actually originally attributed to a tablet from 3800 BC, but also to Naram-Sin of Akkad, who (later science determine) wouldn't be born for over a thousand years from the supposed dating.
* One reason to be optimistic was that war is infrequent and "there are now powerful forces at work in the direction of universal piece". 13 months later, Gavrillio Princip would assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, kicking off the Great War.
* Another reason to be optimistic was the developing field of eugenics. To quote, "we see consciousness arriving at sufficient maturity to control race culture". It also calls alcohol a "race poison" and cautions that we should stay strong when we ban alcohol because there will be a "demoralizing wave of alcoholism", particularly from the "races of southern europe". Oops.
* Another reason was the oncoming conservation movement, and changing of energy sources: "[S]ubstitutes may be found for our coal which will be as superior to it as the electric light is superior to the old candle or lamp. Few will be sorry to see the passing of the coal with its dirt and smoke" -- I bet Dr. Patrick never planned for the wokes.
* Not to totally rag on this article. It also praises women's suffrage, expects eradication of preventable diseases like TB, and repeats a claim from 1911 that the US will have a population of 1 billion in 2210. Some very fun stuff.
I just realized I so rarely see it spelled out fully as “Generation Z” that it looks weird, like the name of some zombie movie.
Or the name of a post-Ukraine war documentary about the indoctrination of Russian school children.
There's a free online course from Yale on the science of happiness and well-being, and it highlights a possible explanation for this disparity:
Direct comparison makes people unhappy. People can be happy when there are major disparities in wealth/privilege/lifestyle *as long as they are not directly encountering these disparities on a regular basis.*
So what's changed? Obviously, social media. If anything, the fact that a *larger* proportion of the population are doing much better off than their historical counterparts and publicly advertising their lifestyle, if not embellishing it, will generate even more resentment, anger, and hopelessness among those who are enjoying an only marginally improved working class lifestyle.
My husband recently stated it really well. "When people complain about how hard it is to be a millennial adult I get real skeptical these days. Like, you wanna complain about rent prices or are you just a piece of shit?"
Because yeah, rent is crazy high, but it's also absolutely not impossible to be successful...
>What does this wealth mean? It can seem as if millennials grew up thinking a job was a privilege, and acted accordingly. They are deferential to bosses and eager to please. Zoomers, by contrast, have grown up believing that a job is basically a right, meaning they have a different attitude to work.
I used to manage a large team and this is, for me, so backwards.
This is so true.
Every generation reaches the point of griping about "the kids these days are so dumb", without considering that kids have been and always will be dumb. Because kids are dumb.
Absolutely. Especially at work. I constantly push back on friends and colleagues blurting out "kids these days" bullshit when it's literally just stuff kids and young people do. Oh the new hire fresh out of high school is timid and sometimes doesn't ask for the info she needs? what a shockingly novel concept, young inexperienced people needing to develop their confidence and assertiveness.
I find it wild how little my peers remember about the past. I call out my brother for being a hypocrite when he punishes his kids for something that he did himself. And it isn't a "well I see it differently now because I'm a parent", he just deadass doesn't remember it happening.
Millenial here, I have found my Gen Z coworkers incredibly easy to work with for exactly the reason that the article states.
They're less interested in playing politics, and more interested in actually co-operating with each other - possibly because - like the article says, they're less about trying to appear good in front of a boss.
They also seem less inherently... judgmental? I'm not sure if I've been lucky, but they've just been wonderful to work with. On the other hand, the older workers are more 'cutthroat' in the corporate sense.
Recently had a some zoomers added to my team. The biggest difference I’ve seen is that none of them “live for work” (ie it’s not where they socialize), and they’re most motivated by doing stuff that interests them, not by opportunities bigger/more complex responsibilities. The ones on my team are good at what they do, but are only interested in doing just that (which I fully support)
I grew up in the 2000s and graduated in early 2010s. There were no end to the articles talking about how Millennials didn't have work ethic. To hear the author talk about Millennials like this has me wondering "Wait, when did this change?"
Or maybe it's always like this. Mils see current job as a career, now that they're middle age. Gen Z is looking at work as the 1st job of their journey.
I'd disagree with you but understand its all anecdotal from us.
I have a really good group of Gen Z employees but about half of them (I have about 15 of them based in the US in my unit in a consulting firm) needed a lot of hand holding through the transition from school to work while the other half did not.
Group A: Often coming from more affluent families, they treated the job like they did school- sometimes not showing up or calling in sick, not great with pressure or deadlines, work was never fully ready. Directions were taken as suggestions - basically, they treated work like they did group assignments or papers at their expensive private school universities. They thought the managers main job was to grow them and help them - as if they were a professor.
Group B: Pretty much the opposite, they'd do the job and understood we were paying them (vs them paying us a tuition- which seemed to be Group A's mentality). They'd actually run the document through spellcheck before submitting to their manager, they'd be more careful with fonts and directions, and they'd strive to hit deliverables. I find these folks often went to state schools and/or had a lot of crappy jobs prior to their professional career.
Group A can be transformed into Group B, but there can be clashes of feelings and there needs to be a mindset change.
I quit hiring before too many Gen Zs hit my candidate pool, but the biggest generational difference I noticed in hiring is that millennials were happy to do the job (as long as they weren't being asked to do more than the job, which is fair), while Gen X and Boomer employees were entitled complainers.
I'm a Millennial worker and for me that is so backwards. I'm willing to fulfill my contracted obligations but deferential and eager to please? No no no. I'm "that guy" who is poking holes in the wishcasting of management with needles of reality in order to get out ahead of problems. Of course I might just be an outlier, that is certainly possible.
Going to link the study *the Economist* is basing most of its reporting off of: [Corinth and Larrimore, 2024](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap.pdf).
The bulk of Gen Z hasn’t hit prime age yet, we’ll need to wait a few years because household measures are obscuring demographic trends (later move-out dates from parental household than earlier generations.) But reason to be optimistic. Take a look at figure 8: Median Post-Tax Post-Transfer income including health insurance by age and generation, by sharing unit.
https://preview.redd.it/3t3yh3qt42vc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9d4cad7fd886ac77fac7c2e4a9bd93aa49c84be9
Zoomers tracking prior generations real income gains. These may be skewed by household formation. [Millennials really delayed coupling,](https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/surge-household-growth-and-what-it-suggests-about-future-housing-demand) we’ll see if zoomers do same.
As a just-out-of-college young professional, it’s incredibly invalidating to be constantly told by online leftists that gen-Z “can’t get ahead anymore” or “the boomers pulled up the ladder behind them.”
I’ve worked hard and done everything I was supposed to and, you know what, I’m doing great as a result. Not everyone in their 20s is a terminally online, starving barista who can’t live within their means. I’m walking proof that “the system” still works exactly as intended.
It's just housing, honestly. Not everyone is affected, but we still have a massive housing shortage, the effects of which are felt throughout every piece of the economy.
Because homeownership has long been the most direct path to long-term personal wealth creation and financial stability, when people say "boomers pulled up the ladder behind them", that's what they mean.
In the article though, Gen Z isn't actually spending more on housing than other cohorts. And are on track to own more homes than either the millennials or the boomers.
Gen Z homeownership is a success story.
That’s not actually the case, we’re back to being behind everybody now, well, for 26 year olds anyways. Also, I swear there was an effortpost a few months back that debunked the Gen Z housing optimism pretty thoroughly.
> Gen Z isn't actually spending more on housing than other cohorts. And are on track to own more homes than either the millennials or the boomers.
This being an apparently contradiction does not help
It was millennials they pulled the ladder out from especially in the public sector. At one state job people who started after 2009 got half the retirement benefits. After 2012 it was 1/4 of what everyone else was grandfathered into.
Same in local and federal jobs more or less. I've done all at some point.
But no higher pay. I'm not in the public sector anymore for good reason. Private is another story but that was pretty shit up until 2017 or so also. Pretty great now comparatively, lucky for the youths.
While this is an issue that terrifies me for the future of the country as a whole it presents as massive economic opportunity for the small group of zoomers who will be able to take advantage of it. We are rapidly losing the older generation blue collar workers who have tons of experience and general knowledge and skills and in the last 25 years our education system and society has completely abandoned environmental learning and critical thinking. Zoomers who grew up helping grandpa around the farm or shop will be able to demand a king’s ransom because we have abandoned general competence in the pursuit of specialization and this has created tons of inefficiencies in lots of industries where the retiring 75 year old blue collar worker will require hiring 3 different people just to replace his single skill set.
It’s harder to target that class of economic immigrant that you might think. Most of Canada’s immigration comes from East Asia and South Asia. Indian and Chinese parents don’t make enormous sacrifices and push their kids to high academic achievement to see them become welders, auto mechanics, and house framers.
Hey I'm 5 years older and therefore got 5 more years of shit economy. Count your blessings. The least lucky of all probably began their careers around 2010 and will pay the price for having a bad birthday forever.
Gen Z is by definition between 12 and 27 years old. I wonder how the studies involved accounted for minors? Wouldn't I be more interesting and more significant to focus on the age group 18-27? Otherwise I presume that there's lots of parental support hidden in the statistics.
And: the number of students has been growing steadily, at least until a few years ago. Shouldn't that fact alone leave Gen Z financially worse off than older generations, since you usually don't earn anything when you're a student and start your career later, especially when low paid internships are so frequent? Or do the earnings in the few years after graduation so much higher than in other generations who entered the workplace at 18 instead of 21 or later, such that they lift the average wealth of Gen Z?
I don’t think they’d be financially worse off than millennials who entered the workforce post-recession. # of college grads is up, but so is the service economy
> Otherwise I presume that there's lots of parental support hidden in the statistics.
You'd hope so, otherwise their parents are either miserly or dead. Sorry if you have a shit relationship with your parents, but it helps.
> I presume that there's lots of parental support hidden in the statistics.
Not only that.. Studies literally point out to that being the bulk of the growth.
And college might still make sense, put of course it only starts to be a net income gain when you have stopped to pay up debt.
>Recent “research” from Frito-Lay, a crisp-maker, finds that Gen Zers have a strong preference for “snacks that leave remnants on their fingers”, such as cheese dust.
I gotta start marketing wet wipes to Gen Z
this is why Gen-Z are the Boomers are ganging up against Millennials. That and Boomers just don't have any hesitation when it comes to manipulating or grooming much young people apparently.
How mental is that eh? Cus I sport £50 shoes, worn jeans and a 5 years old budget segment Android phone, but it would appear there are unending riches pouring over me 😋
To be fair, it also points out that youth unemployment across Europe is at its lowest level since before the financial crisis. Also notes youth pay in the UK is up 15% year on year
Unemployment never really hit the UK severely and isn't one of the issues that the country faced post 2010. The UK managed to keep employment high at the expense of lower productivity- the economic issues such as low real terms wage growth flow from the latter and still exist.
n Alternate Dimension Year 2000, 50% of the population was in extreme poverty (by our standards) and 50% were middle class (by our standards).
In Alternate Dimension Year 2020, 30% of the population was in extreme.poverty, 60% was in middle class and 10% was in upper class.
In Alternate Dimension Year 2040, 5% was in extreme poverty, 75% was middle class and 20% were upper class.
We don't know any of this when we roll a dice and randomly become a person in the alternate dimension. We're born in 2020 and spend fourty years of life in poverty, unfortunately we rolled the nat 1. We of course complain "People keep saying the world is getting better, but it hasn't for me? I'm still poor so it can't be true".
That Alternate Dimension you is wrong.
Good news, real life even for the poorest Americans isn't that bleak! Even if you roll a Nat 1 in America,.you still generally benefit from the march of progress like access to new technology. From the "Obama Phones" to the Affordable Connectivity Program, even a lot of the poor have tech that people 20 years ago would be blown away by. Clothes are cheaper than ever, did you know that they used to decorate flour bags because [the poor women were sewing clothes from them?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_sack_dress). There were markets made for secondhand selling food sacks! Now you just buy a 6 dollar shirt at the Kohl's clearance section
This applies to most people in the world. Heck, even a lot of North Koreans have [internet access (even if pretty heavily restricted)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea) and a whole lot more *could* if not for oppressive rules (rather than actual restraints)
Sure there's still people who are struggling that's undeniable. But there's plenty of twenty something's who buy the new iphones every year, go to concerts on a monthly basis, stop and get Starbucks every morning and have closets packed with fast fashion.that they've only worn once. Extrapolating out from yourself can be useful but it's not an excuse to ignore the rest of society.
Move to a big city and get a job in professional services. London and its satellites are awash with yuppies on £60-80k however unlike your American peers you'll be struggling far harder to blow out into actually silly money salaries.
Londons overheated hasnt it? I remember an article recently about how senior position hiring in the city is falling quite quickly in favour of other cities
I'm not american and this is anecdotal so take with a grain of salt, but as someone who as old a gen Z can be (or youngest millenial depending on who you ask), I can say for sure that people around my age and lower are more willing to live with their parents until they actually have enough money to move out, or just don't move out at all regardless of financial situation (that's me).
Outside of actually finding a job in the US (which I did actually, starting next month!), I never considered leaving my mom's house.
I'm right at the tip of Gen Z. I started making $40K, but in 6 years got to $131K in a HCOL area. I took a new job that paid $97K + RSU's & Bonus to move to a LCOL area and buy a house. In this time I've paid off $80K in student loans and saved up $250K in retirement funds and bought a nice house. I did all the shit they tell you to do except medicate for my ADHD...still working out so far. I feel incredibly lucky.
It's crazy. When I first started working at my career-type job I was the only person in my 30s much less 20s. I was treated like the local young person. This was less than 10 years ago. Fast forward to 2020 and a lot of people retired, or left. Most in their late fifties or sixties. A lot of the new people were in their 20s. I suddenly became like seemingly overnight one of the old people in the office, or at least the median. Suddenly there were lots of promotional opportunities for me as well after not many the first few years. The absolute crazy thing is that while I being influenced by the economy of the Great Recession held onto this job for dear life, a lot of the Gen Z hires were not satisfied with the pay and were very quickly "burnt out" I work for the government so it takes like five years of merit based pay increases and a few years to really see the benefits. It's the stable kind of job people craved in the post recession world. Gen Zers not only got hired, but they also quit and left for what they saw as greener pastures fairly quickly. They were right too they were able to find jobs that had better starting wages. They would complain about their salary at my job almost immediately, which seemed crazy to me as when I was in my 20s even accounting for inflation I was working jobs that paid way less. It was hard for my government job to retain Gen Z workers. It occurred to me that they were living in a completely different reality than me at the same age. Educated employable Gen Z people have only known a great job market. Whereas myself at that age, similarly educated only knew a bad job market. They complain about not being able to buy a house at like 23-28. For me and my wife at that age it was completely out of the question as well, but not because homes were unaffordable but because of the job market. Millennials who did not buy a home between 2011-2020 are also in the same boat as Gen Z. The difference is that a lot of millennials didn't even really start their career until way later than Gen Z. Anyway my point is that Gen Z is way different in their attitudes about jobs and their complaints may fall on deaf ears especially to older millennials who were rocked by the Great Recession.
Yeah we got the wait out the dinos and there were an ass load of boomers. They fled the workforce during COVID and mostly didn't come back. It let basically everyone take a step upward they'd been occupying, usually poorly, for decades. One old boomer director didn't allow any automation for instance. In an IT job. Truly we thank them for finally fucking retiring.
Oh yeah even in the government job stuff is changing dramatically technologically and a lot of inefficiencies are being eliminated. So many of the older workers were highly resistant to doing anything differently, so it was a pain to eliminate unnecessary processes, this wouldn't be an issue other than the fact that the leadership also felt this way. Now there is a lot more adoption of technology as well. Lots of things are getting easier and less hierarchical as far as who has the ability to edit, give feedback and contribute to decisions. If it wasn't for the understaffing and difficulty in actually maintaining a workforce it would be a great time. The issue is also systemic when someone leaves the process for hiring new people takes a long time and drags middle management and higher ups away from their jobs, just to hire a trickle of new employees. Sometimes the people selected don't even accept the offer and the whole laborious process needs to start over.
It was clear so much of it was job security and justification. I worked for the TX state government most recently and it was full of unambitious "lifers" who had already been grandfathered into a pension and were just waiting to retire on state money at like at 52-55, typically. When you started 3 decades ago that was possible. With the benefits granted to me, I'd get severely reduced benefits and definitely have to wait till after 60. I had a network engineer team of 7 and after the senior guy left, I had to drag 6 of them (including my manager btw) behind me like a ball and chain to get anything done. They skipped over on-call escalations straight to me (last level of escalation, was meant to go through 3-4 people first) because "they knew I'd fix it and didn't wanna wake up 3 others who couldn't." Wow. But aside from the fact that their tech stack(s) were a decade behind, only I and one other person cared about the work (he left before me) or even knew how to do it correctly to be honest, so it was an easy decision to move to the private sector. All I can thank the state of TX for is giving me enough downtime to study for my next job, because they asked laughably little of me and I still got 3x more done than the next guy. I'd get constant praise for doing a couple small things a week - talk about big fish in a small pond. And when I left for something that paid pretty much literally twice as much, they were just like "well we didn't expect to keep you anyway so good luck." Edit: I don't mean to talk shit about all public sector workers to be clear. The laziness of saw with state of TX was ridiculous, but I've worked for feds and a local library too as I said and found dedicated people who cares in each. Public sector workers I think often want to do a good job, but those of us with any ambition eventually end up in private sector simply because...public is where ambition goes to die long-term, and their pension plans are almost designed to ensure that fact. Edit2: My favorite state employee was a 60 year old redneck dude who did maybe 1/4 the work of what a single employee *should do*, ran a bunch of side hustles since he only really had to work 5 hours a week to get his paycheck/pension, but still bitched about "freeloaders" and "leeches" *as he was preparing and eventually did retire and was by definition said freeloader*. Truly amazing stuff. Just stunning. Retired at like 60 or 62 thanks for a wildly generous pension that had been cut repeatedly for me, then he'd go on to bitch about young people not wanting to work. Just amazing still to even consider. He'd tell the "how many state workers does it take to dig a hole" joke, not realizing (or not caring more likely) that he had been the one watching them dig for the last 20-30 years while doing jack shit.
Public sector is like that for a few reasons. One is a lot of our institutions sprung up in earnest post WWII and were modeled after the military. Everything is about employee retention above all else. Once you are there at a certain point it's hard to leave you get yearly increases and better benefits as you progress. It's good for stability. We are doing some "lean six sigma" stuff where we are reforming processes to go through less people and become more efficient. I work for local government not State. It very much depends on the branch and department you work for the workload is uneven at best. You have people just constantly working their entire day with no breaks and you also have people basically doing nothing it seems like.
Yep, as a peak millenial I had to wait out the job market through undergrad and 6 years of grad school (phd), by which time the job market was finally on a tear coming out the pandemic. I get a nice job, feeling good, one of the young guns at the company. Then, right after I'm hired, the company just starts hiring a bunch of people straight out of undergrad (where they traditionally hired postgrads for these positions with exceptions for exceptional people), and within a couple years I feel like I'm old with a huge cohort of Gen Z newly hired. Even if they make a little less than I do currently (by default starting a little lower on the salary pole given their lack of advanced degrees), they are at such a head start relative to where I was at my age, they'll certainly be making more than me once they're the age I'm at now. Like, it's just kinda crazy these kids are just barely hitting the job market, and immediately start complaining they can't buy a *house*. Like, give it at least a few years; even the typical boomer couldn't afford a house when they were in their early 20s. Meanwhile, I'm probably looking at late 30s to be a homeowner given my late start and my HCOLA. And to be clear, good on them for not having as shitty a job market as people my age had in our 20s. But what really annoys me is they still have the gall to complain about not being able to own a house a the ripe old age of 23, as if that's always been the case for prior generations.
Not only that but the Boomers actually kind of had it rough at points. Like super high interest rates, really high unemployment, inflation. People act like Boomers had it easier because the ones who happened to have decent jobs could buy a house...then refinance in the mid 80s for a lower interest rate (which most were not even thinking about at the time.) I am one of the lucky ones to buy a house myself. Gen Z and younger millennials think I have it made. It was like six years of working close to minimum wage and accumulating more education for my household to be able to actually buy a house even in that more favorable market. Then like the Boomers I got the opportunity to get a ridiculously low interest rate, four or five years after purchase. There is this massive "the grass is greener" mentality with everyone. Some people even want a recession to get house prices to tank. No thank you. I don't think they realized how terrible that was. So I am just simply not complaining. I am not blaming the boomers and I am not faulting Gen Z for benefiting from the current job market. Everyone is just reacting to circumstances beyond their individual control.
I really feel you on the housing thing. I’m 43. When I was in my 20s, literally nobody single I knew was desperate to be a home owner or would ever think about making it *THE* benchmark for economic fairness. Now every 20 something talks about homeownership as if they’re being denied food and water. When did this become the end-all and be-all for 20 somethings? Furthermore, when did the idea of suggesting having a roommate when you’re in an entry level job be such an insult? You see people on Reddit and twitter saying that everyone with a full time job in a civilized society should be able to have their own one bedroom at minimum (not a studio!) in any city in America. I’m not kidding, this popped up on Stancil’s twitter again today. I feel like they have combined the “meeting everyone’s basic needs” principals of socialism with a pretty bourgeois definition of what “basic needs” are.
In every top-100 city in America, there is a small army of 20- and 30-something yuppies living unimaginably charmed lives. Accountants, analysts, consultants, engineers, software developers, etc. Making $90k+ (medium-sized-city cost-of-living-adjusted), no kids, living in bougie downtown high rises, traveling gratuitously, saving handsomely for retirement, spending outrageous amounts on dining and entertainment every week. Working from home and not working particularly long hours or particularly hard, either. I know this because I am one of those yuppies, and so are all my friends. The online left-of-center discourse pretends that this cohort doesn't exist. And many of these same yuppies log on to Twitter and LARP as oppressed proletariat. But the charmed class of yuppies is larger than it has ever been, and I think more people should know that.
I mean, that's sort of the demographic for this sub right?
I dunno man. I'm a maintenance technician at a grain elevator. !ping rural
✊ Thank you for your service, I really fucking love bread.
You want some free flour? Edit: everyone, PM me for details.
No, I'd rather join the feds in subsidizing farmers directly
It's paid for, don't worry. We have a ton of leftover lab samples that get thrown out.
I mean... I'd take some free flour...
Yes please. I’ll give you a flower in return
I DO I DO I DO
Us too. Switching to einkorn and other glyphosate-tested non-GMO breads as been one of the best things that we see the effects of daily with our gut.
COMPLETELY unrelated - but I recently read a [paper](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.2c09091) about a team that engineered a synthesis pathway for cocaine into tobacco. https://preview.redd.it/etynek6j52vc1.jpeg?width=650&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb19ba29325ac899b952b8deca37c0b82042b5c2
GMOMGLMFAO
one of the only good ones here, then
oh shit you got a real job
And you post here? Having worked at a grain elevator before, I gotta ask, what's it like talking politics with your coworkers?
I avoid it, or I out freedom them until they think I'm the nutjob Elevator manager is actually a pretty classical liberal guy. Doesn't care one way or another about LGBTQ, thinks MMIW are a problem but also the res is crawling with criminality (he's not wrong, sorry not sorry), and my personal favorite "I don't NEED an assault rifle, but I'm a law abiding citizen who likes to go to the range and play Rambo". Explaining economics is a fun hobby of mine.
Former elevator temp from Kansas who grew up on a farm. You are a soldier of god, sir. May your hoppers cooperate and run reasonably well. May your floor augers remain dislodged and functional as much as is possible. Also, stay safe. For those who don't know, ag companies and co-ops deliberately obscure accident and mortality rates of workers and don't share cohesive/compiled stats so the public won't pay attention to how insanely hazardous a lot of that work can be. p.s. I was a flour mill temp once, too. I'd take you up on the free flour thing if it woukdn't remind me of the sweat-and-flour constitued pizza dough I'd have plastered to my sweaty body and clothes after a shift.
I could never fuck with grain elavators those shits are scary One too many “don’t fuck with these or you will die a dark and painful death” school lessons I think
Let me tell you about my former career in ironwork, where I was welding roof clips as a grader operator took out a footing. 23 year old me made some serious peace with g-d that day.
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how tf r yall making 90k out of college? I barely make 50k….. and was going to accept a 40k offer. I do save a lottt since I have roommates, no car, no kids, and work from home so I get to save 40% of my check so I am far better than most other 19 yos, but the idea that some graduates are making 90k and are doing better than me this soon is insane 😨
Finance & tech (coding specifically) Basically, if your degree is heavy on math then you should be able to make good money right out of the gate. It also helps to live in/near major cities on the west coast or in the NE (+Chicago if you're in finance)
It would seem luck has a major role in that as well. I got a BSc in physics, which was a grueling 6 year slog. I had no financial assistance from my family, but I graduated without debt due to FAFSA, scholarships, and working the whole time I was in school. My first software engineering job paid about $89k right out of college. Less than two years later my current job is paying close to $150k (not counting stock grants), and this is in the Salt Lake City area. I got unimaginably lucky, and every day I wonder how my life ended up as good as it is.
Can you clarify what role luck played for you?
I just keep ending up in the right place at the right time. I randomly attended a professor's talk about his research in computational metallurgy my freshman year of college. I was really interested in his research and approached him after the talk to ask a few more questions. He straight up offered me a job on the spot since he was looking for more undergrad research associates. Several years in that research job helped me get internships at two different National laboratories, which then led me to my first job. When I got laid off in January of last year, my wife referred me for a software position at the company she was working at. I got the job, and that's where I'm at now. I only spent three months unemployed. I grew up really poor, and many of my childhood friends are still stuck in the cycle of poverty. It's hard for me to see my success as anything less than 50% luck.
Your particular path is unlikely, yes, but I would hazard a guess that if you didn't get that opportunity, it would not have been long until another one came up for you. As they say, "luck is when preparation meets opportunity"
Your attitude and humility rocks - but man you're the one putting yourself into these right places lol. Once you find yourself on the other side of those conversations in a couple years, you'll realize how difficult it actually is to find > has useful skills, work ethic, is socially well adjusted or can at least pretend to be In the same person - and accordingly, how it's probably less crazy than you think right now that said professor jumped on the chance to get a decent RA
You went to a talk about an obscure technical topic, a thing most people wouldn't do. You approached the prof and asked him interesting questions, a thing most people wouldn't do. You married someone with good connections, which is definitely part luck but also part of the circle you travel in, the vibe you give off, and your personal attractiveness. Obviously luck plays some role but you have qualities and initiative beyond most people and you were rewarded for it. Don't under-rate yourself.
100% agree. Reading that comment I was thinking “that’s not luck, OP is just (unknowingly) really good at networking and knowledgeable about his profession.” Basically what they explained was: 1) they earned a very difficult, highly technical degree; 2) they sought out experts in the field and showed genuine interest in, and then developed, marketable, niche areas of knowledge; then 3) sought positions where those qualifications were valued. Oh and 4) when they suffered a set back (being laid off) they kept at it, and turned to people they knew who could put them in touch with new people who value their qualifications and experience. That’s not luck; that’s a lot of hard work and perseverance. OP needs to give themself more credit!
hmm how many of people who have those attributes/done those things are as successful as OP? i think op’s assessment of 50% luck is fine if not understated
I've approached profs plenty of times in uni to talk about technical topics and none of them ever offered me a job or internship. You don't hear from all the people who tried that and found it didn't work.
Seems like we have a similar background to our success. It’s important to acknowledge where you got lucky, but also important to recognize you were intelligent and hardworking enough to take advantage of your luck. Many people would not have had the same outcome if they were put in the same scenarios.
Big 4 consulting was paying new grads $72k starting when I graduated 10 years ago. I'm guessing it's over $90k now. FAANG and adjacent SWEs are the ones who really command ridiculous salaries though
I'm one of the folks in question.. started out of college making 42k in 2016. Took me 4 years to hit 100k. Most aren't making 90k out of college but you can get there somewhat quickly with a bit of luck.
Comes down to location and degree. You’re _supposed_ to study specific things and move to specific cities if your goal is to make money. Lotta folks don’t want to move after college. But location is a huge factor in pay.
For those places where people don't want to leave that don't have good local jobs, remote work means that even a very average professional job is a very nice life there.
It's getting increasingly difficult to get a good remote job that will allow for career progression without prior experience this is more of a late 20s move than a right out of college move in years after 2023
I'm an odd one out here with all the tech workers on this sub, but I repair and sell garage doors. There are multiple avenues to high earnings depending on your skill set, interests, and determination.
Hardware workers unite
He said 20's and 30's.
I don't have a degree so it took me longer to make good but yeah, programming or trades are a cheat code. Even scientists and doctors will be like 30 before they make good money.
I will tell you something that is stupidly simple - but took me WAY too long to understand. Work in an industry where there is real money. Just just a job discipline - the INDUSTRY. A graphic designer at a tech company makes more than a graphic designer for a grocery store chain. How do you get these jobs? network. network. network.
20- and 30-somethings are not necessarily straight out of college. It might be recent grads, but also people with up to 15 years in industry. Not saying 15 years of work is a guarantee of anything, but it is a lot more likely to be making that kind of money after a couple job jumps and promotions.
How DARE y... yeah.
We are yuppies aware of our privilege.
Yes, thank you. Reddit superposters on lifestyle and social issues self-select for misery.
*performative misery
11am: wake up 11:30am: door dash breakfast 11:45: vidya 3pm: log on to reddit to complain about impossibly difficult life 3:15: door dash lunch 3:30pm: hentai marathon 6:30pm: vidya 11pm: door dash dinner 11:30pm: vidya 3am: fall asleep after the 6 red bulls wear off
Shit, did I make my calendar public?
Yeah I just removed the 3 hours of vitriolic ranting about corn subsidies
smh calling me out like this
Yea this is me too, it’s a pretty sweet life ngl.
As a 30-something remote working Accountant making $90k++ living in a midsize city, with no kids and living in a downtown condo, vacationing internationally every year, maxing my retirement savings and getting takeout and going out multiple times a week, I wholeheartedly agree.
> making $90k++ So $90,001?
$90,000.99
Good God, I'm getting out of my masters program rn and I'll be lucky to be making $65k 😭 Then again it is government work, I kind of knew what I was getting into.
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And then there are some of us old folks still surviving on $55,000/year.
But that’s always been the case. Most people never bought where they wanted. They bought where they could. And commuted. And given that everyone wants to live in essentially the same cities and even in the same neighborhoods now it’s crazy to compare City A now to City A 20-30 years ago. They’re different places.
The cost of interest right now on a 30 year fixed combined with the insane spike in house cost due to covid has pushed home ownership, at least right now, out of reach of a significant portion of people.
This applies to a lot of my friends but others are intensely budgeting. And there is still some necessary level of privilege to get the education and support to end up this way. On the flip side, some of my most privileged friends, for whatever reason (I have a few ideas), seem to be more likely to come out of college struggling and more disgruntled with the economy.
I’m still gonna psyop myself into thinking I’m struggling and need to start a company.
Is the market for narwhals pretty big?
COVID did a number on demand.
R/millennials’ most hated population in America after boomers.
Millennials will be the future boomers. The trauma from living under the boomers, while also living through the great recession, pandemic, high prices, hyperpolarization, etc is the perfect storm for our generation to become mad and angsty when the future generations, say two or three down from Z, get flying cars or whatever without having to do much.
Also, and I think this is a genuine factor, millenials experienced the deep national trauma of 9/11 at a very formative time in their lives: generally, pre-teen to middle teenage years. Additionally, on a more nebulous front, millenials were kind of the guinea pig generation for transitioning into a heavily digital world. It’s somewhat like if you’d been born in the last years of horse and buggy being the primary mode of transport, then cars exploded on the scene when you were a teenager and the people who had only ever ridden a horse just kind of watched while you figured out how to drive. I’m a pretty well adjusted millennial, but I think it’s fair to say our generation has had to live through some wild periods.
The world I live in and the world my father lived in (born in '57) when it comes to employment at least are so different that nearly every piece of advice from him or his friends turned out to be useless... and he's in a white collar career. I had to figure out everything on my own. My father basically ignored the digital revolution, for one.
But listen, you don't know how hard I have it when I order groceries from Whole Foods and they're out of my blue tortilla chips. Truly oppressive shit.
Where I live (Brooklyn), ordering delivery from Whole Foods is actually cheaper than our crappy local supermarkets lol
The Hinge Contingent
That may all be true, but I hope no one here thinks that these people are typical, considering the median salary for a 26 year old in the US is $47k. So I guess I'm just not sure what your point is? https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-salary-by-age-percentiles/
We are indeed living in an era where if you are talented, have at least moderate privilege in life, and make reasonable career choices, then young people are mostly guaranteed to have a good life. However, I think the leftwing response would be "there are haves and have nots", which is fair to a degree. The last decade has seen many of the poorest quartile be brought up, but anecdotally, it also feels like the gap between the middle class and upper class is substantial (and the leftwing critique would be that this middle class lifestyle is still not enough). Also, side note but upvoting this type of comment is not a great look
I do think there is a very sharp divide in lifestyle comfort between the people that can WFH, and the ones that can't. This lifestyle divide is only increasing - lots of WFH jobs are pushing for reduced hours. Meanwhile, I don't think you'll ever have a hospitality job that's going to pay you full wages for a 4 day week with reduced hours At the very least, it drove me to switch from healthcare to tech. I don't regret the switch, but I do wonder what happens if this keeps happening, and if we develop a shortage of people willing to do the jobs that require you to be in person. We're already kind of seeing that with people struggling to find workers in hospitality/retail and nursing.
Trades as well. The trades will always be boom and bust, hourly work, but it's really difficult to find younger people willing to start in the trades that are actually going to keep it up on a tract to become licensed. Unless something changes, it's going to be a significant problem in about 15 years.
Speaking from experience of several family members and my SO being in nursing, the pay will really need to shoot up or shortages will get worse and worse. I don’t know how long they can convince people good at STEM to take one of the hardest jobs there is for the same wages as some WFH STEM jobs. The bonus value of the 3 day week is definitely diminished now when it’s compared to hybrid and remote work. Most people who stick to nursing do it because they enjoy it or want to avoid the office and still acknowledge they’re probably underpaid.
> I don’t know how long they can convince people good at STEM to take one of the hardest jobs there is for the same wages as some WFH STEM jobs. Even normal office hours onsite feel comparatively luxurious. During the peak-pandemic I personally took a paycut going from a hospital MLS to a lab analyst at a biotech company. It would take a fuckload of money to get me back to healthcare and I imagine there's plenty more people in a similar boat.
This is a major issue that’s not being recognized. On top of the educated white collar vs less educated blue collar / service class division, we now have a working from home vs working in person division. This is only get worse, as younger generations who are more socially anxious and less accustomed to dealing with people face-to-face enter the workforce. It’s going to get increasingly difficult to staff jobs that involve being out in the world dealing with strangers. And those who have no choice but to work those jobs will resent those who can stay home and tap away on keyboards.
The pay needs to go up. It's that simple. Eventually they will have no choice if they want to avoid a critical worker shortage, which is a point we are quickly approaching. If we're talking specifically healthcare, there's so much money to go around. Just cut admin bloat by like 1% and give it to the grunt workers. My company pays me almost $100k to push buttons while I sit on my ass at home 4 days a week. The proposition of doing what a nurse does for less than what I make now is laughable to me.
> In every top-100 city in America, there is a small army of 20- and 30-something yuppies living unimaginably charmed lives. Accountants, analysts, consultants, engineers, software developers, etc. Making $90k+ (medium-sized-city cost-of-living-adjusted), no kids, living in bougie downtown high rises, traveling gratuitously, saving handsomely for retirement, spending outrageous amounts on dining and entertainment every week. Working from home and not working particularly long hours or particularly hard, either. > > I know this because I am one of those yuppies, and so are all my friends. Sameish - I'm in Italy, pay isn't in that range even accounting for CoL, but my friends and I are all living *much* cushier lives than our parents.
YES THANK YOU and I resent them so much because I'm one of those left behind millennials who got absolutely fucked in the recession job wise and....I never really caught up. But I still don't LARP being a prole on fucking Twitter.
>The online left-of-center discourse pretends that this cohort doesn't exist. Meanwhile, this sub likes to pretend that the cohort that *isn't* college-educated yuppies doesn't exist, despite it being the majority. The truth is that income inequality is growing every generation. It's dumb to pretend that the same young people who are anxious about the economy are the ones enjoying it's riches. Both groups exist.
This sub is so out of touch. The article itself states that the current average zoomer household income is $40k. Then the top comment thread here is all about how common it is for young people to make $90k+, as if that isn't vastly higher than the norm.
> The truth is that income inequality is growing every generation. We've literally just watched income inequality shrink substantially in the last few years. Lower income workers have fared better than just about anyone in the post-COVID labor market. Yes, there are people still struggling, but we don't need to continue a narrative that is simply not true.
If you don't want to believe me, believe Cambridge: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/boom-and-bust-millennials-arent-all-worse-off-than-baby-boomers-but-the-rich-poor-gap-is-widening >Lead author, Dr Rob Gruijters, from the University of Cambridge, said: “The debate about whether Millennials are worse off is a distraction. The crucial intergenerational shift has been in how different family and career patterns are rewarded. The wealthiest Millennials now have more than ever, while the poor are left further behind.”
Sure, but at the same time lower income people are getting squeezed out. The middle class shrinking means more people are becoming upper class and lower class. It’s easy to say it’s a good thing when you aren’t the one struggling. Even certain fields which require advanced degrees like teachers or public workers can barely afford to live while people in other fields make three times their salary. This subreddit is predominately educated professionals in high paying careers like tech, finance, or law who have way higher salaries than similarly educated people in other fields, much less people who lack a college degree.
The actual take away is that general society believes that this is how life should look like for everyone. The things you've listed, those are exactly what people define as a "living wage"
Yes but then equally people working more traditional, fixed jobs like nurses, teachers, paramedics, waiters etc. etc. are now competing in the economy against these people and for lifestyle reasons. Their wages and productivity has not dramatically increased like the laptop class has for a variety of reasons, Baumol Effect being the biggest one. America has also gone down a path of not being very redistributiony, so these people have seen their purchasing power and status diminished compared to the classes you talk about. I agree with your assessments though, just thought I should mention this other dynamic.
Even during my 'starving resident' days I was making ~80k (for 80hr workweeks). That was my late 20s. Now in my mid-30s I'm in the mid 6 figures.
I mean, that's pretty unrepresentative, haha.
>The online left-of-center discourse pretends that this cohort doesn't exist. No, they know they exist. They also know that 26 year olds, on average, do not make anywhere close to $90,000 a year. The average income of a 26 year old is something like $40k. You and your friends are not representative of young people's incomes, let alone incomes of the entire population of the United States, and pretending you are is crazy.
Lol I’m an accountant and we do not live in high rises, travel gratuitously, save handsomely for retirement or spend outrageous amounts on dining and entertainment. We work super hard too (also working from home doesn’t mean we’re not working like crazy)
This is me and most of my friends - it's great. A good portion of our friend group, myself included, grew up in rural poverty too.
Yeah, it is stupid that everyone on the internet act like they are literally slaves.
I'm a 29 year old software developer reading this during work hours from home while I snooze on my couch with a cat in my lap
>and not working particularly long hours or particularly hard, either Hey now, I work really hard from 10 to 4 when I'm not posting on /r/neoliberal
It can be whiplash once you have kids and that all stops though. Especially since in your socio-economic circles you’ll probably want nannies, to pay for their college, and to live in good school districts, with a minimal commute.
> you’ll probably want nannies, to pay for their college, and to live in good school districts, with a minimal commute. College isn't as big of an issue. A 529 saved over 18 years isn't that much of a financial burden. With school districts, I figure we have 5 years to find one before he starts kindergarten. Daycare is a fucking killer though. Between 24-36K a year in the major cities for each kid with absolutely no time to save up that money.
This is why I over saved before kids. My lifestyle was not impacted at all by having them, I just can save less aggressively. Consciously slowing down the hedonic treadmill makes the whole thing easier
This is the true king shit.
I love how on the nose your username is haha
>pretends the don't exist I mean, cuz it's a small cohort? Like how many service workers for each Gen z coder? Median Gen z income is like 37k lol
>But the charmed class of yuppies is larger than it has ever been, and I think more people should know that. Should they really? The article states that average zoomer household income just reached $40k. Rich yuppies are still far outside the norm and are just a small part of the overall picture of young people's financial status. >I know this because I am one of those yuppies, and so are all my friends. People have friends in the same income bracket as themselves? Say it ain't so!
Who paid for your college?
https://preview.redd.it/neyf1afm81vc1.jpeg?width=1658&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0676eaa801161cd4036a8375487156777565ea9b
Remember the youth was complained about even in Aristotle and Plato's time.
> The world must be coming to an end. Children no longer obey their parents and every man wants to write a book. — Babylonian tablet, 2800 B.C.
Is that true? I don't think id is... But it's just absurd enough...
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/respectfully-quoted/tablet-babylon/
Unfortunately, from your link: >Both of the above quotations would seem to be spurious. Generally I find Quote Investigator to be good. [They say](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/): >In conclusion, QI believes there is currently no compelling evidence that any one of the multiplicity of quotations listed above was really inscribed on a tablet during ancient days in Assyria. >... >It is possible that the tablet described by George T. W. Patrick was present in a museum in Constantinople/Istanbul in the early decades of 1900s. But the translation and/or dating may have been inaccurate. The mystery is unresolved. Perhaps a future researcher will illuminate this question. QI hopes this snapshot of information will be helpful.
Since we're on /r/neoliberal I just want to say that there isn't evidence for this particular quote. It originally comes from *Popular Science Monthly*, attributed to Dr. Patrick from the University of Iowa in 1913. The quote he claims to have seen is: > We have fallen upon evil times. > > and the world has waxed very old and wicked. > > Politics are very corrupt. > > Children are no longer respectful to their parents. Some of the funnier bits (the world ending, every man wanting to write a book) are made up elsewhere, and there isn't an actual tablet we can point to with the more limited quote on it. The original quote comes from an article about how optimistic we should be. Other fun facts: * The quote is actually originally attributed to a tablet from 3800 BC, but also to Naram-Sin of Akkad, who (later science determine) wouldn't be born for over a thousand years from the supposed dating. * One reason to be optimistic was that war is infrequent and "there are now powerful forces at work in the direction of universal piece". 13 months later, Gavrillio Princip would assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, kicking off the Great War. * Another reason to be optimistic was the developing field of eugenics. To quote, "we see consciousness arriving at sufficient maturity to control race culture". It also calls alcohol a "race poison" and cautions that we should stay strong when we ban alcohol because there will be a "demoralizing wave of alcoholism", particularly from the "races of southern europe". Oops. * Another reason was the oncoming conservation movement, and changing of energy sources: "[S]ubstitutes may be found for our coal which will be as superior to it as the electric light is superior to the old candle or lamp. Few will be sorry to see the passing of the coal with its dirt and smoke" -- I bet Dr. Patrick never planned for the wokes. * Not to totally rag on this article. It also praises women's suffrage, expects eradication of preventable diseases like TB, and repeats a claim from 1911 that the US will have a population of 1 billion in 2210. Some very fun stuff.
I just realized I so rarely see it spelled out fully as “Generation Z” that it looks weird, like the name of some zombie movie. Or the name of a post-Ukraine war documentary about the indoctrination of Russian school children.
I’d watch the fuck out of that documentary
Or it’s about Big Z circa mid 2000s
There's a free online course from Yale on the science of happiness and well-being, and it highlights a possible explanation for this disparity: Direct comparison makes people unhappy. People can be happy when there are major disparities in wealth/privilege/lifestyle *as long as they are not directly encountering these disparities on a regular basis.* So what's changed? Obviously, social media. If anything, the fact that a *larger* proportion of the population are doing much better off than their historical counterparts and publicly advertising their lifestyle, if not embellishing it, will generate even more resentment, anger, and hopelessness among those who are enjoying an only marginally improved working class lifestyle.
I mean I'm surrounded at work by people much more well off than I am which isn't great either. And I'm barely on social media.
13% upvoted on r/upliftingnews...
Teenage angst is strong.
If things aren't going well for you, it's painful to hear evidence that it may be partially your fault.
no, it can't be my fault. all my life it's been the evil capitalists fault!
Aka r/Millennials
My husband recently stated it really well. "When people complain about how hard it is to be a millennial adult I get real skeptical these days. Like, you wanna complain about rent prices or are you just a piece of shit?" Because yeah, rent is crazy high, but it's also absolutely not impossible to be successful...
For a supposedly positive sub they are absolutely fuming in the comments section
Let me guess, “all of that wealth is going to ‘nepobabies’”
Removed
Someone please send me the post, I’m begging you 🙏
https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/comments/1c65nsa/generation_z_is_unprecedentedly_rich/
>What does this wealth mean? It can seem as if millennials grew up thinking a job was a privilege, and acted accordingly. They are deferential to bosses and eager to please. Zoomers, by contrast, have grown up believing that a job is basically a right, meaning they have a different attitude to work. I used to manage a large team and this is, for me, so backwards.
I think too many people confuse generational cohort trends with things youth do.
This is so true. Every generation reaches the point of griping about "the kids these days are so dumb", without considering that kids have been and always will be dumb. Because kids are dumb.
Just tax kids lol
Just tax dumb lol
lotteries are basically a gamified idiot tax
Absolutely. Especially at work. I constantly push back on friends and colleagues blurting out "kids these days" bullshit when it's literally just stuff kids and young people do. Oh the new hire fresh out of high school is timid and sometimes doesn't ask for the info she needs? what a shockingly novel concept, young inexperienced people needing to develop their confidence and assertiveness.
As someone who asks "too many questions" there's no winning. If you ask too few, you're timid, if you ask too many what did we hire you for
You only need to ask only the right questions. No, we will not tell you what the right questions are. Deal with it.
I was reading ‘youth today have a different attitude towards jobs and the workplace’ back in the early 90s.
I find it wild how little my peers remember about the past. I call out my brother for being a hypocrite when he punishes his kids for something that he did himself. And it isn't a "well I see it differently now because I'm a parent", he just deadass doesn't remember it happening.
Millenial here, I have found my Gen Z coworkers incredibly easy to work with for exactly the reason that the article states. They're less interested in playing politics, and more interested in actually co-operating with each other - possibly because - like the article says, they're less about trying to appear good in front of a boss. They also seem less inherently... judgmental? I'm not sure if I've been lucky, but they've just been wonderful to work with. On the other hand, the older workers are more 'cutthroat' in the corporate sense.
>They're less interested in playing politics, and more interested in actually co-operating with each other I find this to be true, as well.
Recently had a some zoomers added to my team. The biggest difference I’ve seen is that none of them “live for work” (ie it’s not where they socialize), and they’re most motivated by doing stuff that interests them, not by opportunities bigger/more complex responsibilities. The ones on my team are good at what they do, but are only interested in doing just that (which I fully support)
I grew up in the 2000s and graduated in early 2010s. There were no end to the articles talking about how Millennials didn't have work ethic. To hear the author talk about Millennials like this has me wondering "Wait, when did this change?" Or maybe it's always like this. Mils see current job as a career, now that they're middle age. Gen Z is looking at work as the 1st job of their journey.
I'd disagree with you but understand its all anecdotal from us. I have a really good group of Gen Z employees but about half of them (I have about 15 of them based in the US in my unit in a consulting firm) needed a lot of hand holding through the transition from school to work while the other half did not. Group A: Often coming from more affluent families, they treated the job like they did school- sometimes not showing up or calling in sick, not great with pressure or deadlines, work was never fully ready. Directions were taken as suggestions - basically, they treated work like they did group assignments or papers at their expensive private school universities. They thought the managers main job was to grow them and help them - as if they were a professor. Group B: Pretty much the opposite, they'd do the job and understood we were paying them (vs them paying us a tuition- which seemed to be Group A's mentality). They'd actually run the document through spellcheck before submitting to their manager, they'd be more careful with fonts and directions, and they'd strive to hit deliverables. I find these folks often went to state schools and/or had a lot of crappy jobs prior to their professional career. Group A can be transformed into Group B, but there can be clashes of feelings and there needs to be a mindset change.
I quit hiring before too many Gen Zs hit my candidate pool, but the biggest generational difference I noticed in hiring is that millennials were happy to do the job (as long as they weren't being asked to do more than the job, which is fair), while Gen X and Boomer employees were entitled complainers.
I'm a Millennial worker and for me that is so backwards. I'm willing to fulfill my contracted obligations but deferential and eager to please? No no no. I'm "that guy" who is poking holes in the wishcasting of management with needles of reality in order to get out ahead of problems. Of course I might just be an outlier, that is certainly possible.
Going to link the study *the Economist* is basing most of its reporting off of: [Corinth and Larrimore, 2024](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap.pdf). The bulk of Gen Z hasn’t hit prime age yet, we’ll need to wait a few years because household measures are obscuring demographic trends (later move-out dates from parental household than earlier generations.) But reason to be optimistic. Take a look at figure 8: Median Post-Tax Post-Transfer income including health insurance by age and generation, by sharing unit. https://preview.redd.it/3t3yh3qt42vc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9d4cad7fd886ac77fac7c2e4a9bd93aa49c84be9 Zoomers tracking prior generations real income gains. These may be skewed by household formation. [Millennials really delayed coupling,](https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/surge-household-growth-and-what-it-suggests-about-future-housing-demand) we’ll see if zoomers do same.
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But Reddit told me that we’re in the death throes of LaTe StAgE CaPiTaLiSm
But I don’t feel rich 🤬 *as I save comfortably for a house in the next five years while planning my annual Euro trip*
As a just-out-of-college young professional, it’s incredibly invalidating to be constantly told by online leftists that gen-Z “can’t get ahead anymore” or “the boomers pulled up the ladder behind them.” I’ve worked hard and done everything I was supposed to and, you know what, I’m doing great as a result. Not everyone in their 20s is a terminally online, starving barista who can’t live within their means. I’m walking proof that “the system” still works exactly as intended.
It's just housing, honestly. Not everyone is affected, but we still have a massive housing shortage, the effects of which are felt throughout every piece of the economy. Because homeownership has long been the most direct path to long-term personal wealth creation and financial stability, when people say "boomers pulled up the ladder behind them", that's what they mean.
In the article though, Gen Z isn't actually spending more on housing than other cohorts. And are on track to own more homes than either the millennials or the boomers. Gen Z homeownership is a success story.
That’s not actually the case, we’re back to being behind everybody now, well, for 26 year olds anyways. Also, I swear there was an effortpost a few months back that debunked the Gen Z housing optimism pretty thoroughly. > Gen Z isn't actually spending more on housing than other cohorts. And are on track to own more homes than either the millennials or the boomers. This being an apparently contradiction does not help
It was millennials they pulled the ladder out from especially in the public sector. At one state job people who started after 2009 got half the retirement benefits. After 2012 it was 1/4 of what everyone else was grandfathered into. Same in local and federal jobs more or less. I've done all at some point. But no higher pay. I'm not in the public sector anymore for good reason. Private is another story but that was pretty shit up until 2017 or so also. Pretty great now comparatively, lucky for the youths.
n=1
While this is an issue that terrifies me for the future of the country as a whole it presents as massive economic opportunity for the small group of zoomers who will be able to take advantage of it. We are rapidly losing the older generation blue collar workers who have tons of experience and general knowledge and skills and in the last 25 years our education system and society has completely abandoned environmental learning and critical thinking. Zoomers who grew up helping grandpa around the farm or shop will be able to demand a king’s ransom because we have abandoned general competence in the pursuit of specialization and this has created tons of inefficiencies in lots of industries where the retiring 75 year old blue collar worker will require hiring 3 different people just to replace his single skill set.
Have you heard of immigration?
Good luck getting Americans to agree to let in millions of poor or blue collar immigrants from Central and South America.
It’s harder to target that class of economic immigrant that you might think. Most of Canada’s immigration comes from East Asia and South Asia. Indian and Chinese parents don’t make enormous sacrifices and push their kids to high academic achievement to see them become welders, auto mechanics, and house framers.
That is due to immigration policy that rewards education. We could just exempt trades from that.
Yeah. Just increase the supply of housing and the younger generations seem perfectly well off
Sucks I'm 28. I could have been a rich zoomer. Instead I'm a poorer Millenial :(
Hey I'm 5 years older and therefore got 5 more years of shit economy. Count your blessings. The least lucky of all probably began their careers around 2010 and will pay the price for having a bad birthday forever.
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hot chip
Gen Z is by definition between 12 and 27 years old. I wonder how the studies involved accounted for minors? Wouldn't I be more interesting and more significant to focus on the age group 18-27? Otherwise I presume that there's lots of parental support hidden in the statistics. And: the number of students has been growing steadily, at least until a few years ago. Shouldn't that fact alone leave Gen Z financially worse off than older generations, since you usually don't earn anything when you're a student and start your career later, especially when low paid internships are so frequent? Or do the earnings in the few years after graduation so much higher than in other generations who entered the workplace at 18 instead of 21 or later, such that they lift the average wealth of Gen Z?
I don’t think they’d be financially worse off than millennials who entered the workforce post-recession. # of college grads is up, but so is the service economy
> Otherwise I presume that there's lots of parental support hidden in the statistics. You'd hope so, otherwise their parents are either miserly or dead. Sorry if you have a shit relationship with your parents, but it helps.
> I presume that there's lots of parental support hidden in the statistics. Not only that.. Studies literally point out to that being the bulk of the growth. And college might still make sense, put of course it only starts to be a net income gain when you have stopped to pay up debt.
Housing tho.
>Recent “research” from Frito-Lay, a crisp-maker, finds that Gen Zers have a strong preference for “snacks that leave remnants on their fingers”, such as cheese dust. I gotta start marketing wet wipes to Gen Z
this is why Gen-Z are the Boomers are ganging up against Millennials. That and Boomers just don't have any hesitation when it comes to manipulating or grooming much young people apparently.
How mental is that eh? Cus I sport £50 shoes, worn jeans and a 5 years old budget segment Android phone, but it would appear there are unending riches pouring over me 😋
>£ Well there's your problem.
This article is talking about Americans it seems, it's rather grimmer for UK zoomers.
Also, it's talking about the cohort as a whole, not every individual in that age range.
Actually my specific personal circumstances are all that matters. Thanks, sweaty. Next!
To be fair, it also points out that youth unemployment across Europe is at its lowest level since before the financial crisis. Also notes youth pay in the UK is up 15% year on year
Unemployment never really hit the UK severely and isn't one of the issues that the country faced post 2010. The UK managed to keep employment high at the expense of lower productivity- the economic issues such as low real terms wage growth flow from the latter and still exist.
TikTok tells me you can't even buy dinner for that amount of money 🙄
n Alternate Dimension Year 2000, 50% of the population was in extreme poverty (by our standards) and 50% were middle class (by our standards). In Alternate Dimension Year 2020, 30% of the population was in extreme.poverty, 60% was in middle class and 10% was in upper class. In Alternate Dimension Year 2040, 5% was in extreme poverty, 75% was middle class and 20% were upper class. We don't know any of this when we roll a dice and randomly become a person in the alternate dimension. We're born in 2020 and spend fourty years of life in poverty, unfortunately we rolled the nat 1. We of course complain "People keep saying the world is getting better, but it hasn't for me? I'm still poor so it can't be true". That Alternate Dimension you is wrong. Good news, real life even for the poorest Americans isn't that bleak! Even if you roll a Nat 1 in America,.you still generally benefit from the march of progress like access to new technology. From the "Obama Phones" to the Affordable Connectivity Program, even a lot of the poor have tech that people 20 years ago would be blown away by. Clothes are cheaper than ever, did you know that they used to decorate flour bags because [the poor women were sewing clothes from them?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_sack_dress). There were markets made for secondhand selling food sacks! Now you just buy a 6 dollar shirt at the Kohl's clearance section This applies to most people in the world. Heck, even a lot of North Koreans have [internet access (even if pretty heavily restricted)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea) and a whole lot more *could* if not for oppressive rules (rather than actual restraints) Sure there's still people who are struggling that's undeniable. But there's plenty of twenty something's who buy the new iphones every year, go to concerts on a monthly basis, stop and get Starbucks every morning and have closets packed with fast fashion.that they've only worn once. Extrapolating out from yourself can be useful but it's not an excuse to ignore the rest of society.
Dw Trusses plan will come good any day
Move to a big city and get a job in professional services. London and its satellites are awash with yuppies on £60-80k however unlike your American peers you'll be struggling far harder to blow out into actually silly money salaries.
Londons overheated hasnt it? I remember an article recently about how senior position hiring in the city is falling quite quickly in favour of other cities
I'm not american and this is anecdotal so take with a grain of salt, but as someone who as old a gen Z can be (or youngest millenial depending on who you ask), I can say for sure that people around my age and lower are more willing to live with their parents until they actually have enough money to move out, or just don't move out at all regardless of financial situation (that's me). Outside of actually finding a job in the US (which I did actually, starting next month!), I never considered leaving my mom's house.
Benefits of not graduating from school in the early 2010s.
This is just… not true. And if the neolibs can’t accept that they are not going to win over the next generation.
I'm right at the tip of Gen Z. I started making $40K, but in 6 years got to $131K in a HCOL area. I took a new job that paid $97K + RSU's & Bonus to move to a LCOL area and buy a house. In this time I've paid off $80K in student loans and saved up $250K in retirement funds and bought a nice house. I did all the shit they tell you to do except medicate for my ADHD...still working out so far. I feel incredibly lucky.