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by steverb 5321 days ago
As an older and occasionally burnt out elder:

#2: If the intern was interning in a janitorial/house keeping role, then sure make them take out the garbage and restock your toilet paper. But chances are they're not. If you're not giving them work that is much more significant to the role in which they are interning you're basically just trying to take advantage of them.

#3: Not really sure what the anecdote has to do with the point.

#4: Honor your agreements. If you hire someone, you pay them.

#5: Craigslist is full of people who think they have a great business proposition and if you do X for free this time it is guaranteed to result in much more money later. Sometimes, they'll even let you use it in your portfolio.

#7: I've seen this exact same attitude employed by large well established companies. It has nothing to do with youth.

#8: Thanks for perfectly demonstrating why your point #7 has nothing to do with youth. Pot, meet kettle.

#9: I'm beginning to see a pattern...the author of the post seems to hire only idiots.

1 comments

The author is a very outspoken guy, perhaps just for the sake of it. He's the founder of Vice magazine and is known for his unpolitical correctness.

I still think he has a good point (speaking as a Generation Why youth)

It looks like a large part of his public career has revolved around getting a rise out of people, but judging from this one article, he displays most of the same faults that he is decrying in "today's youth". The only difference is that he appears to be in a position of power relative to those he is complaining about.

I should also add, that he has probably had employees as bad as imaginable, but I've had Gen-X and baby boomer co-workers every bit as bad. It's not a generational thing, or even necessarily a youth thing. Some people suck, some people are great. Sometimes one person can do both depending on a lot a external factors. It's foolish to generally demonize an entire generation.

He has very childish points. He complains about people who want to be paid for work they were contracted for (and then hires them again after not paying them only to complain about it). The client didn't pay is not a good excuse, unless the terms of the work specifically said "Will not get paid until client pays".

He hires interns to do jobs that their job description probably didn't mention. No one has to stay at some shitty job just because someone believes you have to work your way from the bottom up. If he bitches about not having a maid, then hires an intern to do a maids job maybe he should have just hired a maid instead of an intern.

He hates how people want credit for their work, but this is hardly unreasonable to ask. It also isn't very hard to do, we do it all the time in school so I'm sure he can find a way to manage. I find it funny that he complains about people not wanting to start from the bottom, but then refuses to give photographers credit for the little things that they do. People do build careers off of passport photos.

Often a lot of people get screwed royally on work because they were told that they just might maybe get commission if everything works out good. It's not unreasonable for someone to not accept work that isn't guaranteed to pay, he shouldn't be a bitch about it.

He also complains about young people not being able to handle the simplest tasks, but he was probably the person that hired all those people that can't do these tasks. Some older people have just as much trouble finding things on the internet.