[californiaguy]

No, fuck this guy and his bullshit attitude. I'm 25 and I work over 12 hours a day in my technology services company and startup projects and I make a good god damn living for myself and so does everyone who puts in time for our company.

It's his problem for believing the bullshit "adults" told him all his life. I knew from day one it was complete and utter nonsense. I bet he learned to blame others from them too. He should only blame himself for his lack of foresight.

I also have a degree from a good university but the difference is I used that time as an opportunity to extend my social and professional network instead of counting on a fucking piece of paper to grant me magical opportunities. College is what it's always been: a club for the children of privilege to come together and make relationships. If you treat it as such, the value of an "education" is apparent the minute you step foot on campus. Don't waste your time going to a bullshit school without any smart or wealthy people. Just skip it unless you can go to a good school.

[blhack]

What company do you work for, I'd love a job...

See, the way it is where I work is that you better fucking have your laptop with you 24/7 because if one of the duct-tape and chicken-wire projects that you're required to support goes down...well then hollly shit it better be fixed like RIGHT. FREAKING. NOW. (never mind that these outages and crashes happen at companies that we are customers of...as in: they won't let me into their FTP server to fix it when it is just fucking dropping connections for no reason).

But by golly, we better be glad to even HAVE a job! See, if we whine, or don't perform 100% all the time every day (even during our "vacation") there are a few hundred qualified applicants ready to take our job for the same pay and the same requirements (these people will burn out in a couple of months...again...and the cycle will continue).

How did this start? Too many people were told that they were special. Too many degrees were given out, and now the job market is flooded with people. We have a surplus of "skills".

How is it that people can't wrap their head around man-hours as a commodity? De beers knows this, they keep vaults full of diamonds locked away in a basement in NYC because they know that if they dump all those diamonds on the market, the price will get driven down.

We've been screwed. I'm sorry, this isn't entitlement. This is facts.

We've been screwed.

[beza1e1]

I would call it a surplus of skills, but a surplus of paper. The problem is that the paper you get at the end of your higher education isn't worth that much anymore. Experience is still worth something, though. So an employer is better of to take the experience indicator, since the education indicator isn't that useful anymore.

The problem isn't that there are a few hundred-qualified applicants. The problem is that an employer has no tool to filter those applicants, so the applicants can't do anything to be more qualified than the others and the process becomes quite random. My thesis is that given a good graduation result the next best thing is to learn socials skills and tricks in the interview process. In the end HR makes a gut decision.

[AlisdairO]

Isn't it a bit sad that someone should have to work a 60 hour week (assuming you don't work weekends...), likely with no more than 2 weeks a year vacation, to earn a good living, though? Fair enough if you're doing what you love, but that is never, alas, going to be the case for most people.

I'm lucky enough to get to work on what I love, but I still think that we should endeavour to restrict the 'normal' working week to a lower number of hours. In Praise of Idleness is an interesting essay on the point: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html .

[californiaguy]

I could easily earn a good living working 40 hours a week.

I'm trying to get rich so I don't have to answer to some clown barely half my age when I'm 40.

[adrianwaj]

Don't waste your time going to a bullshit school without any smart or wealthy people.

It's pragmatic of someone but not necessarily pleasant of them to seek another out just because they're smart or rich. Also, learning how to learn and learning how to relate can be undertaken at any college. But, I do agree with you on one level.

Furthermore, unrealized knowledge entitlement annoyed me far more than unrealized career entitlement (if any). I was ready to run or inherit a business empire knowledge-wise upon graduating. Alas, that did not occur!

Most grads (of Information Systems) said they used none of their knowledge after graduating: best study something one enjoys or something that will definitely be used.

[fburnaby]

<blockquote>It's his problem for believing the bullshit "adults" told him all his life. I knew from day one it was complete and utter nonsense.<\blockquote>

This what he's warning everyone else against? Don't trust the lying fuckers. He did and he's now screwed. It may be his fault for having believed them, but it's a great thing for him to warn other potential suckers.

[caffeine]

Yikes. Potty mouth.

[calcnerd256]

Surely we can hack our language to get across our emotions civilly without resorting to swear words. I appreciate your comment and hope the sentiment you expressed is more widely shared around here.

[David]

What exactly is the problem with swear words? He's using a word with the appropriate emotional connotation to express his message. Why hack a system that doesn't work when we already have one that does exactly what we want?

[wjy]

A few well-placed curses can emphasize a point and convey emotion. It's all too easy, though, to use too many expletives, and communicate all emotion and no content.

[calcnerd256]

We should reserve them for the most extreme times so as not to water them down. I think of the language progression as inflation. Until we come up with more-offensive phrases to replace the swear words we have, those words are the emotional cue just below escalation to physical violence.