Gen. Y: a rant 23

[HgTX]

I'm pretty sure this is not where engineering is going, but what do I know? Apparently it's where some workplaces are going.

I just heard another news program about the Gen Y'ers (those under 30, in the context of this particular story) and how spoiled they are--sorry, I mean how they need constant praise and reassurance.

Who the hell are these people? Where the hell are these people? Okay, one of them is my teenaged baby sister, who feels such a sense of entitlement that she thinks life is not worth living if she has to do anything she doesn't particularly enjoy. But for the most part, the group described is not deranged high-schoolers, in fact is not that much younger than I am, and none of the people in that age group who work in my office are like that, and neither of my siblings in that age group is like that.

And how do they get away with dictating terms when the economy, for most people, is still in the toilet and jobs are (as in an article cited in another thread in this very forum) disappearing left and right?

Makes me want to quit my job and go around the country smacking their little bottoms.

Hg

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[Qshake]

HgTX - Don't bother with their bottoms - use the 'splainer on their heads for immediate results!

Incidentally - as 'splained to me once by a rural engineering college professor - a 'splainer is usually a healthy 2x4 of a comfortable length that is used when all other means of assistance has failed to get the point across!

Regards,
Qshake

Eng-Tips Forums:Real Solutions for Real Problems Really Quick.

 

[FACS]

Our parents said the same about us, and their parents said the same about them.

Charlie

http://www.facsco.com

 

[csd72]

Just as not everyone who grew up in the 60's was a hippy so too not everyone in gen Y follows these stereotypes.

Depend on how the individuals brain works, how they were brought up. e.t.c.

 

[regalia]

As a GEN-Y'er myself, I will agree that there are indeed (too) many like this. However, I don't think it is fair to characterize the engineers of my generation like this at all.

I'm often suprised that the younger generations don't criticize the older ones more often. The negative effects of the selfish boomer generation seem to get worse by the year. They have spent the last twenty five years running a country off borrowed money while paying low taxes, and will retire just in time to avoid paying for the war they started, medicare, and social security. At the same time they are shipping all the white collar jobs overseas, so we will have less money to fix these problems.

 

[davefitz]

It is all related to how you were brought up. For example:

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!

 

[csd72]

regalia,

interesting comments, I think there is more than a bit of truth there.

davefitz,

I think I used to work with those yorkshiremen.

 

[Lion06]

That's why I gave the man a star!! Nice post Regalia

 

[Ashereng]

It doesn't change at all.

Every generation thinks they are the best, and all the world's problem is due to someone else.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[SnTMan]

davefitz, to quote Monty Python, "We wisht we 'ad a 'ole in the road."

And regalia, I'm a boomer, but I haven't run a damn thing in my life, about the only thing I bought with borrowed money is my house, haven't shipped a job anywhere, and as for retirement, forget it. Not that I completely disagree with you...

Regards,

Mike

 

[UcfSE]

Said it much nicer than I was going to.

 

[SnTMan]

I don't even have a HARLEY

 

[PSE]

I am at the tail end of the boomer generation. From my perspective, each generation tries to improve the quality of life for the next. This establishes the sense of "entitlement" that we later bemoan as a "problem" with the "ungrateful" succeeding generation(s). After all, in the long term, what do you tend to appreciate more, something given to you or something that you worked hard to achieve. It took me a while to realize this while growing up and believe me, I cannot thank my parents enough for what they went through for us as kids.

When the boomers pass away, a great concentration of wealth will take place. I wonder what the succeeding generation will due with this "gift" or legacy.

regalia I cant help but to chuckle at a few of your comments, they are virtually the same as ones we had while growing up. Huge government debt, borrowing against SS to pay for a war someone else started (Vietnam), high energy costs, burdensome taxes. And now people will pay $3 for a cup of coffee without thinking twice.

In about 20 years (or less), the kids of Gen-Y will be bemoaning the actions of their parents.

Regards,

 

[csd72]

Ashereng,
r.e:
"Every generation thinks they are the best...."

But one of them must be right!

csd

 

[SnTMan]

csd72, it IS possible for everybody to be wrong

 

[IAAWVU05]

Gen Y. Gen X. Boomer. WW2. WW1. They all have their fair share of amazing people and rat bastards.

I agree with SnTMan. No generation is the best, so the question "which gereation is best?" is irrelevant.

The better question to ask is "what happened to personal accountability?". Somewhere along the generations, the sense of personal accountability was lost, and the world won't get any better until we get it back.

 

[regalia]

I certainly wasn't trying to pick a fight, or imply that one generation is better or worse than another. I'm simply pointing out we get criticized an awful lot considering that my generation isn't old enough or had enough time/responsibility to really screw up big yet.

@PSE,

I completely agree with you. There is a reason my half of Gen Y (1982-1992) are called 'Echo-Boomers'. Though I hope my generation will fix many of our current problems and learn from the past, it would certainly be my assumption that we will be more similar to our parents than not. And it does irritate me that people whine whine whine about energy costs and then flock to pay for overpriced coffee (and many other things)--but I suppose that is a different thread.

 

[casseopeia]

Here’s a pretty good cultural reference for which generation category you may fall into. The list makes me wonder why the baby boomers are given such a wide range, though. If you count the 40’s 50’s and 60’s, that’s 30 years! I don’t think a ‘generation’ should be more than 20. Culturally, I think 10 year spans work better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

 

[dcasto]

Each generation whether micro or macro must strive to be better or else the society will they are in will vanish. It's Darwins theory. The problem is people interfeer in Darwins laws. Through social programs we try to equalize everyone instead of letting them achieve what they can naturally. We insist that our own children "can be anything they want", so we get a large group that believe they all can be rich and famous no producers we call "professional atheltes" or "enertainers". So while chaseing the dream jobs they waste the money given to them by the previous generations. Next we end up with a shortage of ditch diggers and we import them and these outsiders are given the same social idedalisms and they too enter the sprial (downward).

My micro (personal family) generations hasn't done that, all my lineage has achieved what they can with no expectations for success or failure. My eldest kids however have fallen into the social mutation of "you can be anything" and I supprted that until they were 25, then stopped and they are learning that life is handed to you on a silver platter. The eldest son woke and is back to reality and doing well (except he embrasses all the social interventions).

In conclusion, if mankind would stop most social engineering and allow failures. As for Sadaam, its a classic case of social engineering to counter other social engineering, and finally a third engineeing. And men and women in Iraq, they are good people doing a job that they selected according to their needs and abilities, from ditch diggers to Doctors, they are doing a job. If they weren't there, where would they be? Picking up trash along hiways to passing out medicine to all the illeagles in the US? I'd rather they be there and let the spolied gererations (like me and my kids) to clean up roads and let the illeagle suffer from the flu at home like I do because I won't pay $100 for a visit to the Doctor (and they get it for free).

 

[SomptingGuy]

Mentions of Darwinism...

If a society that undertakes internal social engineering is better adapted to one that doesn't, it will pervade, so long as it's genetic and that society reproduces. You cannot defeat evolution.