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mainestream's avatar

We have slowly backed ourselves into this corner of helplessness. It is much bigger than something which can be solved by institutions and supporting organizations, but that is clearly part of the solution.

It is no surprise to anybody paying attention that we have coddled and smothered a generation of children. Whether it was the indulgences of the first children coming out of the baby boomer families or the more recent developments attendant to various statuses, we have put all the focus on the individual and individuals’ rights in our society. Does anybody really know a teenager with an afterschool job? This is the society that you get when everybody is supposed to be at SAT prep class in the afternoon. We have also seen a steady increase in older parents and smaller families, neither of which is conducive to developing the type of strong and well developed children that should be leading their generation. An older parent is an insecure parent. A parent of a single child is even more protective of their progeny. Those children, who make up a larger part of our emerging generations, are their family’s trophies. And like the trophies we gave all of those kids for simply growing up, they are inherently fragile.

If you peel back the onion deeply enough, you realize that what we are witnessing is a slow unraveling of the nation’s confidence. More focused on protecting the gains in their wealth over the past generations, American families slowly began to worship the wrong things. They chose to race forward and collect things rather than developing in their children character. That is not going to be repaired by more deans on college campuses, many of whom dig in and double down on the same strategies that put us into this mess in the first place.

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Ashe's avatar

Older parents are not insecure parents. They are the parents who actually remember what it was like to have a paper route and babysit and have weekend jobs during high school. They’re the parents that worked during college. They’re the parents whose children read lots of books. They are the parents whose children get A’s because they are expected to live up to their full potential. They are the parents that are more likely to complain that the kids aren’t working hard enough at school and that they need more work—not that they need to get out of it. They are also the parents that wonder where recess has gone. Their kids are super involved in sports and other activities, and they don’t have the drug and weight problems that lots of students have these days. Their kids are the leaders in the class because their parents value education and work ethic.

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Brian Katz's avatar

Trophies, very interesting observation indeed.

I am always proud to display my two trophies. Two daughters, one is a PhD student in Physical Chemistry @ Berkeley, the other is a Junior @ UVM carrying a 3.8 GPA in Environmental Studies, with a minor in Italian (she is fluent in Italian). My pride and joy.

You would think that the parents we speak of, who fail their children, would have the foresight to understand that their children will one day represent them. And that terrible parenting would come home to roost. They either can’t see this, don’t care, or don’t have the skills to do otherwise. They are tarnishing their trophies.

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PH's avatar

FYI, I’m a single divorced mom who had my daughter at 34. She’s 16 now, an A student, gets herself up and out bed and to school on time. She also works part-time. Just saying’ we’re out here. 😀

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BigT's avatar

I think single moms have it the toughest. Good for you!

But too many can't be the great mom you are. Single parenting is one of the reasons so many kids end up in trouble. I can't imagine juggling a job (or two!), parenting, household chores, and activities. I blame the fathers who abandon their kids, and our society who so readily allow that to happen.

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PH's avatar

Well, our difference is that her father is still very much involved and has been in her life still. We co-parent - we just didn't want to be married to each other anymore. And, I agree - too many missing dads!

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mainestream's avatar

@PL

Of course you are!

We take the measure of any society by its median (or mean) cohort. Same should be true in all things.

I am still hopeful. But we are steadily ceding too much power to people who follow very temporal pursuits.

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Wendy's avatar

My thoughts exactly...well said! It all started with "participation trophies". We need to allow children to work through their disappointments and failures. We learn when we struggle and we also know what success feels like when we improve.

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mainestream's avatar

Noted Atheist, Sam Harris, speaking for rational materialists,says that our goal across humanity should be to minimize UNNECESSARY suffering.

Sam and his cohort must know the redline after which we pass into necessary suffering.

When you see a generation growing up with a profound illiteracy around the taproots of our civilization, the so-called NONEs will fall under the sway of guys like Sam and their CRT-advocating professors.

Never has a nation gambled so big on so many untested theories.

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Alison Bull's avatar

@mainstream Also the concepts that have been pushed for years are never truly attainable. Work-life ‘balance,’ ‘fulfillment’ and so many terms that are thrown around but are guaranteed losers because they never come to fruition. Latest is finding ‘meaningful’ work, which is great but for most people you’ll work many, many jobs that don’t fit that description before you find one that does. But now that means you don’t take any job seriously until you find that meaningful job. It’s a constant set up for dissatisfaction, especially for young people.

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Dean R.'s avatar

I agree with you mostly. There are a few that end up in jobs they love. Not me lol, but there are some.

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Alison Bull's avatar

It is very true and despite what I wrote I do believe that everyone should have meaningful work. Just from my experience, the people I’ve seen who enjoy their work the most are older and have either come up the ranks in their current industry or have changed industries over the course of their working life. What concerns me now is young people who are led to believe they should have that level of career satisfaction right out of the gate and don’t realize that a lifetime of work has its ups and downs like everything else. Or if you’re not following your dreams right now, your current job is meaningless. I’ve worked in a few different industries and I did learn skills and made contacts and friends through all of them. There was value even when I knew the job was not for me.

That’s why I believe that in many ways the narrative that the only way to work is on your dream ends up hurting more people than it helps.

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jt's avatar

The other lie they feed to kids is "You can change the WORLD!!"

And that's about all the kids wanna do.

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PH's avatar

This! So much this! This crap being fed to all of us that so much meaning has to come from our job. Sometimes it’s just a damn job! Just do it, get paid, pay your bills and shut up already!

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Celia M Paddock's avatar

I think my dad (Greatest Gen) would have been appalled at the idea that work was supposed to give his life "meaning." He worked in a steel mill, for wages that allowed him to save money for the things he wanted to do. We took "vacation" vacations at least once a year, in addition to driving to Colorado twice a year to visit my favorite aunt (my dad's sister). My dad found his "meaning" in tending his yard, interacting with his friends, and participating in local union leadership and state and local politics (but not as a candidate).

We've had to de-program our adult kids from the notion--absorbed from culture and their peers--that work is *meant* to be fulfilling. For the vast majority of people, work is what you do so that you have the money to enjoy other aspects of your life. It's best if you don't HATE your job, but it's just a way to put food on the table. It doesn't have to be (and probably won't be) some kind of meaningful career.

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PH's avatar

💯

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Alison Bull's avatar

Wait, PL, you’re not ‘following your passion ‘and ‘doing what you love and the money follows’ ??? What???

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PH's avatar

🤣🤣

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Leslie Wilson's avatar

I recently hired a new admin assistant. My previous assistant wanted “work-life balance” which turned out to mean she wanted to do the absolute bare minimum and run out the door at 5:00 on the dot. I interviewed several people and they all had the same requests: benefits, a six-figure salary and “work-life balance”. All I heard was they wanted to be grossly overpaid and would never put in the effort to get the job done. I hired a 23-year old woman who grew up working on her parents farm and she never mentioned any of these things. She’s been amazing so far and is a really hard worker. There’s a huge difference with how we raise our kids these days. So many people today are inherently lazy and believe employers should cater to their every need. I worry what this will look like in another few years.

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Douglas Hayward's avatar

This is one of the reasons U.S. organizations are outsourcing work to India, the Philippines etc - almost scary work ethic (okay, and lower wages).

Our kids will be competing with Indian kids for routine office work soon, at least in midsized and larger companies, given that the pandemic validated the WFH model

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Sally Sue's avatar

I'm going to go ahead & push back on this one.

My husband is a Senior Technical Architect. His company luckily does NOT have H1B's & they have hard working U.S. citizens (who are paid well).

He has had to do projects/consulting work with other companies who hire H1B's in India to cut costs. H1B's are ATROCIOUS. They quadruple everyone else's work with their incompetence. Deadlines cannot be met. Projects go wrong and have to be redone, over and over again.

These companies think they are saving money but they are actually losing money b/c it takes so much longer with these incompetent fools. Also: another fun trick played by H1B's in India: the resumes are completely falsified & they often have someone ELSE interview in their place. To hide the fact that they have no skills & are incompetent. They literally have Another Person Interview in place of them!

At one of these companies, they have 75% H1B contractors & 25% American employees. The H1B's know nothing & do nothing. They screw projects up constantly. The few American employees are literally scrambling to fix the work these fools are messing up.

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Douglas Hayward's avatar

Thanks, Sally Sue. What you are talking about here is immigration scamming - people so desperate to get into North America that they lie about their abilities and end up hopelessly underperforming.

But separately there are tens of millions of smart, hardworking and English-speaking people in places like India who are happy to stay there and earn good money as remote co-workers laboring alongside onshore people.

There certainly can be cultural issues using offshore labor (e.g. around proactivity and around "pushing back" and challenging co-workers and clients) that sometimes that create inefficiencies and can reduce the value of offshoring, but companies are learning how to avoid or minimize these. Money will find a way to solve these problems.

I bet India has the same 'normal distribution' of talent as anywhere else, and with a population of 1.4 billion people (more than the whole of Africa) and with English as the language of educated people, it's going to produce a lot of competent office workers over the next few years competing with our WFH kids.

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Ashe's avatar

And they get it done while we sleep.

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Sally Sue's avatar

My apologies, I did not clarify/specify:

I am talking about both H1B's here in the US & also Off-shore Tech in India.

Yes, the off-shore tech is more than happy to stay in India, they earn high salaries & can afford numerous household servants.

The Off-shore Tech is horrific & quadruples everyone's work. Companies think this will save them money but it ends up costing much more. Project delays. Incompetence which causes failures. Everyone is Cleaning UP the mess created by these off-shore morons. I am sure that people who are not directly involved on the technical side cannot see what is going on. Ask any U.S. software developer about their personal experience working with an off-shore team & they will tell you it is a nightmare. Everything goes wrong.

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Dean R.'s avatar

My company has had to hire H1B engineers over the years. Not enough qualified American engineers. They get treated like everyone else. They either perform or they are let go. We interview hundreds of Engineering students every year. Only the top 10% maybe are qualified.

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Joe Horton's avatar

Results may vary....

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Joe Horton's avatar

“…will be…soon….”

Nope. Been happening for some time now. A couple examples:

1) I used to use D.C. based patent people to do searches before I filed. A few years ago my patent lawyer suggested I try an Indian company. They took about a week, deliver a far superior search, and charge less than a third of what the Americans do.

2) We’ve been dealing with an Indian engineer to do CFD (computational flow dynamics) studies for us for about the past year. Mohit doesn’t look like he’s old enough to buy a drink, but he’s smart as anything. $20/hour, and no excuses, just results. He reminds me of Asok, the Indian intern in Dilbert. Asok gets the job done, even when nobody helps. He could easily run the company.

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Douglas Hayward's avatar

Indeed. My point is that more and more mainstream American companies will move large parts of office work to India, like they moved production work to Mexico and then China. Either moving entire functions, or - just as significantly, if not more do - splitting existing jobs into onshore/offshore pairings when existing onshore employees leave.

I’ve worked for two companies that have progressively moved work to India and in one of these organizations it reached the stage where every type of non-manual work was assumed to be a default mixture of onshore/offshore unless there was a good reason why not. So, offshoring permeates the entire organization.

I think this is still only done by a minority of companies, but will soon become mainstream, which will put young people in America under a lot more pressure to perform.

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