patrick.net

astrid was X/Yish, but they're Scottish and defunct so they probably don't count

I wonder what Mick Jagger thinks about before he falls asleep every night...

I think Gen Y is going to be really unbelievable proficient with computer and the Internet. I started using the Internet back before it was called that, but most young people are at least as proficient as me. At my last job, we had a 17 year old kid who we hired as a Network Engineer and he was very good. I got to talking to him and realized that he was also almost as good a System Administrator as me, too and I had been doing that for seven years! Turns out he got his first computer when he was seven and started programming when he was nine. I didn't do anything like that until I got to college.

We are still only in the early stages of the Internet revolution and I think that Gen Y is going to be the ones who grow up online and will really figure out how to make good use of them.

Yeah, the flip side is that most will not know anything about working with tools, hunting, raising livestock, or anything hands on. There are still plenty of places, like Wyoming, where I mostly grew up, where people will use those skills, but they will mostly be irrelevant to modern life.

Jimbo,

Maybe...but how are they at planning and large scale things. Any generation of younger people will be quicker mentally compared to someone twenty years their senior, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be able to handle more complex problems quite as well. (Though perhaps your 17 year old is exceptional).

OO,

Just to clarify (being I'm not anonymous and don't want some swiftboaters popping up 20 years from now torpedoing me for claiming 'I was a farmer'):

I was not a farmer and didn't grow up on a farm. I grew up in a tiny little farm town, but I was a "city boy". The center of the community was farming, and fathers like mine who commuted over an hour into the big city to work (mostly auto, aerospace or defense like my dad) were the exception. I worked on farms every summer from age 12 - 17, including a pig farm, grain farms, and a strawberry & raspberry orchard. The last was by far the shittiest, incidentally, and the only time I got seriously injured. Many of my friends were farmers. My best friend was a pig farmer. I was sometimes jealous of him, except for the time he let me assist in the 'honor' of castrating the piglets. But it was he who was laughing when one of his hogs won 1st place at the State Fair and he bought a brand new IROC Z* for cash, and still had enough left over to go to the prom. I drove my 1978 Ford Granada to the prom (but my date was way hotter).

*Car Translation: An IROC Z in the mid 80s in rural Ohio was the status equivalent of an M3, because if you drove a BMW you'd (a) get your ass kicked, (b) get your sunroof smashed in or (c) have nowhere to get it serviced. IROC Z's were only trumped by 68 Firebirds or pickup trucks which required step ladders to get into.

My wife did grow up on a farm. She can drive things with all those extra pedals and levers. I cannot.

Robert!

Gen Y doctors busting ass for an extra bit of patient care gets the CEO a nice bonus and every other Gen Y employee a new productivity chart based on the new effort level demonstrated.

My oh my. Sounds like you and I could playact a Vonnegut novel. You can take up the cause of the workers in defense of humanistic capitalism and I'll defend the emergent technocracy which silently benefits those very disaffected workers.

Eric,

That one is new to us. Thanks.

But if your house has been working hard to earn you $100K of tax free dollars a year, don't you deserve to blow a measly $50,000 on a suburban and another $20,000 on a nice long Tahitian vacation?

Gen-Y and their Boomer parents think they're all special little snowflakes who deserve everything.

Wait til global warming hits these precious children.

Eric,

Quite cool, I'm doing some "virtual puking" right now. I was a little bummed there wasn't a dramatic cuh-rash at the end though. :)

M. Robert,

Absolutely! Outside of a few exceptional companies like Google, the last 20 years have been absolutely brutal on R&D in this country, both in private companies and in government institutions. Engineers and physical scientists have fallen behind the marketing people, the sales people, the accountants, the lawyers, and gawd knows whom else. This is ultimately a self defeating strategy for a viable civilization.

Pshaw. Most of the smart technically minded people ended up in Internet companies. I have a degree in Biophysics. One of the guys who reports to me has a PhD in astrophysics. It is like that everywhere, not just Google. There is R&D going on all over the place, it is just not being called that.

Jimbo,

Maybe it's that way on the West Coast. My dad would tell me some horror stories about DoD contracting and big telecomm, both during the boom and the ensuing bust.

Jimbo,

I know this is a pretty public place for ask for advice, but I'm really looking for some. What would you do if you were 27, rather aimless and unfocused, leisurely unemployed, good at math and reasonably intelligent?

My boyfriend is all of those things. He's not concerned and thinks it'll resolve itself. I think he's in danger of becoming his best friend in high school (who is equally intelligent but couldn't bother to even finish a BS in a 3rd rate state school).

justme,

Yeah. It mainly arose from Casey Serin's "Haters" so don't be surprised that you haven't encountered the term.

I encountered a different meaning of "snowflakes" in Lewis Black's "Black on Broadway" show. He's the consummate ranter. I love his style. It's running on Comedy Central lately.

Alternative term: the "Boomerang Generation"

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

astrid says: Engineers and physical scientists have fallen behind the marketing people, the sales people, the accountants, the lawyers, and gawd knows whom else.

I call bullshit. I'm an engineer, and I've worked for two different Fortune 500 companies. Engineers still make more than marketing, accountants and almost everyone else. And to the best of my knowledge, engineers have never made more than the lawyers or account sales reps*.

* My caveat is that these companies both made BIG ticket products, so the commissions were really quite shocking in a good year.

The economy is strong because people are shopping at Santana Row.

That Gen-Y hang-out?

I don't know astrid, I will think about this and get back to you. I have never really been unfocused: I have always been ambitious, even if my ambition was directed in some pretty nutty ways.

Does he have a Bachelor's degree? It is not too late, he should probably finish his schooling while it is still relatively easy to do.

I think the best jobs right now are in Financial Engineering. Berkeley has a great MFE program that I probably would have applied to if I had better undergraduate grades. If that seems unlikely, perhaps he is interested in teaching? Does he like kids? There is a great need for secondary math and science teachers and there probably always will be. Community college teacher is one of the easiest teaching jobs out there, but the pay is not really that great. There is a huge shortage of nurses and this is only going to get worse. Nurses are finally starting to pull down a decent salary, too and men in the field of nursing have a leg up when it comes to moving into hospital management.

I would actually avoid programming and most computer jobs. I know all the soothseeers claim there is going to be a continuing demand, but I think most of those jobs are going to India and China.

We are still only in the early stages of the Internet revolution and I think that Gen Y is going to be the ones who grow up online and will really figure out how to make good use of them.

Yep. They will take Web 2.0 to the next level. Think Second Life.

They will be fine, one cannot get pregnant from cartoon sex.

*Trademark contrarianism follows*

I am not ready to declare "Gen Y" a loss. I think it is essentially difficult for any leading generation to recognize the saving qualities in following generation(s), with a few extraordinary exceptions. Even then, I would remind, that the GI Generation/Greatest Generation was commonly thought to represent a spoiled, lazy and unproductive lot by elders until WWII called them to service (WWI and the Depression had jaded most of the older generations).

I can see some genuine talents and advantages Gen Y carries which may be essential skills in the 21st century global competitive workforce, not the least of which being the very thing we criticism them for: their homogeneity of thought and action. Organizing lots of people to do the same thing could be very important. There is precedent, again referring to the GI Generation. Don't deny a generation its chance to rise to the challenge.

More broadly, I see the opposite of a "America in Decline" and "lost R&D/Engineering" culture. I see an America that's strength is its incredible openness to change -- even difficult, painful change. It's not all that hard for a large, organized national competitor to storm onto the scene and overtake any leaders in the short run, for a couple decades. What is hard is to create a culture in which risk taking, change and dislocation are part of the accepted culture. We shed old industry with minimal unrest, unlike pretty much everywhere else in the non American/Anglo economic world. We let obsolescence happen. We suffer, and make it so people not adding productively suffer. Destructive. Painful. Unfair. But ultimately it breeds incentive for those who don't wish to accept that fate to innovate, change and relocate (physically and occupationally). We are even readily willing to move around within our own country, something very rare world wide. As I read Patrick.net I notice that well over 80% of the non-immigrant posters are in-migrants of some sort or another. This is an incredible strength which gives me great confidence in the next Century of "American Dominance".

I almost hesitate to use that term because it's become so maligned. But it's also what I believe. I'm no jingoistic patriot. I think this country is f-d up beyond belief, especially lately. But I also think this is part of the painful process of creative destruction, and that we'll heal ourselves and get on with the business of moving things forward.

Jimbo,

Yes, he has an engineering degree from a first tier school.

Here is a good description of the generation in question:

http://www.astrofuturetrends.com/id29.html

I think engineering is dead because it does not drive markets anymore.

Anecdotally--I work with a young woman who is probably Generation Y--she is 26 or 27, and while she is pretty aimless in the workplace, insofar as she has no interest in putting any special effort into anything, I also know that she saves a set largish amount of $ each month and that she picks up hours at a second job to manage this when needed. She is also starting to play around with investing.

It seems as though she has no interest in putting forth any more effort than absolutely required to get paid and not get fired, but then again why give away energy for free? She saves her energy for her own interests. If she is typical, Gen Y might do pretty well--possibly at the expense of people around then who have been trained to go the extra mile.

then-->them

What do you think of the MFE program at Berkeley Randy? You must work with some of those guys. Are they graduating good people? Is the reputation of the program high?

http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/MFE/current.html

Eliza, I would argue that she is a trailing Gen-Xer.

Heck, I am sometimes aimless at work. :)

If she is typical, Gen Y might do pretty well–possibly at the expense of people around then who have been trained to go the extra mile.

Think of yourself as a business, would you go the extra mile for your customers at the expense of your bottom line? Is that even "ethical" in terms of doing your best for shareholder value? :)

WWII American Generation not perfect but did great things.

Baby boomers, the most selfish generation in history. They had the most prosperity to start out with, thought they were better than their parents, leached off of them, and then threw them in old age homes. The hippies who became the 80s yuppies taking without giving anything back. The first generation to view credit as an extension of income.

Gen X, very ideological still recovering from being told every day that the world was going to end with them. They tend to be very honest, hate political correctness and live life to its fullest. As I've said before on some threads, we have very blurred political boundaries and don't seem to fit as pure Democrat or Republican. Unfortunately we seem to be repeating the materialism of the boomers, generally seem to be very bad with money.

Gen Y, too early to call, give em a break they are barely out of college, but most of the ones I've met seem very rational. I'd put my money on them before the baby boomers or even the X'rs. They are bearing the brunt of this war and do so without complaining.

I took classes from Stanford's mathematical finance "department" (or was it financial mathematics?). What troubled me was that professors considers themselves mathematicians, not businessmen.

I rather "become" a businessman that invents new math. Look at all those creative loan products. They deserve a Nobel peace prize. :)

My favorite generation would be the Victorians. Even though they were uptight they seemed to always be doing interesting things for the sheer enjoyment of discovery. They loved nature, and enlightenment. The progressives came from this group.

dryfly, don't remember seeing you around patrick.net for a while. If you've been gone, welcome back (hopefully I'm not hallucinating!). Been hanging out over on CR's boards lately? Tanta's been on a tear over this whole subprime implosion... :o

Baby boomers, the most selfish generation in history.

Boomers are individualistic, not necessarily selfish. Although I am a Gen-Xer with a Libra Pluto, that planet happens to be in the 5th house, which gives Leo-like influences.

Perhaps I am a Gen-X boomer.

Peter, two banks have applied for patents for creative loans. B of A with their 'keep the change' and I think I saw this other one on this site somewhere; the mortgage that requires no payments for the first year or more. They build it into the equity but it is a really stupid idea.

I would rather direct any new business idea at Boomers and Gen-Yers.

My biggest gripe with patents nowadays is that they are supposed to be for original inventions which are not just using something differently. Starbucks has a patent on the corrugated cardboard which goes around their cups, and there is a patent on the gummy paper that goes around a restaurant place setting.

The patent system is broken. It is becoming a huge barrier of entrance for not-so-well-capitalized inventors.

I don't find boomers individualistic at all. They all look the same to me. They all seem to have a fascination with buying 100K RVs, and living by themselves in mcmansions. We are definitely stereotyping on this thread with a broad brush but I gotta say, they are the group I can't interact with. They are just a bunch of people compensating for their failed ideology by going against all the ideals they aspired to in the 60's. To sum it up in one word, hypocrites.

I do like Victorian fashion designs. Also, Victorian tearooms. :)