Reply With Quote
You didn't really read the entire article, did you?
(...he says not really shocked that the answer will be "no", and equally expecting no answer at all)
What a bunch of "poor me" bags. I guess the entrepreneurial spirit is dead. When an entire generation is waiting for someone else to hand them something, it doesn't bode well for the future of our republic.
You didn't really read the entire article, did you?
(...he says not really shocked that the answer will be "no", and equally expecting no answer at all)
Sure.
Bankruptcy isnt usually an option for most people. The only people I know who are declared bankruptcy are the super-rich (...and its only Chapter 13 on a failed business) and those who cannot manage money further than their front pocket.Some of these people have nearly $200,000 in debt. Student debt cannot be erased by bankruptcy.
Both of which I have no sympathy for.
I graduated from high school in 1998. I am only mildly older than you (by the sounds of it) and those being described in the article.The idea that a college degree will pay for itself turned out to be a lie perpetuated by pretty much everybody, and now that college grads have graduated in to the worst economy since 1929 nobody knows what the to do because the only people who worked during the great depression are all dead or extremely elderly.
Here is what I know:
I am from a middle-class to upper-middle class area. Lots of UAW kids, a few Automotive Executives kids (who had awesome parties).
I am a UAW kid, with a father that worked every moment of everyday of his short life as an electrician. He could never afford to send me or my two brothers to college.
You had two choices: Get a scholarship or take out loans.
Even then, I did not see the logic in taking student loans. I knew from a very young age that there are only a couple ways to become wealthy. The vast majority of the wealthy are all business owners/inventors.
IIRC, in Europe, in order to open a business, one must be a professional of that business (ie Start a residential electrical business, the owner must be a master electrician). Dont know if thats true, but just what I heard (albeit years ago). In the US, not so. Lucky me.
I have had a job since I was 11 years old. I used to work 20 hours a week washing dishes at an Italian restaurant. My dad was always doing side jobs, so I worked with him, too, throughout my young adult life. From the restaurant, I worked everywhere. Burger King, McDonalds, multiple restaurants and grocery stores doing anything and everything. This all before I graduated high school.
I graduated barely (21.5 credits), mostly because I do not like to get up early (big shout out to the guy who used to wake me up every morning), or attend school (older friends my whole life, they graduated 3 years earlier than me, that sucked) or be sober (woo-ha!). I immediately hired into an $8.00 an hour job welding brackets and bull by the truckload. I was too busy getting high in auto shop so I never actually welded before in my life.
Seeing as the owner didnt much give a about anything but getting product out the door, it was basically a job-party. Fit right in.
Wages blew, I was going nowhere and knew it (besides, had to get up too early). So my revelation was to become a furniture salesman. What a joke. 20 years old, wearing a suit and pitching lines rehearsed in training about products I never cared about. Spent most of my time at lunch and smoking outside. Failed miserably, was fired for under-performance. That was the first and only time in my life I had been fired.
Didnt know what to do at that point. I was kicked out by my father when I was 17 ("...got in the way of his pussy" was how he put it), had been living with the same roommate up until this point. His girlfriend got pregnant, they were getting married and moving (which obviously did not include me).
No job, nowhere to live, no contact with my father in years (Regrets, Ive had a few)...yeah, thats failure. Thats des ute, thats desperate, thats ing life.
What do you do? Cry? Whine? Moan? Complain and blame?
Or was it that I didnt take school seriously enough, that I didnt respect my father's new wife enough (no matter how much I despised her), that I never took one job seriously enough to completion?
Was it the world's fault or mine? Easy answer.
So I got a job at some small shop sweeping the floors for $8 an hour at age 21. In 6 years, I was and am currently running that company. Finally, I committed to something. Finally, I chose a direction and went for it.
I was sweeping floors. One day I was asked "Know anything about computers?" Im a gamer, "Sure do, whatcha need?" They needed a guy who was willing to be trained in CAD software to detail prints. The engineers were/are busy designing this stuff, not making prints for the fab shop. This was a HUGE moment in my life, I thought it was big then seeing as I would actually work at ing desk!, but looking back on it, it was much much more than that.
I met my boss (remember, I was 21). He was 18 years old. Dean's list every year at Kettering Engineering (aka GM Tech). Brilliant little er, he was, y too. But I would be too if I had mastered Calc2 at 16 years old. His first question "Ever worked in AutoCAD before?" Nope. "Drafting class?" Sure, but I never paid attention (ie skipped it so I could party). "know anything about computers?" That I do, could build one start to finish, BIOS, flashing, operating system (Windows of course), I can do that.
He was going back to school in 2 months. Kettering is extremely hard to get into. The curriculum calls for 6 months working, 6 months at school, or some such schedule (cant remember). Either way, he was going back to school. I had 2 months to learn two new programs (AutoCAD and Solidworks) and the basics of engineering, detailing and tolerancing with ZERO prior experience.
I slept at work, literally, in my car on occasion. My mother let me stay with her every now and then to make sure I was eating, so I could shower, etc.
He left for school and I took over his job. The first batch of prints that hit the floor, I was a nervous wreck. I am not a math guru, furthest I ever went was Trig, which I bombed out of because it was 1st hour (again, partying). Cosign, blablabla, none of it made any sense, yet these machinists knew how to calculate such things on a calculator and would come to me with questions about I didnt really understand.
You know what? I ing nailed it. ing nailed it. Homerun, out of the stadium. 4 machines from scratch were designed, detailed (me), assembled (a little me), run-off and shipped while Whiz Kid was at school. Every print that hit the floor was mine and mine alone. Were there problems? Oh yeah. Did I cost the company money? Maybe a couple grand, in total. Did over $1.5 million dollars in equipment get invoiced with my initials in the le blocks? You ing bet.
Big accomplishment for me then, not so much now looking back on it. A monkey can detail a print, but I didnt know that at the time. But regardless, I showed potential, drive, commitment and initiative.
The next thing I was asked to do was Quality Control at the company's second plant. This plant was/is small compared. I was sent to a 2 week class to learn the inspection software (as I already knew about prints, tolerancing, GD&T, etc) as the owner's partner and him had a falling out. The minority owner's son used to do all the ISO certifications, Quality Manuals, inspections and control do ents. All of which I knew nothing about.
Started off just writing the inspection programs (thank you video games and scripts!) and then inspecting the parts associated with those programs. Which lead into my introduction to the International Organization for Standardization, ISO for short (you think it would be IOS, but Apple would have pitched a , Im sure). I then had to learn about one thousand acronyms that, to this day, I hate beyond belief. What a ing charade. Whatever.
At this point, I was making $14 an hour at age 24, I rewrote the Quality Manuals, the Control Do ents and worked with the Cert rep on getting our company re-certified (have to do it every year, it sucks). Nailed it. Homerun. More impressive than detailing prints, but again, looking back on it, ISO is a ing pyramid scheme and anyone who actually likes it enough to do it for a living is a masochist.
Owner can no longer handle running the day-to-day operation of this second plant. His main business is blowing up in a big way whereas as this little -shop is losing money every year of its existence. Not much money, less than $100k a year or breaking even, but when your other company is making millions, your priorities shift.
So, he calls a meeting with me (now the Quality Manager), the Plant Manager and the Office Manager and lays it out. "This company is failing, I can no longer do it everyday, I am probably going to shutter it". Fear of God, yes. I had busted my balls, never asked for a raise in my life, was making for what I was doing, but really, really enjoyed not having to bust my back to make a decent living as a single male with no children (like my father did and my brothers still do).
The PM and OM were speechless, I was not. I coerced the owner into letting "We 3 Kings" run the day-to-day for one year, possibly two. If it wasnt profitable by then, so be it. This company was his baby, he always referred to it as his 3rd child, he never took a paycheck his entire time as owner. He didnt want to close it, he just couldnt throw money out the window no matter how much he was making with his recently bought second company.
He, surprisingly, agreed.
Ive gone on long enough with this story. Summary from here: Lost money the first year, but showed promise with an expanding customer base (me, on the road, A LOT). Second year, became apparent that the "3 Kings" paradigm wasnt working, too many conflicts of interest (one of the first things the office manager did as a boss was give herself, the plant manager and me a raise. I was finally a salaried employee...first time in my life. $800 gross a week). Owner named me the General Manager in April 2006, 5 years after I was hired as a shop sweeping floors and driving the HiLo, of his company that employed 15 people (16 including me).
It was rough. I had to learn proper accounting, payroll, taxes, business taxes, SBT taxes (Michigan thing, dont ask), 941 Quarterly reports, the difference between an S-Corporation and any other incorporation (pretty cool when youre a small outfit). I had to manage egos who didnt respect me as their boss, I had to fire people, knock people's pay down all while you watched a grown man cry that he will lose his house, I had to fire the Office Manager as she lazy made even worse that she didnt know about proper accounting or computers in general. She thought the fax machine was a big deal and hadnt watched one second of TV in 15 years. I cultivated customer relationships with people that were more than twice my age in a business (Automotive) that frowns upon youth in general running .
You know what? I ing nailed it. Homerun, in the seats this time, next time it'll be out of the stadium. I inherited a struggling alley shop that worked from hand-to-mouth job-wise, which had gross sales under $300k and was hemorrhaging money. Today, I turned it into a profitable company with various private and government contracts guaranteeing X amount of dollars in revenue for the next 6+ years (with more to come), that now has gross sales over $2 million dollars, a retirement plan (me), health insurance (me) and employee bonuses twice a year (also me).
I pay more money in personal taxes than most people on this board make in a year, jointly.
Dont ing tell me about what works and what doesnt, because here is what I know. I work, you dont. With drive, commitment, a little luck and the willingness to completely and utterly disregard your personal life as whole, you will succeed.
There are other ways of achieving the same things, with even better cir stances, I know this. But I do not sympathize with those who think working 9-5, 5 days a week as "working hard".
To this day, even with a profitable company and a cushy lifestyle, this success has driven me to be more successful. I work just as hard if not harder now, longer hours, sleepless nights, bigger company investments and risks. I want more. When that fire burns dim, I will retire a wealthy, and more importantly, happy, satisfied man.
Last edited by DarkReign; 10-19-2011 at 03:36 PM.
Im bald.
Im 31. Its working for me right now in a business that, to say the very least, is cutthroat and full of empty promises that can make and break you overnight.
The streets of metro Detroit are littered with empty buildings and failed promises.
Too many people want it all, right now. They get a promise or a Purchase Order from a large company that tells them they need to expand to fill this order, they do, then the order gets pulled because some Asian/Mexican plant can do it for half price.
I compete directly with the slave labor of the third world. I am winning my battles while the rest of the industry is slowly losing the war.
Last edited by DarkReign; 10-19-2011 at 03:39 PM.
the entire generation doesn't want anything, what they want is the older generation to die off and stop screwing up things on their way out
I could make a screwup list from baby boomers that would span the state
Just for starters sake..
Housing
Medicare
Social Security
NASA
Foreign conflicts
Domestic production
Sorry, we're busy working so we can pay for you old farts' Social SecurityI guess it was too long for them to read without getting a participation prize...
I have some friends that made a ton of money in pharmaceuticals software and they seem to think that because they happened to find a niche that there must be tons of them out there.
One thing noted about this generation is that they are hard working. Thats not the problem but taking jobs and hoping to be offered a job for which you are not qualified is not going to have a large success rate.
Don't get me wrong what you did was impressive but you got lucky and I think you know that.
Congratulations that you got your together and are doing well now. I mean that genuinely. But I'm not entirely sure what your situation has to do with the people being discussed in the OP's article.
By and large the subjects of the article aren't stoner ne'er-do-wells who barely scraped through high school before begging for handouts. There's nothing in the article that indicates a universal unwillingness on their part to work hard or to seek employment outside of their field. It really has more to do with the reality check that comes from learning that everything they'd heard growing up (that a college degree automatically leads to a good job, for instance) isn't proving true. As I said early on, they certainly deserve some of the blame for their naivety and/or their sense of en lement, but it's not really fair to get so down on folks for having exactly the expectations they've been led to.
I know people with law degrees that can't find anything. The one's that are getting hired are fighting for 50k jobs where 2-3 years ago the same job paid 100k. They took out their loans expecting the 100k job. Same with my old field. The money dried up when the economy crashed so we all were forced to retrain ourselves to do other things. I'm lucky and found a great job. Most of my peers and friends have not.
Out of curiosity. Say someone has a great idea for a business like a recent college grad but lacks the resources to start their business. How likely is it that they are going to get a loan? How likely would it have been before the crash? Are banks lending more, the same, or less money than 2-3 years ago? Are Angel investors more likely to give the loans to people in the 25-35 age range or 35+?
I'm not saying it can't be done but it's not as easy as it used to be. That's the whole point.
...that these select individuals chose frivolous degrees then cried about no work after they took out loans to get those useless degrees?
...that their personal choices leading up to those degree decisions were unclear, misguided, misjudged and completely devoid of any real world application that could net you a real career?
...that I sincerely doubt their commitment to begin with, seeing as I deal with young people day in and day out? Some with just as useless degrees as those mentioned in the article?
I employ 3 individuals with college degrees. One with a master's in Theater, one with Communications and the other I cant even remember (he is a bit older, so it doesnt really hold this argument anyway). All of them express regret that they didnt do something else with their college time and I can understand that.
But these 3 dont lament their lot in life, they work 60 hours a week, have health insurance, a retirement plan and vacation once a year where ever they want to go.
If by handouts, do you mean me? The auto industry? Something else? Please clarify.By and large the subjects of the article aren't stoner ne'er-do-wells who barely scraped through high school before begging for handouts.
I grew up with these same ing people. When and where was anyone promised anything when it came to college? Seriously. Maybe its different in my very small corner of the MidWest world. I get the impression these individuals in the article are from major cities (most likely NY), where I cant even imagine their collective zeitgeist on career and expectations.There's nothing in the article that indicates a universal unwillingness on their part to work hard or to seek employment outside of their field. It really has more to do with the reality check that comes from learning that everything they'd heard growing up (that a college degree automatically leads to a good job, for instance) isn't proving true. As I said early on, they certainly deserve some of the blame for their naivety and/or their sense of en lement, but it's not really fair to get so down on folks for having exactly the expectations they've been led to.
Maybe youre right. I have friends who are similar to the article, without the student loans in some cases, but they have one prevailing commonality. Theyre lazy and self-en led. They want to hit the clock, work 40 hours and be paid at least $50k a year with weekends off.
I laugh at them, in real life, to their face.
They want to make the national average working a normal work week and that is unreasonable?
$50k isn't what it used to be. This is not 1985.
Says the lazy, self en led brat...
You know nothing about me obviously. I am not worried about my financial situation now or going forward. i worry for other peoples.Says the lazy, self en led brat...
Now i get it. You are just a manager that does not like paying his employees. You are satisfied with your place precisely because you tell others theirs. Power never has had the same effect on me its weird but there are a tone of people just like you.
You ing crack me up dude. In 1985, 1st year accountants, engineers, chemists, programmers, etc. made between 20-30K. $50K was a pretty damn good salary just 10 years ago.
The national average is $47k today.
That was the whole point asking for $50k back in the 80s was asking for a lot. Critical thinking is not high on your list.
I think he was suggesting that newbies feel en led to the national average salary for their zero experience and minimum work week (he can correct me if I'm wrong).
Critical thinking is not high on your list.
Were you even alive in 1985?
Man I appreciate your post, we have a similar go it alone history history up until your employment with CAD. In TX and esepcially south TX you won't find anyone who will take someone that young in that type of serious job role. I knew CAD while that age too, but nothing was around in off-hand employment. I agree with you on ISO 100%, I hate that garbage.
I ended up in and out of the military with a few stints in Afghanistan and college with 2 doctorate degrees in... go figure engineering and physics. Now working as my own boss, contract to contract.
I think it's pretty evident our generation can work hard if given the shot.
Damn. You served a few tours in Afghanistan AND had time to knock out two PhD's? Impressive.
And as I said earlier, just because you don't personally see those fields of study as valuable doesn't mean that they didn't work hard to earn their degrees. You're confusing making an "impractical" choice with an unwillingness to work hard, which is not only shortsighted but also ignores the fact that even those who made "practical" choices are finding it difficult to attain employment within their chosen field.
I wasn't referring to you. Or to any specific type of handout. I was merely suggesting that the kids being discussed in the article, despite perhaps being misguided in any number of ways, all seem to be of a fairly dedicated sort -- those who likely did well in high school, then went on to college and did well there, too, all under the assumption that it would prepare them for the working world. Not aimless slackers, in other words, which seems to be what your argument assumes.
Certainly geographical differences may lead to a wide range of expectations, but I'm not necessarily talking about an upbringing in which all of this generation was told specifically, by their parents or anyone else, on a one-to-one basis that they would be guaranteed a job if they got a college degree. That vastly oversimplifies the issue. But I know that when I was growing up -- and I graduated high school in 1996, so we're close to the same age -- it was already understood that getting a college degree was the thing you needed to get a good job. Not necessarily that you'd be guaranteed a fat paycheck just for graduating, but that college was the thing you did if you wanted any chance at those opportunities. Through various sources, I was made very much aware that financial success and a college degree had a cause/effect relationship. In other words, you're arguing that this generation isn't willing to do the work necessary to get a job, and I'm arguing that by going to college they've done the work they were told was necessary. The article is just addressing the result of learning that in this economy it ain't enough.
To go for the clunkiest analogy ever, think of them as kids who for years have been told that the way to get to the second floor of a building is by running around in circles. Surely some are going to realize early on it isn't working and will find the staircase, while some are going to just pout that they're still on the first floor, but in neither case can you blame them 100% for starting out by running around in circles as they were told.
I'm on page 3 of the article - so I don't have room to comment fully yet, but . . .
I fall within the 20-30 demographic. I graduated from college with a degree in english and comparative literature. Was about to go to grad school but then realized I liked "stuff." Changed my mind, went to law school and bam .. now have some stuff.
Point of the story: there are still a lot of us who like stuff and want to get rich.
lol college. No one I went to school with thought they could do anything other than being a bank teller with a college degree. We all knew that college was high school part II and that we'd have to go to law/med/grad school if we wanted to do anything with ourselves.
lol M.A. in environmental studies.You become a little like my friend Lael Goodman. “The worst thing is that I’ve always gotten self-worth from performance, especially good grades. But now that I can’t get a job, I feel worthless,” she says. Lael, who is 27, was the valedictorian of her high school and did very well in college too. Unable to find a position that paid a decent wage using her EnLuck_The_Fakers_glish degree, she got a master’s at the University of Michigan in environmental studies. She does technically have a job, for now, filling in for a woman on maternity leave at a D.C. nonprofit, but it’s not one that prevents all her go-getting from seeming for naught. Lael feels like she’s stranded on the wrong rung. “All the articles in the newspaper say that investing in an IRA now means I’ll have hundreds of thousands of extra dollars down the road, so I should just scrimp and save,” she says. “But I can’t scrimp and save because I’m doing that just to afford housing and groceries. So I’m screwed now, unable to enjoy young adulthood in the way that I feel I was promised, and screwed for the future.”
lol urban educationSam found out that woodworking turned out to be mostly vacuuming up wood chips, and so after a few months, he moved on to a series of other gigs, none of them exactly a career. When he finally got sick of bouncing around in his broken-down $200 car and living with his parents—who kept pressuring him to revisit his math-and-science ap ude—he got himself a $25,000 bank loan, which he used to cover expenses while enrolled in continuing-ed classes in engineering at one of the U.C. schools. He ran out of money pretty quickly. He then found a job working in urban education, but was laid off after a year and a half. “That was the point in my life where I was like, I need to get a career, I need to make thatmove,” he told me over the phone, in the mellowed-out East Bay patois that had crept into his voice since I last spoke with him. These days, he’s going to networking events and desperately applying for jobs in the tech world, hopeful that landing something very entry-level will put him back on a navigable route to success. He’s had creditors calling him at all hours. He is rather earnestly worried that he might end up on the street. His brothers are managing to stand on their own feet, and he can’t bear to move back home.
lol marketing management. WTF is that?The unions, we know, are heeding that call, but a broader youth movement has yet to materialize. Yaphet Murphy, a 28-year-old Baruch grad from Brooklyn, was at the first day of the protests. He’d made up to $45,000 a year as a taxi dispatcher at JFK before deciding that in order to really get on in the world, he needed a degree, in his case in marketing management. His $50,000 in student loans in deferment, he now pulls in $400 in a bad month and $1,000 in his very best month from freelance projects. He lives at home, relying on the generosity of his mom, an office assistant with the Social Security Administration, and his uncle, who works for the MTA. Yaphet hadn’t gone downtown to wave a placard. He was there on behalf of a client, a (very) independent film called Vodka Rocks!, a “countercultural” critique of corporate branding. “I thought it was congruent,” said Yaphet delicately. He still prefers to entrust his fate to his own hustle.
I love how you guys throw out the buzzword en lement. Same from the GOP for literally 100 years. Same rhetoric used against FDR and LBJ.
No what he was saying is that the way that they had been raised they thought they would get about the national average if they worked hard and played the game.
Well they did that and found that they are being asked to work for half if they can find work at all. Expectation is not en lement.
Like i said critical thinking is not very big for you. You start arguing a point and you lose the forest for the trees. Its like the whole 99% thing. You cite a poll saying that 30% of all Americans lay economic blame ALL on the financial sector and you interpret that as a win because its not 99%.
You have problems keeping up it would be okay if it weren't for your desire to guide policy. Like I said. You are part of the problem.
You're seriously ing re ed. Anyone who graduates from college thinking that they have a chance at a 50k job merely by virtue of having graduated with a b.a. has a severe sense of en lement.
I knew, when I graduated college in 2005, that I had no chance whatsoever of doing anything with my degree. This was before the crash. I say this to show that if anyone expected to get a good job with a non-technical degree (e.g., engineering), then they would also have an extreme sense of en lement as well. Why? Because we knew that compe ion for jobs was outstripping the supply -- there were more qualified candidates out of school than there were jobs. And did I mention this was in 2005?
All the crash did was make a bad situation worse. The article is filled with a bunch of hipsters complaining that they can't find a job with their bull degrees in areas no one gives a about. For every one of their stories (which is rife with solipsistic en lement), I can find stories of people like DR who made something of themselves despite all the that's been going on.
You like to talk about critical thinking. Sadly, you don't seem to do much of it yourself.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
