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Gen Y Tech Savvy, But Not Interested in a Career
jcatcw writes "Young people aren't choosing computer science majors because they take technology for granted — it's something to use not something to make a career. "By and large, this generation is very fluent with technology and with a networked world," according to James Ware, executive producer at The Work Design Collaborative LLC, a Berkeley, Calif., consortium exploring workplace values and the future of the workforce. That future may be in managing technology, which requires skills today's college students don't have: writing, critical thinking, hard work and just plain showing up. One of their primary concerns is a flexible schedule and healthy work/life balance."
I wish I had mod points right now to mod this up. I've been telling people for years how Geometry was one of the things that helped me most with logical/critical thinking - specifically with a bent toward programming.
I was on the bus the other day and there were some high school bimbos (let's not waste words here) and they were all a twitter about the goings on of their MySpace accounts. On and on they yammered about which boys they liked and who's on what list and then they started talking about CSS, that is to say Cascading Style Sheets.
There is a point in your life when you realize that the world has changed, that "nerdy" topics aren't so nerdy anymore, especially now that they are in the mainstream.
Generation Y (ugh!) is undeniably using the tools around them to get things done, just as my generation did a decade ago with more primitive technology. But suffice to say, the reason to get a job in the tech industry is not because you want to play with what you're already using but because you want to create something new. This is not for everyone and I think regardless of the "tech level" society seems to achieve there will always be a minority of tech-career oriented people.
crazy dynamite monkey
Familiarity with Facebook and Bittorrent is different than choosing a career as a programmer or network administrator. Familiarity is not maintenance and/or development. The number of people familiar with using automobiles is a little larger than the number who choose a career as a mechanic.
I know this is being modded funny right now, but I think it is the most insightful reason that has been provided up to now.
The ABA did a better job controlling the supply of lawyers back before we lost a lawsuit which accused us of what was basically illegal monopoly/trust activities (it's a bit more complicated than that, though).
In short, the ABA had worked to prevent law schools from proliferating to the point it's at today (nearly two hundred law schools!) in order to keep the field from being glutted with unintelligent and uneducated lawyers. Once the ABA was denied the ability to restrict the number of law schools, every crappy school in the country wanted a law school. Law schools typically have enormous cost/benefit ratios, due to the limited start-up cost and high return on investment (i.e. profitability of alumni). While this remained true initially, the crappier schools popping up today are failing at that too, dragging their schools even further down.
You want fewer crappy lawyers? Lobby to allow the ABA to get back to its job of keeping those people out of our field.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Most legal activity should not be performed by lawyers.
Just as business people simplify IT that requires specialists and is repetative, we should simplify legal activities that require specilists but happen repetatively.
Seriously-- 99% of divorces could be handled by a "divorce specialist" who would make 60 grand a year instead of 120 grand a year. Law has gotten so big, it needs to be broken down and streamlined.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"Children today are lazy, lack respect and have no faith" - Rough translation of Mesopotamian saying.
What really goads me lately is this massive latching on by the current mainstream press that Work/Life balance is some evil concept. It's as though striving to have a life outside your work simply isn't tolerable. Don't these tools who feed this party line when writing the articles want a life as well?
We are entering a time of extreme excess for the bulk of humanity in 1st world nations, it's okay if we all want to slow down some and enjoy this new world we have. Frankly if we all really worked as hard as people did thirty or fourty years ago we'd either run out of work or resources quickly. This is why we need to continue to push an information economy because its central resource is people something we still have plenty of (for now).
I'm amazed when talking to people on the East Coast and they mock West Coast things like Work/Life balance with derision and a wave of the hand. Unless you *really* enjoy your job above all else, what's wrong with wanting it to have less importance in your life? For most of us, work, is a means to an end. This is your only life, enjoy it! Take a vacation! Get drunk/high! Have sex! Do whatever makes you happy as long as it doesn't directly impede the joy of others.
--- I do not moderate.
This reminds me of an experience I had a couple years ago. My cousin (who is about 16 now) wanted to install some game on his computer. It was a Windows XP machine with a normal install wizard, and he was held up by some error or another. It wasn't a big deal so I don't even remember what the problem was, but it got me thinking.S
I remembered being a kid, trying to play the latest Space Quest game from Sierra, and having to figure out which sound card I should choose during the install. My actual soundcard wasn't on the list, so I had to guess which one was more compatible, and it was a bit of trial and error. I remembered having to write custom AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files for different games to load different TSRs, and use different options of EMM386 or HIMEM.SYS. I remembered how impressed I was with myself when I figured out how to use AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to make a little menu system that allowed me to choose the configuration I wanted while it was booting. I remembered trying to write little BASIC and Pascal programs to do things because... well, computers didn't do that much. I wasn't using my computer to store my music collection or watch movies. The big thing for me to do with computers in those days (besides playing games) was just to screw around with the computer to see what I could get it to do.
And it kind of made me sad that my cousin would never go through that. Sure, he'll be more computer savvy than my grandparents because he's grown up with computers, but he'll probably never understand computers as well as he would have if he were a few years older. Working in IT for a few years, it seems like the most helpful people are those who are young enough that they had computers when they were kids (and therefore grew up thinking about them), but old enough to have experimented with computers back when they weren't so easy.
The schools don't even want talent, they don't want teachers who think, or who deviate from the prepared way they (the existing teachers and administration) have decided things should be done. My wife made a job change from high tech that was burning her out to being a teacher. What she has found is that despite her clear success in two different school systems now (State of MA, the famous MCAS tests) they are not interested in her brand of teaching.
She got kids who had previously failed the MCAS tests to pass and not just pass, but pass by a wide margin...but she taught to a each child's needs and learning style. She stood up for the laws for the national laws and state laws for the special needs for the children she taught. A host of other things that the schools systems just plain didn't like.
She was actually told to do what it ever it took pass kids, and by this I mean fudging test grades and class grades, pass them at all costs even if they don't deserve to pass...I'm not talking about the 64-65 one point bubble here...more like 23! Shock when kids acted like assholes, didn't do their work, and didn't make an effort she gave them failing grades, suggested they stay back...Oh My God! Think of Child! Last year, one parent WANTED the kid to stay back because of failing grades, the school system overrode the parent's opinion on the matter. Despite the parent's opinion and failing grades in 4 classes the kid was passed on to the next grade. Not even summer school required!
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
> You want fewer crappy lawyers? Lobby to allow the ABA to get back to its job of keeping those people out of our field.
I have a better idea: let's change things to make lawyers less needed in the first place.
I used to be in law school, and this is what I concluded before moving to a profession that produces value, not consumes it:
a) Ignorance is not a defense, but
b) It's easy to violate a law, often regardless of mens rea.
Why is b) true? Because thanks to our wonderful common-law system, there's an ungodly number of statutes. These statutes are inter-related, not necessarily the way you'd expect, and the relationships are often only implied. Of course, it's not just enough to know what's on the books, but also know how their interpretation has been modified by precedents (and not just local precedents either; judgments from overseas can have an effect too). How is anybody other than some specialist in the area supposed to untangle that? So we have people who acted in what they believed to be a lawful manner being punished. I find it particularly charming when even legal experts are largely clueless outside their area of specialization. In fact, I'm charmed by the number of specialists who don't even know their own specialization all that well. This isn't a problem of education, this is a problem of out-of-control complexity.
You'd expect that every citizen of society should clearly understand what is expected of them, right? If they break a law, which they of course knew about, there are repercussions. This is just. Instead you have cases being decided on fine nuances of meaning of single words thanks to whatever crazed set of precedent and statute some team of lawyers was able to drag together, rationalized by the excuse that it's a living law. Now toss in lawyers who charge sums of money that is beyond the reach of most people (and pro bono is a risible excuse to protect your guilty consciousness', because you fuckers almost never do it except for friends or cases that'll improve your visibility), and who only benefit by dragging cases out, and we have a problem. A few hundred to a few thousand dollars for a simple printout of some old template in your local copy of wordperfect or word, and it's not just a problem, it's pathetic unadulterated greed at everyone else's expense.
In short, to your profession and those of you who 'graduated' to politics: fuck you. You're a leech on society and promulgate a fundamentally unjust and morally-repugnant system. I don't know how you sleep at night -- while your new associates naively slave away of course. If Diogenes was to wander into a law firm you'd try to sell him a lamp for $5,000, and yet you're supposed to help propagate justice?
Advice for the rest of you: never use a lawyer unless the amount is -- or worth -- millions. Just move on; you'll save yourself much grief and debt.