The dream jobs don't exist for people like me. Every job worth having is taken and will be for the foreseeable future. Consensus amongst employers pretty much dictated the conditions I had to take, or go and work in a factory.
I think its a widespread problem. Whenever you have a structure that places management types (good at manipulating people, but no real knowledge) over IT professionals, they are too clueless to measure the performance of their underlings and so use age as a crude estimate of it.
The game has changed, and I have given the numbers to prove it. This knee-jerk, right wing habit of calling everyone who complains about their circumstances 'spoilt' is starting to get a bit irritating. I refuse to accept the blame for the conditions I found myself in. I didn't make the fucking NASDAQ tank just before I graduated. I didn't force the government to make it harder to go to university. I didn't determine the crappy wages and management in the IT industry.
I spend a lot of time blaming myself for being useless, believing the bullshit put out by people like you. Now I finally realise that it wasn't all my fault. I'm worth more than those cunts were paying me and I'm going to find an industry which recognises this.
You have my sympathy certainly (although not that much - you still live in a semi-democracy and vote in the fuckers who create such conditions) but the harshness of conditions elsewhere does not justify the baby boomers over here demolishing the social programmes they took advantage of and subjecting our generations to deteriorating conditions.
The previous generation had free education and healthcare paid for, mostly, by older taxpayers. Now they have reached that age, they are grumpily demanding tax cuts. So who the fuck has the sense of entitlement?
1998. I got a (small) grant for the first year then a loan, then hit the 1k fees towards the end of my course. Now I've gone back to university I'm struggling with the full 3k fees and no support since I already have a degree (the idea being, of course, than you get one shot at university then you should be happy being the bitch of one particular industry for the rest of your life. Poor people don't deserve choices).
I have only managed this through spending every penny I had scraped together through the years, living off only the bare essentials, working part time (despite doing an extremely demanding course which I put more time into than I would a full time job) and, I am ashamed to say, the charity of others. I am not the architect of my situation, and that is the source of much of my anger.
The younger generation is spoiled.. If you can bring yourself to say "Fuck you" to someone of an elder generation then you're damn well spoiled. The younger generation is spoiled and has no respect anymore. That's the absolute truth.
Wow, 18 and you can already parrot the right wing media. I'm impressed.
People who complain about a lack of respect blissfully ignore the obvious question; why does society/older generation/police or whatever deserve your respect. I do not hand out my respect by default, it has to be fucking earned. The same is true for anyone.
Yes, I suck. I suck at manipulating people, at using them as rungs. I suck at sucking up to my boss. I suck at smarmy NLP shit that people use to climb up the corporate ladder. I strongly doubt technical abilities had a great deal to do with your current position.
Research won't help, because it isn't like there is a surplus of jobs. There is a consensus amongst the few employers hiring that young, qualified IT people should be treated like cattle. Yes, I got out, but I'm still pissed off that I wasted years of my life in an industry that frankly didn't deserve what I was putting into it.
Don't expect technical excellence, rather, US business holds executive, then shareholder compensation first, all others can eat the rest of the crumbs.
I'm hoping to go into research where hopefully scientific results matter more than what looks like it might make some money. I know its a longshot, but there is little else I can do given the circumstances.
I'm due to make something that will, rocket malfunctions notwithstanding, should be in orbit of the Earth by the end of 2009. What the fuck have you done with your life Mr. Anonymous Coward?
This is the point in the conversation where I would break your nose if you weren't hiding behind internet anonymity. You are the kind of smug prick who accuses people of having an anger problem without regard to whether or not there is something to be angry about.
Yes, I am fucking angry. I have a fucking right to be. I am financially squeezed by a mindnumbingly selfish older generation, I have my civil liberties stripped in the name of their security, and I am told that I am spoilt and whiny if I raise even the slightest complaint about it. In such circumstances, it is good to be angry.
Same old shit. "You are new, just accept your shitty pay and conditions and one day you will get the good job". I heard that before, and actually believed it for a few years. Then I saw the lack of progress me and all those around me were actually making. What you are saying is bullshit.
It isn't about greed, it is about respect and being paid your due. The amount you are paid for applying your knowledge has less to do with the quality of your knowledge than how long you have been with the company - and young people are rarely with a company for long because we are treated as disposable tools. In such an environment where what you produce is compensated for by a pittance just because you are young, there is no incentive to work hard. There is a significant incentive to run off half-arsed work, spend the rest of the time playing with your gadgets, and bullshit your supervisor with technical jargon - so after 4-5 years being bounced around the industry that is what I did. Doing so made me feel slightly better about my shit jobs, and made no difference to the rate at which I was turned over.
But like I said, I'm out now. I'm going into physics and hopefully a job where I can actually be respected for what I know.
Give me a break you old piece of shit. Everyone who says 'nobody gave me anything' and 'I worked my way up' is almost certainly lying their arse off. You also seem to think you know what experience I have but clearly you don't. I don't think it is that you aren't aware of the problems facing young people these days, you just don't care. All you care about is getting your own taxes down at the expense of those just started out. You are probably too stupid to compete on intellectual merit, so you and your ilk promote a system where young talented people can never get anywhere to threaten your cushy jobs. Cunt.
I'm not going to give a great deal of credit to someone who can't subtract 60 from 2008. Someone who is 60 now was 5 years old when rationing ended in this country. They would've gone to university in 1966, by which time the UK had certainly recovered from Nazi bombing and they would've enjoyed free higher education in a variety of universities.
You are able to go to school and pursue whatever study you want.
This shows a profound ignorance of the subject at hand - the cost of going to university has been constantly increasing for as long as I can remember.
Nobody expects you to help bring your country around, because its doing pretty damned well now.
Except we are expected to sacrifice for our country. Pay for military adventures instead of health and education, suffer constant losses of liberty that affect the young and poor far more than the Daily Mail brigade. You don't have a clue about what is going on in the UK right now.
Actually I went back to university to do a Physics degree. As part of this I am a critical member of a team making what will (probably) be the first university designed satellite in the UK. So suck my balls.
I'm in a different country - try to keep up grandad. I have £15,000 of debt that someone graduating even 10 years ago would not have (they would've received a grant rather than a loan). I cannot find an NHS dentist, whilst 10 years ago it was fairly easy. People in my country have less these days, yet we are told the young are spoilt. From the Americans I know the story there isn't quite the same, but it is similar - it was easier in the past to get off the bottom rung, and now the people who have done that are gleefully demanding it be made harder in order for themselves to pay less tax.
And you wonder why young people don't give a shit about your workplaces.
No, its selling these things off to make a profit for the already rich. We can afford them, contrary to the propaganda that you have clearly bought into hook line and sinker - its simply that the rich would rather have the money required for themselves and let us suffer. Stop reading the Daily Mail and pay attention to reality.
The myth that young people are spoilt and have an undue sense of entitlement is starting to wear a bit fucking thin though. In what way do we have more than previous generations? Tax burdens have been moved down to lower incomes in the UK, and I believe this is also the case in the US. Public services have been gutted by privatisation. Yet because we can buy iPods these days apparently we are spoilt. Fuck you. I'd rather be able to find an NHS dentist and get free higher education than have an mp3 player. Of course, now all you old fucks have no more need of public education and have fat wage packets to pay for private healthcare, you want such things scrapped so you don't have to pay for them. That is called 'kicking away the ladder'. Then you have the fucking nerve to complain about an undue sense of entitlement in the younger generation. You simply don't want to pay now for the things you were given to help you out when you were young.
Yeah, I'm bitter. I was treated like crap and told to suck it up and that I was spoilt by a generation that had it a fuck load easier than I did. That is why I turned my back on the entire industry, although I don't hold out much chance of getting away from selfish middle-aged wankers any time soon.
Most people born after 1980 are treated like shit in the IT industry. You are taken on for pitiful wages with vague promises of future riches, squeezed for every bit of knowledge you have, then booted out when the project(s) you are working on are finished. So it is hardly surprising that people treated so shabbily don't have a particular commitment to their workplace.
Most of the highly technical and well paid jobs (system admins and the like) seem to be already taken by well established old folk, and nobody is really interested in training anybody for when they retire. Managers take IT systems completely for granted, consider IT professionals to be lowly peons, and are in for a nasty shock when the handful of people keeping their systems running leave.
Friends and family are here. My fiancée is qualified to teach only in this country. Don't have enough money to relocate. Finally, where the fuck would I go? Where in the world isn't a cesspool of power-for-its-own-sake and if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-nothing-to-fear?
Where can I go where a police chief would lose his job for suggesting such a violation of freedom? Where can I go where the media, big business, and the government don't all move in the same circles whilst the people rot? Where can I go where the gap between rich and poor is widening, and the rich aren't spending the windfall on making sure the poor stay down? Where is this fucking magical fairy land I can go to where everything will be OK?
And, seeing as much the same is happening everywhere, of western civilisation.
Our nations are taking desperate measures to survive. Anything is acceptable in the face of the Great Enemy who wants to destroy it. But this simply ignores the questions of why a nation deserves to survive.
My father, like most daily mail reading old men in this country, was complaining recently about young people who have a 'lack of respect for authority' and it made me chuckle inside. Human beings haven't fundamentally changed - so if there is less respect for the government now than there was decades ago then it must be because the government isn't worthy of respect. But nobody seems to think about that. We live in the assumption that parliament, the Queen, and the UK itself are permanent institution and require no more justification for them. Their existence is justified only by their own desire to persist, and as such the people of this country have no real use for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, we are both still a lot younger and fitter than them. Perhaps we should blow of this IT crap, buy some hoodies and start mugging them.
The dream jobs don't exist for people like me. Every job worth having is taken and will be for the foreseeable future. Consensus amongst employers pretty much dictated the conditions I had to take, or go and work in a factory.
I think its a widespread problem. Whenever you have a structure that places management types (good at manipulating people, but no real knowledge) over IT professionals, they are too clueless to measure the performance of their underlings and so use age as a crude estimate of it.
I just point out how your post is semantically just plain wrong, and you go on a victory dance. What a twat.
The game has changed, and I have given the numbers to prove it. This knee-jerk, right wing habit of calling everyone who complains about their circumstances 'spoilt' is starting to get a bit irritating. I refuse to accept the blame for the conditions I found myself in. I didn't make the fucking NASDAQ tank just before I graduated. I didn't force the government to make it harder to go to university. I didn't determine the crappy wages and management in the IT industry.
I spend a lot of time blaming myself for being useless, believing the bullshit put out by people like you. Now I finally realise that it wasn't all my fault. I'm worth more than those cunts were paying me and I'm going to find an industry which recognises this.
Getting the same as everyone else isn't a privilege dipshit.
You have my sympathy certainly (although not that much - you still live in a semi-democracy and vote in the fuckers who create such conditions) but the harshness of conditions elsewhere does not justify the baby boomers over here demolishing the social programmes they took advantage of and subjecting our generations to deteriorating conditions.
The previous generation had free education and healthcare paid for, mostly, by older taxpayers. Now they have reached that age, they are grumpily demanding tax cuts. So who the fuck has the sense of entitlement?
1998. I got a (small) grant for the first year then a loan, then hit the 1k fees towards the end of my course. Now I've gone back to university I'm struggling with the full 3k fees and no support since I already have a degree (the idea being, of course, than you get one shot at university then you should be happy being the bitch of one particular industry for the rest of your life. Poor people don't deserve choices).
I have only managed this through spending every penny I had scraped together through the years, living off only the bare essentials, working part time (despite doing an extremely demanding course which I put more time into than I would a full time job) and, I am ashamed to say, the charity of others. I am not the architect of my situation, and that is the source of much of my anger.
Wow, 18 and you can already parrot the right wing media. I'm impressed.
People who complain about a lack of respect blissfully ignore the obvious question; why does society/older generation/police or whatever deserve your respect. I do not hand out my respect by default, it has to be fucking earned. The same is true for anyone.
Yes, I suck. I suck at manipulating people, at using them as rungs. I suck at sucking up to my boss. I suck at smarmy NLP shit that people use to climb up the corporate ladder. I strongly doubt technical abilities had a great deal to do with your current position.
Research won't help, because it isn't like there is a surplus of jobs. There is a consensus amongst the few employers hiring that young, qualified IT people should be treated like cattle. Yes, I got out, but I'm still pissed off that I wasted years of my life in an industry that frankly didn't deserve what I was putting into it.
I'm hoping to go into research where hopefully scientific results matter more than what looks like it might make some money. I know its a longshot, but there is little else I can do given the circumstances.
I'm due to make something that will, rocket malfunctions notwithstanding, should be in orbit of the Earth by the end of 2009. What the fuck have you done with your life Mr. Anonymous Coward?
This is the point in the conversation where I would break your nose if you weren't hiding behind internet anonymity. You are the kind of smug prick who accuses people of having an anger problem without regard to whether or not there is something to be angry about.
Yes, I am fucking angry. I have a fucking right to be. I am financially squeezed by a mindnumbingly selfish older generation, I have my civil liberties stripped in the name of their security, and I am told that I am spoilt and whiny if I raise even the slightest complaint about it. In such circumstances, it is good to be angry.
Same old shit. "You are new, just accept your shitty pay and conditions and one day you will get the good job". I heard that before, and actually believed it for a few years. Then I saw the lack of progress me and all those around me were actually making. What you are saying is bullshit.
It isn't about greed, it is about respect and being paid your due. The amount you are paid for applying your knowledge has less to do with the quality of your knowledge than how long you have been with the company - and young people are rarely with a company for long because we are treated as disposable tools. In such an environment where what you produce is compensated for by a pittance just because you are young, there is no incentive to work hard. There is a significant incentive to run off half-arsed work, spend the rest of the time playing with your gadgets, and bullshit your supervisor with technical jargon - so after 4-5 years being bounced around the industry that is what I did. Doing so made me feel slightly better about my shit jobs, and made no difference to the rate at which I was turned over.
But like I said, I'm out now. I'm going into physics and hopefully a job where I can actually be respected for what I know.
Give me a break you old piece of shit. Everyone who says 'nobody gave me anything' and 'I worked my way up' is almost certainly lying their arse off. You also seem to think you know what experience I have but clearly you don't. I don't think it is that you aren't aware of the problems facing young people these days, you just don't care. All you care about is getting your own taxes down at the expense of those just started out. You are probably too stupid to compete on intellectual merit, so you and your ilk promote a system where young talented people can never get anywhere to threaten your cushy jobs. Cunt.
I'm not going to give a great deal of credit to someone who can't subtract 60 from 2008. Someone who is 60 now was 5 years old when rationing ended in this country. They would've gone to university in 1966, by which time the UK had certainly recovered from Nazi bombing and they would've enjoyed free higher education in a variety of universities.
This shows a profound ignorance of the subject at hand - the cost of going to university has been constantly increasing for as long as I can remember.
Except we are expected to sacrifice for our country. Pay for military adventures instead of health and education, suffer constant losses of liberty that affect the young and poor far more than the Daily Mail brigade. You don't have a clue about what is going on in the UK right now.
Actually I went back to university to do a Physics degree. As part of this I am a critical member of a team making what will (probably) be the first university designed satellite in the UK. So suck my balls.
I'm in a different country - try to keep up grandad. I have £15,000 of debt that someone graduating even 10 years ago would not have (they would've received a grant rather than a loan). I cannot find an NHS dentist, whilst 10 years ago it was fairly easy. People in my country have less these days, yet we are told the young are spoilt. From the Americans I know the story there isn't quite the same, but it is similar - it was easier in the past to get off the bottom rung, and now the people who have done that are gleefully demanding it be made harder in order for themselves to pay less tax.
And you wonder why young people don't give a shit about your workplaces.
No, its selling these things off to make a profit for the already rich. We can afford them, contrary to the propaganda that you have clearly bought into hook line and sinker - its simply that the rich would rather have the money required for themselves and let us suffer. Stop reading the Daily Mail and pay attention to reality.
Fine, fine, I'll get off your lawn.
The myth that young people are spoilt and have an undue sense of entitlement is starting to wear a bit fucking thin though. In what way do we have more than previous generations? Tax burdens have been moved down to lower incomes in the UK, and I believe this is also the case in the US. Public services have been gutted by privatisation. Yet because we can buy iPods these days apparently we are spoilt. Fuck you. I'd rather be able to find an NHS dentist and get free higher education than have an mp3 player. Of course, now all you old fucks have no more need of public education and have fat wage packets to pay for private healthcare, you want such things scrapped so you don't have to pay for them. That is called 'kicking away the ladder'. Then you have the fucking nerve to complain about an undue sense of entitlement in the younger generation. You simply don't want to pay now for the things you were given to help you out when you were young.
Yeah, I'm bitter. I was treated like crap and told to suck it up and that I was spoilt by a generation that had it a fuck load easier than I did. That is why I turned my back on the entire industry, although I don't hold out much chance of getting away from selfish middle-aged wankers any time soon.
Most people born after 1980 are treated like shit in the IT industry. You are taken on for pitiful wages with vague promises of future riches, squeezed for every bit of knowledge you have, then booted out when the project(s) you are working on are finished. So it is hardly surprising that people treated so shabbily don't have a particular commitment to their workplace.
Most of the highly technical and well paid jobs (system admins and the like) seem to be already taken by well established old folk, and nobody is really interested in training anybody for when they retire. Managers take IT systems completely for granted, consider IT professionals to be lowly peons, and are in for a nasty shock when the handful of people keeping their systems running leave.
Friends and family are here. My fiancée is qualified to teach only in this country. Don't have enough money to relocate. Finally, where the fuck would I go? Where in the world isn't a cesspool of power-for-its-own-sake and if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-nothing-to-fear?
Where can I go where a police chief would lose his job for suggesting such a violation of freedom? Where can I go where the media, big business, and the government don't all move in the same circles whilst the people rot? Where can I go where the gap between rich and poor is widening, and the rich aren't spending the windfall on making sure the poor stay down? Where is this fucking magical fairy land I can go to where everything will be OK?
And, seeing as much the same is happening everywhere, of western civilisation.
Our nations are taking desperate measures to survive. Anything is acceptable in the face of the Great Enemy who wants to destroy it. But this simply ignores the questions of why a nation deserves to survive.
My father, like most daily mail reading old men in this country, was complaining recently about young people who have a 'lack of respect for authority' and it made me chuckle inside. Human beings haven't fundamentally changed - so if there is less respect for the government now than there was decades ago then it must be because the government isn't worthy of respect. But nobody seems to think about that. We live in the assumption that parliament, the Queen, and the UK itself are permanent institution and require no more justification for them. Their existence is justified only by their own desire to persist, and as such the people of this country have no real use for them.