"My generation's obsession with having established careers before 25 has led to everyone being hyper competitive, opportunistic, self-centered and deeply insecure. I wish everyone could relax a bit!"

I came across this quote few days back and I don't know why but this did hit me hard. Every word was so so true, I wish I along with everyone of this age group could relax a bit and enjoy this wonderful life.

Do you feel the same as I do, or is it just me ?

Maybe we're still stuck in our dreams of going out freely...caged

Depends on the generation. That exemplifies GenX for sure. The "millennial" generation had no choice here in the tech industry; they have to compete for limited jobs with the global labour pool which has access to free higher education, takes less time to matriculate and is generally regarded as equivalent for employment.

The olds opened us up to the global rat race, so it is what it is.

Run little rat 🐀

The whole "you're going to pick a job and that's your career for the rest of your life" thing is I think kinda unrealistic at face value... for any generation.

I've worked in various jobs and you can spot the 'worked just this job whole life' folks pretty fast. They're not any better or worse at the job, but you can tell from their perspectives sometimes if they've ever seen much of other things.

I used to visit corporate HQ at a big company and talk to the engineers. They'd complain about cutbacks ... while they eat their nice catered lunches ... and my department would cancel their quarterly crappy pizza lunch because of "cost cutting" ;)

Wait what? Which generation are we talking about?

@SortOfTested I don't see that, there are more jobs than people. The problem with tech is, that education < experience. The first being important too, but experience can't really be measured when you're in your twenties. Especially if you wasted 3 years or more with studying.

I guess because tech starts to look for education more and more, stuff gets more competitive, because now it's not enough to just be the first, now you need to have some virtual proof of what you could know.

IT is becoming like any other job - the more papers you got the better you appear to be. Even if those papers are acquired by slacking off during group projects trying to master some out of time tech and don't really say anything about your actual skills.

Therefore it appears to be the generation that's competitive, but it's just the field most people are interested in getting more competitive day by day.

(IMO)

@nitwhiz
Maybe in Germany. Our degrees are between 4-5 years.

The more jobs than people in US tech is a fiction, there isn't a labor shortage. We have 14% new stem graduate unemployment, 11% general tech unemployment, close to 40% underemployment. Most job postings require an undergrad. Meanwhile we have close to 4M people who are currently living here on OPT, H1B, L1, and green card petition extending H1B.

It's about cost control now, they bring in global labor to drive down the prevailing wage, and raise employment requirements to lock out locals.

I've been over this schema at length in other posts.

@SortOfTested from a business perspective, they rather pay a dude in a random country with a cost of life 1/5 of where they are based.

Still the us is a pretty specific case as globally there are more open position than people to fulfill them, if I’m not recalling it wrongly.

@eptsousa
Allowing businesses to be able to dictate what they want to pay in labor and trusting they will pay a fair wage to anyone is criminally stupid when you account for things like fiduciary duty. That's the bigger game they're playing; it has less to do with how much they're paying than what they hold as a liability (benefits, hr costs, compliance with local labor law).

I'm not convinced the labor shortage is any less fictitious globally than it is here.

@SortOfTested agree, but tell that person from a third world country(not in a bad way) to not accept a salary that even being 1/5 of what they would pay a local developer still is 500% the minimum wage of his country when being unemployed.