https://fortune.com/2024/02/09/gen-z-grad-two-degrees-breaks-down-tears-minimum-wage-employers-resume-in-person/
“I was so upset and disappointed in myself because growing up, I was told that if I get an education, if I go to college, then I’ll be successful,” Santos told Business Insider—and she’s not the first Gen Zer to complain about feeling tricked into pursuing further education.
Just last month, 27-year-old Robbie Scott similarly went viral on TikTok for insisting that Gen Z isn’t any less willing to work than generations before. Instead, he said, they are “getting angry and entitled and whiny” about the prospect of having to work hard for the rest of their adult life, only to “get nothing in return.”
In no way could the country's young people having plenty of spare time but no ability to pay for the necessities of life possibly be a recipe for a disaster
'Recipe for a disaster' or 'possibility for an opportunity'?
Like The Hangover but instead of the start of a big night out, every Friday evening could be the start of a week with a surprise decade hidden inside of it.
massively multiplayer real time zero-ping minecraft
- Raise people in a deeply hierarchical class system, seeping with racism and hatred for the poor.
- Promise them that they will get a ticket to the good life, unlike those lazy [insert slur], if they just work hard and get a degree.
- Fuck them over when they get the degree. Give them nothing.
- I guess only good stuff happens here. A bunch of desperate people who feel cheated out of the privileges they feel entitled to has never resulted in anything bad.
Hey we didn't get nothing for the degree. We got debt that follows us to the grave. Thanks Biden!
Anytime I hear "The economy is doing great" I parse it as "The king is so wealthy. The Lord of treasury boasts of his boundless coffers, he is rich, so I am too."
Same feeling in company meetings when they tell us how much money they are making
One of the highest paid people I know got her first job out of school at her parents' company. Wonder if that had anything to do with it.
The highest paid guy I know is the son of a slumlord. Funny coincidence.
she’s not the first Gen Zer to complain about feeling tricked into pursuing further education.
A growing trend in business news journals is to tell people that pursuing college degrees is some kind of trap. It is downright sinister how the response to the student debt crisis has simply been to lie to young people about their future job prospects without a college degree.
If a Fortune Magazine reporter comes at you with a microphone, remember that you are acting in self-defense when you draw and fire.
Yeah, I remember being in high school, unsure of what I wanted to go to college for and being told
it doesn't matter, as long as you get a degree in something
Which, let me tell you, does not help at all
I've gotten all of my jobs because I knew someone
The trick is to study abroad and never come back. Fuck this hellhole, that's what I should have done.
Or get a degree to do a soulless email job like I did
But I still only got my current job because I knew someone
The only reason I was able to escape grocery is because my brother put in a good word for me at the job he was already a manager at, and for that same reason I might be moving to a different department so I don't explode from stress
MFW I already feel like a loser for mooching off my parents, and it looks like I'm going to have to mooch off my more successful family members just to get the porks to even consider me.
I hate it here.
Honestly? I've been looking at master's programs to do exactly that. Even
is leagues better than anarcho-fourthreich.
I've gotten all of my jobs because I knew someone
I've landed a jobs because of a recruiter and a couple others from applying online. Good corporate jobs, too. But it's an enormous slog compared to having someone already in the firm who will vouch.
That said, college is a big exception to the rule precisely because of how much effort businesses make to hire directly from senior classes.
The degree matters, but surprisingly less than GPA. If you've got a 3.2 or better at a state school or big city college, it's a ticket to practically any employer in the country.
I won't say I'm bad at my current job, far from it, but I'm ridiculously formally underqualified for it. All my grown-up jobs has come from me knowing guys who knows guys. It is ridiculous. If I hadn't known any guys I'd be fucked.
I do have a a bachelor's degree and almost all of a master's degree in something totally unrelated to my current career. I had to drop out for mental health reasons and the student debt from back then is still an albatross around my neck. A very radicalising albatross by the way.
I will just flat out refuse to engage, because if they don't like what I'll say, their fat pig of a boss will decide for me what I said.
No one is ever interested in hearing out our side of the story. Humans simply cannot handle the truth about how they're all worthless garbage despite taking great pride in their savagery.
I just applied to a nursing home dietary aid the other day and never got even a fuck you back, college degree too lmao
i think i get ignored by half the jobs i apply for, and the other half is an automated decline message. i think i get 1 callback for like... 100-200 applications. kinda hard to keep going.and i have a degree + 2 years of experience in the industry :3
I was at 300 applications for 4 interviews and one offer, go into STEM they said, you'll be employable they said
: "Just get STEM only, bro."Biology is laughed at as useless
: "Lol JK, just learn to code, bro."Coding becomes oversaturated
: "Lol JK, just learn a trade, bro."They come up with whatever excuse to not hire us this time
: "Lol JK, just start your own business, bro."With what money? We reinvented feudalism
: "Well if you don't like it, just be reborn as a god and create your own planet, bro."
I want to leave my current job and I have 12 years of experience, applying to jobs that need anywhere from 3 to 10 years, applied to just over 100 so far, and I've had one interview for a posting requiring 5 years. No others. In that interview the guy said wow that experience is exactly what we need, about 3 times, then they emailed me the next day saying nah no thanks
Oof, that's rough. I feel like everywhere wants the exact perfect candidate now, and would rather not hire anyone and keep throwing money at interviews rather than hire someone else.
Good luck with your hunt comrade
never got even a fuck you back
If you want, I can give you a fuck you. I know it's not much, but every little bit helps
When I was job hunting I probably sent out 100+ applications
I heard back from around 10 companies, around 5 rejections and 5 interviews
I got lucky enough that one of them got me a gig
And this was back in 2015 too, with me hot off the degree line and in the top 10% of my class
It's bad
ed. Remembered that one of the companies I interviewed with sent me a rejection letter after I'd been working at my current job for around 6 months
Something about the picture of a crying young woman, the word choice of "humbled" and the publication this is in is giving me the distinct impression that this was written for bosses and Scott Adams/David Sedaris types to metaphorically jerk off to the humbling of those naive kids who think they're too good for poverty.
i can imagine the comments section without checking. "she shouldn't have gotten a degree in gender studies and critical race theory then!" "my niece is exactly like this, she got an education and now she thinks the world OWES her a living."
Bingo. Lot of Big Brains claiming people should just major in STEM, since the job market is always hot for them.
Yep, cscareerquestions is full of doomer posts because the entry-level job market is already saturated
To speak nothing of the engineering job market
It really gets my piss boiling when people use education as a substitution for class analysis. STEM vs. Humanities. College vs. trade school. It's as dumb and reactionary as the big city vs. the "Heartland" crap. In a functional complex society you need people who are good at all sorts of different things. Hate the bougies who are actually stealing from you, not those who went to a different school than you.
Just last month, 27-year-old Robbie Scott similarly went viral on TikTok for insisting that Gen Z isn’t any less willing to work than generations before. Instead, he said, they are “getting angry and entitled and whiny” about the prospect of having to work hard for the rest of their adult life, only to “get nothing in return.”
I imagine having been told to spend so much money so they can get a job that pays it off has a lot to do with their anger. Cant say I'd blame them really.
I've been filing out 20-50 apps weekly for 6 months. I have actual experience too. I'm still unemployed. But I have double depression, double burnout from trying to get a job and keep up with both programming and IT/networking, I am also in shutdown-lite™️ mode, have meltdowns 3-5 times a week and cry 2-3 times a day. I'm a 40 year old man and we have 2 kids and a single income(teacher salary). Can I go viral too?
But I have double depression, double burnout
americans have depression and burnout, but in typical american extravagance they have two of them
There's actually a form of sever chronic depression I recently learned about and the guy I was talking to called it double depression. What he described sounded very similar to what I have. Basically think of having 24/7 depression but yuo are extra depressed where normal people might just have a depression spell.
The double burnout bit was more meant as a joke based on the double depression thing. I was listening to a podcast about autistic burnout and sort of realized I've probably been in burnout from my autism for the last couple of years.
double depression is dysthymia plus major depressive disorder ask me how i know
MDD was the one I was thinking of. Just a constant depressive state. Gonna Google dysthymia now.
E: I guess I'll take one of each
E2: I have dysthymia for sure
I feel ya. I was at least getting some callbacks this time last year but haven't heard much since July from any employers. Tried different resume formats, cover letters, lying about more experience, but nada.
Anothet weird thing is that my employer has complained for at least 5 years that hiring engineers and devs is so difficult, yet we keep seeing all these layoffs in tech. Maybe pay people better? Idk it isn't hard to ask the workers why their industry colleagues don't want to work for you even when they have few other choices.
Didnt mean to bring you down, just needed to commiserate a bit. Good luck on your job hunt comrade
I get a few interviews here and there but suck at them. I've started lying a bit in hopes that I might land something. I even punched way above my belt and applied for a networking position at a local bank and they want to do a screener next week. I'm not qualified but am working towards my CCNA or at least practical knowledge that I hope will work.
I've since given up on software dev since after 10 years total, 4 years of school and etc, I finally land a job and then get fired a year later. They kept the guy on thst never touched programming in his life though. 70k worth of student loan debt just to get told nope by everyone I applied to. I have 2 apps published but that isn't good enough for an entry level mobile dev position.
Nah, the only do stories like this for like art students to reinforce the narrative that it's all lazy millennials who are struggling. Ignoring even the STEM fields are suffering right now, my sister has a degree in mechanical engineering and even she's struggling to find work.
Oh shit, is she an art student? The article is behind an enshitification wall. That just makes the article even more pathetic. Way to shit on someone's hopes and dreams when they don't line up with making oligarchs richer...
My degree is Computer Information Systems and I also get told I should have went for something that was marketable "instead of a liberal arts degree" so the brainworms are real.
We also need a general strike against student loan debt since no one gives a fuck about fixing that bullshit.
E: I didn't see where it said her degree was in but it did say several times that she wanted to become a professional influencer so they are gonna probably just ride that line to dehumanize her.
2015: "lol just learn to code"
2024: "lol just learn to mine coal"
Can they be taught? Millennials are pretty much over with but a few of my zoomer friends are closet leftists and fairly self aware.
I mean, not to be a total doomer cuz I'm actually a tiny bit hopeful on the global scale, but sadly I think the Maoists Third Worldists are right, there isn't a 1st world proletarian and there's no hope of organizing in the imperial core. The treat-brain is too deep at this point.
I didn't know this was a Maoist think but this is sort of where I am at too. We need the Global South to gain class consciousness and cut off the Empire for any real universal proletarian movement to happen.
Job seeking is it's own job but so much more intense, tiring and unpaid. I'm so sorry. On the rare occasion I can muster some energy, I job seek and it's soulcrushing.
I've been unemployed for over 10 years if the last 20. You actually almost get used to it in a sad and depraved sort of way.
The only reason I even went to college was as an attempt to land a career instead of dead end jobs yet here I am.
Well no careee landed but it's at least partially right blame for my radicalizing so there is that.
How dare people call us lazy when we literally are NOT ALLOWED TO WORK?
I can't work if no one gives me permission to work, idiots. In a just world, these porks will be threatened prison time if they don't cough up the jobs.
If she has degrees in communication & acting, that is to say (no judgement implied ofc) that she is a trained liar, and you really shouldn't believe anything she says.
This is in fact her jobs pitch, because she wants to work in the media, she did not in fact hand out resumes to minimum wage jobs and has no intention of working one, probably everything in the article is false these kind of 'experience/perspective' pieces usually are.
edit: perhaps 'storyteller' is a more polite way of saying it. But aside from that ("I'm a story teller & have always wanted to be one, in fact I studied how to tell storys and give performences, now let me tell you a true story about my experience - I even cry") the fact its reported in Business Insider, Fortune dot com, Daily Mail, should really tell you its wholesale fabrication.
Newspapers don't generally run pieces featuring anyone below the kind of 'minor gentry' class in a sympathetic light like this. They do run pieces (often fabricated) from people of their own class who are supposed to create a relatable crafted narrative for the lower orders.
At this point I assume any viral video featured on a big news source is a setup. It's either someone trying to get in on a grift, or it's a pre-existing grift and some money got juiced into it somewhere. I never thought I'd miss the days of genuine cranks getting popular.
But you're right, this video felt the same as those headlines like "Millennial buys $1.2 million house with their own money by drinking water instead of avocado juice"
I'm not sure it is, anecdotes (testimony) can be useful if true, and statistics can be employed to tell lies about data just as well. Also, media has always done this, since mass media came about.
I mean, its just fabricated - not a highly personal example, but rather no example at all. Therefore, any narrative is also false.
But it does align with predetermined notions (themes) for various audiences (like any story) I agree.
Every account I've seen from anybody who has been featured in a news story has said that the truth was ignored, and the media misrepresented what happened, embellished, ommitted, lied etc. Of course in this case, the lies are already told by the 'social media personality', to further her own career - to sell her performances, to an prospective audience but also to prospective employers. So its more of a two-way relationship.
I don’t think there’s a psyop, the media has always had a bias for young white people who come from ´acceptable’ backgrounds.
that is a psyop itself, one that reinforces class hierarchies.
its like shakespere, where all the aristos talk in an overblown 'dramatic' manner, and all the commoners are comedic relief bumbling about being stupid or savage. The concerns and experiences of those of the higher classes are treated with dignity, even if tragic or foolish, while those of the lower orders are not. You can find similar in ancient Greek or Roman drama too. I use examples of fiction, because this article, and the woman's story, are a fiction too.
media literacy is very important, and one aspect of that is to understand that its storytelling. Storytelling works by repetition - variations on a theme. In this case, it doesn't need to be an explicitly crafted psyop as such, just so long as any narrative about jobs and employment is one that doesn't cause people to examine the issue in a way that might threaten the current order - to think about the economy in any depth or breadth.
I'd expect (for example) a biscuit making factory & company that'd been around for a century to be very efficient & knowledgeable about making and selling biscuits. The media is the same, its very good at what it does - even if it looks incompetant, frivolous, or you can't immediately grasp the point of something its doing - this is because you're not, in the analogy, an experienced biscuit maker.
Many hours of labor, and huge sums of capital, and vast institutions, are dedicated to the production of everything that falls under the category of 'media'. Of course, storytelling is a natural human activity, but so is eating or 'spirituality' and the same applies to food production and religion. You can't be cynical enough - its certainly the case that the elites care a great deal about which storys are told. Of course, media organisations are saturated with intelligence agency operatives and assets, this is well documented.
So in conclusion, yes its a psyop of one kind or another. You can find the same in all entertainment - why is wrestling so popular? Because its a soap opera for people who like gladiators. But the stories told aren't 'organic' in the sense of coming from the masses, they're mandated from high, the same being true for other less physical soap operas, or any tv serial, any hollywood film. People who work in the media don't just pick up a pen and decide to write a story, they get told what to write about and how, and then the story goes through approval processes via editors. Its not some impulsive, 'organic' process, but a highly organised and ordered one.
edit; from your other comment on this thread, schadenfreude is one of the intended reactions to this story...
he said, they are “getting angry and entitled and whiny” about the prospect of having to work hard for the rest of their adult life, only to “get nothing in return.”
"You will own nothing... And you will be happy."
Chomsky is a liberal sellout but the last section of this paragraph from a 1996 speech of his has imprinted itself on my mind:
So for example, Brazil. There’s a terrific economic miracle under the neo-Nazi Generals that we installed with great self-adulation back in the 60s. And by 1971 it had become the Latin American darling of the business community. And the President, the General who ran the place, pointed out that the economy is doing fine, it’s just that the people aren’t.
She has degrees in communication and acting, if she just has that without a bunch of skills/experience to go with it, I'm not surprised that min wage jobs are ignoring her. Like it sounds kinda harsh but why would Starbucks care about your acting degree?
It's more of a problem of how little availability there is for her to actually put the degrees to use, there's clearly a problem in the allocation of resources when educated professionals don't have the ability to actually put their skills into the market. Proletarization goes brrrr
tbh kinda her fault for not majoring in "being born owning massive companies"
better luck next life!
She should have went straight to Starbucks university and gotten her masters in Frappuccino Design
Like it sounds kinda harsh but why would Starbucks care about your acting degree?
Because why the fuck wouldn't they? All you have to do is follow the training for like a week and then pour coffee
I'm her age and I was told growing up that it didn't always matter what your degree was, just that you had one. That the act of going to higher education was the important part, not the words on the paper. It's bullshit, of course, but 18 year old me wasn't immune to propaganda, and neither were most people
Plus the environment is full of people with an incentive to lie to you or engage in wishful thinking to validate their career choices.
In undergrad my profs would regularly distribute all this literature about cool jobs you could get in history. I always planned to go for a PhD so I knew those other things weren't actually that realistic and teaching was your best shot but a lot of my classmates didn't know.
Of course after getting my MA abroad I realized that nobody in the states is gonna get paid to teach about obscure history when the Humanities are dying wholesale. No one told me that they're not hiring professors anymore except as adjuncts. I was lucky to get a full ride and not have debt but to actually have a career in history I would have had to live abroad forever.
No one in the dying field has any incentive to tell you the field is dying.
No one in the dying field has any incentive to tell you the field is dying.
Every time a promising student tells me they're thinking about pursuing a PhD in philosophy, I do everything in my power to convince them to change their mind. Unless you're simultaneously incredibly lucky and among the very best in your field, you almost certainly will get stuck in adjunct hell forever. Capitalism has almost completely hollowed out higher education.
Yeah, I have family that ask sometimes when I'm going to get into being a professor, they don't seen to understand that's not a thing anymore. I make more doing manual labor I only needed a GED for than I would make teaching in a university.
To a certain kind of liberal the idea that you can't meritocracy your way into a job you find fulfilling is genuinely impossible to digest.
The only time you should pursue a PhD with the intention of becoming a professor is if you literally cannot see yourself being happy doing anything else for a living. Even then, you have to realize that it's highly likely that you're going to spend years to decades of your young adult life working in terrible conditions for very low pay. If you literally can't see yourself happy unless you're teaching philosophy (or whatever) maybe that's ok, but nobody should go into this thinking that they're going to come out with a tenure track job offer at the end.
to actually have a career in history I would have had to live abroad forever.
heh someone's never heard of youtube
Nah you don't need a history degree for that. Just a degree in plagiarizing Wikipedia.
They said "have a career in history" not "have a need for a degree" tho
It's actually the opposite.
They take one look at that degree and see you're overqualified, which means you might get uppity if the manager steals from your paycheck.
I can't read the article because paywall. Which degree did she go for first? Also, a communication degree with no experience seems worthless. It sounds like she needs a few years at an entry level position before try to land a "real" career position.
She was applying for minimum wage jobs, I would assume they were all entry level.
Minimum wage jobs can be high in demand depending on the state minimum. Not saying it's enough, but if it's enough to pay your share of the rent people go for it. In under $12 minimum states less so
Minimum wage jobs that her degrees might give her an advantage as a job candidate, or random minimum wage jobs? The parent comment to mine kind of nailed it that some minimum wage jobs might not care about the degrees, especially if they are irrelevant to the job she is applying to.
I'm going to just assume that she applied to jobs that were applicable to her degree first and began applying for other positions after it started looking bleak. I remember applying for entry level state jobs years ago after getting a 99% on the entrance exam and sending out a few hundred applications, never got a reply.
I assumed "minimum wage" meant "fast food/retail", not "entry-level communications".
completely fucking unnecessary to include that bit, please nsfw tag it, jesus christ
so fucking tired of guys using SV to shock jock for a point
Don’t worry, I’m sure Matt Walsh will take time out of his busy schedule of refusing to do household chores to admonish her for being lazy.
