Gen Z Grads Are Being Fired Months After Being Hired (fortune.com) 363
"After complaining that Gen Z grads are difficult to work with for the best part of two years, bosses are no longer all talk, no action — now they're rapidly firing young workers who aren't up to scratch just months after hiring them," writes Fortune.
"According to a new report, six in 10 employers say they have already sacked some of the Gen Z workers they hired fresh out of college earlier this year." Intelligent.com, a platform dedicated to helping young professionals navigate the future of work, surveyed nearly 1,000 U.S. leaders... After experiencing a raft of problems with young new hires, one in six bosses say they're hesitant to hire college grads again. Meanwhile, one in seven bosses have admitted that they may avoid hiring them altogether next year. Three-quarters of the companies surveyed said some or all of their recent graduate hires were unsatisfactory in some way...
Employers' gripe with young people today is their lack of motivation or initiative — 50% of the leaders surveyed cited that as the reason why things didn't work out with their new hire. Bosses also pointed to Gen Z being unprofessional, unorganized and having poor communication skills as their top reasons for having to sack grads. Leaders say they have struggled with the latest generation's tangible challenges, including being late to work and meetings often, not wearing office-appropriate clothing, and using language appropriate for the workspace.
Now, more than half of hiring managers have come to the conclusion that college grads are unprepared for the world of work. Meanwhile, over 20% say they can't handle the workload.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat for sharing the article.
"According to a new report, six in 10 employers say they have already sacked some of the Gen Z workers they hired fresh out of college earlier this year." Intelligent.com, a platform dedicated to helping young professionals navigate the future of work, surveyed nearly 1,000 U.S. leaders... After experiencing a raft of problems with young new hires, one in six bosses say they're hesitant to hire college grads again. Meanwhile, one in seven bosses have admitted that they may avoid hiring them altogether next year. Three-quarters of the companies surveyed said some or all of their recent graduate hires were unsatisfactory in some way...
Employers' gripe with young people today is their lack of motivation or initiative — 50% of the leaders surveyed cited that as the reason why things didn't work out with their new hire. Bosses also pointed to Gen Z being unprofessional, unorganized and having poor communication skills as their top reasons for having to sack grads. Leaders say they have struggled with the latest generation's tangible challenges, including being late to work and meetings often, not wearing office-appropriate clothing, and using language appropriate for the workspace.
Now, more than half of hiring managers have come to the conclusion that college grads are unprepared for the world of work. Meanwhile, over 20% say they can't handle the workload.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat for sharing the article.
To be fair (Score:5, Interesting)
As a young Gen X, they should have fired me at my first tech job. Between the insubordination, slacking off, and office drinking. But it was the late 1990's and they were taking any warm bodies that could use a computer.
That's funny. (Score:2, Interesting)
In the late 90s I could never find these unicorn jobs you are talking about.
Re:That's funny. (Score:4, Interesting)
I found several in a row, but they all crashed and burned rather dramatically, ultimately taking my career down with them, and later I pieced together they were actually just fronts for organized crime. You probably dodged a bullet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:That's funny. (Score:4, Informative)
Networking company in the 90's. Beer carts on Fridays shuttled right to the lab. Cookies, cake, soda... Pizza Fridays from a place down the street for 50 engineers. I was right out of college and what a great time! .... then the layoffs started. A startup and another layoff and finally landing at somewhere stable for the last 15 years I see it about to turn dark again. Buckle up friends.
Re:That's funny. (Score:4, Insightful)
I went public sector. Gold-plated health insurance, $130k a year and a month of paid vacation time. Private sector can kiss my cushy ass.
Re: (Score:3)
I went public sector. Gold-plated health insurance, $130k a year and a month of paid vacation time. Private sector can kiss my cushy ass.
If you are married ... just be careful how you elect to take your retirement plan. Read the paperwork 3 times before signing anything. Some of the options will screw the payout to your spouse once you die, especially if the spouse did not contribute any $$ to the plan.
Re: (Score:3)
In the late 90s I could never find these unicorn jobs you are talking about.
Where did you live?
Hint: The jobs weren't in Alabama.
I was in San Jose in the 1990s. It was like the gold rush.
Re:That's funny. (Score:5, Interesting)
They started catering free lunches like salmon or chicken with french style sauces for the staff. That lasted several weeks before they switched to sandwiches then to nothing at all. Eventually instead of fancy lunches, we filled the cafeteria with arcade machines and several people got in trouble for playing them all day (even though they were working all night). And the new rule was we couldn't play them during business hours (?!?)
Later we hired the voice actor that did HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Douglas Rain) for out commercial [youtube.com]. [I have no way to confirm if it really was Douglas Rain. That's just what I was told at the time.]
Quite a few of these companies at the time, and it got crazier and peaked by about 2000-2001. Then companies started getting bought by larger ones (that's what happened to us) and those new owners struggled to wrestle the madness under control and turn it into a profitable business. (OOPS too late for that!)
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Interesting)
"six in 10 employers" , this tells me 6 in 10 employers are rubbish. Which is an easy to believe statistic. Adapt with the times, or start paying people what they are worth.
I'm guessing that 6 in 10 employers didn't offer their new hires a decent wage, and thus in turn the employees were disinterested in doing more than the minimum to keep a paycheck. I've seen fast food workers more motivated than some office workers.
But here's something not said. Outsourcing sucks. Outsourced employees are often abused to the point of not caring. It would not surprise me if all "6 in 10" employers are some form of outsourcing or consulting firm.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the most motivated workers I've had the pleasure of sharing office space with were at the very lowest end of the pay scale. Motivation comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
Re: (Score:3)
It takes them a few years to realize how futile it is and that sacrificing for the company is never worth your time/health :-)
Seriously though, this article just sounds like employers inventing excuses, rather than admitting they treat workers as disposable, firing them as soon as their quarterly profits look like they aren't going to grow.
You take on graduates, you know it's their first real job and it will take some time for them to get the measure of it. If you want experienced workers then pay experienc
Re: (Score:3)
In corporate culture, there are slackers, achievers and psychopaths. The motivated achievers are the suckers that will always be exploited by the other two groups.
Re: To be fair (Score:3)
You're drawing way too many conclusions from limited data. What if those 10 companies hired an average of 15 zoomers? And six fires a single person. 6/150 is a VERY healthy rate to fire new employees.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait till you figure out that if you think your attitude was bad, multiply genZ by 100.
Seriously, I get to watch genZ fire genZ and they're brutal; out of the genZ running the place I'd keep 1 maybe 2 of them.
We're talking drug use, alcohol use, violation of regulations, health codes, theft. And those are the ones that get to stay.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it's just the overall direction we've been going on for some time. I'm a millennial myself, but I seem to be really unpopular, likely even among other millennials when I make posts like this:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
The moderation says a lot, but the responses even more. The typical person doesn't seem to want to take responsibility for themselves, just expecting the river to come to them and then have the fish jump out of the water and on to their plate. Otherwise, to them, there's no oppor
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
I seem to be really unpopular, likely even among other millennials when I make posts like this:
You're unpopular because you're assuming that opportunities must exist where others are that will absolutely fulfill their needs and that they are just too lazy to go after them. That in and of itself is intellectual laziness.
The moderation says a lot, but the responses even more.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. You casually dismissed their concerns en mass as them not grinding their noses hard enough, of course they aren't going to respond well to that. Especially the ones that have put forth a good faith effort only to be taken advantage of again and again.
but when I see the average slob on the internet doesn't share that view
Except you don't see them. That's the entire problem with you. You dismiss them the second you read a disembodied string of text you disagree with, and assume that's their entire character. You don't know who they are. Anymore then they know who you are. Yet you are quick to judge them and their lives as if you have known them since birth.
That's the real reason for TFS and TFA: People decreeing themselves so much better than others, that they should deny others concerns and livelihoods out of hand.
Re: (Score:3)
That's right up there with "tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life."
Not terribly useful.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, expectations of employers today are completely off-kilter; from expectations of always being on-call to the circus that is the interview process, I have to imagine the fault lines are manifesting in unexpected ways.
The bigger point however- hiring is irrevocably broken. Might have something to do with the complexity of modern institutions, maybe the complete joke that is HR, but once or twice of being burned is expected. A trend is a lack of due diligence in your "meritocracy".
Re: (Score:2)
expectations of always being on-call
My perception is there's less of that. Servers are more reliable, and when a VPS goes down, it's often someone else's problem.
to the circus that is the interview process
There's nothing new about that.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Interesting)
Well.. there is something new though. I've seen interview processes with *five* interviews, along with a 4+ hour take home "assignment". Ridiculous. Some of these interviews are 1/2 day on their own. Essentially you're looking at half a week of work, and the 4+ hour take home is before shortlisting, along with at least one of the 4 hour interviews.
I've been on both sides of the equation, and there is an immense hiring problem. So many people are just non-factual about their experience, outright lies, and others are literally incapable of performing any task at all. This may seem like i'm exaggerating, but I've personally hired someone who has supposedly been a Linux expert, and with the flavour the org runs, and it took them *three days*, I kid you not, *three days* to do what takes me 30 minutes to do.
I have zero issue with learning on the job. Yet there is simply not way other than "this person has no idea how to use anything in front of them". No requests for help. When queried "I'm fine, just working on it". When the completed work was examined, simple things on a list such as "change /etc/hosts to this" were not even done.
(Why no ansible? puppet? auto-deploy? I want new admins to understand key aspects of the servers they manage, including installs. You don't learn much by looking at an install script, you learn more by interacting and configuring manually. It sticks into your mental model, and beyond this, it tests very specific things with new hires. Are they able to follow a list of things to do? Are they able to even understand Linux commands? Do they know what various config files do? How to use basic Linux command line tools? This is a post-hire test. And it took *three days* to hand a 30 minute task.)
My point in the above is that it is quite difficult to actually interview for computing tasks. I think people have gone the wrong way. Sure a 4 hour coding task will at least validate a coder has skills, but only if done in person or while someone is watching. That won't tell you work ethic, won't tell you if the person can do the job remote (or needs to be at a desk and watched to get work done), that won't tell you how proactive someone is, or whether they have poor work ethics, and on and on and on. Or, even what their true problem solving skills are.
So hiring is broken. I think, really, firing is broken. And referrals are broken. A 1/2 week of interviews aren't the answer, but I don't know what is.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Interesting)
As of 98 I was a college drop out (after two years, due to money), moved back home and figured I'd try to find a job and go to school locally instead. I ended up in the job I wanted (IT), rose quickly, and going back to school was never more than a fleeting thought. I got my foot in the door at just the right time. Friends who finished their degrees found a very different job market at that time, and those with CS degrees found themselves at minimum wage working a help desk while I was the main systems and network admin for a company with two offices, five warehouses and over 130 retail stores.
Re: (Score:3)
I started in the professional world out of college in the mid-90's... and I do realize my bosses needed to adapt a bit to me, and I needed to adapt a LOT to them. E-Mail was just starting to be a major form of communication which created friction: the office still relied primarily on fax machines for communication with external parties, and faxes were treated with just a tiny reduction in formality from posted letters on letterhead. My boss might write one email a day, while I was writing 20-50. [With Mi
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't have office drinking. We went to the nearest bar. During work hours, if there wasn't enough to occupy us.
And it was not the standard of the day for all industries, but it seemed fairly common in IT. We were like Gods back then. I was no catch, but I actually had women hit on me when they heard what I did for a living, presumably dreaming of accessing what must certainly have been a large bank account (it wasn't).
Things settled down after the dot-com bubble burst and most of us became commodities like everyone else working for a buck.
Re:To be fair (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: To be fair (Score:2)
Office drinking was not unheard of in the 80's thru early 2000's. Many of us had taken drugs casually from Jr. High thru College during the 70's. Laxxer attitudes back then.
Re: (Score:3)
My office now has a couple of kegs in the cafeteria and cabinet full of various whiskeys. No one blinks if you have a beer at lunch. No one ever really ties one on until a Friday afternoon or if there is an official happy hour. Peer pressure keeps most people pretty responsible.
Re: (Score:2)
I've personally smoked before work, among other things, or had
Re: (Score:2)
In the Valley, drinking was normalized. Hell, even at the eBay/PayPal complex (which was one of the more straight-laced places in San Jose), beer taps turned on at 5pm and people would regularly grab a few and head back to their desks. At Adobe, it wasn't uncommon for all the managers to have bourbon or whisky at their desks. At Intel, there wasn't a ton of booze out there in the open, but all the engineers I knew in the early 2000's had at least two drinks at lunch before they came back to the office.
Hopefully a wake up call (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hopefully a wake up call (Score:4, Insightful)
This coddling began with millennials. Xenials or early millennials had far less of this but as you get on to kids born in the 90's it goes down hill pretty fast. We essentially tossed out ALL child rearing concepts in favor of garbage social science and mind altering antidepressants within a single generation, then ignored the fact they were homicidal and suicidal. Instead of fixing this problem as it goes wrong we've just kept on steamrolling forward.
"expecting them to spring fully formed from the head of Zeus is foolish. I'd like to think that they're up to this learning experience"
That's what college is supposed to be. If they aren't springing out from a bachelors ready to compete with the guy who has being doing the job for 4yrs then why are you hiring them instead of him? We have massive unemployment in tech, the market has reportedly contracted by over 40% this year and the buzz I hear is that for some reason the rare instances of hiring that actually happen are hiring for formal education over proven experience.
Re:Hopefully a wake up call (Score:5, Insightful)
This coddling began with millennials. Xenials or early millennials had far less of this but as you get on to kids born in the 90's it goes down hill pretty fast. We essentially tossed out ALL child rearing concepts in favor of garbage social science and mind altering antidepressants within a single generation, then ignored the fact they were homicidal and suicidal.
My son was in middle school in the 90's and the teachers diagnosed every single boy in his class with ADHD. I refused, but most other parents chemically straitjacketed their sons. They were trying to work that stuff like it was candy. Today, most of his friends are not normal. Turns out the effort to protect th almost universal teaching staff of females that wanted the males to be as tractable as the young ladies wasn't well thought out. Despite womanist doctrine, there ar fundamental differences between boys and girls.
Instead of fixing this problem as it goes wrong we've just kept on steamrolling forward.
"expecting them to spring fully formed from the head of Zeus is foolish. I'd like to think that they're up to this learning experience"
Let's hope. We have a lot of apathetic males, and frustrated females. They have to throw away most of the social mores they have been taught in order to conform to reality. Life is a competitive grind, you aren't going to be CEO a month after you get your first job, and making a difference is kind of nebulous.
But when you do have accomplishments and garner real self esteem, that's priceless.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
My sis asks her how you can say no ADD? Doc notes that nephew knows every Pokemon card and comic book hero, the kid has excellent attention, just doesn't care about school. I point out to sis that the "diagnosis" that found its way into his permanent record (yes, there is such a thing) could have adverse impact on his future employment, education, and immigration status to another country. And BTW, a medical doctor can make a diagnosis, not a school psychologist, but nobody's gonna recognize that subtle difference. Sis volunteers at the school, small town community involvement at its best. When the teachers are teaching, she goes into the office, locates the file, and takes the papers out - along with those of the other two lads false diagnosis.
Tell your sister Ol says "You go girl! You did a great thing." Not only keeping the lads away from the poison they were dosing our male children with, but ridding them of the stigma of a fraudulent ADHD diagnosis.
My guess is that we will eventually put the wholesale drugging and damage done to young males brains in the same category as the Tuskegee experiment and frontal lobotomies. And I call out every teacher who thought so poorly of normal male children that drugging them was a great way to straitjack
Re:Hopefully a wake up call (Score:4, Informative)
Americans pay quite a bit for education per child in our public school systems. For example, the infamous Washington D.C. public schools spend nearly $24k per student per year:
https://www.usnews.com/educati... [usnews.com]
They said you were coddled too!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
This coddling began with millennials. Xenials or early millennials had far less of this but as you get on to kids born in the 90's it goes down hill pretty fast. We essentially tossed out ALL child rearing concepts in favor of garbage social science and mind altering antidepressants within a single generation, then ignored the fact they were homicidal and suicidal. Instead of fixing this problem as it goes wrong we've just kept on steamrolling forward.
I am so sick of this narrative. I'm old AF, but don't shit on new generations. Gen X was no better and the boomers...I've never met more fuckups than the boomers. These stupid stereotypes are just things we tell ourselves to feel better. People bitched about the "The Greatest Generation." Millenials served in the armed forces (in the USA) more than the generation before and after, but people made a million stupid jokes about wokeness and them taking pictures of their avocado toast to make themselves feel better.
My generation?...I remember the fuckups....we had our share...the generation before me?...seemed even worse. Nearly every boomer I've met in the workforce was a POS. Millennials?...well...I heard all the jokes and stereotypes, but I never saw them in action, certainly in no greater number than any other generation....same with Gen Z. This intergenerational finger-pointing is pure bullshit.
I know it makes you feel better to call people younger than you softer, but I don't see that at all. I see young workers entering the workforce that know a lot more than people did when I was entering and have greater mastery of the basics and are much more productive. I am Gen X and find people younger than me much less insufferable than my own generation. It's just lame...it's like when people think whatever was popular when they were in high school was "real music" and today's stuff is pure shit. Just because they know how interact with minorities with empathy and civility much better than older generations, doesn't make them softer..it just make them more capable.
I don't view people of my generation throwing out racial stereotypes, homophobic jokes, and casual use of the "R-word" as "keeping it real" or boldness...I just view them as failures with too small of minds to see other perspectives.
Re: They said you were coddled too!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I won't paint an entire generation with such a broad brush, but hopefully this is a wake up call for those who never received one before. As much as we all might like to shove the blame on the newest generation just entering into the world, some of it falls on the older generations that failed to raise them properly.
We older folks have a lot of blame to share.
Maybe we thought we were doing them a favor or were just overcorrecting for the problems we perceived in our own generations, but expecting them to spring fully formed from the head of Zeus is foolish. I'd like to think that they're up to this learning experience, as harsh as it may seem.
We (a collective we) tried to insulate them from any adversity, and gave them unrealistic self esteem with no real accomplishments, as well as other stupid but well meaning things. And many of us tried to stifle competitive drive. People bristle when they are claimed to be participation trophy generation, but that was exactly what happened.
Ar they up to adapting to reality? Yes, but they need to understand that life is not infinite, so they should start soon.
Re:Hopefully a wake up call (Score:5, Insightful)
Life is a competition, not puppydogs and rainbows that your third grade teacher told you.
I agree, bud. They should be working for pennies in the coal mines for the robber barons.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Like the Boeing machinists holding out for a 40% pay increase. Much of that will end up in *higher union dues*"
Source? Or shut up.
Thank unions for the 5 day work week
Thank unions for ending child labor. Although you may be in favour if it, I guess?
Thank unions that our workplaces are safe.
Thank unions for the 40 hour work week
Thank unions for the unemployment benefit
Thank unions for paid vacation
Thank unions for sicktime
Union shops have on average a 20% higher wage than non-union shops.
So you can really ju
Every new wave of workers (Score:3, Insightful)
On my first job I did shitty work. It's unbelievable how even simple things can be done poorly by a kid. But I started working (summers) at 16, so people kind of expected that. By the time I was out of college I already knew how to get along with people in a work environment, how to handle frustration at bad supervisors or being dependent on the output of a bad coworker. I still wasn't as good as someone who had years on the job, but I could be professional and churn out the labour.
A lot of kids today have never been in 'the real world' and the Covid pause didn't help at all. They're poorly socialized and entitled because they've been coddled. They'll figure it out, they're just behind by a few years.
Re:Every new wave of workers (Score:4, Insightful)
They're poorly socialized and entitled because they've been coddled.
And looking at their phone for hours each day, claiming they have "anxiety" if they have to talk to someone, claim they're "autistic" which is why they can't communicate well, claim they "panic" if they get a phone call, claim they're "introverted" which is why they don't socialize, and the excuses go on.
As I've gotten older I've found there's always an excuse for something. Nowadays that's the default for most people, but particularly for this group.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's probably true, a self-fulfilling prophecy. They're allowed to self-isolate and everything outside their bubble is scary because they haven't been forced to acclimate.
And it's not something in the water. I've known some great kids who are going to rule their own futures with any luck at all, but I do see a lot of kids who can't handle making eye contact. I worked with one last year who quit 2 days in because she couldn't handle saying 'good morning' every day to a half dozen people in the off
Re:Every new wave of workers (Score:5, Interesting)
They're poorly socialized and entitled because they've been coddled.
And looking at their phone for hours each day, claiming they have "anxiety" if they have to talk to someone, claim they're "autistic" which is why they can't communicate well, claim they "panic" if they get a phone call, claim they're "introverted" which is why they don't socialize, and the excuses go on.
As I've gotten older I've found there's always an excuse for something. Nowadays that's the default for most people, but particularly for this group.
I have social anxiety, tested as dyslexic, possibly slightly autistic and introverted. None of this stopped me from working my ass off to get along with my coworkers in the office, publish and present papers, and do some adjunct teaching. Usually anything worth doing scares the crap out of people (it does me), so just be scared and do it anyway has worked for me (I've only resulted in one major breakdown so far).
Re:Every new wave of workers (Score:4, Insightful)
As I've gotten older I've found there's always an excuse for something. Nowadays that's the default for most people, but particularly for this group.
As I've gotten older I've noticed that there's always blame for something too, even the things that are blatantly obvious phantasms of deranged minds. Avocado toast outrage for instance by people who want to pay half the minimum wage but expect their workers to be on call 24/7, never sick and for the government to pick up the slack for them with food stamps, or helpfully tell them to get another job.. as long as it doesn't interfere with that 24/7 availability. Oh and the benefits the law says you're entitled to, that's just paper, if you actually try to use them you can find another job.
Re:Every new wave of workers (Score:5, Insightful)
We have massive unemployment and tech employment market that shrank 40% since Feb. Many of the listings are just to make existing workers see how bad the market is so they'll be afraid to lose their existing job and absorb more roles.
Companies are turning away rockstars with decades of varied progressive and proven performance even if they'll take entry money. Why would you hire a mouthy and whiny woke kid when you won't hire a guy who was integrating global enterprise scale solutions less than a year ago to fill a basic infra engineer spot?
Re: (Score:2)
The kid's willing to work for less because they don't have rent to pay since they haven't been able to afford moving out of their parents' house anyway. And they don't have the experience to know a bad deal and walk away quickly.
And at the bottom end of the industry, it's always been this. What's remarkable is seeing these 'disposable' entry level people get fired rather than abused until they've picked up enough experience to find a better job.
Re: Every new wave of workers (Score:2)
The big players are ripe for the pickings. People are literally sick of their technology, addicted and sick of course. There is a lot of room for cheaper, simpler and less evil.
Re: (Score:2)
Been watching this same cycle happen for 20+ years. In 2 or 3 years if not next year, they'll be whining about being unable to find workers with Masters degrees willing to take entry level positions in the janitorial dept.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I think there's something good to be said about high school part time work in terms of what it instills in a kid early on. As you say they get exposed to real world expectations in an adult environment but also learn skills around money management and the like, having real personal finances for the first time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was a teen I worked summer jobs. One summer I shoveled horse manure out of the stables and spread it on the farm-fields -all day, everyday. Another summer was spent splitting firewood (by hand, with an axe). Another was doing construction work -mostly carrying and pushing things. In college I worked part time as an office temp. Low effort, but lots of emphasis on timeliness, appearance, politeness, and willingness to follow instructions.
By the time I got into the real working-world, I knew what
Re: (Score:3)
That's a load of shit (not the manure bit, but the lack of experience). I've never seen anyone apply for a graduate role without internship roles and several minimum-wage thankless shitjobs under their belt.
The idea that graduates are being shielded is a very first world 1%er view of the situation. In reality most graduates had very shitty jobs while they were studying in order to pay for necessities.
I'm generally against painting an entire generation with a brush, but even more so when you use the wrong co
These are among the first wave of pandemic grads (Score:2)
And these complaints all sound a lot like cptsd symptoms. Itâ(TM)s gonna be like this for a while. We have rushed to get âoeback to normal,â but thereâ(TM)s lots of ailing psyches.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"cptsd symptoms... there's lots of ailing psyches"
Sorry but speaking like this is symptomatic of the problem. Coddling.
Re: (Score:2)
Please (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't news.
Old people have been complaining about the current youth generation since time immemorial. I can pretty much guarantee that if you did a similar survey 10, 20, etc. years ago you'd get very similar "news".
Re: (Score:3)
Eventually you go back far enough that on-the-job training was normal and expected, and employers were willing to invest in it because they had good retention, and they had good retention because they had actual benefits and pay and so on, and they had benefits because they were afraid of unions.
But now, employers don't like hiring entry level employees for entry level positions, so new generations are strangled out of the workplace.
Re: (Score:2)
Old people have been complaining about the current youth generation since time immemorial.
It's always funny when you see someone reference a quote about younger generations that looks similar to TFS above, only to reveal afterwards that the quote came from a newspaper or magazine article originally published in the mid 1800s.
Re:Please (Score:4, Insightful)
"originally published in the mid 1800s"
"The young are by character appetitive and of a kind to do whatever they should desire. And of the bodily appetites they are especially attentive to that connected with sex and have no control over it They are irate and hot-tempered and of a kind to harken to anger. And they are inferior to their passions; for through their ambition they do not tolerate disregard but are vexed if they think they are being wronged"
-Aristotle's _Rhetoric_, circa 4th century BC
Re: (Score:2)
a three piece suit
Two flip-flops and Bermuda shorts.
Re: (Score:2)
Now I will be first to admit the young'uns have their problems, but...
Even if college did actually teach skills that are needed in the workplace - which it doesn't...
Who in their right mind would think anyone should be motivated to go to meetings, wear a three piece suit and use "language appropriate for workplace"? Much more so for a salary that cannot even rent a room? Stfu you retarded manager wannabe, go and die a sad death somewhere, you are obviously missing a few vital workplace "skills" yorself, too
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure I follow. Companies, much like human beings, not able to articulate their needs does not mean they do not have needs. Not even all of the bullshit of the job market takes away from that.
Also, you can be an old fart in the industry, yet the job postings still expect from you to have 10 years of experience on the latest fashionable js framework and whatnot. Such cluelessness is universal and not tied to the age or offered position of the prospect employee. Same goes for fishing expeditions and ev
Degree inflation (Score:3)
I had this long ass screed written about businesses requiring college degrees leading to an overwhelming number of people opting to take federal loans going to college, which also resulted in grade inflation which then followed them from k-12 to higher ed, and how this process over the last couple of decades has devalued the college degree.
Then I read the article. it's talking about recent college grads. The poor bastards who went through the grind from k-12 post great recession, then started college during the lockdowns, and then concluded their 4 year degree with protest shutdowns, whose succeeding cohorts went through the same experience, but were in high school when the corona lockdowns happened.
Yeah, if you never got a chance to work a part time job, or socialize in person during HS/College, you'd probably get shitcanned after a couple of months at work in person. It's not like HS or higher ed really prepares you for work in the first place, and online learning just made things worse.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Yeah, if you never got a chance to work a part time job, or socialize in person during HS/College,
And there's the excuse I wrote about above. While missing out on a part-time job for one year because of covid might come into play, to claim that is the be all and end all of why these whiners can't be on time, properly communicate, or even dress decently, is just an excuse. These people are 21-23 years old. You're telling me they can't communicate an idea because of covid, or that they've never had to be s
"6 out of 10 firing some" is not that much (Score:3)
That said, "not wearing office-appropriate clothing" is the most stupid reason I have ever heard of for firing someone. Employees should be rated by the results they deliver, not by their looks - unless they are actors or models.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, "not wearing office-appropriate clothing" is the most stupid reason I have ever heard of for firing someone.
No, it's not. They're running a business. They want people to look presentable. Not dressed to the nines, but at a bare minimum wearing something reasonably approporiate. Polo shirts are perfectly acceptable for most jobs as are short-sleeved shirts. Flip flops are not appropriate unless you work at the beach.
Most places have severaly loosened attire requirements. No more suit and tie
Re: (Score:2)
Office-appropriate clothing today basically just means 'non-offensive'. Don't wear shirts with slurs on them. Don't wear ripped jeans with your junk hanging out. Wash your hair. Shave. Basically make yourself look presentable. That is NOT a high bar to clear.
Re: (Score:2)
We can only speculate as to what the article's cited managerial ensemble chose to regard as office-appropriate clothing. It might be three-piece suits; it might be shoulderpads and heels like a Pointer Sisters video [youtu.be]. Presumably the real issue is non-compliance with a posted dress code, which is to say a well-developed resentment of middle managers.
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure what kind of jobs but they must be in Britain since the summary repeatedly refers to people being "sacked".
And it's too late... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: And it's too late... (Score:3)
An over $100k salary in today's dollars is worth what a $50k salary was in 1995. That's just simple math.
You want quality. Pay for it.
Re: (Score:3)
Shouldn't you be outside measuring the neighbors grass height so the HOA can put a lien on their house or something? I bet they have kids too, the little bastards, wanting to play outside and make all that noise. Serve them right to have their house seized. Oh, I don't think you have enough cameras and spotlights pointed at their house either. Better fix that.
Not really a new thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Fresh college grads are always a crap shoot. Some of them are outstanding, others can't cut it. You don't really know until you get them onboarded and attempting to do work. This was true 35 years ago when I started my career.
"Having poor communication skills" (Score:2)
How does such a college grad get hired in the first place? Are employers not screening for this? Is there some way to fake this?
Re: (Score:2)
As a large language model created by OpenAI, I'm offended you'd even ask.
This sounds like a flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
An entire generation being shit? I don't think so.
Here's the truth: young, inexperienced professionals are young and inexperienced. You were too before you got older and more experienced. The experience includes learning that silly things like being on time and dressing decently matters.
In fairness, when I started my career, I was awful. I was always late (but I made up for it by staying late too), my code was shit and - most annoying memory for me now as a seasoned professional - I have an opinion on everything and voiced it loudly, despite the fact that I didn't know jack squat.
I see the same thing with some of the latest recruits in my company, who are fresh out of university: they're eager, but they have no patience for anything, they know it all and they have a hard time getting up in the morning. It sometimes annoy me to no end when I try to show them something useful I know and being told that "it's old crap".
But here's the thing: I was the same when I was their age :) So I'm patient, because really, they're not bad people. They just don't know yet that they don't know.
trash (Score:2)
the skibidi toilet kind
Before blaming Gen Z... (Score:2)
These young adults do need to take responsibility. I also have experience with an employee who has poor business communication and doesn't take pride in making sure the results look presentable rather than just thrown together.
Huh (Score:2)
My daughter is a Gen Z and she's a fantastic worker. Hard-working and passionate and her employers have really liked her at the jobs she's had so far.
Dissing an entire generation is lazy and stupid, and will come back to haunt people when Gen Zers are in charge.
Busiiness Cycle - Because they can (tm) (Score:5, Insightful)
Retired boomer here.
The business cycle ebbs and flows just like the tide. This is a side effect of capitalism and cheap or expensive money.
Employers can get away with this now, but the music won't be playing forever and there won't be enough chairs when the music stops. Demographics will see to that.
AI is mostly hype. I'll come crashing down just like the Dot Com crash in the naughty oughties. When it does, there will be more pain for both sides for a while,
but the economy will will get reconfigured and re-arranged, and there will be the next great thing (tm). (Sort of like a cyclic universe)
One thing which has always been on my mind is the start of major war. We'd be in a hell of a pickle if one flared up. Everything being outsourced overseas is going to be a real problem then. Will they draft techies into the military in this case?
Take a hard look at the world they grew up in (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember what the world was like in the 80's and even the 90's, and at risk of being accused of seeing the past through 'rose-colored glasses', many things were much better then than they are now, quality-of-life-wise and hope-for-the-future-wise.
Gen-Z grew up in a world where in order to get that college degree they had to go into massive amounts of debt with a payment system that is stacked against them, and on graduation they're launched into a system that apparently doesn't value workers at all, doesn't plan on keeping them around more than a few years anyway, and between whatever they're being paid and the ridiculous payments they have to make on their student loans, they see not only no way they'll ever afford to get married and have a family (if that's what they want) and they can't see any way they'll be able to afford to buy a house, let alone ever be able to have any sort of retirement fund for themselves. This is all assuming that when they get their degrees there's even any sort of job they can get in their chosen field to begin with, which, apparently, there often isn't. Socio-politically, they seem to see the world from the perspective of the Doomsday Clock (currently set at 90 seconds to midnight): their world may get ripped out from under them at any moment with no warning. Some have seen their own parents fall into homelessness for one reason or another, regardless of it not being their fault (pandemic, The Great Recession, etc). Many of them not only don't own a car, they don't want to own a car or anything else that could tie them down, slow them down if they have to run for their lives -- and yes, some of them think that way, believe it or not.
So I put to you: where does the blame lie for their situation, the way the world has become, or them?
I say that it's mostly due to the way things are in the world. I've put myself in their shoes, as a mental exercise, and if I was growing up in the world of today I'd be scared and feeling hopeless most of the time, too, and maybe just going through the motions, unsure if there's going to be a tomorrow.
You have to admit we've got tons of problems in the world today that need fixing, and many of those problems are our responsibility to do something about.
Only been laid off once in my life. (Score:2)
These kids today can't knap flint for shit. (Score:3)
You know who ELSE thinks that certain other groups are whiny, soft-bellied, parasitic trash with a shite work ethic? That's right, I'm talking about EVERY GENERATION EVER. Surely we can't all be right.
Also, maybe your willingness to quietly and obediently tolerate being exploited by the rich isn't the flex you think it is. Just a thought.
Meanwhile (Score:2)
Those 6 in 10 companies definitely have shitty leadership and shitty policies. Motivation and initiative are the employer's problem, not the employee's. My motivation to work is because I want to buy things, but that doesn't mean I'll do just any work for any money, and it doesn't mean I'm motivated to work harder or faster, because I'm not going to get paid any extra. As for initiative, it's getting the job. Initiative done. The only other initiative I'm going to take is the initiative to do my job in a qu
Dead beat dads (Score:5, Insightful)
Hiring kids can be dangerous though because it takes a certain type of person (typically a former teacher, youth director, or even a pedophile) to do so. While my boss never came at me in any way, he made our conversations awkward. It was just a generation gap, but. yeah. (I've had others that "believed in me" and hired me that were functioning pedophiles though, but I was 19/20 so it was legal with me, but not everyone.)
If I was a business owner I would definitely hire 15-24 year olds as part time or full time labor in the field they want to work in, but I come from a teacher family. Even while they go to college. I'd just hire them slightly older to direct them all, which is exactly what we had when I was in middle school, we had high schoolers that baby sat us. They understood that we were still kids and let us goof off a bit while still accomplishing the task together. For example, my college level mentor in middle school always gave me this look every time I ejected the CD rom drive on the server sitting next to him. Drove him nuts and he had to set permissions, but I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I not once got in trouble for it.
Kids bring a lot to the table too though. They're cheap labor. They're usually loyal. They have fresh ideas. They learn / adapt fast. I'd imagine college students were similar. They just have no prior experience, that's all. So to solve this problem we need to start opening more jobs up to underage and in college kids so they can get that real world experience with a bit of hand holding. For whatever reason though, it's taboo nowadays except maybe at the University in a work-study situation if you're lucky.
Let's play "Big Number or Small Number" (Score:3)
"six in 10 employers say they have already sacked some of the Gen Z workers they hired fresh out of college earlier this year."
"one in six bosses say they're hesitant to hire college grads again."
"one in seven bosses have admitted that they may avoid hiring them altogether next year."
"Three-quarters of the companies surveyed said some or all of their recent graduate hires were unsatisfactory in some way"
Is that more or less than what they've said previously?
Also, how many are really hesitant or will really avoid hiring them altogether?
Motivation ha ha ha (Score:3)
"Employers' gripe with young people today is their lack of motivation or initiative"
LOL. I repeat, LOL.
At ~66 years old, my motivation is somewhere in the negative numbers. I just don't give a fuck anymore because, as the saying goes, I have no more fucks to give.
All my fucks were squandered by hapless PMs, brain-dead SMEs, and incompetent managers who couldn't find their way out of a phone booth with a map, a mirror, and a squad of Army Rangers to lead the way. (I'm lookin' at YOU, Rick, Krista, and Mark.)
Initiative? Yes, I still have some left. It mainly seems to come into play when I see someone doing something in a slow, stupid, or inefficient way, and then my decades of sloth and experience wake up and I spring into action with my dog-like reflexes.
I show them a better/faster way to do it, ponder my life choices, and go right back to doing as little as humanly possible.
Sorry, it is what it is. I just don't care to give it my all anymore. My work gets done in a timely manner and it's usually pretty good, but is it going to happen at lightning speed? Hell no. Is it going to happen at the speed of sound? Again, no.
It'll happen at the pace of a cranky old fart who knows that the work will still be there tomorrow, so what's the fuckin' hurry, honey?
Yes, my younger coworkers can make mistakes way faster than me, but then they just have to redo it, possibly multiple times. I snooze along and get it right the first time (usually) and no one says a god damn thing to me.
I'm not special but I do have a lot of miscellaneous skills, and my current manager genuinely dreads losing me because I can fill in all the skill gaps and deficits that my coworkers have. The stuff no one else can do finds its way down to me, and I get it done.
I'm talking stuff like *any* kind of programming, using basic tools like Postman that no one else has bothered to learn, and all those other little "jack of all trades" kinds of things. Tricky Excel stuff, a little CMS widget wizardry in Confluence, wrangling Sharepoint, working the HCP interface, making ServiceNow do what it's supposed to, etc etc.
If they lost me they'd be well and truly fucked for quite a while, and they know it. I'm not bragging, I just know how to do a lot of shit because I've been doing this stuff for quite a while. I damn well SHOULD have a lot of mini-skills by now, and I do.
So yeah, save the motivational crap for someone who cares cuz I'm just not into it.
I'm a convert. (Score:4, Informative)
But in the wrong direction. I've been in hiring and team building positions for 25 years. I have been a huge proponent in having mixed teams of veterans and industry newbies. I have hired new grads, mentored them, and promoted them.
I started noticing a shift in "quality", for lack of a better word, about 2015. In 2020 I stopped making the effort to hire green people. Specifically young people. Four hires in a row backfired on me, for reasons described well enough in the article.
Of course you can't paint the whole generation with a single brush. But playing the odds makes sense.
Perhaps my radar for talented people just deteriorated. Maybe it's my fault. Doesn't matter. Now, privately, in the unexposed recesses of this interviewers mind, X and Y start with the advantage.
Can't say that out loud... but there it is.
Not new (Score:3)
Not a new problem. Need mentors (Score:3)
I was naive and ill-equipped out of college with regard office politics and other people skills. And this was many decades ago.
I believe mentorships are the best route. Pair the newbie up with somebody who knows the ropes and has patience for newbies.
I do realize this can be difficult for smaller companies, though. I don't recommend smaller co's hire newbies.
super late to the party, will bloviate anyways (Score:5, Insightful)
1. their parents didn't parent. You have to step in and correct bad behaviour. The parents instead try to be "friends" with their children.
2. If you have a 3 - 6 year old, give them a cellphone/tablet and you won't even have to lock your bedroom door to have sex.
3. Apple. There's an app for that.... and believing if you read it on Google, it's the answer. The world has learned to be helpless if there isn't an app for that.
Let's focus on #3.
It's like the Jesuits who said "give me a child for the first seven years", or Muslims who are only taught "The Book".
Like the aforementioned religious zealots, "The kids" cannot conceive of ideas beyond what they had burned into them.
Creativity is dead, because there isn't an app for that. Analysis is dead. It's too much like Math. Analysis is too much like work. Work!? Who wants to work when you could just look into a phone and be an "influencer"... Literally no one looks beyond Microsoft or Apple for "The Answer". It's just too hard.
Sure. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It's more to do with high interest rates (Score:3, Insightful)
So they started up their post rate cut hiring plans and then the fed sat on their asses for another 3 months.
It'll cost these business $$$ to reacquirer those hires but nothing is more important than this quarter's numbers. Next quarter's numbers are a problem for Mr Future.
Re:Unpopular opinion here (Score:5, Interesting)
But I think this has A WHOLE LOT to do with "fee fees" and being taught to crybully their way through life, and being taught the ways of the snowflake. Unsorry, but I wasn't too hard to see this one coming and I told people this was going to end up happening.
This should be at +5, but it will probably be at -1 something.
My experience has been that they came into work with unrealistic expectations, thought way too highly of themselves do to being trained for very high self esteem while not building it through accomplishments. They were told that they would get meaningful jobs, and make the world a better place, and all they had to do was find their passion, and nothing could get in their way. They expected to be promoted in a few months to management.
Now before the mob goes nuts on me, this is not really their fault. They were taught this was their future by well meaning but seriously stupid parents and teachers who tried to insulate them from any adversity. To the point of trying to eliminate the competitive drive that is needed to excel.
They were never allowed to grow up. Many young males are uninterested in adulting, many young females expect perfection from males, because they are told that they are all "10s", and since they didn't grow out of the High School attraction to bad boys, with the males avoiding interactions, many women find themselves stuck in a cycle that involves the only me who will approach them are bad for them, and they are going through a lot of trauma. What is worse for the young ladies is they have been taught they can wait until their late 30's-mid 40's to have children via IVF, which in truth, doesn't work all that great.
So many dreadfully unhappy women in that age range. And call me old fashioned, but I really hate to see women crying.
Re: (Score:2)
"My experience has been that they came into work with unrealistic expectations, thought way too highly of themselves do to being trained for very high self esteem while not building it through accomplishments."
Which as also said about Millennials, and said about GenX, and I presume said about Boomers.
Re:Unpopular opinion here (Score:5, Informative)
"'We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control." These words - expressing the all-too-familiar contemporary condemnation of young people - were actually inscribed on a 6,000-year-old Egyptian tomb.
Later, in the fourth century BC, Plato was heard to remark: "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
And then, a few hundred years later, in AD1274, Peter the Hermit joined the chorus. "The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint ... As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behaviour and dress.""
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/mar/17/ephebiphobia-young-people-mosquito [theguardian.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
This should be at +5, but it will probably be at -1 something.
On slashdot, this statement means they'll rig the scoring feedback to make an insane, rambling, word salad type statement that sounds like a horny boomer that hasn't gotten any in 20 years appear more prominently. No one agrees with a word this nutjob says. This is the fucking dumbest thing I've read on slashdot in over 4 hours.
Ah, so you don't read your own posts?
Re:I predict a ground swell of old farts (Score:4, Informative)
You try to sound like a old timer, but given you seem shocked by the recent interest rates... you've apparently not been on this planet all that long. Give me a break, "old farts" who got their first job during the .com boom? Those people are only in their 40s!
The current interest rates are pretty much where they were when my wife and I bought our house - in the 1990s. And those were low compared to the interest rates from the mid 1970s through the 1980s - which was when I grew up and started working. Heck, we refinanced in the early 2000s because we were happy to drop our mortgage down... to 6%!
Recent interest rates are mainly "high" primarily when compared to the absurdly low rates that followed the post-2008 financial crash for about a decade.