Comment by johnnyanmac

Comment by johnnyanmac 3 days ago

40 replies

>and people recover.

So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers?

They aren't put on the streets, but it's clear some very long term damage is being done to people simply as a matter of bad luck.

thewebguyd 2 days ago

> So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers?

Myself included. Graduated in '08, had to work various minimum wage jobs in retail for several years because no one was hiring. I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28.

Degree doesn't matter much when your only work experience is 5 years of working at Starbucks, and you barely have personal projects because you're too busy working 2 jobs to just to survive.

Those of us who suffered through that time period barely recovered, and many didn't recover at all. It shaped an entire generation.

  • smileson2 2 days ago

    I'm a little older but I have found it strange how well economic crisis has been almost wiped from our collective memories

    it was a horrible period and I have many friends who are in the same boat especially those not in software

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    • flag_fagger 2 days ago

      It’s because the site is chalk full of millennials who jumped on the “I was an office assistant making $40k and I did a bootcamp and now make 200k” at the right place at just the right time.

      They’re convinced they’ll time the next grift right. Who knows

    • SilverElfin 2 days ago

      I think it is wiped from memories because it very specifically affected one or two years of college graduates (that had the experience the parent comment mentioned). Not an entire generation. The data shows millennials as a whole are better off than boomers were at their age.

      • mvr123456 2 days ago

        > The data shows millennials as a whole are better off than boomers were at their age.

        Perhaps true if you go east far enough, seems objectively wrong for the majority of the west though. Honest question, if you think this and it isn't just rage bait.. what data supports it? Scott Galloway disagrees and offers hard data, and goes as far as calling it intergenerational theft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E

      • AngryData 2 days ago

        A lot of the data used to claim millenials are doing better off is based on nonsense like "millenials have larger TVs on average" or "millenials all have smart phones yet boomers didn't have mobile phones", or equating 1 person making 3 times the median wage and 2 people making nothing as just as good as 3 different people making median wage.

  • CalRobert 2 days ago

    Class of 2008 here. A couple years ago a 26 year old colleague whined he made only $130,000 a year. At his age I made $17 an hour photographing tennis rackets. My sympathies were limited…

  • pyuser583 2 days ago

    sorry your math seems strange. You graduated from college in ‘08 - 17 years ago. You’re nearing 40. So let’s say you graduated at 23 … you’ve only had a college level job for five years?

    The economy has been moving upward since 2013 - 12 years ago. What were you doing from 2013 to 2020?

    I ask because I also graduated around ‘08. I’ve been a software developer since 2016. I’m currently a senior dev with almost a decade of experience.

    There were really crappy years to start with, but I feel I’ve made up for it substantially.

    My own parents graduated in the late 70s during a terrible economic recession.

    It seems weathering economic recessions have been a tradition for several generations.

    I still remember articles almost identical to the ones I see now; “this generation is screwed and there is no possible salvation.”

    It’s getting old.

    • flag_fagger 2 days ago

      Yeah man, those stupid hick rednecks in Appalachia should have just learned to code.

      • pyuser583 2 days ago

        My grandparents were stupid redneck hicks from Appalachia who moved the Midwest and became wealthy and well educated.

        The current VP is a stupid redneck hick from Appalachia who … you can Google him.

        Point is, one way of responding to regional decline (Appalachia was once the wealthiest part of America) is to move.

      • bluGill 2 days ago

        I know some rednecks from Appalachia who did learn to code. He retired from IBM a few years ago (that is IBM was a different company when he worked there than it is now) to a nice retirement in his little mountain shack.

        Though I wouldn't tell the rest what they should do. The guy I know had to live in MN for decades (where I met him) away from the rest of his friends and family - that is itself a large cost in lifestyle that I question if money makes up for.

  • Den_VR 2 days ago

    > I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28.

    What or who is the standard for where you “should have been at 28?”

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  • tarsinge 2 days ago

    Career progression is not everything, I'm approaching 40 and I'm doing the opposite, pivoting towards what I should have been doing at 28.

adamredwoods 2 days ago

Here's the study on that:

https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/77/4/78...

>> Across a generation’s life course, early-life advantages are magnified through disparate occupational and social trajectories that lead to wide late-life disparities in financial and health resources, in a process first termed by Crystal and Shea as one of “cumulative advantage and disadvantage” (CAD; Crystal, 1982, 1986, 2020; Crystal et al., 1992, 2017; Crystal & Shea, 1990b; Dannefer, 1987, 1988). Dannefer (1987) described the trend of increasing inequality over the life course as the “Matthew effect,” applying a biblical dictum first used by Merton (1968), stating that “to he who has much, more is given, and to he who has little, even that is taken.” This ongoing process has also been described as an “obdurate tendency” for increasing inequality over the life course (Dannefer, 2020).

Saigonautica 2 days ago

I mean, it caused me to emigrate to a growth economy. If I stayed in the West, I don't think I would have been OK.