My ultra-feminist neighbor complaining that her grandsons can't get jobs

[samsamsam]

Laner,

Respect to you for volunteering. The partial quote reminded me of something I have heard.

Perhaps the worst of this is the psychology behind the scenes where these guys get anxiety logging into their social media accounts where all around them is the illusion that everyone is successful or going places on their way to success. There is a very real debilitating result when a young man has an ever present feeling of inferiority and hopelessness.

I have heard Millennials, despite the entitled perception that many have of them, are a very anxious generation. That stuff compounds on itself and I can only imagine it leading to destructive behavior. Looking over your shoulder and constantly being in some form of doubt will ruin a person's health. Any guys experiencing this, I suggest that you take whatever steps you can to counteract these negative forces.

I remember when I was younger and in my first job, I was challenged in certain aspects. I was the youngest person in my start group, and despite my academic and tested achievements, I lacked certain skills and understanding of the world that would have helped me. I had no idea how adults socialized, mainly because I was a kid. I didn't know how to deal with setbacks. I didn't grow up entitled or anything like that, just that school was easy and I graduated early. Didn't even know what hard work was, it was all sort of a game but graduated with a useful degree. This isn't meant to be a humble brag. On my first real job, I started grinding my teeth (which still affects me today - thank god for mouth guards) and just worried about shit. It didn't help having a prick of a manager who rode me. Looking back it was a good experience, mainly from what I learned and how I grew, but it wasn't easy. But it was a kick in the nuts and seriously affected my perspective and still does. I definitely worry about stuff, a bit more than I need to at times. It comes in great for strategy development (I generally see all angles to a situation), not so much for relaxing and chilling.

Fortunately, it was made clear to me I was never meant to work for someone else. I'd hate for anyone here to get overly stressed at an early age. So do what you can to minimize it. Including staying off of social media.

 

[Grodin]

On the perception of "keeping up with the joneses" so to speak, I agree 100%. This is again where mentors come in. When I was in my young 20s I used to look around at the guys my age driving mustangs and dressed nice but I had no idea how many of them were swimming in debt. Which could lead to a big tangent about our debt problem and the scarcity of capital... just watch IOUSA if you want to know more.

As far as jobs go, talk to anyone who's looking to hire and it is hard to find competent people that meet basic qualifications. Qualified, intelligent people 'should' have no problem getting a job, I agree, but it 'should' also not be that hard to find qualified, intelligent people.

I don't mean to paint a rosey picture, I know the economy is in trouble and there are problems with the blue collar job market (and the white collar is catching up) but there are jobs for qualified plumbers, pipe fitters, welders, equipment operators, boiler technicians, longshoreman, engineers, accountants, logistics specialists, and on and on. The only caveat I'll add is that in today's economy, you might have to move to where the jobs are. Or hell get a nursing degree and go into the bloated medical field. Might be akin to enjoying the downfall but you'll have a job.

 

[chagataev]

As far as jobs go, talk to anyone who's looking to hire and it is hard to find competent people that meet basic qualifications. Qualified, intelligent people 'should' have no problem getting a job, I agree, but it 'should' also not be that hard to find qualified, intelligent people.

I don't know, I find it very difficult to accept that it is hard to any business to find people good enough to do the job. If some jobs are hard to fill because not enough people have a very specific piece of technical knowledge, then try to hire smart people and train them. But NO COMPANY does this anymore. They all want people who have the exact background the job calls for. This tells me they must have a lot of wiggle room and find more than enough people capable of doing the work. I suspect if I were to talk to any hiring manager they would say exactly that it's hard for them to find the right people, but I suspect a. they're lying, b. the "right people" to them are people with more experience, skills and qualifications than they're willing to pay for.

 

[Grodin]

There is definitely a little bit of that too. I'll admit that my experience with this issue is specific to the buttfuckingly cold arctic, where not a lot of people want to work and live.

 

[Samseau]

And they have no real skills because they studied "business" or sociology. For those people, no, there aren't a lot of great jobs. And thats on the students for their lack of research, and on schools for being far far behind the times.

Donald Trump has one of those worthless business degrees, obviously he must have been such a dummy for getting one.

Newsflash: Once upon a time there were businesses in America.

The entire country is going broke because it's corrupt from top to bottom in almost every aspect. Name anything: the schools, colleges, tax system, election system, regulations, zoning laws, etc. And you can find hundreds of problems.

The idea that young people are to blame for their problems when they were born into an extremely fucked up world is laughable.

Exactly. There are still some degrees and particular skills that can help people get good jobs. For any individual person it's good advice to tell him to pursue those particular fields. But it's no advice on a societal level. The couple fields that still lead to good paying jobs do so because there are so few people in them. If everyone taking useless degrees went in for computer science, engineering, etc (and there are already fewer STEM jobs than STEM degree holders) the wages there would plummet like they are in everything else.

The fact is there AREN'T enough jobs. There are hundreds of applicants for any given job. Anything who doesn't recognize that reality and the problem it presents is delusional.

Competent, intelligent people should be able to find a job no matter what their background or particular technical skills. People should develop particular skills to improve their value, but in any functioning economy there should be enough businesses and things being done that a competent, intelligent man who can add value should be able to find a decent paying job no matter his background. This is very, very obviously not the case in the developed world anymore.

For the future I'm incredibly pessimistic that this will get any better. I suspect the jobs available will continue to dwindle and start putting a squeeze even on highly skilled labor (this is already happening). I predict a continual worsening of economic conditions, wage growth and job security over the next several decades. In fact I predict it will become so bad that only violent revolution, or the real and present threat of violent revolution, will reverse it. Our elites are absolutely, totally 100% *USELESS*. You cannot over-estimate how ill-equipped and uninterested they are in dealing with the problems that affect real people.

Exactly. The analogy can be made to game. If everyone learned game and worked out hardcore, would all men start to get laid more? No, it would just mean that women would increase their standards.

Likewise, if employees increase their skills, employers will just increase their standards.

If you want more men to get laid, then one must increase the supply of women (there are many ways to do this, such as strict monogamy). And if you want more people to get jobs, one must increase the amount of jobs.

 

[Grodin]

Who do we look to to increase the amount of jobs? Any way young men can be part of that effort?

 

[CaptainS]

Who do we look to to increase the amount of jobs?

There was a time in America when the answer would have been "ourselves". I would argue that was a better time.

I've listened to my friends yammer on about jobs since high school. Yet, I don't know of a single kid who worked hard in high school but didn't have money available for college - and not a single kid who worked hard in college and couldn't find a good job within 4-5 months of graduating. It wasn't always in their chosen field, not always enough to afford to live in Manhattan or Manhattan Beach, might require relocation away from their friends - but the jobs were there if they took their time in school seriously.

A lot of kids create a bad situation then just complain or look to others to fix it. It USED to be parents who would set them straight but that's in the past.

EDIT: When my cousin graduated college and couldn't find a job (he wanted to work for a REIT), he worked at a fast food place and delivered papers in the morning while doing an internship at a real estate appraisal firm. Eventually they started paying him, he got his license, became a partner, then started his own company with one of his coworkers. It wasn't the easiest first few years but he owns enough income properties to retire if he wanted to at 35. The key is hard work. Something tells me these kids in the OP aren't hard workers...

 

[Laner]

Back to the OP and the youth he is dealing with, there is much to be said for leveraging ones skills in a place where it was worth something. The term 'Journeyman' stems from this, where when an apprentice was released he would be expected to move on to where the work was instead of staying and being direct competition with the man who trained him.

Men don't need a social circle to feel complete. Sure, its nice to have a safe place among friends that have been there for years. But allowing them to hold these guys back is 100% their own fault. In a city where the economy allows these guys to play it safe and still eventually find work this takes some hard convincing, but the reality is most young men travel to go to college out of state but will refuse to move to another lower tier town without having friends there. The ones that do, well, they are not the ones getting yelled at by their Grandmas.

North America is so big that at any one time there are a dozen boom towns. Go where the work is. This is where I do start to call young men out for being pussies. Can't leave your girlfriend? Mom? College buddies? Well no shit you are having a hard time getting a job. A man like me can sniff the dependency from across the hiring desk.

 

[ManVsMachine]

I'm a software developer and even my industry, which is rife with jobs, has sadly become very "who you know," which is doubly bad because many in my field range from lacking the soft skills to enable "who you know" to being full-on autistic and virtually unable to find work.

You'd think this is a blessing to the wolf among sheep, but it's closer to a double-edged sword because when you show your charisma, an excited HR will have the technical part of the interview grilling you harder and getting into far more theoretical stuff which is not at all relevant to doing the job, and doing it well (think computer scientist vs programmer). Fortunately, I'm past that phase.....and I hope my body of work will speak for itself moving forward.

Some of the younger guys like myself can pick up new, highly sought-after framework languages, but I have total sympathy for the older senior software engineers who were essentially kicked out of their jobs by foreign remote workers......See the Disney thread posted here a few weeks back.


You also have issue with the rising cost of simply living in America. You'd be surprised the number of young people who end up working 2-4 jobs to make ends meet and still are devoting a lion share of their salary to pay rent...... Now, in 2008-2010 you could easily tell a young guy to move to a 'second' or 'third tier' city, I saw this as I was going up in college, but these same lower tier cities are also growing more and more expensive. I've recently had to kick out two very close friends out of my apartment, back-to-back, because they couldn't keep up with rent, and both of them work......harder than I do. I do believe us Millennials are used as scapegoats for the bad state of things, but at the same time, the "Millennial situation" is much like the pre-Baby Boomers in the 30s and 40s who quite literally had to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Only, our generation has been coddled and doesn't have the wherewithal to cope with the bad situation.

 

[rpg]

Every able bodied man should start a business, even if only as a side job.
I did it after Sept 11 and it saved my as many times over. I am now spinning 3 career plates at the same time.
Fuck having one job a a time.
I know a guy who had his dogs fuck and then would sell the puppies for vacation money! Every year.

 

[Shrodax]

I have to call bullshit on anyone who says "just get a job." I went through a year-long stretch of unemployment a few years ago after grad school that required me to move back in with my parents. I have a Masters degree in physics, one of the almighty STEM fields, so my problems definitely weren't related to majoring in liberal arts.

I applied to nearly every tech job I could find that required a STEM background all across the United States. I was willing to move anywhere in the country if it meant employment. I got a few interviews, but they never progressed anywhere. If I was lucky enough to hear back on an application, it was always a "no". Most of the time, though, I wouldn't even hear back.

Realizing that was the wrong approach, I instead focused on getting back into academics by wanting to teach physics at the college level. I again sent in application after application across the U.S., only to hear "no", "no", and "no", and again only if I was lucky enough to hear back from colleges. Fortunately, I got lucky and was hired at a school on the other side of the country just a few weeks before the fall semester started. I packed my car and hit the road.

Almost every single one of my close friends either went through a lengthy period of unemployment, they're still in grad school, or they're severely underemployed. So it's not just me. The most hardworking of them found a job in his field after only 9 months of searching.

The problem isn't that there aren't jobs; the problem is that there isn't enough jobs. So yeah, everyone has anecdotes of someone they know getting a high-paying job when they just worked hard. But getting that first full-time job after college is no longer a matter of skill or hard work, but rather it's just plain old dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time.

When you submit application after application, and receive rejection after rejection, that takes a psychological toll on you. It's a phenomenon that psychologists call learned helplessness. Every time you get called for an interview, you get excited that finally, maybe this one will turn into a job. But nope. All they ever do is leave you hanging for months at a time, only to finally send an impersonal rejection e-mail once you've already extinguished all hope on your own.

I was lucky enough to have the mental fortitude to keep pressing on through the rejections and not take them personally until I found a job. But can you really blame others if they eventually just give up? Can you really call them "lazy" in that case?

And then, of course, when you do finally get a job, you have to constantly walk on eggshells because you might accidentally say something that offends someone else's delicate sensibilities. Even when you're not talking to that person directly, you can still offend somebody who overhears your conversation. Then you get HR personnel all up your ass. So even when you do secure employment, you can't just relax and focus on doing the job when you're worried you could be fired at any moment for an off-color joke or espousing a politically incorrect belief.

Most people aren't born to be entrepreneurs. Hell, only right now am I even starting to get into an entrepreneurial mindset, and that's only after years of being beaten down by the realities of the current job market. I'm currently struggling with the fact that although I have a job, in a highly specialized field, I still can't choose where I want to live. Most applications to other positions still go nowhere. But for the moment I have to keep my dayjob until I get some of my projects running.

Most people just want to follow the "get a job and do it until you retire" life script. That used to be the standard operating procedure up until just a generation or two ago. It makes sense, since the world has always needed far more Oompa-Loompas than Willy Wonkas. But with so few jobs to come by anymore, it's becoming more and more impossible for anyone to still follow this life script.

To call Millennials "lazy" for trying to follow the script laid out by their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc., is extremely short-sighted. What some here see as laziness for all of them not becoming location-independent, passive-income-generating entrepreneurs is instead Millennials struggling to adapt to the new reality that we no longer live in the old world.

Personally, I'm thankful for finding the Manosphere and RVF and for helping me see that getting a traditional job is no longer the only way to make money. But it's going to take a long time to get that mindset to permeate through our culture.

 

[lskdfjldsf]

The average American has two options in life - either rack up $50k in debt to become an Account Manager at some software company, or flip burgers. This wouldn't be a problem if Qing Xiajing and Ming Pao weren't manufacturing our cars, refrigerators, or forging our steel in factories.

We need our manufacturing base back. There's honor in this line of work.

 

[Laner]

Shrodax- I hear what you are saying. We live in an age where firing resumes off to the corners of the country satisfies the question of "Are you actively seeking work?" But this also shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Too many people, not enough jobs. This tells me right there that odds are heavily in the favour of recruitment to fill any position with far more talent than needed and from the local area. Why would I hire a guy from across the country when I could find my pick of the top 5 from right here in my own neighborhood?

I get contacted on LinkedIn on occasion from students who want to know more about some of the people and companies I have worked with. They act like these companies are Gods among men, when in reality they work out of a 100 year old studio on Ikea desks and enjoy cracking beers on Friday afternoon. How many people walk through the door vs. email looking for meetings/interviews/information? Lets just say no one walks through doors anymore just to meet up and see what is going on.

Again I recommend looking for what places have the highest demand for certain skills that one possesses. Go there. Drive around and visit places, ask questions, take names, cards and get referrals. Its not about getting lucky, its about creating opportunity by being out there letting people know you are eager.

You are right about not everyone being an entrepreneur. The reality is even more harsh than this, and that most people will never be an entrepreneur and those that do will likely fail. This is a good thing, as entrepreneurs need dedicated and reliable people to take on the majority of the daily work. If everyone just showed up to work every day and counted the hours until heading home to work on their Kickstarter campaign the actual economy would fall apart. Entrepreneurs are built, not born and a guy who hits it big on his first venture is by no means a sure thing over the long haul.

I can be empathetic to young peoples tough situations, but the world is a tough place and always has been. So when young men tell me that they are doing what everyone else is doing (sending resumes all around the country) and its not working out then it really makes me want to slap them some sense.

 

[samsamsam]

To be fair it isn't just Asians. It is every where that has lower cost of labor, heck overall lower costs than the US. Part of it is our consumer economy, few people care where it is made, just if it is cheap.

Yes, people gripe that made in China stuff is crap (however, Apple's products seem to be well made), but if you told them a quality made US equivalent is twice as much most people are gonna balk.

It is the destruction of a strong middle class. And that isn't China's fault. You can't blame the Chinese or anyone to take work that pays them more than they made in the past. You think they should turn down the opportunities?

It is mainly the fault of politicians, the wealthy, and shareholders that demand more profits or are lobbied. I read something that Disney brought in immigrants on the H1B visas to be trained by the Americans they were replacing because they were cheaper.

I have heard Toyota is moving out to Texas from SoCal. It can afford to bring in replacements to train at Toyota for a year before moving out to Texas. The replacements are for the people who didn't want to make the move to Texas. What kind of fucking amazing deal did the government of Texas cut Toyota to afford that sort of training expense.

Idiocy starts at home. You can't blame the rest of the world for taking on opportunities that Americans offer them.

 

[N°6]

I agree with her that her grandsons should get a damn job. No excuses.

However, kids don't magically grow up. They do need to be taught how to be adults, and the expectation has to be set. Seems like someone dropped the ball there.... rabid feminist... I can only imagine how that happened...

There are reasons why young men typically are not as advanced as their fathers and grand-fathers were at the same age - to women's detriment:

*they've been equalised downwards to the level of women, which means that young women of exceptional looks get the graduate/ entry level jobs;

*productive, skilled, semi-skilled, unionised, well-waged jobs have gone to the Far East and the service sector based on over-priced latte coffee has not taken up the slack;

*within the feminised service sector, technology has ensured that the middle management pay grades are just a few £$ higher than the basic wage despite still having the responsibility levels of previous middle managers.

Like you said, a young man cannot afford to use the above as an excuse but boomer SJWs which colluded with international capital to loot the West of its productivity should not complain if their grandsons are jobless and therefore undateable by women who don't want equality in the dating market.

 

[Shrodax]

Shrodax- I hear what you are saying. We live in an age where firing resumes off to the corners of the country satisfies the question of "Are you actively seeking work?" But this also shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Too many people, not enough jobs. This tells me right there that odds are heavily in the favour of recruitment to fill any position with far more talent than needed and from the local area. Why would I hire a guy from across the country when I could find my pick of the top 5 from right here in my own neighborhood?

I get contacted on LinkedIn on occasion from students who want to know more about some of the people and companies I have worked with. They act like these companies are Gods among men, when in reality they work out of a 100 year old studio on Ikea desks and enjoy cracking beers on Friday afternoon. How many people walk through the door vs. email looking for meetings/interviews/information? Lets just say no one walks through doors anymore just to meet up and see what is going on.

Again I recommend looking for what places have the highest demand for certain skills that one possesses. Go there. Drive around and visit places, ask questions, take names, cards and get referrals. Its not about getting lucky, its about creating opportunity by being out there letting people know you are eager.

You are right about not everyone being an entrepreneur. The reality is even more harsh than this, and that most people will never be an entrepreneur and those that do will likely fail. This is a good thing, as entrepreneurs need dedicated and reliable people to take on the majority of the daily work. If everyone just showed up to work every day and counted the hours until heading home to work on their Kickstarter campaign the actual economy would fall apart. Entrepreneurs are built, not born and a guy who hits it big on his first venture is by no means a sure thing over the long haul.

I can be empathetic to young peoples tough situations, but the world is a tough place and always has been. So when young men tell me that they are doing what everyone else is doing (sending resumes all around the country) and its not working out then it really makes me want to slap them some sense.

The main problem with just moving somewhere where there may or may not be a demand for one's area of expertise is a lot like the chicken-and-egg problem. What should come first, getting a job or moving to a new city? What if you don't have the money to move because you don't have a job? What if you take the risk to move and still don't manage to secure employment? What if you move and then get a great offer elsewhere?

I was fortunate enough to be flexible and could move at a moment's notice. I still can. But what about people who have families and can't easily just pack up and move? Most of the posters here thrive on being nomadic, but we're still in the slim minority of people. Most people long to put down roots and build a home somewhere.

In a bygone era where traditionally the man worked and the woman stayed at home, if the man got a new job in a new city, the whole family could pack up and move. But now, partly thanks to feminism, we live in an economy where one person's income generally can't support an entire family. My grandfather worked in a factory his whole life and was still able to provide a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle for my grandmother and their 3 children. I'm currently employed as a college physics instructor, a job requiring much more specialized credentials than a factory worker, and there's no way I could single-handedly support a wife and 3 children.

What this means in our current economy is that for the average person who wants a family (crazy notion, right?), both parents will have to work. So this presents a two-body problem of both people needing to be employed at the same time in the same location, in an age where just one person securing a job is enough trouble. If one person needs to move, should the other quit their job and hope to find employment in the new city as well? What if a couple's skill sets don't match up equally to the demand in one city? This fact alone can't be good for society, and I suspect it's a major reason why many young people today are delaying marriage and starting families for so long.

Even being local is no guarantee of success. My friend who was unemployed for the relatively short period of only 9 months fired off ~400 applications to his field in the same major city where he was living.

Yes, the world has always been a tough place, which is why humans built society. Society used to streamline life and make it possible for the average person to just do what everyone else was doing and still afford a comfortable lifestyle. Like I said, my grandfather wasn't anybody who was particularly special. But he lived in a time where millions of men like him were needed to just do the job they were told to do and were paid well for it.

If you didn't have an entrepreneurial mindset, and there's nothing wrong with that, you could just be told, "go build this railroad and we'll give you enough money to support a wife and some kids." If you didn't have any experience but were willing to work, employers would take you on as an apprentice and take the time to train you. Now, employers want 5 years of work experience for an entry-level position, and oh, those internships you did in college don't actually count as work experience in their eyes. Now you're on your own to figure out how to get work experience without already having work experience.

I can't, in good faith, call Millennials "lazy" or "entitled" for still wanting to follow the life script of their grandparents and not having a hustling, entrepreneurial mindset. Was my grandfather, and the millions of men like him, "lazy" for only having a simple life, working in a factory, and living a middle-class lifestyle? I know this forum is biased towards men seeking to live a well-above-average life, myself included, but I still see nothing wrong with an average man just wanting to live an average life. Society was founded on the principles of making sure the average person could have a comfortable life.

The U.S. used to have a solid manufacturing base where most people made their living. If you lost your job at one factory, there were a dozen more in your area where you could go. This was enough for the average guy who just wanted an average life. But with these jobs drying up faster than a slut's vagina in the presence of a beta male, what are these guys supposed to do? You can say "work hard" all day long, but it takes significant time and money to build up the skills to make it in the technical fields where there are still some jobs available.

And we don't live in an age anymore where you can just walk into a company or cold-call the boss looking for work. If you try that, you usually get directed to the HR department and then told to apply online. Online is the only way almost all places even accept applications anymore. Maybe there are still a few old-timers and Manosphere entrepreneurs that will appreciate the audacity of a cold-call, but they are few and far between.

 

[lemko]

Damn, what depressing prospects for young men and I definitely fear for their future! The toll exacted by the economic implosion is staggering. The grinding poverty is soul-destroying. Alcoholism will be more rampant now than ever. Coupled with virulent drug abuse, depression and a huge upswing in violent street crime, many men will be dying faster and earlier. People will live their squalid lives against a backdrop of numbing drunkenness, drug abuse, immorality, crime and violence. Robbery, rape and assault will be endemic and gangs will rule the streets. Murder, suicide, extortion, thieving, money lending and prostitution will be a way of life in such a poverty stricken atmosphere.