Posted by thanedar 1 day ago
I decided to step away from my job as an engineering VP and try something I actually wanted to do. It's terrifying, especially in this economy, but I wake up and feel excitement in the morning instead of dread for the first time in as long as I can remember.
What are you trying now that you actually want to do? Cheering for you!
(And please let me know what you would've liked to see in the second half! Blog posts are easy to edit!)
I also wonder about the "now it's time to lift everyone else into abundance" earlier in the article. I don't disagree that this is valuable, but it doesn't solve the existential "why", it just puts it off for a few decades until the poorest humans are as rich as wealthy Americans are now. "What a problem to have!" one might say, but literally that is the problem that the article is about, right? Going back to power-level everyone else doesn't actually solve the problem of what to do when someone reaches the level cap.
Ultimately there is nothing that is obviously and provably more important than the individual reading or writing this, as there kinda was in previous eras. Some candidates include religion, panhuman expansion or thriving (Musk), building a successor entity or entities (Altman), and the State or politics (the OP). I don't know of any argument better than personal preference, at the moment.
The older generations have everything and still feel burnt out and unhappy? Cool. Cool cool cool. That will certainly help with the nihilism.
Also, there were no jobs.
My life rules hahaha. Only problem is that the older generations are going to parasitize my kids for disability money and shit but I’ll just move them to where humanity is growing if it comes to that.
Bizarrely my parents also feel like their generation had a great time. So who can tell. Maybe I’ll make it so that Gen Beta says the same story.
And we all knew people who had died of AIDS, and I wasn't even in an at-risk community. Gay men I knew felt that they had gone through an apocalypse, like they were the survivors of a secret war that no one talked about.
Home ownership when I was growing up was around 50%. Not owning a home was extremely normal, not a sign of deprivation.
Which isn't anything new. It's feudalism, and the way things usually are. But that's a far greater concern for those in that situation, than AIDS or nuke scares.
Gen X was called the Slacker Generation because we didn't think it was worth trying very hard. We didn't want the life of our parents: working all day at a job they hated just to buy stuff to impress neighbors that they didn't like. [Yes, Fight Club was about Gen X--or at least that's what we tell ourselves.]
But it got better. For me, computers were a salvation. I found that all that time I spent writing PC video games resulted in skills that companies valued. We were the first digital natives. I remember having to teach 50-something year-old CEOs how to type ("Hold down the shift key for uppercase").
I don't know what unique characteristics will save today's Gen Z. They be able to take advantage of the wrenching change that AI is about to unleash. They'll be in the thick of the changes, but still young enough to adapt. Us older generations will have a harder time.
Their words implied they were a member of your generation.
I'm not as confident it's bouncing back as fast this time. College debt wasn't as bad in 2010. You didn't need to compete against thousands of people around the globe in 2010. There were still human interviews in 2010.
Millennials and younger are all fucked for the same reasons and are going to continue getting fucked over unless some revolutionary change happens.
We’ll also be in this together as we watch our boomer/genx parents burn up the last of any existing generational wealth sitting comatose in a nursing home because they refused to accept that they will actually die some day, and so made no plans for it
Yes, housing, education, and medical care are way more expensive now than in my era. There's no sugar-coating that. Education, you already have, don't try to buy more unless the math works out. You're young so hopefully you don't need much medical care. Housing is a big problem, I agree. If you can move to a cheaper state (Ohio? New Mexico?), that might help.
The real problem is dating and relationships. I think that's where we all need to focus. Are there any AI matchmakers yet? [Just kidding, maybe]
But don't worry about the world. The world has been broken ever since we discovered fire. My parents were born literally in the middle of World War II. Somehow it all worked out.
it's already hard enough finding jobs in traditionally properous states. What am I finding in New Mexico?
I also think it's a bit ironic that we need to work on relationships and meanwhile also need to move away from what's likely our existing social networks.
>The real problem is dating and relationships. I think that's where we all need to focus.
We do 1000% need to regulate dating app algorithms. We can't let tech companies exploit the human connection for money. But with all the other BS out there, meeting women seems so far down the list of priorities at the moment.
But that is almost certainly not true. You are playing a high-dimensional game with a few hundred degrees of freedom and imperfect information. You already know how to play this game: make a move, see the result, adjust your strategy and make another move.
Of course, it's not easy. Maybe you don't know which move to make. Maybe you don't know which moves are available. Try the following: Ask HN. Describe your current situation, describe your goals, and ask HN for advice. I guarantee there are lots of smart people here who will answer. One of those answers might even be helpful to you. You never know.
But that's just me, as a late millennial that had some professional experience before the rug was pulled from under me. I have value to show to the few companies looking for actual labor. People a few years younger than me are absolutely thrown on a chess board with 2 pawns and told "good luck, I did these moves when I graduated... (with a bishop and Knight)". I don't know what actionable advice I can give outside of "survive until the market improves. Work on your portfolio and network if/when you can to prepare for that". But it's not great advice.
My bias is that talking about how unfair it is for Gen Z (or whomever) is the worst kind of advice because they can't do anything about it. It's not their fault.
I think advice that gives people hope (that things get better) and agency (that they can make moves on the game board) are more likely to improve the situation.
But that's just my opinion.
But that mentality is part of the issue. "they" can't do much about it. "we" as a collective can. have our representatives at the very least penalize ghost job postings and that's already a big step. And then from there we could make disincentives for outsourcing and reel in the abuse of the H1-B program. You'd be surprised how quickly things can change when politicians have a fire under their butts to do something.
But all that first requires awareness, and then empathy. Something that some of this community clearly lacks.
>I think advice that gives people hope (that things get better) and agency (that they can make moves on the game board) are more likely to improve the situation.
I feel issue #2 is that there is such thing as "toxic positivity". Giving hope instead of recognizing that things are bad only enrages those who feel bad. People don't like having their lived experienced invalidated, especially by those who haven't lived it themselves.
Advice needs to be tailored as such too. Saying "just keep interviewing" is technically realistic advice, but not one that gives much agency if the issue of burn out is applying for jobs.
My parents were born in Peru in 1941/42. Peru was neutral for much of the war, but in 1942 they began deporting Japanese individuals suspected of Axis sympathies to internment camps in the US. In 1945 Peru entered the war on the Allied side. If the war hadn't ended, I'm pretty sure my dad and his family would have been interned.
And even after the war, the situation was unreal. My dad's uncle didn't believe that Japan had lost the war. He thought it was all just allied propaganda. In 1949 he sold all his possessions and took his family back to Japan--to Okinawa, in fact. When he got there, he saw the truth: the country was smashed to rubble, and he had to beg in the streets for food. My grandfather travelled to Japan, taking my 10 year-old father in tow, to bring the uncle back to Peru.
That's probably one of the tamest, least tragic stories from that time. Even in the US, 400,000 never came home and 600,000 came back wounded. That's a million families affected. Germany, Japan, Russia, France, China, Korea, and even Britain, had far worse stories.
Whatever troubles we have now (and we have plenty), they are not on the same scale as those from that time.
400,000 US soldiers/marines never came home. Another 600,000 came back wounded. That's at least a million families affected.
And by 1950, only five years after the end of the war, millions of men were sent overseas again for the Korean War.
And after that, the children of the returned WWII soldiers were sent off to Vietnam, unleashing the greatest civil unrest in the US since the Civil War.
And you think it was a great time for all because the dollar was worth a lot?
Put in the simplest terms: Economic nihilism happens when no house.
I'd just like a proper job again, thanks. Just like I had before the tech industry shit itself 2-3 years ago. My current "cool" ideas are not being in debt and not worrying about a 3000 dollar catalytic converter replacement.
Now my "really cool ideas" is being able to take a bus around town without being stranded if I miss the last bus at 8pm. But that's blue sky thinking right now.
Do student loan costs go down if you move to a low cost of living area?
We had some movement in the direction of people immigrating to low cost areas like that with the rise of remote work, but then execs decided they didn’t like not having control over their workers live and did RTO. To their offices in the cities with high rent and home prices.
You never heard about people taking that “great deal” because it’s not a great deal. Like really, you think there’s money left on the table like that and there’s not at least some low double digit percentage of the population that would have sought out the benefit? Or is it more likely the market evaluated the option and it’s not good
People this detached really need to spend a few days on linkedIn applying to jobs. Not with their connection, but through those horrible workday portals and thousands of apps turned in after an hour of the post.
>if you want a tech job, well there are quite a few in Alabama
Hiring or "had a job up for 2 years but seemingly can't find nobody"?
Seriously. Try applying to some of these jobs and see how far you get. It's tough out there. it's not like 2015 where half your apps get a response.
I am nearly 15 years into being a tech professional and competing with these kids for jobs and the thing that is horrifying me is that I am being told I am not qualified enough after getting through the filter where these kids are all washed out for not having 10 years of experience in a 4 year old field.
Even looking at retraining into a different career, every single US corporation has completely shed their training costs to put onto their labor force, but we've gotten to the absurd point where 4-8 years of training is needed for an entry level job while corporations wont guarantee that the field even exists in a year.
The people I've spoken to in the field who have the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps, everything's better than in the past, why are you all complaining" mentality are the same ones who have verbatim told me that having a job in charge of a technical area at a faang that pays only mid 6 figures and has 5 peers on the planet, is a non prestigious job because their father is a near billionaire.
A lot of people on this forum are going to be shelling out for security in the next decade or finding out that they are made of meat, and hungry people don't really care where the food comes from.
In a city, you have both much better chances of finding employment suited to your skills specifically, better chances of being paid well for it, and better chances of upwards mobility. Plus, should it become necessary you're more likely to be able to find something to keep the bills paid with even if it's not what you'd like to be doing.
Low CoL areas by contrast come with scant employment that's generally poorly compensated and almost always has a low ceiling.
In some cases one can commute into the city for work and live in LCoL area, but then you're burning time — multiple hours each day, usually — that you'll never get back on your employer instead of yourself or with your family, plus the myriad expenses that come with driving that far and often.
People think all there is to do is work in a waffle house in the shadow of a closed steel mill, but really these are cities that by definition need a somewhat diversified economy to even function as a city at all. They have all the various pieces that make a city a city and a region a region. Sorry, not much startups, but that's about the only exception, truly, and may not even be the case adjacent to the state flagship universities.
The countryside gets romanticized a lot but reality is not so rosy.
Even if that wasn't a factor and both locations paid the same, a dense city with many employers gives you a much better chance of finding a job when needed or seeking out better opportunities if you are being ambitious.
I grew up in one of these "great deal" towns with 2-3 employers that had more than 10 employees. Anyone who had a bad interaction with a single employer, which included asking for a raise, was blacklisted from employment and effectively homeless if they didn't leave town looking for work.
Whenever I visit my parents back home I notice how there appears to be no one in the town in their 20s to early 30s. Its either retirees or older parents who moved there to give their kids a country experience.
The few people I've kept in contact from growing up who are in that town currently make less money than an entry level McDonald's does near the city, and are only able to survive due to the help from their parents either in the form of free room and board or direct subsidizing.
https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
https://www.statsamerica.org/sip/rank_list.aspx?rank_label=h...
2. saying "move to a state with less job opportunity" to afford necessities really shows how out of touch people are with the youth. They moving to another state with what money? How are they getting approved without a job in tow?
3. "I understand that failed progressive policies have ruined opportunities for youths in some other states" is a doubly loaded sentence. a) it was not "progressive policies" that enabled zoning laws, lobbied out workers rights and unions, and made women lose agencies of their bodies. b) This isn't a "state by state" thing. Tell me how the job market is in Kentucky and why it's thriving compared to New York
4. "nationwide the future is still bright" The nation is bright when old people prosper and the youth suffer (which you half acknowledge)? So what's happening in 20 years when most of those people die? Is it gonna finally trickle down this time?
Among the youth who cannot get into entry level work, or the displaced who can't find a new job: yes.
>Put your prejudices aside and look at the actual economic data.
https://www.pymnts.com/gig-economy/2025/gen-z-turns-side-gig...
>Side hustles account for 43% of the average hustler’s total income. That share climbs to 57% for Gen Z consumers and a striking 76% for those earning under $50,000 annually — turning what was once a cushion into a core source of liquidity.
Okay, your turn. Where's your economic data instead of "I know a young rocj dude who bought a house". Or is it easier to blame everyone else instead of taking a look at the reality around you.
The world may be physically comfortable but I do not feel safe. And that's because they do not feel safe from me. I don't want to sound defeatist but there is no objective way to describe it without sounding cynical.
You can point out that things weren't as good as they're presented back then either, or that people are falling for advertising, but no one is really impressed that their living standard is better than the 1800s or earlier.
The world is less broken when you only look at the top of the K shaped economy. There's less immediate turmoil, but also much less opportunity, and tons of flags saying opportunity will only decrease more. That's now how you encourage a high trust society.
I'll also add "Radicalization is when no community". And community is certianly broken among Gen Z. By design of those who want to maximize profits. Even the serfs of centuries ago had community because you need to work together to stay alive. Today's society is slowly realizing that, but this is after 80 years of individualism.
It’s not even like the physical infrastructure is all that much better. I live in a house built in the 50s, and clearly the people living in it then led a pretty similar life to mine. It just cost me a lot more money.
Perhaps the problem starts with the fact that we continue to steer society in the direction where everything we want costs money.
If I was seeing lots of comments say something like "The cost of life is preventing me from pursuing my dreams" then the article would be relevant to that.
>You got the great job. You built the startup. You took the vacations. But that’s not what you really needed.
And people will lash out if they haven't even gotten that far. it's tone deaf to the wider realities of society.
Good luck if you're not strongly religious, though.
>And Church youth / under 30 groups are basically marriage express lanes
Given recent news, this is part of why I'm not religious.
I’ll get downvoted into oblivion for stating the obvious, but if you’re tired of running yourself ragged you should turn to Jesus.
His burden is easy and his yoke is light.
And yes. odds are that those who are going to church already have the "simple life" covered. So be careful of selection bias.
I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending. I don't have any good advice as to how to defeat this perspective, but I am constantly reassured that because I'm not the only one that thinks things are shattered, there is a path to fixing it all.
Join some like-minded individuals and do something amazing. Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives.
Will you? https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/recessi...
Maybe you did, but statistically those people are permanently behind.
>I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending
There's hoplessness of impending doom, and hopelessness of no progression. I do think Gen Z has a unique experience of the latter, where the former generations were mostly facing worries over the former. Boomers had the nuclear scare, Gen Z had the peak unease of the cold war, Millenials had 9/11 and a decade of questionable wars.
Gen Z doesn't have that impending doom... yet. COVID was very impacful, but not apocalyptic as long as you followed mandates (I know, a big "if" in the US). But I wouldn't hold my breath given all the conflicts out there, and the US's own warmongering riling up again.
Meanwhile, many can't even get their foot in the door. Not many 20 years olds ever felt like the future was hopeless, no matter what they did.
>Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives.
Pay my rent for a year or so and you got a deal.
Otherwise, I feel like this is highlighting the exact tonedeafness Gen Z is tiring of. Gen Z doesn't just get to sit down and hack in their free time. They are doing gig work to pay rent and applying to thousands of jobs a day for hope of an interview (not even an offer).
I won't say it's uniquely bad. But it's bad in different ways from when you or I were growing up.
I have been looking for meaningful work since I was 18, started in sales went on to marketing and ended up in engineering as a data scientist.
Even though I feel closer than ever I still feel that I am not where I am suppose to be. One of my biggest problem is having to many options, to many callings. And they constantly keep changing, and perhaps that’s normal.
It’s easy and dangerous to get stuck in the idea or quest of finding the ultimate purpose and try to translate that into actual work.
Oh that and that the dog will miss me. But as we all know they don't live for long.
The purpose of work (for most people), once you’re past comfortable survival, should be to buy time for you to spend living your life in ways you enjoy and that gives you meaning. If you don’t have something that gives you that feeling, find it!