"Failed investments"/ "Millenials, a career at a start up is not like a lottery ticket"

Dec. 16, 2017 "Failed investments": Today I found this book review by Isabel Sloane in the Globe and Mail:

Millennials are the most educated generation but are worse off economically than their parents and grandparents

On Sept. 29, 2011, whispers abounded that Radiohead would play a secret show for Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York’s Zuccotti Park. By the next day, the rumour had metastasized and hundreds of fans had tromped to downtown Manhattan in anticipation, prompting some militant occupiers to scrawl makeshift placards on pizza boxes: “If you’re only here for the band, go home.”

Needless to say, Radiohead did not show up to play a casual acoustic set for the city’s disenfranchised. But six years later, the perpetrator of the hoax, Malcolm Harris, has written a book that retains all the humour and good-natured absurdity of his original stunt. Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials is a formal report on the state of the millennial generation, using a confluence of data trends to explain subjects ranging from the labour market to internet fame. 

Harris posits that millennials were the first generation raised as investments, tiny pinnacles of productive machinery meant to accrue in “human capital” over time, which accounts for the starkly unprecedented divisions between millennials and the previous generations.

Since primary school, millennials have been taught to “reach for the stars,” effectively raised under the cozy rhetoric that they can be anything they want to be if only they try hard enough. 

Harris unpacks the insidiousness of this logic, noting that children are made to start working by the time they enter junior kindergarten. Time is scheduled, inflexible and filled with activities such as violin lessons meant to amortize over the course of their lives.

 For example, a primary school in Elmwood, N.Y., cancelled its annual variety show because administrators did not think that the six-year olds could spare two days off from their regularly scheduled work. 

Essentially, children are handed a job long before they are eligible for the work force: To make themselves as attractive as possible to future employers.

“If more human capital automatically led to a higher standard of living, this model could be the foundation for American meritocracy,” Harris writes. Yet all this extra labour hasn’t increased millennials’ standard of living.

 Instead, studies show that the most educated generation in history is actually worse off economically than their parents, grandparents, even great grandparents. “Being under 35 now is correlated with poverty wages,” Harris writes.

 The education system is designed to generate the most human capital possible, but the en masse increase in competition doesn’t advantage individuals. Rather, the more kids are deemed “high achievers,” the less likely the hours they spend doing extra math homework are likely to pay off.

Millennials have been taught to fear and avoid failure, unlike the previous so-called slacker generation. And yet somehow millennials have ended up the butt of all slacker jokes, chastised for being lazy, entitled and eating too much avocado toast.

 Harris actively demonstrates what’s at the end of the road for most millennials who do everything right: a $16-an hour job and “disillusionment, depression and feelings of worthlessness.”

I read Kids These Days in fits and starts. Every time I went to go read it, a pit of dread suddenly filled my stomach and I found an excuse to go do something else. My reluctance to dive into the book was akin to a sick person avoiding the doctor’s office because they’re afraid to learn their diagnosis. It’s the old adage of “ignorance is bliss” taken to the extreme: survival as a form of self-preservation.

Yet if the cohort of card-carrying millennials born between 1980 and 2000 ever want things to get better, we need to stop avoiding the present and learn how to advocate for ourselves.

 Right after local news websites DNA info and Gothamist were shuttered by their billionaire backer after attempting to unionize, one particular passage struck me in the gut: 

"Muscles atrophy and solidarity can’t be relied upon if young workers don’t learn and practise it.” Harris knows that late capitalism has set us up to fail, and it is only tools such as a basic universal income etc., that will dig us out of this modern morass.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-globe-and-mail-bc-edition/20171216/284691912305434


My opinion: This was kind of a sad book review.  This part stood out to me:

"Millennials have been taught to fear and avoid failure,"


Well a lot of people are already afraid and avoid failure. I know not to apply to STEM in college because I'm not good at it.  It's about playing to your strengths. 

"Instead, studies show that the most educated generation in history is actually worse off economically than their parents, grandparents, even great grandparents."


The millenials are very educated, but the economy and world has changed.  Back in the days, things used to be cheaper.  I wrote about this before from the TV show This is Us.  The character Jack was in the 1970s:

Jack: I make $17,000 a year, can we afford to pay $200 rent a month?

Mar. 28, 2018 "Millenials, a career at a start up is not like a lottery ticket": Today I found this article by Alyssa Furtado in the Globe and Mail:

Co-founder of Ratehub Inc. and CEO of Ratehub.ca.

If you’ve graduated in the past decade, you probably remember the nerve-racking process of choosing your career path. Your first foray into the job market can feel like a game of chess, where every move either brings you closer to your ambitions or sets you back.

As startups increase in popularity in major cities across Canada, they’re becoming a new, popular option for new graduates. But are they a smart career move? Last week, an article by Bram Belzberg argued that millennials who choose to join startups are “[treating] their careers like lottery tickets,” but I beg to differ.

If you’re a millennial who has discounted startups as a starting point for your career, you’re missing out on some of the most rewarding job opportunities on the market today.

 Fortune favours the bold – a saying I found to be true when I left my management consulting job back in 2009 to co-found my startup, Ratehub Inc. Here’s why you should be bold by launching your career at a startup.

First, the skills developed at a startup are highly valuable for recent graduates. Early- stage startups often have very small teams and a lot of work to do, which allows younger team members to engage in high-level work early in their careers. 

One of Ratehub’s very early employees, Kurtis, started out as our office co-ordinator straight out of university. Unsure of where he wanted to focus his career, he developed a passion for product and analytics work. As we grew, we were able to give him more of this work and support him outside of work with coding courses and training, enabling him to grow to become Ratehub’s first product manager. Today, he leads product at Zoocasa, a tech-powered brokerage.

There’s no topping on-the-job learning or the opportunities that will be presented by the fast-paced growth of a startup. If you later want to transition to the corporate world, you can rest easy knowing that your startup experience is held in high regard.

 Established companies frequently tap startup founders and talent to lead technology, digital advertising and digital transformation projects and divisions.

In his article, Mr. Belzberg argues that startups don’t provide formal mentorship opportunities for young talent. I agree that mentorship can get dropped down the list of priorities at some startups when they’re finding their legs, but this becomes less true as the companies mature. 

It’s important to distinguish between early stage startups and scale-ups, which usually refers to companies with more than $5-million in revenue that have had multiyear growth rates on employee count and revenue. 

Scale-ups are better suited to create and implement formal mentorship programs to foster talent, as their scale requires more experienced managers and they have the revenue or funding to pay for more senior talent. But early stage startups are also uniquely positioned to provide millennials with the latitude to grow and experiment as one of just a handful of employees. In either scenario, mentorship is available to those who seek it.

Another common worry from young talent: the potential of a startup failing, and how that impacts their future job prospects. The anxiety of “hitching your wagon to the wrong horse” can make millennials wary of promising career opportunities. 

However, Canada’s strong startup ecosystem puts young people in a great position to find new roles even if the worst comes to pass. Cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Kitchener-Waterloo have close-knit tech communities supported by networks of industry experts. I’ve personally received handwritten recommendations from former startup heads vouching for the strong talent they’ve worked with that will soon be coming on the market. In the startup world, we have a solid community of people who support each other and care about each other’s success.

For millennials, one way to mitigate the risk of joining a startup is by doing your due diligence before signing on the dotted line. Be sure to do your research on the strength of the leadership team and its commitment to its employees. 

Asking the right questions early in the hiring process will have a big impact on whether you join the right company and get the right experience. Think of working at a startup as an investment in your career, and make sure you choose the right company for your goals.

Joining a startup allows you to set the pace and direction of your career growth. If you’re a tenacious, challenge-driven millennial looking to establish or pivot your career, Canada’s startups could be exactly what you’re looking for.

Alyssa Furtado is speaking at the 2018 Globe and Mail Small Business Summit, a one-day conference where Canada’s top entrepreneurs share strategies for success. Full lineup and early bird tickets available at tgam.ca/SBS18

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/article-hey-millennials-heres-why-joining-a-startup-has-nothing-to-do-with/