I think there is a fine line that needs to be addressed: These snotty young brats may just be smarter than they appear. What levels of college degree do they hold? Bachelors, masters, or Ph.Ds? Because if we are talking about higher level graduates, they very well may get the higher pay first and pay their dues later. That is just they way the world is turning. We've been through the ice age, stone age, bronze age, iron age, middles ages, the renaissance, exploration, age of industrialization, the World Wars, the Cold War, and now folks - we are in the Information Age. (you HS teachers can double-check my chronology
. And I must be missing a bunch!) But the point is, our fathers and our fathers' fathers, used their hands. They worked their asses off for little pay. They
had to fight for their salaries (ie. jobs were tight) and often that meant working harder than the next guy. Today, is different. If a company won't pay a competitive salary to a master's graduate, there is a company elsewhere that will. And the graduates know that. Today's market IS high-level education and there is a good reason for that too. The world is being driven by advanced technology and it doesn't matter how many years you have under your belt at an organization - unless you take the classes that are teaching the new revolutionary ideas (this goes for businessmen as well as engineers) you fall behind. This is stuff that doesn't come with experience because the ideas behind it are coming on too fast. Where I work, for instance, the people who are constantly bitching are the old guys who think that they have to much experience to have to learn something new. And that mentality henders their promotion. It has to; because their experience must change with the times. And the new information is only going to come faster and faster. For instance, did you know that companies have been
holding back on wireless electronics? That's right. For the last 10 (or so) years the govt and these companies have been anticipating a saturation of the limited bandwidth available for wireless transmission. However, new IDEAS and communication TECHNIQUES (include spread-spectrum among others) give promise to doubling and tripling usage of the available spectrum. What that means is this: in the next 10 years the new wireless phones, portable internet devices, satellite radio, tv, Bluetooth devices, and other such gadgets will be coming in at an enormous rate. Companies will stop holding back. If any of you have heard of Moore's Law - experts expect the new wireless onslought to have its characteristics. So, companies that are in the business obviously must ensure that their employees keep up with the current state of the art. But, even companies that are not in the business won't be able to avoid its impact. People simply need to keep up (to some extent). And that is what makes new graduates attractive to today's businesses. New graduates have been (intellectually) raised on these new ideas and concepts.
You are never too old to learn. This is the concept that America most often ignores. I wrote a paper for the accreditation review board for the University of Alabama about a 1.5 years ago that regarded "Lifelong Learning." It was the hardest paper I've ever written because there are no resources for this topic! England has a huge society dedicated to it; America has barely heard of it.
One last thing - And this is where the old guys have a strong advantage. In my job (electrical) noise is everything. I am always attempting to determine what types of noise is in a system, how to reduce the noise, or how to avoid it. Here is how it breaks down (an older (great) guy at work told me this. Some of y'all have probably heard this. (I think Rumsfeld said it. But it applies perfectly to the search for noise types.)) -
There are three things to consider: there are...
known knowns - things that we know we know
known unknowns - things that we know we don't know
and unknown unknowns - things that we don't know we don't know. It is this last one that really hurts us. And only experience will promote us to the known unknowns.
anyway, I'm done. Bring on the hate mail!
PS. None of this is to say, by the way, that I am in disagreement with anything thus far written. In fact, I am not. ****ty kids are ****ty kids, but in this day and age they may just be smarter than we give them credit for. ???
