I agree that having a population highly capable of reasoning and critical thinking is a good thing. But I do think this vision of an enlightened society is a little bit of an ivory tower fantasy.
We don't live in a society where people have a large amount of freedom and exist as free independent agents.
Most people need to be employees. And if you are an employee you will exist in a dictatorship with a military-like structure, and doing critical thinking and proper reasoning will be downright dangerous.
"Um excuse me Mr. Manager, but your proposal for the future of the division has a logical error in the reasoning, and your conclusion is actually false"
Nope, Mr Manager is always right. Because you have to play the game of corporate politics if you want any chance of success, and avoid being labeled as difficult and abrasive.
As long as the large majority of job postings and companies are looking for obedient workers of a certain skill, most people will want an education to become an obedient worker of a certain skill. And universities need to adapt to demand in order not to have a decrease in applicants..
This is exactly my feelings as well. I just compare my situation with my parents and see that they had it ridiculously easy compared to what my situation is like now, while the lifestyle is basically the same in every way.
It's like my parents asking me if I want to be just like them, only work a lot harder and get a lot less for it. Um, no thanks.
Why not just pay everyone at the company the same salary, and adjust it each year to be 10% over the average salary.
That would
1. take the issue of money off the table
2. free up lots of resources spent on navigating politics, negotiating, competing with colleagues
3. probably make the workplace less hostile
4. bring out all that potential of creativity and cognitive power
It still wouldn't be a below average salary, so it wouldn't turn away the good people.
Seriously, I can't see one single reason why it wouldn't work, if people care strongly for purpose, autonomy and mastery.
I know it's (for some reason) a huge tabu to mention this, and there's always the immediate "but that's evil socialism!" comeback.
But seriously, I think it would actually make sense.
I know they did this at NeXT, and that it was abandon after a while, don't know the details of why though..
But there are two issues here, one is regarding the tasks having to do more with updating/enhancing an existing product, as opposed to creating something new from scratch.
This is normal, and not inherently bad in any way.
The other issue is the one of mismanagement, which is obvious in this case, and very common.
The amount of technical debt indicates that previous developers have either been incompetent, the code reviews/quality control lacking, or they have been under serious pressure forced to cut corners.
Managers thinking that "dump every issue regarding this product directly on this developer guy with an urgent e-mail" is actually management. While in fact they push the responsibilities of prioritizing/delegating/allocating resources, onto the developer.
This is really bad management.
To me these are basically signs of a company competing in the market segment of quick and dirty, good enough, pretty low quality software/services. Think about it, there are huge demands for lower end products and services. But it's not very fulfilling to work for such a company.
Ok I'll go with that, let's say we're similar to or better off.
But just to be prepared, if it should turn out to be the other way around, or if this would happen in the future, what would you do if conditions suddenly are comparably a lot worse for non-established younger people?
How would you keep them motivated? Would you divide the economic hit equally? Start tearing up old rent controlled apartment leases? Lower pensions?
I think it's an interesting political and moral issue which seems not to have been considered.
If we are having economic problems and decide to raise the retirement age from 65 to 70 (as discussed in europe), should people who are 66 and just retired go back to work? Or should it only affect the younger people, and if so, why?
Ok I'll name my working conditions: A work environment with peace and quiet to be able to concentrate. Have enough time to be able to deliver though-out quality work. Having reasonably specified tasks, and if not, have the decision power to fill in the blanks as I see fit. Not being constantly interrupted.
Not being under constant stress and pressure to the point where I feel that my health might be suffering.
From my experience these (common sense?) demands on working conditions would rule out pretty much most programming jobs.
It's funny how most comments here are dancing around the issue trying to point out factual errors and counterexamples.
Bottom line: Young adults today have it way worse than their parents.
In most developed countries in the world. How should this issue be dealt with?
In my opinion you can't just call it bad luck, and tell people to deal with it and adapt.
Personally I think the biggest motivation of all is the sense of change for the better, and a future to look forward to. I simply can't accept that my generation got the bad future, and all the good future was used up by our parents.
Looking at my parents generation I think they lived pretty subservient lives, which were also quite stressful, with lots of stress related disease, heart attacks, blood pressure issues etc..
And if I work really hard and study, best case scenario is that I get the same jobs as my parents, only twice the workload and half the pay.
Yeah of course you'd bring them in for an interview to talk about those projects if they show a promising portfolio.
I just can't imagine hearing someone say
"Yeah this guy is a great visual designer, look as his gorgeous portfolio, and look at all this great stuff he did at smashing magazine (or whatever good place for design, I don't know..) But he's not a team player, he is sceptical about doing 'pair-designing' for 8 hours a day with other randomly chosen incompetent designers. No hire."
There is a lot of focus on team work. I'm still not sure if programming is suited for team work. There's clearly some activities of creative problem solving which are better suited for individuals working mostly alone, but belonging to a community of peers.
For example:
* math
* research
* art
* visual design
* writing
* music
* programming?
People have been trying to apply Taylorism to programming making it approach an assembly line in organization. Now we're trying to organize programmers as sports teams instead with Agile.
I just don't understand why programming specifically is under this intense pressure of having to be measurable and quantifiable in every little detail.
It seems like being a good cog in an assembly line, or a good member of a sports team is just as important, if not more, as just creating good programs. Why aren't for example visual designers being hassled in this way? No they are beging left alone as long as they do good stuff. They can freelance or work from home if they want.
But programming is somehow different. There's this assumption that it needs to be done in a group at all times. Solving all problems by group discussion.
If I was hiring I would just ask to see previous project, and/or a portfolio (github for example). If they have nothing to show, or it's really bad and show no signs of progress, I would not hire. Simple as that.
I wouldn't hire a group of 15 clearly sub-standard visual designers who have nothing to show, try to organize them into a group, measure closely and try to make them create visual design.
In the same way I would not try to do this with programmers either.
This reminds me on what Zed Shaw said in The ACL is Dead, when he compared programming to publishing magazines. Lots of people collaborating in creative tasks aiming for a deadline.
How does magazines manage to work deadline driven and still be able to produce good creative work?