Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/us/since-recession-more-young-americans-are-homeless.html?pagewanted=all

by kunle • 14 years ago

218 231 14 years ago

shanelja4• 14 years ago

It took quite a lot of courage to write this post, but here goes:

I spent a large portion of the past 9 months sleeping rough, maybe 1 in 10 days in total.

I was living in Spain and moved back on my own at the age of 19, with no job to come to, the promise of a house to stay at for a month and £1,200.

This was no grand entrepreneurial dream, it was simply trying against everything which told me it was stupid to improve the quality of my life, see the woman I left behind in the UK and find work within the tech industry.

People these days are too quick to criticize the youth of today for not having jobs or sponging off their parents but in my opinion, even when you have a large skill set and are willing to do anything, it isn't easy to find work. I went to 41 interviews in everything from cleaning to PHP programming before I was finally accepted on a job.

Even once I found a job, the pay was piss poor and I was living in sheltered accommodation (a step up from the bedsits and alley ways I never told any of my friends or families I was 'sleeping' in) to keep a roof over my head, all the time only being able to afford to eat one meal per day (on a good week!)

Now, 9 months later, I am living in a home which I find adequate, I have a new, new job which pays me £13,000 per year (almost 3 times what I got paid at my first job) and my relationship with my girlfriend is stronger than ever. But more importantly, I feel more happy and more empowered than ever before in my entire life.

The point of this post is really this: If you are in this situation, you can make it out, it won't be easy, but it isn't impossible.

The area is totally different, but if you are currently homeless, or in danger of being homeless, or really just in any kind of trouble in the north of England, you can find my email address on my profile here, fire a message off to me and I will see what I can do. Somebody helped me out when I was at the darkest point, it's only fitting I do the same - no one wants to be alone at Christmas.

Also, on a side note, the day I created my HN account on here I was sleeping rough, sat in the middle of a public park with just a backpack and a laptop, but dreaming of a better life, just wanted to thank all the people on here for showing me the better side of humanity when all hope seemed lost

snikolic• 14 years ago

Sincerely, thank you for sharing. (both your story and your generosity)

shanelja4• 14 years ago

It's really nothing, what might be something small to me now, like a food parcel costing a few pounds, could make a difference to someone else. It would be ungrateful and irresponsible of me not to want to help.

I am however off to sleep now, but I will be awake again by 7am.

My offer still stands to all who need it.

guylhem5• 14 years ago

I sincerely wish you the best, in both your personal life and your career, but "when you have a large skill set and are willing to do anything" you DO find work.

And when you are damn good at what you do and productive - more productive than the "average" mediocre default - you DO get rewarded.

That being said, however being in a weak position is a self reinforcing spiral where you get fewer and fewer opportunities and become less productive. And small hits take a tremendous toll - one who has not experienced what you have should at least read Scalzi's "On being poor" - http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

Yet for some reason you found the strength to get back on your feet. Once again, I sincerely wish you the best, and hope you can give a hand to other people. We all need help at one time or the other, and it's better when you are on the giving end :-)

untog• 14 years ago

but "when you have a large skill set and are willing to do anything" you DO find work.

I think that's the point he's making. HN has a can-do, make your own opportunities mindset that can often lead to us forget that we are living in deep recession. Depending on where you are in the world it is still extremely hard to find work, no matter how clever or willing you are.

yummyfajitas2• 14 years ago

You really shouldn't read Scalzi's "On being poor" - it's not particularly informative. The typical poor American is vastly better off than what Scalzi describes.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1713461

zem4• 14 years ago

if the economy is restructuring itself to provide work only to people who are "damn good at what they do", it makes it all the more imperative to have alternative means of providing for the remaining people.

crasshopper10• 14 years ago

And when you are damn good at what you do and productive - more productive than the "average" mediocre default - you DO get rewarded.

Not everyone in the world who's good at something gets paid for it.

And while it's great that you got rewarded for being productive, that doesn't mean it will always happen for everyone else.

The dark side to "Make your own success" is that "You're on your own."

viz., http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4940848

eli_gottlieb12• 14 years ago

And when you are damn good at what you do and productive - more productive than the "average" mediocre default - you DO get rewarded.

Yes, yes, yes. We've heard this before. For some X, the top X% of society by skill/productivity/motivation will always be able to find remunerative work.

The question is: what's the value of X? For some fields it has always been very small, like in philosophy.

However, our entire notion of "democratic capitalism" has always depended on the notion that over all fields and the entire population taken as a whole, the value of X would be a fairly large majority. There has always been some notion that the bottom Y%, where Y = 100-X, will inevitably have trouble finding jobs, but nobody outside the radical Left has ever really faced up to the notion that at some point Y might range between 20%-50%.

joe_the_user• 14 years ago

If you are in this situation, you can make it out, it won't be easy, but it isn't impossible.

That is an important message for people who in this kind of situation and need to keep persevering to get out. Thanks.

But I would want to caution others looking from the outside not to take the statement as "nothing to worry about, the good people will be OK, move along...".

If we think of the condition of young-adult homeless as stochastic process, it shouldn't surprise us that people get out of it. But the question and the potential problem is if more people are getting into it than get out it. Society as a system, has to consider this.

fred_b• 14 years ago

I think part of the problem is that it's hard to discuss the problem and solution in a way that is both descriptive and productive. I think these are a some of other issues:

1. I think too many people attend college (in the US at least). College is expensive, and the ease with which students can attain loans to attend has made it something that people probably take too lightly. There's still a perception that if you go to college and study "something," when you graduate you'll get a job from the magically place where jobs come from. This perception is being challenged, but it's a barrier.

2. The fields of study that tend to lead to higher paying roles also tend to be more challenging. The difficulty and popularity is somewhat "priced in" in the microeconomic sense. For instance, I think our society romanticized the humanities and arts, despite the harsh reality that these programs leave students with few concrete/marketable skills. And while I'm not saying that we should gut arts and humanities programs, I would argue that right now that skill-set is in low demand. Statistically speaking, the chances of success are low and the roles of distinction are scarce, leading to higher unemployment rate for certain fields of study. Add to that the general scarcity of good jobs, and an increasingly competitive economy as developing countries rise out of poverty and converge to the developed ones.

So what do we do? 1. I think our society should better educate it's citizens on these issues (what are the value propositions of certain fields of study, what can people do to be more successful, etc). I think we could also use some gov't coordination to ensure that the skills being learned match the desired skills of the market. Anecdotally I know of many firms that are hiring, but feel there's a mismatch between the skills available and those desired.

2. I think we should find some way to provide employment for at least some of these un/underemployed youths. The Civilian Conservation Corps from the Depression Era U.S. comes to mind. Basically, citizens were given the option to work on gov't infrastructure projects as an employment option. I like this because it both provides assistance to the unemployed and allows society to recover some of the cost of helping its citizens.

And congratulations, shanelja. The situation among some of my friends has been pretty bleak... It's always nice to hear an uplifting story...

eLobato• 14 years ago

Living in Spain at the age of 19 with no college degree, no matter how sharp your skills are, is truly a pain in the ass. It sounds like your parents were able to support you, did you never consider to move back with them then figure out your job prospects in the UK? I'm just imagining you're the son of one of the many British expats that live on the Canary Islands/Andalusian/Valencia coast. There aren't many tech jobs around there but I saw a few companies started by people in these typical expat areas that might be willing to take people like you (given you like Spain enough to stay in). Did you ever consider to stay with your family in Spain and try to get a college degree in there? In any case, glad to see it's working out so far. The best thing when you're in a hole is there's a lot of room for improvement.

shanelja4• 14 years ago

Before I reply, I will give some back story: I lived with my mother and sister in the UK and wasn't working, my skills with the Spanish language were poor to say the least and finding a job was proving near impossible.

I moved back to the UK to widen my prospects and it worked to be honest, even without a college degree I managed to find work, I did look in Spain, don't get me wrong, but there was nothing which resonated with me and I became disillusioned with the country and the idea of living there.

I did consider moving back to live with my mother, but the harder my situation became, the more focused I became on succeeding, if I moved back I would have given up a big part of me, my drive and passion for my work and my love for my girlfriend, there was no tangential course which I could myself being willing to give those up.

As for your last statement, I couldn't agree more, the lower you sink, the more scope there is for climbing. Every time I get kicked down, I feel more empowered, safe in the knowledge that I've been through worse things and I always found a way to make them better.

Of course, I couldn't have done it without the support of my friends or girlfriend, I can't thank them enough for the help I've had.

Crake3• 14 years ago

I'm really glad things are better for you. I hope they continue to improve.

calinet63• 14 years ago

This has scared me for quite some time: http://i.imgur.com/ZxBWh.png

and: http://i.imgur.com/u6aU2.gif

With a plausible explanation: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/04/the...

The only explanation I can come up with is that this happened because it could. Because money is self-reinforcing, and breeds power, which allows control.

But I don't think it's sustainable, and I think it's one of the largest, if not the largest problems with our society today.

1. I am not an economist. Is this view in any way valid? Am I seeing the right things?

2. What are the other causes? Surely the economy is complex and there are multiple driving factors.

3. What can we do?

Help us all if this can't be resolved. Because that graph is very, very scary and I see this going downhill fast if something doesn't change.

uiri• 14 years ago

I think it may have everything to do with how we're measuring productivity. The world in 1975 is obviously not the world today. The biggest difference being the personal computer and by extension the internet. How much of productivity gains are due to computers? Email can be near-instantaneous and although the paperless office is probably a pipe dream, filing and paper work have become less plentiful and are taking less time. Not to mention the advances in software which improve productivity. Of course, this is just in offices. You can go ahead and look at factories which are becoming more computerized and I'm sure the primary sector has benefited from computers too.

So, although workers of today are more productive - per dollar paid per hour/month/year, is it possible that people haven't actually been working harder but rather machines have been doing more work? Is it possible that these productivity gains represent value provided by giving every office an IT department rather than people working better (or harder or smarter)?

I think it is possible, but I don't think it is a satisfactory explanation. It could simply be the effects of supply and demand on the marketplace. Beyond a certain point, money doesn't buy happiness so I see no reason why the upper end of salaries would increase other than pure greed (which is consistent with lots and lots of increases in executive pay) and unskilled labour provides minimal value so why would machines making one interchangeable labourer able to do the work of two or three interchangeable labourers lead to an increase in the pay of interchangeable labourers?

ivany• 14 years ago

One way to look at it: years ago, we dreamed that all of the menial tasks that we do would be done by robots, and that we could enjoy endless leisure while our robot servants labored under us. The first half of this dream is coming true. Unfortunately, the second half is not, and consequently we wind up with robots (or IT) doing the menial work instead of us while we sit unemployed.

azernik2• 14 years ago

Economically, there's no real difference between productivity rising for different reasons. However, people "working more" has nothing to do with any of them - productivity measures value produced per time worked, and so rising productivity by definition means that people produce more with the same amount of time working. From this perspective, there's no reason why a productivity rise due to computers in the 2000s should be any different from a productivity rise due to better factory equipment or production processes in the 70s.

guylhem5• 14 years ago

If I may provide some help, economical theory has some explanations, including the Stopler Samuelson conclusion in the HO model for international commerce : in an economy focusing on the export of highly technical outputs, the best qualified have their "salary" go up, while the least qualified have their salary go down (leaving aside the fact that physical capital is responsible from most of the productivity gains, an explain Marx dislike since according to him it's all about how labor use and create physical capital)

You can get such a divergence if you have fewer qualified people than less qualified people. Wrong conclusion like the one mentioned in the blog post can be reached when using a representative agent approach, while the actual population follows an (at least) bimodal distribution.

In the end, there still is a divergence, but it doesn't have to be resolved - people either have to learn more and become more qualified and productive, accept their reducing wage, or move to another country (Mundell conclusion in the HO model IIRC)

There is no reason why someone should commend a higher salary than someone else, just for having won the birth lottery ie being born in a reach country. If someone from say India is more productive than me, I see no reason why I should get more money than them.

JoeAltmaier2• 14 years ago

A free market would help out some here; maybe its the lack of a global free market that is causing the disparity. In which case, being born in the wrong place would definitely put you at a disadvantage.

oscilloscope4• 14 years ago

Marx considered a decline in real wages, even with increased productivity, to be an inherent feature of capitalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immiseration_thesis

Also related is the capitalist crisis, which tends to destroy the accumulated wealth of workers in recurring boom-bust cycles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_theory

steveklabnik14• 14 years ago

From one person who understands Marx to another, expect to get heavily downvoted around here.

Every once in a while it's okay, but this isn't exactly a place that's friendly to criticisms of capitalism.

yummyfajitas2• 14 years ago

Some more graphs to look at:

Total compensation (including non-wage benefits): http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/RCPHBS

Cost index (attempts to control for composition changes): http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECICOM

Employers have shifted compensation from wages to benefits.

In answer to your question of what to do about it, very simple - eliminate the tax advantages of assorted non-wage benefits (e.g., treat employer-provided health insurance, 401k matchin, etc as income).

crasshopper10• 14 years ago

very simple - eliminate the tax advantages of assorted non-wage benefits

yummyfajitas, that may shift compensation more towards wage/salary rather than benefits. What is it going to do about the unemployed youth?

curt• 14 years ago

Remember all wage comparisons over time are basically useless unless you are comparing total compensation. You have huge costs that change over time such as federal employment taxes, unemployment insurance, workman's comp, 401k, and especially health insurance. These all eat into a persons hourly wage.

crasshopper10• 14 years ago

money is self-reinforcing, and breeds power, which allows control. ... I don't think it's sustainable

It sure sounds sustainable.

I am not an economist. Is this view in any way valid?

But you're quoting an economist.

Am I seeing the right things?… What are the other causes? What can we do?

I don't know if you remember the standard US economist's story for rising wage inequality in the late 90's and early 00's. It was "skill-biased technological change" or "perhaps trade". (I translate that as "No f___ing clue.")

If any economists have figured out why wage:GDP ratios are dropping, I haven't heard that explanation.

(Actually I have heard one but haven't thoroughly looked into it: declining union membership rates roughly anti correlate with the http://i.imgur.com/u6aU2.gif.)

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

It sure sounds sustainable.

It is sustainable up until the point where the guillotines are sharpened and the pitchforks come out. So probably about 10-15 more years on our current course.

polskibus• 14 years ago

Possible cause could be the rise of debt (the absolute total value of debt) as a major tool in fiscal policy and as a speculative financial instrument. The date where the two lines split on the first chart roughly coincides with the rise of hedge fund industry (see "More money than God" book for reference).

I'm not criticising hedge funds per se, but the trend they created in financial instutions at large.

marknutter7• 14 years ago

I'm out of my element here, but isn't the stagnation in wages counterbalanced by the availability of cheap goods and services? Sure, wages may not have gone up over the past 50 years, but your dollar can buy a heck of a lot more now than it could 50 years ago, thanks to cheap overseas labor, automation, technological innovations, etc.

It makes sense that wages would reflect this, too. People agree to work for a wage that will let them afford the quality of life they are comfortable with. If you can live as comfortably as you could 50 years ago at roughly the same wages, then there's no reason they would need to rise.

The final point is that the labor pool has roughly doubled since 1950 because women entered the work force. It's now more common to have two incomes per home than one, and it's only natural that wages would decrease accordingly. Again, it's because workers set a bar for themselves in terms of quality of life, and they simply want to reach that bar. If it can be done with two salaries buying cheap goods and services, then wages don't need to rise.

eli_gottlieb12• 14 years ago

Has the Consumer Price Index gone down?

chii3• 14 years ago

> it's because workers set a bar for themselves in terms of quality of life, and they simply want to reach that bar. If it can be done with two salaries buying cheap goods and services, then wages don't need to rise.

thats a post facto explanation, which i don't believe can be used to make predictions. I mean, will wages rise if suddenly, due to post peak oil, that cost of living suddenly became high?

I think the real reason wages didn't rise is because it didn't have to (from the point of view of the employer) - there are people willing to keep the same wage. In other words, people are becoming more and more worthless, especially unskilled workers (automation and robotics etc). Its a sad fact, but its true, and its a problem that needs fixing. Probably only fixable by better gov't policies on education.

guylhem5• 14 years ago

"Duane Taylor was studying the humanities in community college and living in his own place when he lost his job in a round of layoffs"

Read - this guy was not only studying something with a very questionable market value, but paying through the nose and going in debt for that, when the actual objective truth reminded everyone that indeed was the truth and that there was no way around it.

I'm sad for the suffering he incurred, but it was logical and likely.

redschell2• 14 years ago

My initial reaction was similar, but, upon further reading, it appears that his only family, his mother, was in similarly dire straits, and thus the option of commuting from home to save money was not available.

dnewms• 14 years ago

While humanities majors are on the lower end of salary scales, there are plenty of assumptions that you made there. For one, "paying through the nose" is unlikely -- one term at Seattle area community college is about $1,300.

guylhem5• 14 years ago

A tenth of that pays for a full year in the FWI, and leaves enough for ~ 3 month of housing. And there are other countries in the world - you don't have to study in the same place.

So I repeat myself - paying through the nose. Unless these things he did want to learn were so secret there was no public course online and no information on the internet, I fail to understand what kind of RoI this education would make during an education bubble.

I'm sorry he wasn't in a position to do something stupid (and something many people also did while managing to escape the consequences of their acts) but it was totally predictable.

purplelobster2• 14 years ago

I think you're being a bit harsh. He's partially to blame, but everybody makes mistakes. I think there's a slight lag in what people educate themselves in. For the longest time, only a minority went to college. When few go to college, having a degree at all meant you could get a job, so there was this culture of "study what you're passionate about, it'll be alright". This is unfortunately not true anymore, but this is what the older generations are telling us young people, because they haven't realized that things have changed. Today, you have to be able to make a life determining decision right out of high-school, with limited and outdated information and years of the older generations giving you an incorrect view. Soon we'll probably get an over correction with nobody going into humanities and loads of people going into engineering and computer science.

What's really needed is mandatory statistics for every degree and school on the form "1 year after graduation 70% of graduates was able to find jobs, 40% related to their degree, 30% with salaries of $50k+, do you still want to apply?". That's what's needed to even remotely be able to make a rational choice. If you're great at humanities and you love it, it might be worth the chance, but for us average people, we're better off with something that gives us a better chance of success.

kamaal10• 14 years ago

No, I would say you have to super dumb if you 'chose' to study something that doesn't have much value or doesn't pay well. Its your life and you have to make smart decisions. Its not a game, where you can just shrug it off as a mistake, blame the government and then expect something miraculous to happen.

Looking back, I can tell you about my own experiences here in India. When I opted to study engineering and before that science for my pre-university college, there were a lot of friends of mine who wanted to study history or commerce because it was 'easy'. Really, you have whole life to live on that and you take a wrong decision just because you want it easy for the next 4 years?

Now after 4-5 years when we were all looking for jobs, the very same people who consciously studied history and commerce complained that either had no jobs or jobs that payed very poorly. Most of them either ended either being clerks(where their jobs are constantly threatened by automation) or working at call enters. And again you see the same government blaming. How can the government or people around you help if you make wrong decisions all over the years?

And not surprisingly it turns out most of such people are generally the kind of guys who don't very hard and are always looking for short cuts. One fine day you suddenly wake up and realize its not that easy after all.

zalew3• 14 years ago

> For the longest time, only a minority went to college. When few go to college, having a degree at all meant you could get a job, so there was this culture of "study what you're passionate about, it'll be alright". This is unfortunately not true anymore, but this is what the older generations are telling us young people, because they haven't realized that things have changed.

So true. We're currently suffering badly a similar effect in Poland. My generation and current graduates were raised in the belief that you got to have a diploma to find yourself in the market. That led to a crisis of vocationale schools and an overflow of private colleges offering the wackiest fields to graduate in. Now we have waitresses and mcdonalds cashiers with degrees, and employees facing hiring problems because of unskilled labor. Of course all those "educated" youngsters are frustrated, they were told if they study they'll get a career other than salting fries. Only recently our education system started slowly recovering from this madness.

mgkimsal2• 14 years ago

"Today, you have to be able to make a life determining decision right out of high-school, with limited and outdated information and years of the older generations giving you an incorrect view."

I remember being terrified in 11th grade - all my friends were doing college applications, and it all felt permanent. I remember crying in the counselor's office one day, and she didn't understand the pressure.

"I'm being told I have to choose 'a major' in a college, which is going to determine the rest of my life, and I can't even drive yet". "Oh, don't worry, you can always change it later!" (She was nicer than that, but that was the gist).

SilasX3• 14 years ago

What I don't understand is, why weren't more people able to make the inference I did: "If a college education doesn't actually make you better at performing a job, then there's nothing to sustain the trend of employers from hiring you simply because you have one -- they could just quit doing it one day, and I'd be out in the cold. So I should take a major that is actually needed for certain jobs."

Or, to put it another way, "College doesn't actually make you a better worker for most majors, so hiring based on it is stupid -- that trend can't continue."

If I could see it long before applying for college, why couldn't others? Yet I was continually seeing many, many people around me taking majors with no clue as to how that would make them substantively employable.

kamaal10• 14 years ago

>>Read - this guy was not only studying something with a very questionable market value

One thing that a person must almost remember before doing anything(apart from recreational and entertainment stuff) is to immediately question the 'worth' of what he/she is doing.

So it goes like this. A couple of days back my manager spots a architect during lunch and starts talking about how great the architect is. The conversation over the lunch table descends down to my manager just showering praise on the architect about how much the architect knows. It went on for like 20 minutes and then at the end I just asked him- 'So, what is all that worth?', and then there was like dead silence after that.

Most of the problems exists because people do not understand how much they know or how intelligent they are is irrelevant to people around them. If you are wondering why the cab driver who drives you back home, or the guy who sells candy in the subway is financially worth more than you. You still haven't figured the mere basic fundamentals of the demand-supply problem. You have to sell/do/provide some product/activity/service which people need. It can be painful for you to know while you can architect a complex system, a intern who just arrived can make more money by selling a simple game on the android market.

Add to this class problems. People have a difficult time digesting that a cab drivers kid can go get a engineering degree while a clerk's kid can't. You also have to be ready to do something small time, or things that don't attract respect or jobs that don't command much self respect.

And lastly. Please save money, that's important. Theory say you can earn endless money. But if you are from the middle class, face the hard fact now. There is only X amount of money you will ever earn. So learning how to get rid of debts, savings and investments are crucial for your financial well being. If you are in financial mess because you have badly managed money- You can blame nobody else.

thoughtcriminal• 14 years ago

Hindsight is 20/20. Besides, we don't know the whole story. His rationale might have been perfectly understandable.

jlgreco3• 14 years ago

Ask any STEM undergrad what they think about the job prospects of their humanities peers.

This isn't a something that is really up in the air until you go through it and see how it worked out. Employment statistics are easy to find and are practically shoved down your throat when applying to colleges. Jokes about art students and coffee shops are now so strongly a part of popular culture that we see them in television advertisements.

There is a very large portion of the population that seems to have pretty crystal clear forward-looking vision with these things, and that's not a matter of luck but rather awareness.

In some situations the decision will only clearly bad in hindsight. Perhaps people looking to be lawyers or teachers a few years ago got legitimately blindsided. I think these cases are the exceptions that prove the rule though.

dkarl• 14 years ago

When somebody is employed and supporting themselves, it's pretty harsh to fault them for what they study in their free time. Plus, it's a community college. Studying the humanities is a good way to get practice and competent feedback on your writing, which has a crucial impact on how you're perceived professionally.

warfangle3• 14 years ago

No one should be penalized for pursuing education.

prostoalex2• 14 years ago

In the US that's a broad term. People go to a university to "pursue education" by throwing a leather ball to a guy dressed in tight spandex pants.

People who know the best technique of tossing a leather ball to another guy are currently the most valued education professionals in university system: http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/

jlgreco3• 14 years ago

Would you say the same of an education that did not come from a western university? What if instead of studying the arts in a school in Kansas, it is my burning life desire to hitchhike around southeast asia for five years. Should I not be "penalized" (read: not be in demand) for making that decision?

This isn't a silly exaggerated hypothetical either. It is exactly what I would have done if I had not valued career prospects so highly nearing the end of highschool.

Crake3• 14 years ago

True. Still, I found independent reading from library books to be much more informative than the liberal arts electives I was forced to take (and pay for) as GEC reqs on the exact same subjects.

Penalized for pursuing education, no. Penalized for making extremely poor life choices? Probably. But it's not really so much a penalty as an easily predicted result that people are steadfastly intent on ignoring, because that way they get four years of fun instead of work.

No one should be homeless and we should take steps to fix the hideously large gaping holes in our social safety net, stop charging $80,000 to attend even a state school, etc. Until it happens though, I think it's good to encourage an attitude of fiscal responsibility which is currently desperately lacking in many of those in my age group. So many have no idea how to budget their money because they live at home with their parents and have never had to pay for any living expenses.

I was really glad to see this article, though--I'm one of those people who don't have any family they can move in with, and I've come desperately close to being unable to afford housing in the past. Stressful times.

cullenking• 14 years ago

I spent three years studying whatever at community college, fulltime, while figuring out what I wanted to do. That's one of the best things about community college - you don't pay through the nose, you can learn for 'cheap' while you figure out what you really want to do. Then you can choose a university and go from there.

azernik2• 14 years ago

If he was doing this studying in a community college, he was likely not paying through the nose - Community Colleges are a type of two-year institution in the States that are supported by local government, usually charge per course rather than per semester, and rarely cost more than $1000 a year.

eli_gottlieb12• 14 years ago

The newspapers cherry-pick stories whose situations sound "rightful". There are plenty of unemployed accountants, lawyers, engineers, IT support workers and, yes, programmers.

AVTizzle3• 14 years ago

I'm torn whenever I hear stuff like this about my high-functioning (non-mentally handicapped) peers struggling out there.

Half of me thinks: How weak.

Don't they get it? It's not about "money" or "jobs". Those are abstractions. You have to create value. What do YOU do that's valuable? Why should someone hire you? Why should someone pay you?

Can't they see? Quit blaming the economy. Quit waiting to be hired. Bring the locus of control inside. Put in on you. Go to the public library and start learning. Make yourself valuable. With enough determination and will, you will find a way. Or you will make one. Less fortunate people than you have done it. Dumber people than you have done it.

That half of me recognizes that the hard work, the learning, the hours I've put in to get traction on a strong path of entrepreneurship wasn't handed to me. It wasn't intuitive. I make sacrifices, I toil, I struggle, but I make it work. Why can't they?

The other half of me wonders: Why do I realize all that? It's a rather meta though. But... I can't tell you honestly why my life fell into place so that I would be so driven. Why my life fell just so, so I would be curious enough to seek out the books, essays, podcasts, and blog posts that have shaped my entrepreneurial character.

Why was I drawn towards the heroes and role models that I was - business and technology leaders, instead of rock-stars or athletes - who inspired me towards a particular path?

Sure, it has taken talent, drive, hard work, and sacrifice to capitalize on the opportunity presented to me. But perhaps it was the greatest luck of all - the lottery of birth - that gave me those gifts in the first place.

redschell2• 14 years ago

I know how you feel. I count my lucky stars that I consider Elon Musk a role model and Kim Kardashian a fat-assed clown.

onedev• 14 years ago

This is so well put and exactly how I feel.

DamnYuppie• 14 years ago

The only issue I have with your first argument is that the majority of the people doing the hiring have no idea how to readily determine someones value. Often times they fall back on the easily quantifiable such as school, employment, and in our industry technical qualifications. Even at that few are able to administer even the barest of sniff tests to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Otherwise I don't really disagree with you.

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

You will discover a wealth of wisdom when you get the answer to this question: "Don't they get it?"

Of all the things I have chosen to do in my life, by far the most challenging has been raising kids. I cannot tell you how many times I wished I had some super power like telepathy to convey a concept directly into their brains because words just weren't cutting it. The whole idea of taking the locus of control and bringing it inside (love that btw) is what I wanted to teach, and sometimes it gets lost in the "You could make this happen, why don't you?!" Your kids have to be confident enough to know that their failures aren't a reflection on their worth, but not so confident that they push the failure outside and into a place where they can deny an ability to change it.

Once it 'clicks' the world changes, before it clicks you're adrift in the white water rapids of life. Once you 'get it' you realize you don't have to stop the river you just have to exert the necessary force to navigate around the hazards, before that all you can think is that "nothing can stop this river, its going to kill me!"

I haven't a freakin' clue how to teach that.

kamaal10• 14 years ago

I'm still single, and not kids.

Will it work if kids are given some lesson by sending through hard experience?

Lets say I tell the kid I will give him a buck extra for a buck he saves. How would the kid go about it?

bmelton6• 14 years ago

Agreed. I have an eleven year old daughter, and I'm constantly quoting the movie version of Alfred Pennyworth to her, in the perennial hope that some day it will just click.

"And why do we fall Master Bruce?" "So we can learn to pick ourselves up."

I like to think that I've done well, letting her get into programs that she finds worthwhile, hoping that she'll apply herself in a way I never did at her age. It's painful watching children fall in and out of like with things when they realize how much work is involved, but having given her exposure to enough things, I've found that when she can grasp onto the kernel of something she truly enjoys, it's a lot easier for her to overlook the effort involved.

It doesn't fix the fact that some things aren't worth trying for (especially eating her Spinach, though that one's obviously not crucial), but then you have to overlook that y'know, she's eleven, and if I'm honest with myself, she's a million times better at applying herself than I ever was at her age.

The only thing I've found that works is when there are crises, we try to collectively break down the problem into its smallest component parts, and deal with them in very small chunks. Another very useful tool has been the "Destination Imagination" program -- I don't know how old your kids are, or whether the program is available in your school district, but it is, specifically, an unstructured lesson in getting kids to learn creative problem solving through small, focused problems that they are challenged to solve (like how to most efficiently roll golf balls into a bucket on the other side of the room using a broom, two chairs, a pack of bendy straws, etc.)

Having been a judge for DI, I can assure you that the children came up with a variety of solutions I never would have fathomed, to varying (but often impressive) degrees of success.

jjoonathan2• 14 years ago

You think about them: "How weak." They think about you: "How lucky." You're both somewhere between half correct and entirely correct.

> Quit blaming the economy.

> With enough determination and will, you will find a way. Or you will make one.

You seem awfully certain of that. I can't help but wonder if this view derives primarily from confirmation bias or if it represents an accurate appraisal of the market. I think your conclusion holds with regard to the tech sector (most of us probably do) but I'm much less convinced that it generalizes. There's no cosmic entity guaranteeing that "a way" is present, only the economy. It's pointless to argue over the particular combination of self-reliant traits and opportunity that leads to success, but ignoring the correlation between the economy, opportunity, and success, is obnoxious and leads to short-sighted and self-serving policy positions.

> it has taken talent, drive, hard work, and sacrifice to capitalize on the opportunity presented to me.

See, here's the problem: there's a positive feedback loop between opportunity and success and down at the "no success" (poor) end of the spectrum the availability of opportunity is strongly determined by the economy. Talent takes time and resources to develop, drive takes resources to exploit, and hard work has no inherent value. You can't capitalize on something you you don't have. For the poor, acquiring resources means having a job, and it's possible for the conditions around that to be shitty enough to inhibit progress along self-determined directions even for the most driven of individuals. Nobody would argue that Chinese wage-slaves or starving African children are simply failing to capitalize on readily available opportunities. For less extreme examples of opportunity deprivation, less extreme conclusions still hold.

Just because the tech sector is in a fairly rosy position right now doesn't mean we should bury our heads in the sand and pretend like our victories are due to "superiority of drive" or "understanding of value". We should fight to increase the amount of opportunity available to society's poorest members. Sometimes this means offering resources necessary for "bootstrapping". Other times it means chopping down barriers to entry by punishing anti-competitive and monopolistic behavior. I don't believe our society does nearly enough of either.

I know that your post wasn't advocating a political position and was instead observing that a certain attitude is best for self-development. HOWEVER, I see way too many people who get drunk on the combination of this attitude with confirmation bias and then proceed to take the short-sighted and self-serving policy positions I mentioned earlier. End rant.

falcolas3• 14 years ago

I apologize in advance, but I mean every word.

What kind of entitled bullshit is this?

> Quit blaming the economy.

The simple truth is that it's difficult to get money in this economy without either an established job, and established home, or a reserve of cash from which to build something. Just because the tech sector is doing well doesn't mean that all sectors are doing well.

> Quit waiting to be hired.

What do you suggest? He build a company from the public library, while living out of a homeless shelter and eating in soup kitchens?

> Bring the locus of control inside. Put in on you.

I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. It sounds like something you'd hear at a bad self-help seminar.

> Go to the public library and start learning.

The man in this story was trying to get a degree (granted, humanities isn't one of the more employable degrees). He couldn't afford it; a public library is a poor substitute to a school.

> Make yourself valuable.

With what? He is lacking in resources from which to build his future.

> I make sacrifices, I toil, I struggle, but I make it work. Why can't they?

What makes you think they are not? Would you have been able to make it if you had been dropped from college halfway through your bachelors degree with no money? Would you have been able to get VC funding without the contacts you made in college, or even a home address?

Why do you think you're smarter than he is, and not just luckier?

zem4• 14 years ago

i could not have said it better myself. even if he is smarter and not just luckier, so what? the fact of the matter is, in sheer production terms it's becoming increasingly unnecessary for everyone to have a job; it's just that the "working and 'making your own way' is the only right/moral/ethical/deserving way to live" mentality is so deeply ingrained in people that they are unwilling to face up to the fact.

cuu508• 14 years ago

On waiting to be hired: if market doesn't need my skills I can either wait for market to change... or I can work on my skills.

If you have no other options, learning in public library will get you much further than doing nothing and pitying yourself.

Parent post concludes with similar thought as yours: maybe he was just luckier at birth. Being better educated, feeling smarter and more driven might all be consequence of that.

thisthisthis2• 14 years ago

It's the AVTizzle's that make things difficult for the young people in the article. He's right about one thing: it's not about money or jobs. It's about attitude.

The top poster has the right attitude.

But many people who are in a position to help others cannot because, while they may be able to manage many things, they cannot manage to adopt the right attitude. They will never be generous. They will never help the less fortunate.

I don't know how to define success in the general sense that it is often used in the context of careers (As the great New Orleans songwriter Allen Toussaint asked: What is Success?), but in my view generous people are successful. They have succeeded in adopting the right attitude.

Simucal• 14 years ago

> I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. It sounds like something you'd hear at a bad self-help seminar.

The locus of control is a psychology term[0]: "referring to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them."

I've had many peers growing up who had an entirely different attitude from me regarding what was within an individual's control and what was not. Many people hide behind the circumstances that they have been dealt without acknowledging that it is possible to change them. They simply give up and choose to see no path forward.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

bmelton6• 14 years ago

Why do you think you're smarter than he is, and not just luckier?

Did you read his entire comment? Assuming he didn't edit it after your post (and it appears he didn't, since he starts off admitting that half of him feels that way,) he concludes that "maybe I was just luckier."

He admits being torn on the subject, but that doesn't change that many able-bodied, mentally sound people can do more than they're necessarily capable of realizing while in the throes of despair.

"Pick yourself up by your own bootstraps" may not be the sort of advice that someone is able to grasp while depressed, but on the off chance they are able to hear it, it's sound advice. There's little doubt that many people, if not most people in the world could be trying harder than they do. It's also easy to get carried away with being down on your luck.

I don't disagree with many of the points you've made, but they also don't necessarily discount the points of the poster you responded to either. Self-teaching from a library might be a poor substitute for a proper university, but it's still miles and away better than sitting on your ass waiting for your situation to change.

Anyway, I'll apologize as well, because your knee-jerk reaction spurred one of my own, and I don't mean to seem harsh, but I think the criticism to the parent was unnecessary, and I feel like perhaps you missed the part where he bares empathy.

Edit: I completely blew my cool there. I don't think my narrative-voice was yelling, but it was definitely speaking in harsher tones than I like to, and for that, I owe you another apology.

I think I'm generally fed up with how unnecessarily mean HN has become lately, and how knee-jerk everything seems to be. This is me adding on to that, and for that I am genuinely sorry. I would like to ask though (of myself as well), in the future, if you could take 10 seconds and re-read a post before blasting its author, it would make a huge difference over all.

mtnman• 14 years ago

Wow. Not to get personal, but you're a douchebag.

AVTizzle3• 14 years ago

No offense taken.

bjustin• 14 years ago

Sometimes I think like the first half of what you describe. Surely, if you really want something and have a decent head on your shoulders, you can obtain it.

The problem is, sometimes you just don't understand. I have no concept of hard work, having largely coasted through high school and even maybe even more so in college. Were I homeless, I wouldn't know where to begin "creating value".

Fortunately, I'm employed as a software developer now. I stopped coasting and take my job seriously. Were I driven, I bet I would be an employer (or self-employed) rather than an employee. But then I also could make my savings work to avoid becoming homeless when not earning much money.

DanBC6• 14 years ago

Just to push a point about the effect of luck:

> But then I also could make my savings work to avoid becoming homeless when not earning much money.

You've taken reasonable steps to avoid homelessness.

What happens if someone pushes a software bug out to your bank?

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfina...)

(http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northe...)

It's easy to think "I would cope if I had no access to my bank accounts for three weeks" but until you've faced it it's hard to understand how tough it can be.

And for some people the consequences were a few extra days in jail:

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18589280)

crasshopper10• 14 years ago

How weak.

Of course, the weak are to be looked down upon!

May John Galt bless the boot of your heel as you crush those idiots who haven't figured out what DO they do that's valuable.

I'll be thinking of you next time I toss a Rails book at a homeless person and tell them to stop whining.

agilebyte• 14 years ago

For anyone in the Rand camp (I know I was), realize that even if people wanted to become the future workhorses of the World, a good quarter of us are ill either physically or at various parts of our lives mentally. It is a bit unreasonable to demand that people not be human...

HeyImAlex• 14 years ago

Tell me about your life. Supportive parents? Good school? College paid for? I can't imagine anyone other than a person who's definition of adversity includes "having to study really hard" making a post so sickeningly lacking in basic human empathy.

lnanek2• 14 years ago

Honestly, I often think the same sort of way. Blaming the economy doesn't do anything useful, even if it is at fault. The thing you can control most is yourself, so often you whip that. It does seem really strange to me sometimes when I see people having trouble finding work, but they won't relocate or other things that are simply meaningless to me. They do often have less resources to make themselves valuable, though. I had a computer and lots of free time to program constantly my whole life. Someone working fastfood who likes to socialize and smoke in their free time would have to give a lot up, or not even be able to afford to spend time learning even if they wanted to. Most of them don't want to give up their going out at night, or watching TV or whatever anyway. Oh, well, everyone has their own values. You can try to explain to them that they have extra variables and knobs they can spin when they get desperate enough to want to change at least.

chirp• 14 years ago

"With enough determination and will, you will find a way"

This line of thinking is very dangerous and patently false. You need to bone up on how much one's socioeconomic class affect your chances at doing anything. Besides which, your suggestion does nothing about addressing how to enable people to be productive, it just says that you try and be better than those around you, which even if that works, still leaves all the people you beat to suffer and become a drag on society as a whole. It also completely avoids answering the question of why this is even happening in the first place.

Let me ask you this, would you have the same suggestion to someone who is homeless in India? If you've been to India you'd see how ignorant your thinking is. Why do you people think that the US is some magical place where dreams and wishes come true if you just work hard enough? It's the bullshit the politicians feed us to make you all think we're all millionaires in waiting. This is why we're all going to hell in a hand basket. You need to start taking more responsibility for our fellow citizens. You want to live a place where it's just up to the individual to "make it", go to the developing world and see how much you like it. The reason it's better in the West is because we all share, or at least used to, a similar standard of living. This homelessness in the youth affects you whether you like it or not. You won't like it very much when your town is crawling with them and unemployment is double digits. I can tell you now that your shitty advice and self aggrandizing will be of no help.

"I can't tell you honestly why my life fell into place so that I would be so driven"

Your arrogance is breathtaking. Maybe if the street people start sucking Steve Job's cock the way you do they'll get a clue and start really sacrificing so they too can get ahead.

My best wish for you is that you fail miserably at everything you do so you'll get the chance to put your money where your mouth is, and work your way up to the top as you eat out of a garbage can and sleep under a bridge. When you do that, come back and I'll issue an apology.

ionforce5• 14 years ago

Wow, why don't you eat shit? His entire post was lamenting the fact that he is ignorant, why do you have to berate him over it?

DanBC6• 14 years ago

> But perhaps it was the greatest luck of all

It's a shame you buried this at the end of your post. It's also a shame that you don't appear to recognise that a life, any life, perhaps your life, can be destroyed by that same luck.

It takes surprisingly little to make a person homeless. Until someone's been in that situation they find it hard to understand why it's so hard.

Tichy7• 14 years ago

It's not a given that there is always something valuable to do. And even if you start some venture, success is not a given either. I agree with not giving up, but what if you need money right now, to eat and get a roof above your head? Starting some venture that creates value might take a while, too, and require some capital which you don't have.

yorak• 14 years ago

I think some people take AVTizzles comment or, as I see it, flow of thought too harshly. My interpretation of his comment is that he is not giving a statement or preaching about the true way (tm) of doing things Right.

I feel that he did a honest attempt to understand why it is so that at the same time there is capable young people sleeping on the streets and capable young people donating $500 million to charity? Why this world is like that? Some people seem to get angry when someone is trying to find out the reason why as if they'd have the answers. We all know that shooting the messenger does not help. Is is some kind of self-blame in works what drives people to a sort of resentment presented in some of the replies?

AVTizzle3• 14 years ago

Thank you for understanding.

kokey4• 14 years ago

I'm with you on this. I dropped out of high school because it was becoming hard for my parents to support me, and there was certainly never going to be any money for university education. This is in a developing country, where English wasn't even my first language. Yet, I've always had this curiosity that made me want to learn, and want to better myself and my life. I've moved between countries and started from scratch a few times, having to make opportunities for myself. I think I've been lucky to not be stupid, but I'm also wondering if my upbringing didn't help a lot more than I thought. My mother took me to the library a lot as a kid, and my father was never good with money or appeared hard working or ambitious, but he was always knowledgeable or able to explain things very well and a rational manner. I was left to my own devices and guided to take responsibility for my own well being and figure things out for myself. Maybe that was it, I don't know.

calinet63• 14 years ago

You got the "luck" part right. The rest, the "other half" you spoke of first, is solid gold bullshit.

We can talk about hard work and smarts all you want. You can even bring up outliers—cases where people have pulled themselves up from hardship and succeeded anyway. But they are not statistically supported. The truth is that the better upbringing you've had, the more opportunities you have had to improve yourself and your abilities, and the larger support network you have, the more likely it is you will succeed.

It really is that simple. It is situational. Purge your mind of the bullshit, because it is incorrect flawed logic.

eli_gottlieb12• 14 years ago

I see you've never heard the term overproduction before.

benburleson• 14 years ago

I'm 33 and remember when I was in high school, there was a trend growing in the grades below me to reward all students, no matter whether they achieved anything or not. "Participation awards" became the hot new thing. I honestly wonder if this has had an impact on that generation just after me.

angrycoder• 14 years ago

Puts a whole different light on the glamorization of couch-surfing and minimalist lifestyles.

ionforce5• 14 years ago

What do couch surfing and being minimalist have to do with earning a living?

techsupporter• 14 years ago

Two months ago, Mr. Tano gave up an apartment in his native Dallas after losing his job. He sold his Toyota and sought opportunities in the Pacific Northwest.

He rented a room and set out with his résumé (expertise: fund-raising). But when his $2,000 in savings withered to nothing, "I ended up sleeping on the street for the first time in my life," he said. "I just kind of had to walk around and try to stay warm."

I'm very hesitant to critique someone who is making what he or she perceives as the best choice, especially as a mostly-anonymous commenter on the wild Internet, so I'll frame this as general advice that I think really needs to get out on the general Internet: Do a little research before making a move like this. Dallas is one of the lowest-cost large cities in the country. $2,000 would pay for three months of rent and utilities in several areas of the Metroplex. Denton is cheap, if you like public transit, even to Dallas or Fort Worth, and being in a college town; virtually anywhere in the Mid-Cities is also cheap but lacks transit. And, as the news will tell you, jobs are booming down there. Seattle, on the other hand, is one of the most expensive places to live outside of California or New York. $2k will last a month or two, tops, even down in Rainier Beach or Othello. Yes, Seattle is a virtual dream land of fairly nice people, decent weather (it doesn't rain _that_ much), and a different brand of politics, but at least someone in this situation can still eat in Dallas. Young wanderer, if you're ever in this boat and still feel the yearning to move, try Austin.

(I moved from Dallas to Seattle with a very good paying job and relocation benefits. My wallet still hurts every month. I can't imagine what it would be like for someone in these straits to do the same.)

jjoonathan2• 14 years ago

This. In high school I was forced to take AP Human Geography (I was meeting a requirement) and I was genuinely shocked to discover just how much geography mattered.

Cost of living, cost of health care, job availability, industrial economics, EVERYTHING is a function of geography. Not in a subtle way, either: economic metrics that I thought would vary merely by 5% or 10% often varied by factors of 2 or 3 (health care) or 10 (for industry). If you are willing to optimize the geography function but haven't computed the value of doing so, you're missing out big time.

joonix• 14 years ago

Perhaps Americans can take some cues from more collectivist, family oriented cultures now. In my culture, sleeping on the street when your sister has her own place and a couch would be unheard of. I don't care how imposing it would be or how small my own home is, I wouldn't let my brother sleep on the streets. And what about parents? Uncles?

I do respect the struggle and pull yourself up mentality, but that's a lot easier to do when you have an address, a safe place to sleep and a shower. We have to face the reality that there are economic factors at play here, and it's not always someone's own fault if they are down on their luck in finding work.

zem4• 14 years ago

yeah, that kind of shocked me too. no matter how poor i was, if i had a roof over my head and one of my relatives did not, i'd find a way for them to stay with me.

mgkimsal2• 14 years ago

Even if they were a convicted pedophile and you had small children in the house? That was a situation a friend of mine faced recently. Oddly enough, it was similar to a situation another friend's family faced 20 years ago (minus the conviction).

ladzoppelin• 14 years ago

Most people in this country agree with you and probably even have somebody to lean on in a situation like this however most does not mean everyone. The person in the article probably did not want to get into the real reason which is why his explanation seems strange. I feel really bad for this person and hope he at least finds a way off the streets.

Wingman4l72• 14 years ago

One of the NYTimes commenters made a good counterpoint to this: just because you have family with a home does not mean moving in with them is a viable option -- said family may be drug addicts, violent, mentally ill, abusive, or manipulative.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/us/since-recession-more-yo...

dclusin• 14 years ago

As someone with an older sibling who meets 4 of the 5 aforementioned criteria I can confirm that no it is not always that easy. Giving him a place on my floor wouldn't really do anything to improve his circumstances or outcome. What makes me the saddest is the realization that more than likely I will end up burying him in less than 5 to 10 years time. That sounds like a rather callous thing to say, but after watching my parents spend upwards of $100k on treatment program after treatment program it seems like there isn't any other choice but let him figure it out on his own. He's pissed away every opportunity he's had his entire life and it's time for him to take ownership of his own life. Not expect someone to always come running with an open checkbook.

mynameishere• 14 years ago

The vast majority of people living on the streets have terrible mental illnesses and/or chemical dependencies. Please don't confuse storytime with data.

calinet63• 14 years ago

Chiming in here, I'd never let my brother or any family member or friend sleep on the street or in a shelter. I think there are so many people in the US who agree with you.

Part of it true, there is a broken culture here where the wrong things are valued. But there are islands of virtue we cling to.

html5web• 14 years ago

I've recently arrived to NYC with Green Card (permanent residence program), I'm from Uzbekistan I've worked in my country as Web Designer, I've applied to more than 100 Web related jobs, in NY I but no result. since November 20th (my arrival date) I've done almost all jobs, moving helper, Dunkin' Donuts baker, Delivery helper at supermarket, Busboy at restaurant (all part time jobs). Nobody gonna hire me. I feel myself lost in the big NYC. I hope 'll find a job I want.

nlh• 14 years ago

Welcome to NYC, and I hope you end up doing something you love and that pays you well for it.

I'm curious -- how are things here compared to back home? Are you earning more in your part-time jobs here than you did back home? I know it's only been a month, but I'm just curious about your perspective.

I ask because I've heard a lot of stories from a lot of immigrants and they cover a HUGE range. I've had some guys tell me that they're thrilled to be earning $7/hour, that they love living in a home with 10 other people, and that they're happier than they've ever been because compared to back home, they're earning 10x as much, living with heat, hot water, eat well every day (McDonalds is well for them), and are _still_ sending money home.

So it's a matter of perspective -- just curious to hear your story...

tudorizer• 14 years ago

A link to your portfolio or some of your work on your profile would always help ;)

vellum• 14 years ago

You'll get better results if you spend more time introducing yourself at tech meetups, and less time browsing monster.com A lot of those job sites are black holes as far as resumes are concerned. I don't know all get-togethers in NY, but meetup.com is a good place to start.

jibjaba• 14 years ago

There are a lot of very entitled comments to this post. I have a feeling that many of those commenters have never experience true hardship. It's easy for such a person to overlook the myriad of advantages they have and have no conception of the difficulties faced by people without them.

Before making the typical ignorant "you have the power to change your life" or "stop being lazy" comment ask yourself how much do you really know about what the bottom 10% of society life is like. This question itself has issues of course, one of which is that many people do not know how little they know. Spend some time ding a little research online. Several interesting stories came out during the run up to last US election. Typically of conservatives whose idealogical world view proved inadequate when they ran into real people with real problems.

moultano• 14 years ago

It was quite a shock the first time I saw a homeless person who was younger then me. Until then I had been able to rationalize them away as the responsibility of the previous generation, but no longer.

dmd149• 14 years ago

I wrote a blog post not too long ago about my experience moving to a city with no job or apartment. I detail what my "unfair advantages" were and what the emotional impact was like. I think my experience would most likely to apply to young people from middle to upper middle class backgrounds.

The most surprising part to me was how little I got done with my side projects, especially considering all the free time I had. You get into a funk and you just really don't want to do anything. Small wins make you really happy, but the rest of your free time is spent in this kind of depressed funk.

Here's the link if you care to read it:

http://dalethoughts.com/2012/11/what-its-like-to-move-to-a-c...

cloudshoring• 14 years ago

It is difficult to imagine the plight. Is there a way, some of us could join hands and create a fund to help the needy.Perhaps create a micro financing system,that can help some of them who could get a job and pay back or if they are entrepreneurial and they could attempt and succeed.

There are jobs outside the US,I have met youngsters from the UK and US who work here in India in the IT and Financial companies for reasons such as this. perhaps the qualified can temporarily get a reprieve until the economy becomes better, make sure there is a predictable job and earnings.

Some or many of us could join hands to explore how we could help and if there is a possibility act on it.

All these may be wild thoughts, but a lot of things are possible if we could try .Even a small up-liftment may be of significant help.

Let me know your thoughts. sankar@cloudshoring.in

Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street

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