One thing I have noticed is how prevalent the hustle culture has become among Millennials. LinkedIn is a hotbed of narcissism, and Twitter has a ton of self-proclaimed business superstars who have made money by having companies entirely dependent on using foreign labor and providing shitty service for customers. It's quite appalling how often you hear fellow Millennials go on and on boasting about their own "successes" or try to sell themselves without an ounce of honesty.
The hustle of creating "passive income" means that we are going to see a lot of sociopaths becoming landlords and doing the bare-minimum for those who rent from them, and the quality of services will continue to decline across all companies as there is no value in providing a good service, merely making money. The decline of quality we have seen from the boomer generation onward (yes, that includes you, Generation X, you aren't exempt from being self-destructive narcissists like your parents and your children) is going to ramp up significantly.
Some people will say, "blame the system, not the person," but for god's sake, eventually someone has to stand up and refuse to operate as basically a scam artist. For as many supposed "leftists" there are among Millennials, they sure have no qualms about taking the worst aspects of human greed and using that as their core business model.
Am I over-exaggerating here?
Unfortunately that's because narcissism is what gets rewarded in the labor market. Having powerful friends, err I'm sorry, networking is the be all end all of getting work these days, because fuck having skills. Narcissism just makes it easier to obtain what really matters.
Most networking is pretty useless. The only time networking helps is if a family member knows someone. Networking with random strangers is absolutely useless.
That's not how that works, and that's why it's useless. You actually have to build a genuine relationship with people who will then present you with opportunities because of your metaphysical connection, rather than your material one. This would not be an issue in a parochial community because you would know this person and his family because they live down the road.
Instead, you have to actively socialize and befriend these people into a proper social network that most modern Americans do not know how to do.
If you're networking with strangers then you're doing it wrong. I see a lot of discussion online that straight up doesn't get it. There's this notion going around that you shouldn't make friends at work, that your colleagues can't be people you develop strong social connections with. You know how you build a professional network that's going to result in people setting you up with future work? You simply have to not be a complete sperg and allow yourself to make some friends. Because of that I've been able to both set people up with jobs when they needed them as well as had opportunities handed to me on a silver platter.
Just embrace the fact that humans are social animals instead of subscribing to the unhealthy idea that you have to always keep everyone at arm's length at the workplace.
This is even more important now than it ever was, since the "lifelong employee" concept is dead. So all those friends you make at work are going to fly out into dozens of other jobs and fields, leaving you an in to follow them if need or desire be.
No offense, but the replies are correct on this one. Besides your own skills, networking is the most valuable commodity both in school and in work. The best opportunities spread by word of mouth, not public notices that anybody can read on the internet.
If you're in college, work through problems with other kids as much as possible. This is a top method to succeed. Even if they're slower than you sometimes, you still firm up your knowledge by teaching it to others and do people favors that will pay off later.
Minor example, there's this dude at work who can be pretty hard to deal with. Because I'm friendly with him, he just got me into a deal with tools that saved me hundreds of $.
Networking is what matters because regulators, certification, academics, and HR have all entirely failed to do their jobs, and everyone is lying.
Companies simply can't believe anything they see, and even if you have the correct mertiocratic qualifications, your psychological conditions may prevent you from working effectively in the environment or with the team.
As a result, the level of work required to suss out a good candidate whom you can employ for 3-5 years is neigh-on-impossible.
Therefore, what most places value is trust. If a person that they trust, says that you can be trusted; that's worth it's weight in gold because they don't have to work nearly as hard to analyze you, judge you, watch you, even after you're hired for the next 90 days.
It's no joke, I've seen the data. Referral hires have the best track record because the person referring them already knows whether or not they'll actually meet the real qualifications of working at a place every day with a set of people.
We built a materialistic, low-trust, fraudulent credential, economy and as a result trust has become the single most valuable asset that a person can have.
I don't disagree with you for the most part, especially the part of about fraudulent credentials (hello woke degree mills!). I just have first and second hand accounts of "trust" meaning "in the club" in reality, and that part shields them from having to actually be competent. Companies never seem to complain about the well connected fuck ups they employ, so when the well connected part is taken out of the equation it's difficult to sympathize with their concerns.
The problem is they're not really interested in selecting for good candidates outside the networking process because that takes real work on the part of the hiring manager. My mom told me a story about how her company hired a finance major for a rudimentary accounting job. The guy was retard who couldn't figure out basic credits and debits and their takeaway was that they needed to stop interviewing non-accounting majors for jobs like that instead of, you know, taking basic steps to filter out retards. For anyone reading that isn't aware: All majors in the school of business (accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) take the same "business core" as part of their major that teaches basic stuff like that. A finance major with an IQ above 85 would have been able to figure out that job.
This is a bit of rant, but it's born out of frustration with employers who whine about how hard finding good people is when they use their inability to find a networker as a pretext to hire the cool bullshit artist since he'll be fun to be around at least. It's all that not dissimilar from women who whine about not being able find men with ABC when they're selecting for men with XYZ.
I agree that that is the pathological version of this. Fundamentally, because trust is more valuable than competency at this point, laterally being in a boys club and schmoozing around with people is more valuable than a 4 year degree in mathematics (3.5 years of which is gender studies and critical race theory). Within that, con-men (literally: confidence men) will find such environments perfect to operate in. In the worst case, the entire social structure is run by the predators (con-men), and so it becomes impossible to ascend without fraud. This has happened many times already.
We're not really disagreeing, I'm pointing out the back-end explanation of what went wrong.
This is all part of the same competency crisis, though. The HR departments that recruit are operating under all the exact same ideologies as any Leftist. They will refuse to hire non-retards based on skin color unless they have no other choice. The hiring managers will also be retards as well. It's retards hiring retards, and the company (in abstraction) can't figure out why nothing is working. They don't realize the horrible truth that every component part is broken.
So, they rely on the networking process. But if they don't know how to network properly and filter people out correctly (which is a whole different skill set in and of itself), they will also not be able to filter out retards or predators.
It's not wrong. There is a feminization of society and institutions that has broken social structures based on masculine concepts and frameworks.
I dislike handing out blackpills, but... depending on the type of job you're talking about, it gets even worse.
Most government jobs, you'll find really quickly, have no meritocracy whatsoever. It's pure nepotism above a certain level of authority. You might find a diamond in the rough every so often(and said guys tend to be REALLY fucking good at their jobs), but most often it's all about how many dicks you've sucked to get where you are.
Of course, there's a flip side to that - because they've sucked so many dicks to get where they are, they expect everyone else to kneel down and fellate them. And when you don't, they get really pissed off. Ask me how I know!
Thankfully, I've only ever had to deal with this from the outside looking in, but it's hilarious watching how they break when you refuse to bow down to thier little kingdom. Sadly, you can only do this in certain situations. I doubt people would appreciate, for instance, me pointing out how service went straight to shit when they started hiring on a bunch of black women to fill the positions for all the white men who were retiring...
Let's be real, we've built a low trust society.
Let's be even more real: the American populace has been actively ignoring that our government hasn't built anything and instead let the country fall into disrepair.
You wouldn't look at a falling down, foreclosed house in Detroit and say "ah they built a shitty house."
I live in NY State -- and one of the biggest things I have learned is that blue states are AMAZINGLY worse off than Red states.
Basic infrastructure isn't failing, it has failed. I am talking about traffic lights that never turn green, or turn green towards a parking lot for 45 seconds at 3am. Potholes that never get filled. Police that never show up when you call 911 (had a guy in the middle of the street stopping cars and screaming at people).
Why would anyone have any trust for anything when basic services are broken beyond repair?
Yes, entirely.
The solution isn't to browbeat them, it's to put them out of business.
That would be possible of companies weren't being protected by inflation and regulation.
Stress business enough, and you know what they do? Fire those 2 negative contributors no matter who's friend they are. That's why deflation and contraction are important.
Honestly, I've come to the conclusion that what you do matters less than who you work with.
Actually look for businesses and people that seem to have high-integrity and would be a good people to work with. The skills you learn along the way are w/e. And yeah, smaller can be mostly better. My "trust" argument works both ways. Interview them as much as they interview you.
You could always take a potential pay cut and go more local, but you'll also need to take more leadership, training, and organizational roles to help them build up to where they need to be.
So, for example. Let's say I'm going to quit my job as someone who has a supervisor role for an IT Help Desk. My primary concern is not pay, it's going to be the integrity of the people. I might see who has some of the best reviewed service desks. Look through the company on glass door and see if anyone mentions whether IT was good or bad. If I get a response back from their HR, I'm going to want to press them on those credentials more than anything else. If I'm in the interview, I'm going to ask them how would they handle examples of employees that need training, or how they would try to correct or assist with an employee's deficiency. How would they structure opportunities for people to both grow their careers and develop themselves personally. I'd want them to tell me a story of what they think leadership looks like and how it's important.
The only thing these shithole Leftist oligarchs have anything going for them at all, is the giant pile of money they steal from innocent people who don't know how hard they are getting raped. Smaller companies with a better reputation for quality and professionalism is where you should focus on working and developing a career.
This is such a lower mindset. The reason you hire only people you know or friends of friends is because that's the ONLY legal way to vet anymore.
Why the fuck would I take a chance on some stranger who claims to have skills instead of just going with somebody I trust's son who at least has been vouched for.
The rest of this thread is equally retarded, using "networking" to mean connecting with people on LinkedIn in, instead of demonstrating your capability to those you have relationships with and trading on that reputation.
I have customers I never called, never met personally, and don't even share a language with that carry certain months. Simply because I took care of their brother or friend and they gave the recommendation.
Y'all want to talk about white communities and living off the grid but you won't make the connection that that's how things function in such a place. That's what gatekeepers IS. Not this pseudo liberal "meritocracy" that never existed in the first place.
Blame the system is just a cope to rationalize the awful behavior.
The system is its elites.
Right? I'm sick and tired of people who see tyrannical or unethical shit and just say "they are just doing what they had to" or "they're just doing their job".
As if being a cog in the machine doesn't perpetuate the function of the machine.
The woke infestation in corporations has also shown that "they just do what makes money" is also untrue, and that there are people making decisions in spite of what makes money involved everytime.
Truth is: Passive income only exists in scams or deflation.
In a normal human economy where perpetual inflation is not the goal, your savings would just sit there, and not spending money would increase your purchasing power over time. Since that's not possible, but everyone still intuitively wants it "passive income" to keep up with inflation has become the goal of all people with money.
However, since no one can passively gain income, even money lenders, everyone who is saying they have a mechanism is comitting to a scam.
The problem is, your criticism exists at all levels, including the ultra-wealthy, and for corporations. Since no one can save money to gain purchasing power, everyone has to try and make more money at greater than 3% a year to outpace inflation.
Your worried about something that already exists and will continue until regular deflation can occur.
I know you want to hit back with the fact that you don't want to just blame the system, and I get that, but literally nobody can adjust properly until the government stops printing money. And because the entire Fabian Socialist economic order is dependent on that; the moment it does, you will get a global financial meltdown worse than the fall of the Spanish Empire.
Now, I will say that I am basically doing that by simply saving tons of money to accrue large capital to wield as a large single investment. And I'm stacking metals and crypto, knowing that inevitably there will be corrections within the decade that will hurl their value up. But most people don't want to live like me, where they are saving 50% of their income. Most people actually can do that, they just aren't prepared to strip away all of their own private welfare programs and live with the responsibility of figuring out when and how to spend money. If you spend $120 a month on health insurance; you are so attached to that, you wouldn't consider saving $120 a month in the event you need health care. Nor would you be willing to risk only saving $30 a month for a while so you can spend it on other things. We've convinced people to bankrupt themselves for nothing.
I've tried to tell people this about myself. It seems I have the perception among many of being rich. Having real estate, or a sports car, or whatever will do that to your perception. The thing is, I'm not. I've only got regular job income on par with a lot of what these same people who think I'm rich have. My actual living expenses are just so low, but a lot of it is from leveraging responsibility and mindset. I guess similar to what you'd call avoiding private welfare. I do that down to a tiny level though, when it comes to recurring expenses I'll save $2 a month if I can. This mindset goes back to when I was barely an independent adult. Simple things like if there is something recurring I want to pay for, say it's $10/mo or $100/yr. I'm going to pay for the year, because that's $20 in my pocket. I may also think about if I really want whatever that recurring cost buys me. In a lot of cases the answer is really no. I'll hear people that buy a car and add on the wheel damage plan or whatever because it just made their payment go up a little bit. That little bit might be $500 in the end. Whoever is selling that plan is not doing it as charity. Why pay them to make money I could be saving?
Don't get me wrong, I don't really save 50% of my income in the most classical sense of the word. Maybe 30%. I don't know, I'd have to argue what counts as savings to really give a number.
I totally get it. But, I've explained like how ammunition works in Metro 2033.
In the game, they came up with the idea of ammunition was money.
You buy it to save it, and then use it all at once in a firefight you need to defeat bosses or large forces.
If you think of your budget like that, it makes a fuck-ton of sense on how to save money and why.
Unfortunately, keeping an eye out for someone stealing your money after you've earned it is the price you pay for having wealth at all. With power comes responsibility, with freedom comes vigilance.
As a guy who refused to get credit cards for a long time, I regret that decision now. First because cashback on spending gains me more "effective interest" than my savings and checking accounts do, particularly under inflation. Second, because I have a nearly perfect credit score now because I treat my credit cards like debit cards. I'm getting offers for personal loans with low interest rates and shit apropos of nothing. If I need a genuine infusion of capital, it's actually at my fingertips.
That doesn't mean I'm not stacking as you noted.
Gradually buy up the plots around your house and build a kingdom.
And how many jews do you blame when you cry into your sheets at night?
No matter how much I despise you, I'll give you this lesson because improving your life will make you less retarded.
Rent typically isn't 50% of your income unless you are living alone and making very little money. For example: here's a shitty little corner of Pittsburg for $435 /mo. That's $5,220 a year. If that's 50% of your income, you're only making $10,440 a year, or around $5 /hr.
It's a little shit-pot, but it's workable. Get that, a reliable car, and grind out every hour of paid work that you can until you can create a pile of savings. That 20%-50% savings rate should be a goal of yours. That way, when the time comes to pay out for a real apartment, or a real car, or (much better yet) a real house, you can put that money down on it. Instead of feeding into a rental system. I don't like mortgage debt-based financial vehicles instead of savings, but that is one of the rackets you can get into and do well enough with if you don't blow your money out of your ass.
Middle class people are perpetually in debt, but it doesn't hurt them because they don't ever need to fully pay their debt off. The mortgage actually becomes a giant loan guarantee. So long as you keep working you can actually change your loan so that you can buy new houses with it. You could literally: get a mortgage on a broke-ass $50,000 house. (Okay, it's super weird I found one that isn't even that bad, actually) So long as you keep reliably paying it back, your debt becomes your savings. (Again, I don't like it, but this does work for the fiscally responsible) You don't have to pay that mortgage entirely off. You can both move into bigger or smaller houses and your loan company can adjust the mortgage for you, and take the sale price from the other house, and put it into your new loan. So long as you keep paying on time, you can even pull 'equity' out of your house. Meaning that they will give you some money up front from your mortgage as cash on hand.
If there's no way for you to save money, you can actually use this debt system to use the bank's capital as long as you are continuing to pay your debt reliably and get a good credit score.
"I have bad credit"
It's fixable. Start by getting secured credit cards. They literally won't let you spend past what you put in. Do that for a few months, and get a zero APR credit card. Something from Discover or the like. This way if you somehow manage to fuck it up, you can charge the credit card and pay your minimums. You SHOULD NOT be doing that, but if you end up having to do that (like, say, your car needs an new alternator); it won't kill you. Do this again for a few months, then get another credit card. Yes, you'll have several credit cards now, but that's fine because you'll ALWAYS TREAT THEM LIKE THEY WERE DEBIT CARDS. New credit cards that are being paid off well are given more emphasis than old bad debt. Multiple credit cards becomes multiple credit lines that are each weight more heavily than old bad debt. SO LONG AS YOU ARE PAYING EVERYTHING ON TIME, you'll actually build credit very rapidly. You could genuinely go from 300-800 in a year if you are diligent.
Again, I'm opposed to this debt system, but if you have zero capital, and you can budget correctly, you're good and you'll move up the socio-economic ladder very quickly. This is because the financial industry doesn't really want you to have capital anyway, but they'll love you if you just pay your damn bills.
Haha wait until it's zoomers. They don't give a shit about anything, and they are the laziest pieces of shit to ever walk the Earth. Dealt with an office full of them recently on a relatively important matter. They'd just ghost me for days on end, not returning emails, not answering the phone. Then They'd just start communicating again when they felt like it and pretend everything was fine.
I have rental property--really don't understand the slumlord mentality. I guess it's like you say make a quick buck now or whatever. In my opinion it's a very short term mindset. I have a property manager to deal with tenants, but our arrangement is to not skimp on maintenance. Earlier this year I told them to totally replace the HVAC unit, because honestly that old one was a lemon and I was sick of throwing parts at it. Yeah, it wasn't cheap, but in the long run it's way cheaper than repairing it every 3 months.
If I had to guess, a lot of these people actually can't afford to upkeep their property though. They stretched way too thin to buy it thinking it would be passive income and if you have a nasty mortgage on the property there's not necessarily a ton to be made. I own mine outright, but if I still had the mortgage that was originally on it (at much better terms than you'd possibly get today), looking forward to next year I'm probably only breaking even. Costs have gone up. I'm considering raising rent and may discuss with property manager to see their thoughts, very well may leave it alone though for another year. Cheaper to keep a tenant who pays on time every month than risk it for $50 or $100 more they might not want to pay. It will have to go up eventually though.
Thought about buying another next year, but it would be on a mortgage and with the atrocious terms of those right now, I'll probably look for some land I can build on in the future that I can buy with cash instead.
Yeah hopefully so, or whenever I sell it I won't have the value of a beaten down shithole. There's not many rent houses where I live and of course I get one right by me that gets neglected. It was never even a bad house, but whoever owns it does the absolute bare minimum to maintain it. It had a decent size tree branch fall near my fence. A tree service comes out to fix it, only does the bare minimum. They could have paid the service who was already an extra $100-200 and pruned the entire obviously neglected tree. They didn't and a big branch fell on their roof and damaged it, which is still not fixed. No way is that cheaper than just fixing it the first time. It's so dumb.
I always had a colloquial understanding of the word "hustle" to mean (in this context at least), something illegal or VERY shady that you usually do on top of your legal job. ie, selling pot to your buddies after work, managing Direct TV accounts for Canadians, or what Nick Wilde was doing with those popsicles in Zootopia.
So when I hear that word, I understand that I'm dealing with a crook ...
Honest folk just call it a "second job". Or side job.
I don't have a problem with renting out property you own, I just have a problem with Millennials who put the bare minimum effort possible when renting the property out and treat the renters like shit. Even though the end goal is to make money, you still have a responsibility to maintain the property prior to residents moving in. You also have a responsibility to ensure that the property is maintained in ways beyond the control of the renters. That fact is lost on many landlords and the Millennial hustlers often embrace the slumlord mentality.
Basically everything you described here are things my grandfather was doing or talking to his friends that were doing it a decade+ ago. And they are in their 80s. All of them certainly worked hard to reach a level of wealth and nepotism to get to that point, but the idea was very well known and underway for many of them.
So I think your only over-exaggeration is blaming the Millenials, which is probably because of a core difference between the generations. Which is millenials are boastful and don't like to keep shit to themselves, so they will loudly promote and share these ideas for accolades, while older generations from the "don't talk about your income" days will keep it to their close circle.
Of all the things to be mad about, "my peers becoming financially successful" is near the bottom.
tbf most of them are probably lying about their income too, or are running on loans and vc cash. you never know how leveraged someone is.
When the money system collapses they will all be gone.
I don't see the problem you've described at all.
My understanding of the problem you've described is that you feel millennials are doing anything they can to make money which includes being a slum-lord and therefore quality of service is going down because millennials care more about making a quick-buck than they do about quality-of-service. Correct?
Again, I don't see it. I see slum-lords but not millennials. I don't foresee there being any significantly more slum-lords in the millennial generation because of their pursuit of a quick-buck.
I also don't see anywhere in the market where quality of service has come down because of these things... You describe guys who do shitty work by outsourcing the work to other countries. Bro, is this the 1970s? That ship already sailed.
When I go through the drive-through and I get shitty service, guess who's working behind the counter? Shaniqua. It has nothing to do with millennial side hustles. When I call up tech support and get Rajesh on the line, I already know it's going to be a struggle and it's not because Rajesh has a side hustle. When I'm contacted by Hussein for some financial product, I know to be weary and it's not because Hussein is doing a side-hustle.
Check out the HR Departments of most major corporations. I can tell you why the quality of service is going down only from looking at the photos of the people in the HR Department. And it has absolutely nothing to do with millennials having a side hustle.
No taxation without representation.
Till then.
Kumbayah.
The people brought in like the Indians tend to only hire other Indians and have been active participants in outsourcing everything to India. However, that doesn't absolve Millennials of perpetuating the decline through their "I'm a brilliant business guru" approach to business.
I remember O'Leary saying that shit on the Canadian version of Shark Tank too.
He'd call any entrepreneurs morons if they were still producing their product domestically and hadn't already outsourced and scaled up their production before coming hat-in-hand for seed funding.
Globalist is gonna globalist.