> Generation Z (Gen Z) has a reputation for being challenging to work with and difficult to manage.

If you do not compare the results with a similar poll for when other generations where entering the market, the article reads like an arbitrary roast on Gen Z.

I will not get fooled by their domain name!

Every generation of Grandpas claim the winters were colder and the fish were larger then when they were kids. I won't be fooled into believing climate change and fish population collapse!

Maybe every generation of graduates is getting less employable.

To add what you said, the poll asks: " 25% state that all recent college graduate hires worked out well, while 62% mention that only some were successful. Further, 14% report that only a few or none of the hires were successful."

The interpretation of result depends on what "some" means, it could be reasonably be 50%, 75%, 85%, or 95%. If it's 50%, it seems bad. If it's above 75%, that's pretty good overall,

One good thing about most college graduates is that they can generally learn new things quickly, especially if they’re willing to put in some effort.

There is a lot of truth to this, in my experience. Larger companies (F500) have formalized rotational programs for new grads which sets them up for success, but they can only take a limited amount of grads and almost no middle + small companies have anything similar.

The corporate culture of hiring new grads seemed to die in the GFC of 2008. Companies thought it would be too great a risk to hire someone with no experience, so they would have job postings for candidates with "2 to 5 years of experience." This is also why we have a perpetual talent shortage in that demographic, bc everyone wanst them and there isn't a new pipeline of young people to back fill that range.

Companies are not hesitant to hire only:

- 25 with 10y exp

- no kids

- no plans for family

- keen to unpaid overtime

- no vacations planned

- underpaid and happy

Kind of ppl. Who would have thought ?

Complaints against self absorbed and lazy millennials have been an annoying trope for my entire professional life.

The ancient Greeks complained thier kids were disrespecting them.

I do enough work with new grads to feel comfortable declaring the kids are alright. Gen Z doesn’t feel different fundamentally from millennials to me. We’ve had good (mostly) and bad hires over time. College hires (really any early in career hires) have more variability over experienced hires because they may not belong in it profession they’ve chosen, but that’s been true over time.

The one really shocking number is the 6/10 have fired a recent grad. Given how hard it is to get rid of someone generally that is a huge number.

FWIW, the last firing of a new hire I was remotely a part of involved a Gen x or elder millennial woman who could not behave appropriately at work and managed to document her inappropriate behavior on company IT assets.

I could see this as a first step towards some more interesting work and data collection, but can't imagine there is any actual signal here worth writing about.

The worst thing they do is say no.

When I was a student I was hanging out in an IRC room for discussion of SELinux, asking questions. One night a Red Hatter PMd me and invited me to apply for a job, which was an exciting thing because I'd never been asked to apply for a job before. But my heart sank because the job ad had a huge list of requirements, so I regretfully informed the guy that I couldn't apply because I did not have enough years of experience. He just laughed and said there were probably five people on the planet who actually met those job requirements and told me to apply anyway.

In the end I didn't because I wasn't actually finished with the degree at that time, but the way he treated the job ad as a bit of a joke was definitely a useful life lesson. Job ads are often not written by the people who want to hire, so a lot gets lost in translation.

For those two reasons, a real estate office is a bad example of the dynamics of hiring junior (high skill) CS graduates IMHO

I agree that companies do a poor job of advertising and screening for skills that they really need. Guessing, it might have to do with HR or worse, bad-intention managers, copying the habits of other hiring practices blindly.

Alternatively having a real apprenticeship program developed for tech would be super useful, but we hate it when we try to do real engineer things.

Or twenty-five years ago about Gen X.

It's just an article about "how older people tend to feel about hiring new college grads". There's nothing new about Gen Z that makes them somehow "less hireable".

> Nearly two-thirds (65%) of hiring managers surveyed believe that recent college graduates are entitled, and 63% think they get offended too easily.

This line sounds to me like 2/3 the survey respondents might be at least as much of a problem as many new-grad candidates allegedly are.

This line is so glaring, that I wonder whether it was written specifically for social media engagement/enragement.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the quality of both teaching and assessment plummeted during this time, so I suspect that it’s even harder than usual to trust things like a transcript to see what an applicant really knows

No judgement, but you might be missing something or doing something "wrong" without knowing it. Being ghosted absolutely everywhere sounds strange regardless of how the market is doing. CS as a field is not dead yet.

As for the field not caring about you: nobody owes you anything. That doesn't mean you should just roll over and give up. And it also doesn't mean you should take shit from abusive managers "working you to death". There are good people and companies out there, but you need to go out and find them. I work only 4 days a week, prioritize my family, and my employer accepts that.

Compared to so many other jobs CS is still a lot better than other options and will continue to be viable for a long time. You're absolutely not too late.

In my current job was through an agency where I was placed on a mandatory probation period where I'd need to have my contract renewed yearly, get hired or be terminated. The only thing that sucks is that during this period, you're an employee of the headhunters so none of the benefits of the company you're working at apply to you.

In regard to, "doesn't even care about me", that's reality. Though there are some companies and individuals that do care, the vast majority don't. Right now, CS is one of the few fields paying over 100k for some entry level positions AFAIK.

It sounds like you're a woman and I commend you for thinking about children. Personally, my recommendation is to stick it out, possibly invest in a bootcamp or follow thought leaders or tech tool creators and learn niche or cutting edge skills. Getting certifications can help as well. Degrees help you get past the gatekeepers and bootcamps help you get some attention. I've always seen degrees as proving you can stick with something. And I see bootcamps as proving you can stick with something specific that allows you to provide immediate value. But personally, I believe experience is the best teacher and the best way to get it is to take anything. I loved taking 2 months gigs. Fail hard, then try again. If you're eager to learn, you'll be surprised how much you can process in 2 months time and if you can treat every gig as an opportunity to learn something new, 2 years can bring a lot of experience.

On the other hand, I've worked with interns who were pretty good. One I knew had done a lot of side projects while going to school. He is now making about $300k TC, 3.5 years after his internship.

In the climate today, internships are the road to a job. People intern at a company between sophomore and junior year, and then another one between junior and senior year, and hope they have offers from at least one of the two on graduation (plus maybe a few more they applied to separately).

The IT job market has been tight since the end of 2022. I don't know what position someone who is ready is in, but just doing classes probably isn't enough. I tended to learn something in a semester, and then apply it after. Like I learned Java one semester, and during the semester started fixing bugs for a free software project that was online. Then I had a small program I wanted, and did it in Java. Similar with C++, computer graphics and other things - I learned it during the semester, then applied it during summer or winter break on little projects.

On a wider level, I wouldn't disagree the managers and owners of the field can make you work to death without caring about you and the like. On an individual level though, if people want to break in they need to do the right things, know the right things, and get a lucky break. I can say everyone I know who kept at it eventually got a break, but it can take longer than they wanted it to. Also, from late 2022 until now has not been a great time for new talent.

Stories like this remind me what a harsh reality college was. People like that knew college was worthless and were just attending to pass the time and get their degree. They came with the skillset to get a job from day one out of high school. Basically these types of kids can join a team, and be completely self sufficient within days, taking complete ownership of everything they touch.

I've had the privilege to work with 1 of these kids and it's amazing to watch. You give them little and they do a lot. I didn't read the article but my issue with some new gen ppl is those who make it without any struggles, say, they graduate and immediately get a job, they get really arrogant and refuse guidance or feedback. They write shit code that never looks at the bigger picture and get upset if they don't get praised.

> The IT job market has been tight since the end of 2022

Trump messing with H1-B visas really helped raise wages and mobility IMO.

I always figure 3-6 months to find a good position, probably because I started in the 80s and remember all the tight job markets between then and now. For me, 3-6 months seemed to be 'normal'.

I guess its a huge shock when all you've seen are the 'good times', but all fields/careers go thru boom-bust cycles. I seem to recall hearing we had a glut of lawyers and new grads couldn't find work.

“ It can be easy for managers to buy into typical stereotypes of Gen Z and dismiss them entirely; however, companies have an equal responsibility to prepare recent graduates for their particular workplace and give them the best chance to succeed. By understanding the challenges of Gen Z workers, companies can take a more proactive approach by implementing formal employee onboarding programs that clearly outline company culture and expectations. Paring recent grads with mentors in the company can also pay huge dividends as that can provide Gen Z workers with the guidance, feedback, and support for them to succeed.”

My first impression of the article was that the author was trying to say “Gen Z is bad/worse than other generations.” As many other commenters pointed out, the article itself does not present enough evidence to support that claim. What I realized after reading the comments and then re-reading the article is that the primary argument is actually that companies need to target these specific areas to ensure that new graduates are successful at their companies.

This article also suffers from a headline that doesn’t match the content in terms of key information.

I hired and subsequently fired two new college grads in the last two years and both had most if not all the issues listed. It was a huge challenge to get them to do basic things even when I told them they needed to be done multiple times. I have a third recent college grad working on my team and they are doing great because they put in the work.

The chance of hiring a genius is tiny.

So, hope someone else performs that experiment for you.

It’s always been a filter. Or rather, a qualifier for white collar jobs. It doesn’t mean there isn’t value obtained in education OR that their value is becoming more diluted as the more of the population obtains a bachelor’s degree. It just means that there are new qualifiers. Examples: specific schools are held in higher regard, requirements for higher education, job experience or portfolio, etc.

The reality is _a lot_ of applicants without any proof like that don't last long and thus wasting lots of company resources (including rehiring). Of course there are many very great folks without a degree and also a lot of idiots with a degree, but I learned to trust that heuristic until a strong signal otherwise pops up.

We need to lift them up somehow, they are not temporary visitors, they are our own children that the country will be handed over in 10-20 years.

Employees don't stay at companies long enough because they virtually always only get market level salary increases by going elsewhere

There's basically zero space in two week sprints in many companies to accommodate adequate training regardless.

We're a smaller but growing company, and this is the case for us. If you're planning to move on in 2-3 years it's just not worth it for us to invest in you.

When we grown a bit larger we might have some more positions that are compatible with short-term work, but so far we rely on devs to have a lot of independence and domain knowledge.

I do get smaller companies not being able to do it, but it seems like we're reaching a point where "smaller but growing" can be stretched to mean a company with a few hundred employees and if they don't have the ability to handle juniors it's hard to know what chance most people have of getting a start.

That said, sure, this isn't an issue with the latest crop. However I get the feeling from my more senior colleagues that this wasn't common back a couple of decades ago, at least here in Norway.

But yeah, we've been 7 devs for a good while, we've grown to 12 over the last year or so, hence why a single person makes such a difference. Once we reach 20+ I fully expect to have room for more junior devs. If not we're doing it wrong.

This is such a strange state of affairs where traditionally getting into academia meant delaying your career from age 23 to 27 when you would become an assistant professor.

More Than Half of Hiring Managers Say Recent Grads Are Unprepared for the Workforce

yeah, because non-grads fare so much better in this regard?

...

>63% of hiring managers surveyed believe that recent college graduates get offended too easily.

What would this etiquette training entail, exactly? How to endure being mistreated?

>Recent college graduates interviewing for their first job should take the initiative to thoroughly research the company they are interviewing for. Doing the research and sharing your perspective in the interview shows that you have a genuine interest in the company and are committed to being a part of what they do.

I'm here to make money. I thoroughly research and have a genuine interest in companies that pay well. Market forces working as intended.

That number seems relatively high to me.