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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm firmly a Millennial (1987).  Most "kids" I went to college with were utterly effing lazy.  Very few of my peers hustled for internships, which are pretty much there for the taking in DC.  I ended up in a spectacular job out of college, but I was obsessed with networking.  It was so fun to be on my own in DC, I could do internships year round.  I loved it.  The world felt like my oyster.  I wiggled my way into young professional groups, I collected business cards, I went to receptions that I thought might be helpful, and I met people for coffee.  (I met my husband at such an event.  He is only a year older than me, but he was basically doing the same thing and was of a similar mindset.)  Importantly, I spent very little time on campus.  I graduated with like a 3.6 or so, so I got good grades, but I wasn't exactly lighting the world on fire academically.  For reference, I went to very "normal" school here in DC.  College no longer prepares people for the working world.  It takes a dramatically different skill set to succeed in the work place vs. school.  The economy is different now and the unpaid internship has replaced the entry level job.  If you want a job when you get out of college, you better start hustling by your freshman or sophomore year of college.

I have met very few Millennials who seem willing to do things that are truly unpleasant and/or make them uncomfortable.  I have a friend, a self-made multimillionaire, whose daughter graduated from a top business school a couple of years ago. She did great in school and naturally got a excellent job at Big 4 consulting firm.  Well, within 18 months she quit because she didn't like how much they were asking her to travel (she knew this going into the gig).  She is a single 25 year old with no children or obligations, and still can't be bothered with a demanding work schedule.  I have more friends than I can count who have stayed in undemanding, dead-end jobs in order to not disrupt their lifestyle.  These stories aren't one-offs.  A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with an exec of a large company (household name), he is totally frustrated with even his highly qualified Millennial staff.  He feels that even top MBA and law programs aren't generating good workers.  Indeed, succeeding in school vs the workplace requires dramatically different skills.  Colleges and graduate programs are interested in promoting themselves as necessary and making money, not in taking their students' egos down a peg and giving them a dose of reality.

Millennials are really connected through social media, so they don't necessarily feel isolated while living in their parents homes, even though they are isolated.  They don't need to live with Suzie to know what she ate for breakfast, when they can just see it on Facebook and SnapChat.  They're also more comfortable at home, and we know Millennials don't like to be uncomfortable.

All that said, I'm still not sure how Millennials are more entitled than their Boomer parents were.  It just shows up in different ways.  Boomers have taken for granted the fact that they inherited a better economy than any other group of people in the history of the world.  They've enjoyed pensions and an exploding stock market.  They could go to college back when you could scoop ice cream for a summer and pay the tuition with that money (good luck doing that at even a state school now), and the cost of housing was dramatically lower.  I don't care that the interest rate on your mortgage was 15%, housing was still more affordable.  Boomers took out home equity loans like hillbillies that just got paid and would buy all kinds of crap.  Boomers could go to college and get a good job out of school, and they most certainly were not competing in a global economy in the way that today's college grads are.  A lot has changed.

[/quote]

Agree with this, made in 1987 as well.

Assuming you also graduated the same year as I did, you also need to consider yourself lucky.  2008/2009 was truly a shit economy.  I do not consider myself "effing" lazy.  I also hustled for summer internship and did well in school.  The stars just simply aligned and I wasn't able to secure a job before graduation.  I, along with many of my peers (as should also know), worked unpaid internships in the DC area for a good 6 months until we're able to get entry level positions that paid a sub 40k salary in the DC area.  Actually, college kids, IMOH, hustle much more than we did because of the fact that social media has opened doors to many, thus creating a much more competitive atmosphere. [/quote]

I consider myself very lucky in a few ways.  First, college was way cheaper 10 years ago than it is now.  Secondly, since I graduated with a job and the market was at an all time low, the little bits of money I was able to put into my IRAs during those early years has exploded.  However, I don't necessarily consider myself lucky in that I got a job.  I worked many years worth of unpaid internships leading up to my first offer.  The difference was that I did it during college, and I worked to actually networked in person.  Networking electronically will never be as powerful, and I don't think it is a good substitute.

And yes, my offer was actually $30,000.  It was a political job with a LOT of access, so it acted as a springboard to much more high paying things.  My salary quadrupled within 5 years of taking that job.[/quote]

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