Candid career advice for today's USA millenials:

You’re already screwed. No, really. I mean that. I don’t like to say that “I mean that,” but until conditions in the USA change substantially, you may as well come to terms with the fact that “the American Dream” that your Mom, Dad, and Grandpa taught you to expect and to work for … is gone, and it isn’t coming back anytime soon. Let me explain.

In the 1960s, you could essentially go to college for free. And, as Billy Joel once said in a song, “every child had a pretty good shot … to go at least as far as their old man got.” President Eisenhower had recently spoken about “fine, well-equipped hospitals.” Of course you could go in to one, get treated, and come out not-bankrupt. You went to school and you got the professional position that a college degree conferred upon you. You bought a house: four walls that actually belonged to you. You had kids. (That means you, “kid.”)

First beginning in the 1980’s, and hurtling with ever-increasing speed, all of these social structures have been demolished. They didn’t “throw an American flag in your face.” They threw a foreign one.

I can tell you of the days that I remember: when votes were cast, and counted on paper, and sometimes re-counted, and they could be, and there wasn’t too-much :rolleyes: of reading names off tombstones to add to the voter rolls. I can tell you that my complete college education took about $11,000 and that somebody else paid for it. (Today, in that same public school, one semester costs about twice that out-the-door.) The Glass-Steagall Act was the law of the land, so banks, insurance companies, and financiers were forced to remain at arm’s length. Consumer interest rates were capped at about 6% by anti-usury laws which existed throughout the land, and you could deduct credit card interest on your taxes. There was no type of debt that you could not discharge in bankruptcy if you really fell-down. Sure, politicians took bribes as they always do, but it was illegal to do so.

Today, if you finished college … if you even finished the semester you’re already in … you would be “another day older and another $40,000 in debt” … in hope of getting a job that you won’t get.

Surely, you’ve heard of the H-1B Visa program, which lets about 250,000 people a year come in to take American jobs for six years. But that’s not the real problem. The L-1 program allows foreign corporations, while still remaining “foreign,” to bring their “foreign” workers in unlimited quantity, to feed and clothe them however they wish, and to pay them the wages of the home country. The USCIS wrings its hands and squirms that it “doesn’t know how many” people are present on these wretched terms. I assure you that it does.

But, let’s go one step further here: CG work can be done anywhere, because the work only produces great big digital files. And to someone out there, the quip of “a million monkeys can write Shakespeare” became a business plan: “bring on the monkeys!” Find the cheapest, most disposable labor pool that you can, and work them to death.

And, in case you think there’s particularly something that you can do about it, think again. Votes are counted by electronic computers that don’t give you a receipt. There is no paper trail. And, there is no proof of who, supposedly, cast any vote, or could have cast it. The “winners” of the next US Elections have already been selected. The official tallies are completely unauditable. “Buy a hamburger and don’t get a receipt = free hamburger. But, cast a vote …”

So, the very best thing that you can do right now is to quit school immediately and try to be one of the first truck drivers. $60,000 a year, no debt. But don’t spend any more of that money than you have to, because things are going to get a lot worse … “Great Depression II” worse … before they ever even begin to turn around. Quietly sell that $6,000 bicycle of yours. Don’t waste money going to movies or buying computer games. As soon as you are able, buy the tiniest piece of land that you are able.

This is not “a political rant.” It’s someone who remembers when this country was comfortably clothed, pointing out that it has made itself naked, while less-than-a-thousand people at the very top (out of more than 350 million in the country at large) are sitting around in their halls of power, drunk as a skunk. History has repeated itself, and has laid a tremendous problem at the feet of your generation.

This is also not saying that you should “give up” on your careers and future. Transportation is a future, too. What you are avoiding is a mountain of debt that you can never repay … debts that, fifty years from now, will be garnishing your Social Security income on the off-chance that such programs still exist at that time. You don’t have a “career future” if the numbers are against you. And right now, it’s time to face the facts that: they are against you.

In general, the usefulness of college and university education would be diminished to a noticeable extent if not for companies continually looking for that piece of paper that states you have taken a course in that subject.

The reason why is because the internet allows you to access more or less the same information once only obtained through colleges for either a much lower price or no price at all. There are tons of Youtube videos for instance that tell you how to do almost every task under the sun to the same degree as a professional (my father for instance rarely hires a professional these days to do any sort of task like pest control and wiring because of that).

Also, last I checked, if you decide to set out on your own by way of starting your own business, then there’s no degree required for that. I also believe that your assessment is extremely pessimistic because it seems to lead to the conclusion that the only possible career choice is ‘truck driver’ and you should abandon your hopes and dreams otherwise.

The point of college is to introduce you to a body of knowledge So that you will pass it with a minimum understanding. Its also a decent filter of dedication, In that if someone can show up enough to pass college that their is fair odds that they will do the same in the workforce. Are their other ways to get said knowledge, Yes But that still has the same sit down and learn it requirement as college does. And with a fraction of the structure, support network and feedback. Yes Timmy if you flunk a test you got feedback that you did not know the material.
Yes in the CG field you have a proving ground where people can self teach, Put together a portfolio and as long as they don’t blow the interview they have odds of a happy career. But that still take an attitude on par with what you need to make it though college.

And if one has the stance that they can look up anything they need to, Then these should be the same people that can hand code their game engine, Learn sculpting in a month, Do their own brain surgery. If the only thing you need to do is look it up, Then start doing it every time you complain that blender sucks. Just look up the information you need and solve the fucking problem already.

What to start your own business? I’ve seen a dozen threads on the cg forums that touch on the topic of starting your own open movie/game And you know what. Its allot of the same game there! Except in this one your playing for money with a shot of going homeless tossed in as a boobie prize.

Although as a student of history, I don’t think sundile is to far off on their prediction.

Please understand my point-of-view here: I have a Bachelor of Science degree. (Today, it would be called Summa Cum Laude,thankyew very much … highest departmental honors … near-charter membership in a very prestigious scholarship program. Blah-de-blah de-blah.)

It cost about $11,000.00 out-the-door … thank you kindly, Mr. Brock … and the question of whether or not this price had any ROI is completely wiped-out by the reality that a single semester at that same school, thirty years later, now costs more than twice(!) as much.

A few years after my debt-free graduation, my wife and I signed a $95,000.00 note for our first house. I paid for it with the good-salary from my programming job (and skill).

Today, we would have graduated $150,000.00(!!) in debt … and I would find myself quite unable to compete with a flood of millions of earnest but not-yet disillusioned young people who could beat my asking-price by two thirds.

Thus, my frank advice: “what you actually want is The American Dream. Not to achieve it in any particular way.”

The USA has decided that it does not need any professionals: not programmers, not CG artists, not engineers of any sort, not teachers, not even doctors. They insist that “such people simply cannot be found here,” but it has not yet dawned upon them that this could be … and, in fact, under prevailing conditions should(!!) be … “a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

There is, right now, zero economic “return on investment” for any American-citizen college student even to complete their diploma … and the aforesaid statement is not(!) “a political rant.” :eek: (Dear God, I wish it were …)

Cut your losses … immediately. Whatever professional skills the USA might require, it can “borrow,” at much less cost than you could ever possibly afford to cost. No matter how good you are, “you cost $90,000 and they can be bought at $15,000 apiece, so I can buy 6 of them, and if 2 of them wash-out but 4 of them manage to muddle through, ‘I still come out ahead.’”

(Or, in the case of the L-1 program, “I can just ‘contract with a foreign company,’ and pretend that I cannot see what’s really happening …”)

The USA is on a collision course, right now, with the application of this perverted logic towards the acquisition of “talent” (sic…) to fill any and every sort of once-professional position, and there is nothing at the immediate moment that any of you can do about it except: Duck and Cover.

Don’t wind up $150,000+ in debt … for no damned good reason … when the cards are stacked against you. Instead, “Opt Out.”

This is, after all, a rather-brutally business decision. If you find that the return-on-invesment does not exist today …don’t invest. And, if you determine that the investment that you so-far have made is not reasonably likely to pay off, stop investing. Don’t throw good money after bad.

What gave you the conclusion that this country does not want any professionals of any kind, go to any community college or any smaller college and you’ll find that only a fraction of students are foreigners.

Just where are you getting this information, I know there’s the obvious answer that you might have a ‘glass half empty’ view of life, but that first requires the acknowledgement that the glass actually has something in it.

Ace…I would suggest reading something other then a blender forum for a change, Sun is more or less doing a copy/past of the last ten years of the front page on msn, So how this can be new information to you ace blows my mind about as much as you and your almost twenty four thousand posts here.

I’m not trying to be a dick about it, Well no more then I have to, But I look at that post count and It makes me wonder what that effort could of got you if you focused all of it on art-ing rather then posting. I mean hell, Give yourself a challenge. For one month if you want to post, Make it a point to model something first.

Err… many of the American news companies nowadays are known for having heavily biased slants as well as personal agendas. They are also increasingly looking less at objective journalism and more about generating buzz and page hits (by posting provocative and incomplete headlines to serve as clickbait).

Among their techniques is the promotion of pessimism, the state of the media in some cases is simply a mess right now.

Here is a interpretation
" We can not find qualified employes here in the US."
interpretation is
“We do not want to pay for an American employes.”
They say illegals are taking jobs “nobody wants” Thats a lie.
I could not find a worker at LAX airport parking in Los Angeles that spoke enough English to give me directions.
The thread starter is correct.
The guy working at the dollar store told me last week " Im lucky I got this job" I told him " Thats sad"
US government says screw the American worker.
“Hey Einstein ! What happens if we keep doing the same ol thing?”
Best change the road your on son, if you want to pay off your college loan.

This must be more a situation on the coasts. Here in the middle of the country there are still a ton of full-blood American workers who speak perfect English and have always lived in the area.

The issue I have with Sundial’s post is that he makes sweeping generalizations about the state of business. In many areas, it’s just not the case. We do have plenty of people from other countries, but they only make up a fraction and not the whole. I can go to any store and I’ll much more likely meet a local working there than a foreigner.

Then what is the point in staying in the us and becoming specifically a truck driver? I’m sure they can find a foreigner for that as well.

Well, there was a serious attempt to accept Mexican trucks and Mexican truck drivers … until they discovered that Mexican drivers are just as determined to “arrive alive” as are their American counterparts.

Now, as for me “dreaming this up,” here is the fee schedule page for that college. And here is a handy calculator.

Go ahead, try it. I was an out-of-state student living at home, driving to campus every day, eating lunch. There were no “lab fees” for computer science classes at that time, although they cost $660/semester today

According to the estimator, the fees for one semester at this public university are: $13,033.00. :eek:

So, if fees did not go up every year (but they do …), the base cost of your four-year degree would be: $104,264.00.

  • Remember that the out-the-door cost of my diploma was about $11,000.00.

As for the impact of H-1B and L-1 Visas, first of all let me emphasize that I have been there. And I have, with my own eyes, seen these three things:

(1) Seventeen people in business suits, filing out of one two-bedroom apartment and getting on a bus.

(2) An entire floor, of the Tennessee department that administers unemployment benefits(!), with no non-foreign workers, period. At the front of each cube was a map with the photograph of that cube’s occupant. You could not pronounce the name, but you could recognize the face. A small “E” indicated if the occupant could speak at-least pidgin English. Many could not, so you had to find an “E” to translate for you.

(Yes, you read that right. The department that pays unemployed Tennesseeans … didn’t employ Tennesseeans.)

(3) Department upon department within Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee … one of the area’s largest employers of foreigners, with several such floors. An occasional “white guy” who was the workgroup manager.


So, this is not “a rant.” This is cold, hard facts.

  • There will never be a return on your investment of “about $24,000 more than I paid for a house that was worth what I paid for it (and that I sold at a profit).”
  • America does use these visa programs today as its primary source of: engineers, teachers, computer programmers, and even many doctors.
  • The L-1 Visa program is even worse than H-1B, since you are a “foreign” corporation on American soil, bringing your “foreign” workers with you, paying them “foreign” wages according to your “foreign” laws . . . in other words, peonage.
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  • (Never mind that the 13th Amendment says that “… involuntary servitude shall not exist in the United States nor in any area subject to their jurisdiction.”)

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You can’t change these reallities but you can conserve your financial future. If the return on investment isn’t there anymore, don’t obligingly do what Grandpa told you was the right thing to do, given that it was the right thing to do in his youth but simply is not a credible thing to do anymore.

As far as I’m concerned, public colleges should be closed down and the land sold. L-1 Visa companies could use the dormitories to hire their workers and former classrooms would make excellent workshops and office buildings for their use. Rent and profits from the land could be used to help pay better unemployment benefits. The rich members of the Landed Gentry (millenials aren’t buying land … they can’t afford it) can continue to support private colleges, that is if their children think differently.

Okay, okay … that last paragraph probably is “a rant,” but is it really anything but a logical reaction to what has been done? To what conditions have been consciously made to exist by changes in modern public policy? If you consciously remove demand for native-born labor and professionals, while simultaneously pricing the associated education beyond the point of reason, then you should be prepared for your lame excuses to become … reality. One should not expect a savvy new generation of people to fail to see the cards that they have been dealt.

And I, frankly, am not willing to continue seeing them “being dealt that hand.” I do not want to continue to see public funds being spent on institutions of higher learning that do not provide education at a reasonable, affordable, and accessible price. (Nor do I wish to see “public educational assistance” being used to pay for non-public education.)

Ok, you get your wish and in 20 years you have a country with 250 million truck drivers, then what?

Obviously, what I really “wish for” is a return of the American Dream. Today, we have a generation that, while not “left behind,” also is left with nowhere to go.

And furthermore, especially with the L-1 Visa program, we have an unconstitutional return of peonage and indentured servitude, to the extreme detriment of millions of innocent and hard-working people … who didn’t travel tens of thousands of miles away from home to experience what they do experience here.

It is morally wrong, not to mention extremely bad business, for “indentured servitude to exist in the United States,” in flagrant violation of the 13th Amendment (which, if you kindly notice, excludes the practice on the basis of territory, not citizenship nor lack thereof).

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States, nor in any territory under their control …”

But what it will take is concerted political action … “millenial style.” :slight_smile: And also a much greater awareness, among people like Ace, of what actually is the present-day situation that has been allowed to happen over the past thirty years or so. And, a refusal to accept it anymore. On behalf of citizens and/or​ foreigners.

And as FDR put it: “I agree with you. Now, make me do it.”

And until conditions do change, immediately stop wasting your future on a schooling that offers none.

Nor did I really think so. I’m just wondering if you want to end up with a generation (or several) of uneducated people?

The world will always need experts. Being able to look up how to do something on youtube does in no way make you an expert.

What about new inventions then? Should we just stick with what we have and not strive to develop?

One of the most crucial skills you will learn in school/college/university is how to actually learn stuff.

Wrong. It is.

Closed.