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Originally Posted by Katsunami
The masses out there are not terminally stupid. They are terminally *lazy*.
I know some people who are more than intelligent enough, as they have finished a bachelor or a master in a field that I'd call respectable. Often, their jobs require them to NOT be stupid.
Still, when they need to have something done on the computer, or have to have a new home entertainment system installed, or a device configured, they call me and try to get me to do it for them. Those same people are also the ones saying "I can't do that" even before they took a look at what they would need to do.
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That's simply typical. Like any animal, they'll take the path of least resistance. Once thing I learned, far too many times, is that people don't do "what's right," (generally), no matter what they tell themselves; they do what's easiest. They'll rationalize what's easiest into somehow being "the right thing." If doing the RIGHT thing is hard, fuhgedddaboudit.
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They just don't have the drive to study and learn new things. They also groan, sigh, and moan when they have to study a course on work-related stuff (rule changes in law, or taxes, or whatever).
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Seriously, what's the purpose of life, if not to learn new stuff? Sheesh. Yeah, yeah, we're all here to procreate, no matter what other high-and-mighty story we may tell ourselves, but when push comes to shove, learning as much as you can on your trips around the sun is the best you can do with your time. Obviously, just my opinion, but...
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IMHO, because there are a lot of these people, they are the ones which make employers think that people above 35 are less interesting for a company, and the ones above 45 are completely and utterly useless, even though they still have 20-22 years to go before retirement.
There are quite some 45+ year old people I know that react with fear and loathing (even when not in Las Vegas) if they are required to do something that is only the tiniest bit outside their normal line of work.
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I must confess, I know this wasn't your intent, but, BOY, have you managed to offend me with this. I have a number of friends, most WELL over 45, who are frustrated at their inability to find work, even though they, far more than most college students, have invested and are investing their time in learning new things--technologies, programming, you-name-it. Maybe it's because most recent college grads think that they can rest on their laurels, while those of us longer in the tooth think we have to prove we're still "cool" and can make with "The Facebook, The Youtube and The Twitter." :-) (Old fart joke).
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Heck, I know a few people who are in their twenties that are already like this.
"Could you write a mailer script in PHP that sends an uploaded to a number of people?" (And it's PHP because the webserver happens to be running Apache on Debian, with PHP already installed and serving some stuff.)
- "No, I can't. That wasn't a part of my education. I've only worked with C#."
Those people WILL be useless in 20 years... after the version of C# they learned has moved on to beyond being a relic.
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Yes, actually, THAT I've seen. There's an obdurance to a lot of recent college grads--I don't think it's laziness, or whatever; I think it's a bad case of "I know better"-ness. It seems to be a constant irritant with new-hires fairly straight out of school.
Or, perhaps, this is simply proof that the Generation Gap still exists.
Hitch