Amen to that one. My grandfather invested some money on my behalf when I was born, so when I graduated from college, I burned through $10K of it without a second thought. Then I finally swallowed my pride, got a job working minimum wage, and suddenly gained new appreciation for the value of money. Discovering that buying lunch is essentially equivalent to eating an hour's worth of work will do that.
It's also easy to post on Slashdot "what a whiner!" whenever a story comes up about $OSS_SOFTWARE not fulfilling $BUSINESS_NEED. That's another perspective that disappears quickly when working for a real business. You really do need to be making money to have a viable business (long-term), and no amount of idealism changes that.
If I could go back and give myself one piece of advice, it would be "get a crappy job before you're 22."
"Ravens are black" ==> "All ravens are black"
"Germans like beer" ==> "Germans have a significantly greater tendency to like beer than people in general, though of course there are some non-beer-liking Germans"
It could be an interesting question in linguistics to figure out the difference between the two types of "Xes are Y" sentence.
All boomers are...
All Gen Xers are...
All Gen Yers are...
Yeah, right.
This is just an excuse for lazy journalism (is there any other kind any more?)
Would have been nice if the author dug a little deeper to try to understand why none of the 7 people answered the phone. To his credit, he brought up several good points:
"They’re trained to work in teams — in school, in extracurriculars"
My theory (even though I'm no more qualified than anyone else):
For many young people, playing on a sports team has replaced the part time job. There was a time when you had to work if you wanted a car, insurance, or money for college. Not so necessary now.
Responsibility to one's teammates has replaced "getting the work done". I have always thought that real responsibility is learned "on the job". Delay work, delay responsibility.
Even in this community, there's a tendency to try to solve problems in our own little vacuum. Here's what I think... I read somewhere... Things oughta work like... As a hacker, I'm just as guilty as anyone else; it's so easy to try to "think" things through.
Then I stop and say, "Find a customer." (Or find a job.) Once you have to really serve others in need, the "issues" cited by the OP melt away.