DISQUS

Brian Moore · 3 years ago

Ouch! Speaking as a native of the twenty-something demographic, can we deport Anya to another generation?

I may have permanently strained that metaphor, but she started it.

Sully · 3 years ago

I've interviewed a lot (really a lot over 30 years as a recruiter) of folks who claim unpaid intern experience on their resumes. Most such experience is bogus. Employers generally get what they pay for, and they don't get a lot of actual work from someone they don't pay. Similarly, employees get a lot more actual experience from a job if they are being paid because that means there is (generally) a real and valuable function to perform.

lysha · 3 years ago

College students should get real jobs. Simple as that.

Bernard · 3 years ago

Leaving aside for a moment the obvious technical deficiencies of Kamenetz’s piece, the most interesting/unfortunate question is this:

If Kamenetz has become such a popular and apparently influential figurehead of whatever the hell group of people are buying her book by being monumentally irrational, does it follow that monumental irrationality is the rational course of action for would-be columnists or politicians?

If so, it would seem to follow that your rational approach to the whole matter is pretty irrational and may explain why you don't have a column with the NYT.

Alternatively, she may just have a good pair of tits for them to stick in the obligatory op-ed photo, in which case ignore all the analysis above.

brett · 3 years ago

> does it follow that monumental irrationality is the rational course of action for would-be columnists or politicians?

Read the New York Times -- both the op-ed and politics sections -- and you'll have your answer.

Greg Newburn · 3 years ago

This was fucking brilliant, Will. That first line is priceless. Make sure you use that one somewhere in your book, because it's dynamite.

L · 3 years ago

"unpaid internship" sets off "rent-seeking" alarm bells; of course, it's just a symptom

Maybe Kamenetz is sensing the same thing, but isn't familiar with the concept. If so, cut her some slack, because it's a difficult concept.

anonymust · 3 years ago

Thank you for this. I'm a writer for the Voice and have cringed at every Kamenetz column. May it remain at the top of the blogsearch for her name forever.

T. · 3 years ago

I think Anya has a valuable message buried deep with in her rantings: college students are encouraged to take more and more debt for a degree that's less and less valuable. Undergraduate degrees are basically high school diplomas now, it's become so easy to go to school thanks to guaranteed student loans (and guaranteed loan money in the hands of youngsters doesn't give much incentive for the universities to compete on price, they know the kids are flush with cash). Now that undergraduate degrees are the norm and aren't paying off, everyone tells you to just "change fields to a more rewarding one" like in the Slate article. good advice, but get ready for even more extremely expensive student loan debt and time out of the work force if your career change requires more schooling.

The problem with Anya is that she so exaggerates the hardships of young people and is so full of shrill hyperemotional rants of self-pity and ridiculous economic logic that any good points that need to be addressed end up getting totally obscured by her more ridiculous sweeping pronouncements of doom and gloom.

Andrew Coulson · 3 years ago

Not to pile on or anything, but actual union membership as a share of the private sector workforce is not 12.5 percent, it's 7.8 percent. It hasn't been as high as 12.5 percent since 1988 (http://www.unionstats.com/).

You'd think that someone on the NYT editorial board would know that, wouldn't you? The fact that they published it lends support to my theory that the NYT op-ed page is not actually edited at all. They run submissions through MS Word's "grammar check" feature and then go to press.

Brian Moore · 3 years ago

What it comes down to is this:

She thinks that upper-middle class kids/young adults have it rough. They do not. I am one, and so are all of my peers. We have it super easy, perhaps moreso than any generation in the history of mankind.

If she were talking about inner city kids who go to violent, drug infested schools, she would at least have a point.

I don't know her reader demographics, but it's possible that he reason she's successful is precisely the reason she's wrong -- twentysomething kids love to be told how rough they have it while they browse their NYTimes magazines in their plentiful spare time.

I suppose I should be thankful -- it's better to have it good while people proclaim gloom and doom than to be miserable and have no one care.

MattXIV · 3 years ago

I'm with Brian. The unpaid internship is the province of the upper middle class (or wealthier) college student. My girlfriend, whose family is middle-middle class, couldn't afford to take one. The value of a 4 year degree over a lifespan, even outside of "hot" field, is still way more than tuition, even at the more expensive institutions that less wealthy students are likely to avoid. Since student loans are in many cases heavily subsidized, many relatively well-to-do students just borrow the money and instead of cutting personal expenditures or taking part-time jobs.

T. · 3 years ago

Re: Brian Moore

Are you serious? I think it may be a mild case of white/class guilt speaking there. Poor, inner-city kids have it best when it comes to attending college. In my college we had the EOP program which allowed them to go to college with almost a free ride and lower academic credentials. Most of my friends' colleges have similar programs for inner city kids. How can anyone say "no one cares" about poor, urban kids? NY Times, activists and limousine liberals lobby for them all the time. The busing programs, magnet schools, the education lobby, the class articles in the NY Times...how can you say that wel-off 20-somethings get more press than poor urban kids, especially in a progressive paper like the Times? I hope I don't come off harsh, but it does bug me when people try to paint this image about America ignoring the plight of the poor when we dedicate billions of dollars to the war on poverty and give the issue plenty of coverage in the mainstream media.

happyjuggler0 · 3 years ago

Pop quiz: What's the difference between an education you get for free and an education you pay for?

Answer: The first is called an internship. The second is called college.

The notion that a business ought to pay someone for the privilege of on the job training, and then have that person leave after 3 months or 6 months is ludicrous. The real miracle is that there are actually paid internships.

BillKorner · 3 years ago

Why would gratitude ever be appropriate for an employee to feel simply in virtue of having been given a job? Supposedly, employers hire exactly the person that's most to their advantage not as a benefit to the employee. That's exactly what the economists' moral norms of the labor market tells them they should do. Gratitude, by contrast, is appropriate where someone extends a benefit beyond what was required by the relevant norms, especially when the benefiting action shows conscientious care for the plight of the beneficiary.

It's not appropriate for me to feel grateful to the employer who pays me a prevailing wage of $5/hr when they could afford to pay me $100/hr (if not for the demands of shareholders) and I would be willing to stave off starvation for $3/hr.

So now we must ask: Is ingratitude just the absense of gratitude? My view is that there is not really such an emotion as ingratitude. There is only gratitude and its absence. The actions that seem to manifest ingratitude really just exhibit a certain kind of anger and envy that come from feeling that one is being taken advantage of.

Any comments from the peanut gallery on the emotional psychology... as opposed to its ideological implications?

Will Wilkinson · 3 years ago

Bill, If it's a good opportunity, a good chance, then you should be grateful for the opportunity, and try to do it justice. There's a reason people intern for free, and usually its because they think it will be a good opportunity.

mike · 3 years ago

2 things...
First, as a small business owner, I can't imagine paying somebody who is not at least a little grateful.
Not that I need to feel appreciated, it's that a grateful employee does a better job than one who is not. Period.

Also, internships are not just for the well-to-do.
I completed an internship while waiting tables and going to school....yes, it sucked....but it can be done. I ended up with a much better career opportunity
because of it. I've had many interns as well and I can say without hesitation that the time I spent teaching them didn't even come close to the time they "saved" me by working there. However, it was a great way to find and hire talented kids who were serious about working and truly interested in our business.

How to Ask for a raise · 3 years ago

this is all pretty good info, but you know that successfully negotiating a pay raise with your employer is the most profitable way you can spend a few minutes.

Gerald V. Casale · 8 months ago

i have often wondered how much of her success is due to her attractive looks and cute personality.

ms. kamenetz doesn't know what she doesn't know. her youth, inexperience and naivety is obvious.

i do not understand why penguin and the times publishes this stuff...maybe because publishing is not a meritocracy?

golfman_story · 8 months ago

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Sunglasses · 4 months ago

Great post.. College students are forced to take more and more debt for a degree that's less and less valuable. Undergraduate degrees are basically high school diplomas now, it's become so easy to go to school thanks to guaranteed student loans (and guaranteed loan money in the hands of youngsters doesn't give much incentive for the universities to compete on price, they know the kids are flush with cash).

Sunglasses · 2 weeks ago

I totally agree with the last post - the question is, where do we go from here? As an employer, I have no idea how I'm supposed to successfully rank graduates any more.