Why do young people think they need to know everything from day one.

jc98

jc98

jc98

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Ok so i work with a lot of new engineer straight out of uni. Lots of them think they should know how to do everything from day one. And think asking how to do something (some internal process something you can't google or chat GPT) will make them look bad somehow.

Why do they do this to them self’s? We all started from a point of not knowing and worked up from there.

We have a new engineer in the team 7 or 8 months in to her first engineering job and she is doing great but comparing herself to someone with over a decade in the company and in engineering. And asking how dose that person have that much knowledge and deal with problems so quickly and without stress. She hates when I say its just experience.

She is going to be a great engineer in a few short years she doesn't see it yet. I look forward to the day when I can sit down with her and she see this.

There is no shortcut to experience and knowledge.
 
jc98 said:
Ok so i work with a lot of new engineer straight out of uni. Lots of them think they should know how to do everything from day one. And think asking how to do something (some internal process something you can't google or chat GPT) will make them look bad somehow.
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Because if you look at LinkedIn and see what they asked for "entry level" job requirments. You see why.
 
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Yep. It sucks. I struggle a lot with this in my line of work, and I keep telling people that there's no such thing as a stupid question, but a lot are still too ashamed to ask anything. I break them down eventually but it's one hell of a task.
 
jc98 said:
There is no shortcut to experience and knowledge.
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Correct, there isn't.
Unfortunately these days every young entitled brat want's everything now and seemingly can't be bothered to put in the effort to get to where they think they should be skill wise.
Being qualified is absolutely no substitution for time served.
 
Young people think they need to know everything
Old people think they know everything

I don't think there's any harm in matching your performance to those more experienced, so long as it's a spur rather than a stick they beat themselves with.
 
This is not a new thing. Everyone goes through three stages:

1) They know nothing, but know they know nothing. For students this is called university.
2) The know enough that they think they know everything. This is typically the first three years of a job. This is peak Dunning-Kruger.
3) They know a lot, but are keenly aware of all the stuff they don't know. This is a really experienced person.

Adding to this is management's belief that it will never take more than five years to master anything.
 
I don't mind it, at least they are keen and asking the right questions....

I have a newbie shadowing me at the moment, not young just new to the company, 3rd line engineering looking after a platform....
he's asking all the questions... some of which is out of our scope of support... due to the nature of the business, I've told him already a lot of the stuff is on a need to know bases, we such a large org by the time he needs to know it.. it'l likely to have changed, some one will give him the info at the point he needs to know it.

In terms of skill gaps, I've told him to write down a list of stuff that he want's upskilling on....
he's come up with some classics, we are doing our re-certs at that the moment and the whole team are getting 98%+ on the certs.. so he's asked for access to our "brain dumps" and resources, so he can pass the certs the first time. I was like, dude we all done our 10,000 hours looking after enterprise level platforms, your looking at a team with over a century of experince in this specialist field, it's just what we do daily and we just re-sitting the exams because work are paying for them.
 
Meridian said:
This is not a new thing. Everyone goes through three stages:

1) They know nothing, but know they know nothing. For students this is called university.
2) The know enough that they think they know everything. This is typically the first three years of a job. This is peak Dunning-Kruger.
3) They know a lot, but are keenly aware of all the stuff they don't know. This is a really experienced person.

Adding to this is management's belief that it will never take more than five years to master anything.
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Nope it isn’t. The dunning Kruger effect is about metacognition and our ability to evaluate our own performance.

 
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throwaway4372 said:
I think the "job for life" not being a thing anymore contributes to this too. It used to be easier to see your career as a journey through life. Now you know you'll be looking for a job again in a year or two you gotta collect stuff to write on your CV.
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Yep, you see it now with all these lay-offs.

Get all the skills and experience then move on before that company decides you need to move on.
 
I think a lot of the young people I work with are really scared that they're going to get fired at some point for making a small mistake - when they're looking around seeing big companies lay off really skilled and competent people it must feel like you're really up against it as a junior with no knowledge.
 
Diddums said:
thing as a stupid question, but a lot are still too ashamed to ask anything. it's one hell of a task.
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I dunno mate, some of the people I have to work with.....

I had one girl, fortunately she left in probation but we would have failed it anyway.

She was trying to work out income from a document, I said, just use an average of those two figures.

Well I might as well have said it in Chinese.
 
BUDFORCE said:
I dunno mate, some of the people I have to work with.....

I had one girl, fortunately she left in probation but we would have failed it anyway.

She was trying to work out income from a document, I said, just use an average of those two figures.

Well I might as well have said it in Chinese.
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Yeah I actively try to avoid hiring idiots :D


I just seem really bad at it :(
 
JonRGV250 said:
Correct, there isn't.
Unfortunately these days every young entitled brat want's everything now and seemingly can't be bothered to put in the effort to get to where they think they should be skill wise.
Being qualified is absolutely no substitution for time served.
Click to expand...
I do laugh at the ones where they're on Reddit saying, "I need to earn £80k, £100k, whatever, what job should I get" fresh out of Uni. I'm thinking, "Mate, you will be lucky....".
 
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We've actually hired someone straight out of Uni recently and the one thing I've noticed is that the art of researching is dying. He just uses ChatGPT for everything. It's probably something I need to learn to get better at but it grinds my gear a little bit when I can just see he's asking me questions to ask ChatGPT something for a response
 
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