I feel like the people I interact with irl don’t even know how to boot from a USB. People here probably know how to do some form of coding or at least navigate a directory through the command line. Stg I would bet money on the average person not even being able to create a Lemmy account without assistance.
I have worked with a few gen z interns/fresh grads, and some younger millennials (I am a 1990 kid) and its interesting… Some of them have been very successful at passing the tests but have no mechanical aptitude at all. Some have been technically literate on first glance, then proven to be just confidently incorrect. In general though, it seems they just didn’t grow up being interested in how things worked like I did. It could be isolated to my small sample size or it could be a general trend. They also don’t seem to make connections across disciplines as easily either but again, that could just be a time in service thing at this point and not a generational trait.
I have not been super impressed with the new ones we get when we get them, some of them have been quick learners though and have impressed me with their adaptability. I am a huge proponent of proper mentorships or rotational programs and that is something that seems to get overlooked with younger grads in my experience.
One thing that really annoys me though, is that when prompted with something they don’t know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don’t know. Saying I don’t know is a completly acceptable answer as long as it is followed up with “but I will find out” or “can you help/explain it”. Falling back to a first principle approach and talking through it is also valid but just making up some shit doesnt fly with me.
This is just the majority of people, not specific to any generation. Our minds are predisposed to use inductive reasoning to explain the world around us. We see something new and our brain immediately begins to make inferences based on prior information we believe we know (I say it this way cause our memories are incredibly faulty) that we think is relevant or comparable.
It’s essentially the Dunning Kruger effect: we think we know more than we do and, because of this, believe we can simply assume correctly about other things we know nothing about.
It’s an incredibly bad habit that is supposed to be trained out of us through our education systems but we all know how incredibly faulty those systems are.
The education system as I lived through it in Texas was actively hostile to saying you didn’t know, it was treated as being worse than being wrong or guessing. You can tell by the results allllllll around us.
Hadn’t realized what a gem “I don’t know” is until waaaaay too late. Saying “I don’t know” still often feels like a personal, albeit public, moral failure. Which is so dumb. But feels like it makes so much sense.
I think about the Lucky 10,000 XKCD comic all the time.
As a Louisiana resident. I feel ya neighbor.