the hubris of youth or new reality?
 

So we have summer intern positions in our labs. Typically current college students or just-graduated. Pay ok, mostly is a couple of months of work for them to learn stuff, us get some heavy lifting done, and then either they move on or if they graduated, we may keep them around.

Kid (just graduated) comes in to interview for a position. We send him the thumbs up and try to nail down paperwork. He emails back today saying that instead he's decided to try a startup with a friend. No problem - best of luck. Then the last line of his email:

"I would like to ask that the lab and other members...consider the information that I have shared about this project to be confidential."

Umm...excuse me? You come in looking for work, decide that you want to be the next Oculus, and now want retroactive confidentiality? Much more likely is that *he'll* be taking ideas that *we* disclosed during the course of the interview.

I need a vacation...

He sounds like a megalomaniac tranked up on XANAX or some other medication....a lot of kids today are medicated from an litany of conditions making them feel they can do everything(and generally qualified in nothing)

I'd sent him a response e-mail that he in no way being interviewed by your company was any intellectual properties transferred to him or 3rd parties.

Send him also a certified letter to this effect as well...this should hopefully scare the shyte of the prick.:D

If your company has a lawyer either on staff or retainer, consult him or her before opening up the 55-Gallon drum of whup-ass...

I will do no such thing.

Dictated but not read,

Mr. Nostatic

Sounds like a typical average everyday hipster to me.

I'd spend a couple of bucks and file a patent on anything he discussed.

That'll learn him.

Every tech company i have worked for I've presented them with a list of stuff I had in the pipe before we start a relationship.

He sounds like every other Starbucks barista to me.

hilarious!!!

My wife is an SVP of human resources. She said she just interviewed a kid fresh out of Pepperdine's busines sprogram who answered a text in his interview!!! :eek: She said "how much vacation would I get" is one of the first questions asked in every interview with fresh graduates.

I'm either a victim of my parents generation gap, or the new generation is destined to steam latte's and live in their parent's house late into adulthood.

Sorry Todd. Does it make it seem less bad if it is the hubris thing too?

Ahhh...the summer intern season. My facility attracts megalomaniacs like a bug zapper (one of the two top DOE facilities). Some of these guys are truly brilliant and come in with a very humble attitude and others make my jaw drop with their extreme over-confidence.

My student last summer came in on day one and assumed he already knew everything. It was a long summer. I have a student this summer also. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Lots of kids come out of college into their first job. It seems less and less common to have a job during the teen years, so by the time they graduate they are thoroughly full of themselves. One of many reasons why my kids will work during high school and college, nothing like cleaning a Burger King bathroom to keep you humble.;)

Yes. We will keep your personal contact and personal I.D. information confidential, as we would with any employee or applicant. You can also trust that we have no desire to put an ad in the NY Times regarding our conversations.

:confused:


Maybe the kid is just an idiot.

I've brought in 4 new mech engineers straight from college over the past 8 years.
Starting pay was around $80k.

I remember one incident in particular.
Mr. wet-behind-the-ears had been hired as a reliability engineer a month earlier, and I was giving him a tour of the repair shop where the equipment over overhauled. As I pointed out a few typical failure causes, his eyes glazed over and he tuned out.

I said hey, this stuff is important.
His answer was that he only planned to be in the reliability engineering department for 6 to 9 months so he didn't need to bother learning the "nuts and bolts".
He lasted about a year.

its the latest generation, they are a strange group. This is the same personality that will ask for a raise after working for 2 months.

It is our job, as old folks to teach them some manors.

I would have replied with "I am under no obligation of non disclosure, but as a favor to you I'll do my best not to talk about it".

I think these kids need examples of people taking the high road. A snarky response would be fun but counter productive.

Sounds like a typical average everyday corporate lawyer to me.

Maybe he's smarter than he sounds? Or than you perceive him to be.

We were all in that strange group once but outgrew it by someone slapping our heads (bent hill style) so we wise up. It sure seem that this group of reason grads are really different to the point of unwilling to learn. The entitlement runs deep and started to be ingrain in their lives early on? I sure hope they will get out of it.

People are people, and although regulation/government drives some behavior more than others, I've found in reading books written decades ago on design/engineer management that problems of today were still kickin' around as problems decades ago.

This it the response that my colleague sent:

-----
We wish you the best of luck in your path. Of course we are disappointed, but have fun!

As per our phone call, and with respect to your request to keep the information you shared confidential: 1) you made no such request when meeting with us, if you had, we would not have been able to accept the meeting without signed approval from our legal department, so there is not an implied or real obligation, 2) We did not hear or see anything in your presentation that was not known to us before or is not public knowledge.

Please let me know if you agree with the above, thank you.
-----

Part of this mindset (on the part of the students) is driven by the original dot-com boom, and the current tech bubble. Everyone thinks they'll be the next millionaire. Sadly, society seems to rewards the swaggering ones more than the ones who actually contribute but not sure that hasn't always been largely the case.

This is part of a broader discussion we're having about commercialization and where academic research fits into society. I've spent the past few years looking at ways to transition some of our work and have come to the conclusion that we're probably better off just giving it away - assuming that we've got funding coming in to support the work (largely govt/DoD at this point). If we start limiting what/who/how we collaborate, we'll lose opportunities and in the end, less interesting work will get done. That said, living off essentially one customer (govt) is dangerous as well.

Nailed it.