As I read all these replies I find it interesting how many of them are knee jerk emotional flares. I am on the edge between the millenials and the Gen X's, though personality wise I am more gen X. What does that mean? Nothing really.
So what everyone is really bitching about on both sides is the "other" side does not meet their needs. Um yea, what fairy tale lives do you all think (employer and employee) exist? Why should the employer be any more reasonable than the employee?
In honesty both side drastically over estimate their skills, needs, and demand far more than is reasonable.
Sorry, finishing college does not entitle you to more than entry level. You talk about "highly trained" or being some sort of miracle worker. Guess what? There are hundreds or thousands just like you out there. Here is a small important note... pure corp logic, if someone has skills as good as you claim, they will pay, they will do all it takes to keep you there. Ofcourse, if your attitude and arogance becomes more of a liability than your skills give asset, you will be dumped.
I myself work for one of the largest employers in the area, directly with the CEO's and CFO's and C?O's of all sorts. I am the one that creates the reporting and data they use to make those "layoffs just to improve the bottom line" choices. There are always reasons for these things, but employees simply act with emotion and anger, and forget that just perhaps the employer is paying too much for staff, or any other of a large number of reasons. (Ofcourse there are exceptions, just like there are exceptions in employees, real geniuses, and real slackers).

On the otherside, employers who have found themselves handicaped because a highly valuable employee turns into one of these self entitled employees who essentially hold the employer hostage. "Pay me this, or I leave, and all your systems will crash". Hmm, then its no suprise that the employer will no longer have much loyalty for the employees. Been there seen that. That is when they start hiring inexperienced college grads, pay them low, and get inferior work, but the results are always so that when one of those staff quit, a new one can be hired without disruption.

Employee sides of things, despite how brilliant you think you are after college, its experience not skills which make you really valuable. That is why a company is more likely to fire the new staffers than the old, even if the old staffers are less brilliant. Experience continues to teach, and temper your learning in college into something truly spectacular. Without experience, I have seen projects where the noob (to use a more accurate description) has gone all fired up, has a really great idea, builds the thing, and part way through it finds out, oh, the reality of this particular business makes all this more complicated, and the project fails in technicolor. Experience, that is what you really need, I don't care if you are Steven Hawking, without experience you are not much good to be part of my programming team.

So what does that mean? It means, yes you start entry level, and if you are as spectacular as your parents tell you you are, then you WILL move rapidly upward. However please understand, you can not all be part of the top 5%, its not possible, some are going to be better than you. Others are simply easier to deal with in a work setting. Yea, um, real social skills are very important in the real world. Any of you see any of those on the edge sorts of colleges where the IT students have to take courses on things like business lunches? They do that because too many of the techies graduating now simply can not "fit" into a company. The world does not revolve around you, it does not, really it doesn't. We are all happy that your parents think you are a divine prodigy, but get a grip will you?

I see rants about companies being "unfair" in the raises. I may be wrong in applying my company's situation here, but its what I see. I have sat at lunches listening to people say it was impossible to get above and "average" review, and impossible to get a pay increase above the minimum. I say this because its the same attitude I see in these posts. Trouble was, I was sitting there, and for ten years I have received perfect reviews, and the highest of raises HR allows for. So while listening, I consider what these staffers do in a day, and amazingly, they do the absolute minimum they can. Infact, they look for ways to get out of doing work, and spend large amounts of time gossiping. Hmm, work the minimum possible, get the minimum pay hike, why does that not sound unreasonable.

Sigh, but then there are the employers that are infact unreasonable. An employee should have no need to work 50-90 hours a week, infact in such is the case, its clear the company needs more staff. Myself, in 10 years I have only had to work over 40 hours in a given week about 4 times. (4 hours on a weekend, to assist IT in replacing 1000 PC's) It was a reasonable request, and reasonable I am good with. Would I work that overtime regularly? No. Why should I? Why should you? This is where people need to push back on employers, if there is consistant overtime, its simply the employer not recognizing there is more work to do than the staff level can do. Since all the youngens are so willing to leave jobs, this is an easy demand. Simply refuse to work the overtime, what are they going to do fire you? What difference does that make considering how little loyality you have for the company, and how much self-centeredness you have.

Bleh, if you read all these things, the various articles on the work place, and employee/employer interactions and find your self all pissed off and emotional, I have but one suggestion for you. Quit the job you are at, its clearly not the one you should be doing. When you manage to find that job you should be doing, its a nifty thing, that sort of anger and stress just goes away, when you are in your perfect niche, you don't have to worry about being fired, downsized, or underappreciated. (That is that "fit" employers talk about)

breath deeply, relax, let go of your anger Luke.