Posted on 07/12/2007 6:38:19 AM PDT by BenLurkin
What's the point of baby boomers complaining about Generation Y at work? First of all, it's a cliché, because people over 40 have been complaining about "young people" since forever.
Even worse, it's a losing battle. Generation Y is huge. It's one thing for boomers to verbally squash Generation X -- that was no problem. Gen X is tiny and the baby boom was huge.
But in Generation Y, baby boomers have met their match. And in the demographic catfight of the century, Gen X aligns itself with Gen Y over baby boomers, which means that the workplace gripes boomers have about young people are going to be moot in a matter of years.
Generation Which?
So maybe the over-40 crowd should spend less time talking about trying to "bridge the generation gap" -- which is really a euphemism for "get Gen Y to be more like us" -- and more time celebrating the great things that Generation Y brings to the workplace. Gen Y isn't going anywhere, and it's not like they're about to conform to baby boomer demands.
But before you continue reading, understand that the world doesn't actually adhere to demographer datelines: The generation you fit into is more a function of the choices you make than the year you were born. So if you want to know where you truly fit along generational lines, take this test.
And if you want to know why baby boomers should ease up on Generation Y, consider the ways that these youngest workers are making life better for everyone:
1. They won't do work that's meaningless.
These kids grew up with parents scheduling every minute of their day. They were told TV is bad and reading is good, and are more educated than any generation in history. They just spent 18 years learning to be productive with their time, so they're not going to settle for any photocopying/coffee stirring job.
But that's good, because we all want meaning in our jobs, and we all want to understand how we're contributing to the world at large. Why should anyone have to wait until retirement age to start demanding that?
These days, the workplace can be restructured so that we all do a little coffee stirring in exchange for each of us getting to do some meaningful work. And if work can be in some way meaningful for all of us, then the workplace in general will be a better place to spend our time.
2. They won't play the face-time game.
We've known forever that it isn't necessary to be in the office from 9 to 5 every day to get work done. But many of us have missed family events only to sit at a desk all day getting pretty much nothing done because of the stress of missing a family event. And there didn't used to be any option -- if you wanted a successful career, you made sure co-workers saw that you were putting in the hours.
Generation Y wants to be judged by the work they do, not the hours they put in. And what could be more fair than this? In fact, a good portion of the workforce has been requesting flextime for decades, but the requests have gone unheeded.
We have Gen Y to thank for forcing the switch, because if Gen Yers can't leave the building whenever they want, they'll walk out the door and never come back. Face the truth: Boomers weren't willing to go that far, but they sure are benefiting from it. Now they have more opportunities for flextime, too.
3. They're great team players.
If you've climbed a corporate ladder your whole career, then it's probably inconceivable to you that Gen Y doesn't care about your title. But it's true -- they don't do rank. Chances are they saw their parents get laid off in the '80s, so they know how ephemeral that special rung you stand on is and they don't want to waste time trying to get there.
Generation Y played on soccer teams where everyone participated and everyone was a winner, and they conducted playground politics like diplomats because their parents taught them that there's no hierarchy and bullies are to be taken down by everyone. And Gen Yers take these values to work -- they expect to be a part of a team. Gen Y believes that no matter how much experience an individual has, everyone plays and everyone wins.
Maybe it's annoying to you that you don't get to be team captain, or worse, the bully on the playground. But you've read the Harvard Business Review's decades of research on how essential workplace teams are and how older people have little idea how to be good team players, so relax: Gen Y is doing the teamwork for you. In fact, there's no way to work with Gen Yers except on a team. They go to the prom as a team, so they're certainly going to go to product reviews as a team.
That makes us all lucky. We don't need any McKinsey person coming to our company for $10 million a minute telling us how to promote teamwork. We can just follow Generation Y.
4. They have no patience for jerks.
Generation Y changes jobs every two years, typically because the work isn't a good fit, or the learning curve isn't steep enough, or they don't like their co-workers. And Gen Yers will disengage from a jerk before trying to get along with him or her, according to a report by Stan Smith, national director of Next Generation Initiatives at consulting firm Deloitte. They have no desire to bother with somebody they don't like.
This is really how we all should function. After all, according to research by Stanford professor Bob Sutton, the cost of putting up with a jerk in a company is about $160,000. Moreover, Harvard researcher Tiziana Casciaro found that people hate working with high-performing jerks so much that they would rather work with someone incompetent who's nice.
Nobody likes having to deal with jerks, but we've always believed it was asking too much to have a workplace full of decent people. Generation Y sets a new standard for this, and companies are having to dump jerks quickly or risk losing their ability to recruit and retain Gen Yers.
Don't Fight the Future
So let's get off our high horses and stop evaluating whether or not we like working with Generation Y. Its members have incredible leverage in the workplace right now, and they're not going anywhere.
It's time to admit that the workplace is changing and that we're lucky to have a group as optimistic and self-confident as Generation Y leading the way.
Replace us! Hot diggity. Will you hurry up?
I’m inclined to agree with you, though, as someone who has one of those graduate degrees, I’m inclined to say that anyone who actually goes through what you have to go through to get one certainly deserves to write their ticket to a degree. Then again, I took my degree and at one point was working 70-80 hrs a week. It paid off, but if it had not been paying as well, I probably wouldn’t have done it.
This new generation, or, our kids, are the entitlement generation. They have had everything handed to them, they have had no sacrifice to bear, financially speaking, and even those who don’t come from well off families have managed to go to college because this is the first generation that has figured out how to successfully use loan programs to get what they otherwise wouldn’t.
To a degree, they have a point. If you can get a degree beyond undergraduate, you are in a special class for sure, but it doesn’t entitle you to anything. I’m not a big fan of trial lawyers, but I will say this, most of them, when they came out of law school, they got the cases no one wanted, and they often were being paid less than people who had just quit school after 4 years and became middle managers. Then again, for those who are really talented and good at what they do, they soon get the chance to rise. This is how it is supposed to be in every profession but it’s not anymore because we’ve made college into some kind of right, and in certain states, a 4 year degree is a prerequisite for even being middle class. It’s ridiculous.
As the purveyors of the entitlement-mindset, simply tell Gen Y the Boomers were wrong.
“Well, if the Y’s keep voting for all the entitlements they seem to think they have a ‘right’ to...”
You’re kidding, right?
You’re going to blame Gen Y (!) for socialism in America?!
That’s some serious chutzpah. Seriously. The Boomer generation didn’t just break that door down, it built a freaking freeway. And taught their kids that’s the way it should be.
We should be grateful that the Gen X and Y generations have resisted the socialism their parents - the Boomers - indoctrinated them with as much as they have. What’s the Boomer’s excuse?
Full disclosure: I’m Gen-X.
Qwinn
What entitlements are you talking about?
The movement for affirmative action started under the watch of the Boomers.
Just the past two weeks I’ve seen Affirmative Action rulings overturned.
Or were you talking about the “flextime” idea? The one where people get paid for their work, not their hours? Yeah, I can see how getting paid on “results” could wind up being bad.
Fact is, such actions would be more likely to produce a drop living the “credit-card” lifestyle. Working for a boss who is always in debt it bad.
Please, enlighten us. Worst that will happen is I leave the thread in a hissy-fit.
Don’t forget your “greatest generation” is the one who started all the SS/Medicare entitlements. The Boomers who were plenty were useful to supply these entitlements to the greatest generation. Now that many are aging suddenly it is their fault the money running out.
I cry BS dude!
And how would they be different from the Greatest Generation and Boomers who don’t want Social Security or Medicare Reform even though it could bankrupt the country.
That is an unfair indictment of boomers. Many people my age don’t expect to get any “entitlement” from the government because our parents sucked it dry and the spineless pinheads in Washington won’t fix it!
“I can’t win.”
“The boss better not pick me for that assignment.”
“This thread”
(Just noting the threads responses...)
They may have won the War - but they didn't overcome the Depression. A WWII soldier who was 22 yrs old was only 7 years old when the Depression started. How does a small child "overcome" the Depression? It was THEIR parents who had to try to feed a family during the Depression.
My mother and father were always telling me how tough it was during the Depression - I constantly remind my mom that she was born 5 years AFTER the Depression started and my dad was born three years AFTER the Depression started.
It was my grandparents who had to figure out how to feed their families.
So... 7 year olds didn’t work durring the Depression?
40 year olds didnt land in Normandy?
I think the “Greates Generation” mantle belongs to those who would have been at retirement age durring the Korean War. Plenty of those lived through (and worked through) the Depression.
I think the point your parents are trying to tell you is that they as kids lived through something you as a kid couldn’t imagine.
And if you can’t understand that it’s a sure sign you’re a Boomer.
Your generation is so self-absorbed STILL at an older age, you can’t seem to admire any other generation but your own.
Ridiculous.
Can someone refresh me on which age group of our all-volunteer army is bearing the brunt of the fighting and dying right now?
*love* your tag! Thanks for the AM giggle!
As a Gen X’er who often hires Gen Y’ers I’d have to agree, they have a sense of entitlement similar to that of the baby boomers. The difference is that the boomers think they earned it while Gen Y has been raised with it.
Both generations are lucky to have Gen X’ers in the middle who are more libertarian than the Y and boom gens. It’ll probably keep America from becoming a full fledged socialist or fascist state by about 10 years. Enjoy it while you can, and you’re welcome!
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