AskLG

Recently, I stumbled upon an article discussing Generation Y.  It was harshly criticizing my (Yeah, I’m a Y’er) generation’s beliefs and ethic.  Intrigued, I set off to research the public opinion of Millennials.  Many people chastise us, and a few (surprisingly) defend us.  As a Millennium, I feel I need to discuss our image as perceived by the public and make some justifications/corrections to the whole situation.

Background

Generation Y is the group of people born between 1980 to 1993-ish.  They are the largest generation since the Baby Boomers with a population nearing 75 million.  They’ve been dubbed “Generation Y”, “Generation WHY”, “Generation Next”, “Millenniums”, “Boomlets”, “Netizens”, and quite a few other names.

According to a Deloitte study, they are defined as: techno-savvy, confident, optimistic, independent, goal oriented, success driven, lifestyle centered, diverse, entrepreneurial, connected, impatient, and community-minded.  Thats fine and dandy, but not all things are thought to be good with Gen Y.

Public Opinion

Public opinion, especially the corporate opinion, of the next generation of workers paints a faint, dismal picture of what is yet to come.  Generation Y has the unique distinction of being considered spoiled.  When they were younger, many were rewarded for everything they’ve done.  In little leagues, every team was full of winners and trophies were doled out to every player.  In order to employ Millenniums, bosses must speak like a therapist.  Coaching this generation rather than bossing them around.  There must be special awards given for good work.  Since they are spoiled, they are also narcissistic.

Netizens love themselves and are caught up in their lifestyle.  All personal needs go before corporate wishes.  So in this odd generational shift, work is actually scheduled around life events.  This leads us to a “I’m sorry, but I can’t work late since I’ve already made plans with friends” type of mentality.  This process can manifest itself in job decisions as well.

Generation Y isn’t loyal.  They could care less where they work as long as they have a job.  Their narcissism makes them seem like they are worth more to the company than they actually are.  They are serial job jumpers, running from one place to another.  Since jobs mean so little, hard work is strictly voluntary.

Their work ethic involves music, fun, and flexibility.  They won’t work hard to earn what they think they deserve.  Don’t even mention overtime either since their night is already planned and the company doesn’t mean enough to make them stay.  The constant rewards growing up as children led them to believe they should always get what they deserve and don’t have to work hard to obtain it.

What Gen Y Is Really About

Being part of the Millenniums, I don’t agree with some of this widespread perception of my generation.  Look at how we are toted as spoiled.  In a sense, it’s true.  Growing up people weren’t as harsh on us as others generations were on their children.  After seeing the pains of our parents and watching the news though, we have come to realize the harsh realities of life.  Through our experiences out on our own, we’ve become optimistic realists.  We know life might throw us lemons, but we’re hoping instead to get thrown limes for our margarita.

This notion of bosses giving therapy treatment is a tad absurd.  It’s true, all of the yelling and threatening the older generation allowed isn’t going to work with us.  We simply aren’t scared of bosses as much and could care less about how things used to be done.  The only thing we’re truly scared of these days is failure.  Just because we don’t respond to the classic threat methods doesn’t mean you can’t tell us we’re doing a terrible job.  When we’re told our performance is bad though, justification is mandatory.  My generation thrives on information, to a fault perhaps, and must know exactly why the company believes we’re performing badly.

On the same token, we demand respect in the workplace.  If we have ideas, we expect management to hear us out.  It’s fine to not run with our ideas (again, justification is needed) but we feel the need to contribute to the team.

While we are narcissistic and do schedule work around life, the nexters genuinely care about who they work for.  We will work overtime if there is an actual reason to.  We will put in the hard work if we feel the need is justified.  We will do anything management asks as long as we’re given reasons why.  The point is, blind obedience has long passed the corporate world.  Nowadays, obedience is a trait that must be earned by our employer.  Even then, we’re always watching our backs to ensure the obedience is never taken for granted.  If we’re going to go out of our way for the company, we expect the same in return.  Since we are looking out for ourselves, we’ve been labeled with disloyalty.

Generation Y can be loyal, but we aren’t naive.  We’ve seen our parents get cut after being loyal for so many years.  Personally, my dad was let go after putting in 17 years.  He worked all the overtime asked of him, some of which was without pay.  He put everything he had into the company.  17 years later, they were downsizing and said he made the most money in the local management pool so he had to be let go.  Growing up where layoffs were the norm, Generation Y knows the game.  We know it happens all the time, especially when the market isn’t great.  As a gut response to the market, we no longer look for long-term achievements.  We live for today and tomorrow, not 10 years from now.  I’m not sure if taking that mentality is good or bad on our part, but it is definitely something engrained in our personality.  We aren’t the next on the chopping block, and we’ll be at the next job if we feel we’re close in line for the cut.  If things are great at work though, we’ll happily stay.  We aren’t jumping for the sake of jumping ship.  We just look out for ourselves, which is something our parents didn’t do.

What does Gen Y bring to the world?

Our generation is all about solutions.  If we don’t know how to do something, we will educate ourselves.  When we were children, we were told “knowledge is power” so we took that to heart.  All the information in the world is on our cell phones and laptops which we frequently tap into to find answers.

We are also persistent.  We’re determined to be the great at everything we do (or at least care about) so we’re constantly changing and tweaking our behavior.  If management thinks we did something poorly, then let us know.  If we’re told why we performed badly, then it won’t happen again.  The constant fluctuation and change in our generation will either make us one of the best or worst groups ever.

This change we’re so used to brings a different culture to the work place.  We aren’t focused on working a set regiment of hours.  Instead, we work based on performance.  At the beginning of the the day or week, we set goals to achieve.  Once we’re finished with our goals, then the work day is done.  This could be before our ’set hours’ have passed or after their done.  Overtime is no big deal as long as we’re making huge strides in our work and have reasons to stay.  We’re very much goal-oriented and success driven.

Don’t misunderstand me though, we like to have fun.  In high school and college, our parents (our role models) told us to study hard if we want to get ahead.  Listening to their advice, we worked and worked and worked.  Everyone needs a break after all that work, so we learned how to party hard, in a limited time frame, as well.  We’re a constant mass of energy that is always on, always ready, and always busy.

We expect work to be similar.  We want to work hard and party hard while on the job.  I mean, work is just an extension of your life right?  Many companies have put in gyms, foosball tables, ping pong tables, host parties, and have other ‘fun’ activities.  So yes, we might play a little ping pong on company time.  Many might think it’s a waste of corporate money, but I’d like to offer an alternative way to look at it.  Everyone at one point or another gets a mental block or hits a mental wall during the work day.  This is stereotypically known as some form of “writer’s block”.  Instead of sitting in our cubicle being bored while we wait for this block to pass, my generation likes to see it as a time to brainstorm.  We go pick up those ping pong paddles and play a few games.  This partying hard mentality lets the mental block pass, gives us more ideas, and keeps us happy.  We can collaborate with coworkers, talk about projects, and whatever else is going on.  This multi-tasking filled break helps us to give the company a better product or service, so we’re all winners right?  Some people are thinking: “Well, they’ll always play and stop working.  We can’t give them games.”  This is far from the truth.  The Millenniums are realists, remember?  We know our job, salary, bonuses, and such are all based on our performance.  We know what we need to get done and how to get it done.  At the end of the day, we might have played an hour or two on the job, but all the work management pushed off on us will be finished and will be the highest quality we can produce.

Generation Y perceives themselves as a commodity.  We have to sell ourselves and our work to get ahead of the millions of competitive peers in the work force.  Not getting things done on time or doing them poorly just doesn’t sell well, so we constantly try to push ourselves to the limit.  This is why we need feedback from our bosses.  We will try out different things, expand our horizons, learn new techniques, but we need to know if it’s working.  We need to know if we’re doing a good job.  Form letters, emails, and gift cards aren’t the type of feedback we want.  My generation needs personalization and quality information.  We need the boss to come tell us we’re doing a good (or bad) job.  We need specific cases when we have excelled or done poorly and reasons justifying both cases.  Like I mentioned earlier, we’re constantly changing ourselves so feedback and information is crucial to our work process.

Conclusion

While some public perception is correct, much of it is given a negative slant.  Maybe this is due to push back from the Baby Boomers and Generation X in attempt to force us to conform, but there are no reasons for us to go the way of our parents.  We’re rebels and here to stay.  Companies need to adapt to this changing mentality or we’ll form our own companies and drive your business away.

In order to find out what the public perception of my generation is all about, I read quite a few articles.  CBS News, Time Magazine, Entrepreneur.com, Wikipedia, and Deloitte had the best information and what was used in this posting.  If you want more information, you should definitely go check them out.

Tags: about, baby boomer, baby boomers, Boomlets, CBS, commodity, culture, Deloitte, determined, Entrepreneur, flexibility, fun, Gen Y, generation, Generation Next, Generation WHY, generation x, Generation Y, job, jobs, life, lifestyle, loyal, Millenniums, naive, Netizens, opinion, optimistic, performance, persistent, play, public, public opinion, realist, solutions, time, why, Wikipedia, work

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 9:32 am and is filed under William. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.