This May 22 broadcast on WBUR-Boston (NPR) does a lot towards explaining my difficulties with my (ex) 20-something editor:
Twenty-somethings with iPods and attitude, ready to take on the world as they see it.
The early line on Generation Y? Ambitious, demanding, questioning everything, self-absorbed, multi-tasking, optimistic, and very-well pierced and tattooed. They change jobs like their parents changed clothes. They bring their own rules.
Some managers don't know what to do with them. Others say they may end up the highest-performing workforce in history.
Why do they seem to want too much from me, too soon? a manager asks. As "On Point" guest Nadira Hira explains, they are looking for mentoring (this is as the employee, not the boss) from the Boomers, because that's what they got from their parents.
According to Hira, boomers shouldn't be complaining about dealing with the "monsters" since we raised them to feel entitled and to question everything! (She has a cover story on this in Fortune magazine, as well as at least this piece. I can't find a link to the cover story.)
"In the real world, nobody cares if you got a straight A in the second-year English class," says Jason Ryan Dorsey, another guest and consultant on how to deal with employees of his generation. He goes on to say all a CEO wants to know is what you can add to the company, something he says a Gen. Y person might not get.
With parents touting their kids' achievements left and right, it's small wonder the kids think everyone should be impressed with them. It's a hard lesson to learn (the one that everyone is not).
Are they slackers, or are they hard workers? This is the question. I think that they are not slackers, but they are unrealistic - but I think they learned that from parents (and others) who got a lot really fast during the boom of the 1980s.
"I don't want to start from the bottom, and we've been told we don't have to," comments a 21-year old listener. In today's world, many of them don't have to; in this young man's case, since he's going into journalism, he probably WILL be an editor after 2 years.
And look at the models they came into adulthood with: people who made a lot of dough off Internet startup companies; YouTube, MySpace, etc.
One thing I agree with what the guests are saying is a Gen. Y trait is that a person can work from home, if it's appropriate to their position, and produce just as much, if not more. That's one thing my last employer really understood (but the one before that did not).
What I found most frustrating was how much time I spent explaining things, when I could have been working. As my supervisor, she pulled me away from my work much more than was necessary, as was commented upon by others in the office.
I was taught how to interact with adults who were not my parents/relatives ... and to work on my own, without benefit of input from an iPod or other people, until necessary (my parents didn't help me with my homework, for example).
They don't want to feel alone, agrees Hira, who says she can't walk down the street in New York City without using her cell phone because she doesn't want to feel alone.
The young guests also concede that many of their peers can't fill out job applications, they take their mom with them to job interviews, some of them can't tell time without the help of a digital display ...
What you see in the workplace is Gen. Yers interacting with Boomers the same way they interact with their parents, says Tamara Erickson, Consultant and Researcher on Gen. Y and changing workplace demographics.
"Why is the sky blue, Mr. (or Ms.) Boss?"
In the long run, however, what I get from this is that all the guests on this program were Gen. Y people, and they are obviously making a good living talking about - themselves.
And it's working to their advantage, as Boomers are getting the heck out of the workplace earlier and earlier - or having to pay consultants to tell them how to deal with employees who were raised to feel ... how? Neglected? Coddled?
Hira says she believes that things will even out more once her peers reach their 30s. Let's hope so, or within the next few years we'll have people running for President who are incapable of running the country without their mom being there in the Oval Office with them.
Or not being able to read the Doomsday Clock.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
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9 comments:
This is a really insightful and interesting post. I completely agree with everything you say. Even though I'm only in my 30's, I still feel a HUGE generational gap between myself and people in their 20's.
About once a week I ask one of my Gen-Y staff to do something and they reply "that seems like a lot of work" and my reply is always, "that's what we're here for - when the work stops we're unemployed!"
Mary, I hear ya! Although I find even younger people (high school age or recent grads) do not exhibit the same 'symptoms.'
Bubba, I have only ever (recently) worked with two people who were in their 20s. The first, the daughter of the boss, was fired (twice) for displaying a similar attitude to the one you describe. The second I have trashed on here, ad nauseum.
Oh man, as a Boomer who teaches college freshmen writing classes, I can really relate to these observations. I'm having to explain everything in much more detail than I used to, and when the kids get their grades, they tend to argue with every point they lose. It is tiresome. They are very hinky about feedback, which I always provide couched in many positives along with what they need to work on. A recent related example involves the editor of our campus newspaper, who demands that he should get paid for doing his job while in another state doing a 40-hr-a-week paid internship. He's also demanding a raise next year, only half way through his contract, despite that the paper ran up a huge deficit last semester, and has been quite humorless about the whole thing. He has shown little empathy for the circumstances of his fellow staffers, who make much less. The boomers on the board making decisions about his payment are quite startled and annoyed by what we see has his self-centered audacity. I hope this generation grows up before they have to change my Depends. P.S. Thanks for linking to my post about the New Yorker cover.
To be clear, Gillian, the Fortune story in question and resulting media frenzy is a year old. Note the date of your link (and yes, that's the cover story as Fortune is considered part of CNN Money due to parent Time Warner) from March 2007, which is also the date of the NPR broadcast.
In any case, I hate stereotypes and much of what the folks on that broadcast said could be applied to any generation. Fact is, though, Baby Boomers will retire and younger workers (or Generations X and Y, if you prefer such terms) will be replacing them. So, either everyone needs to get along and find a happy medium or companies will be forced to close their doors if people retire and no one is left working.
So ... ? What, it doesn't apply anymore,a year later? I was going for provoking thought and thoughtful comment, not something that was "hot off the presses."
No, much of what was said does NOT apply to any generation (at least not IMO).
What's the happy medium? See, what I was looking for was answers...
And, I've lived most of my life with the stereotype of being a "Baby Boomer" and attached behavioral patterns, all well documented.
What ? Is that the sound of a 20-something not taking criticism well ?
Perhaps we should just apologize and give Ari a participation trophy.
As for what will happen in the future, the industrious 20% of the Gen-Y population will be managing the 80% slackers....and it's not too late to save Gen Z.....
@Gillian: Someone told me last night, "In order to have a friend, you need to be a friend." Friendship is reciprocal and the challenge of discovering the "happy medium" between any employer and any employee is through conversation and reciprocity.
You want an example?
The man who called into the show and said he was frustrated by 20-something Starbucks baristas and McDonalds stockboys who lacked so-called office etiquette or expected to be hired at the top of the ladder without doing the work was dead-on.
By the same token, the 21-year-old who called in and said he wanted a newspaper editorial position and not a cub reporter gig was wrong; and he admitted his annoyance and acceptance of social norms.
Put both people in the same room and either they'll claw each other or hug each other. I vote for hugging.
@Bubba: I'm not complaining, nor am I a 20-something or Gen-Y.
OK, Ari - I may be mis-interpreting your first sentence, but this is something that was also brought up in the broadcast. The notion that co-workers and your boss are automatically friends. In my experience, this is not necessarily unique to Gen-Y. I have had at least 3 bosses (all of my generation) who wanted their employees to be their 'friends.' I always took this to mean that when you did something (at work) they didn't like, or was downright wrong, it was put to you that somehow you had violated a friendship.
Sometimes I thought they had only started a company to gather people around them and force them to be their friends!
But then I realized that in at least one case, it was emotional blackmail and a tactic to coerce us into doing his 'evil bidding' because, after all, we were his 'friends.'
Bosses are not usually so much about reciprocity (you'd end up having to reciprocate with numerous individuals, which is not workable). As someone in the WBUR broadcast said, they want to know what you can give to their company. Period. All the rest is just a need for affirmation on the part of the employee - or in my case, the other way round, since I was the Boomer employee and my supervisor was the Gen-Y.
Actually, I have a deeper theory about all this, but I'm saving it.
Thank you!
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