6 ms·

The 'Trophy Kids' Go to Work

43 points by nickb 18y ago

sdurkin 18y ago
Another old people complain about young people story. Its bull. Never in my life have I had the luxury of feeling entitled, and my parents are well off. Its older than Christ, "Times change and men decay." Or at least thats what the old people think. Maybe I should go dig up the last twelve stories submitted here with the same ridiculous premise, and we can be done with this once and for all.
- cdr 18y ago
  The fact that it was submitted yet again and hit the front page should be evidence enough that we'll never be rid of it.
- tomsaffell 18y ago
  plus ca change...
randrews 18y ago
What an obnoxious attitude. "They want to be treated like colleagues rather than subordinates" "They would renege on a job-acceptance commitment if a better offer came along." "Millennials also expect ... time for their family and personal interests." None of that sounds like a sense of entitlement to me. This is the third or fourth article I've seen on this meme. Are corporate managers really that outraged that people in their 20s want to be treated like human beings?
- modoc 18y ago
  This sums up my thoughts far better than my rambling comment: "Are corporate managers really that outraged that people in their 20s want to be treated like human beings?" Exactly!
  - randrews 18y ago
    My favorite part was about how "millennials" will move into entrepreneurship instead of working for people who don't respect them. Hope so!
    - modoc 18y ago
      I'm hoping that we see a big shift in the high-tech field away from big companies toward a network of small entrepreneur-driven companies that do one thing, and do it really well. Working with a network of people I trust, who are proactive and motivated to do a great job because they have skin in the game, is a real pleasure.
      - fallentimes 18y ago
        I think it's already happening and will increase even more as very talented people continue to get laid off for reasons outside of their direct control.
        dla2000 18y ago
        Except that there's going to be very limited start up money available...
      - marvin 18y ago
        This won't happen, it's like the sweet dream of small, self-sufficient communities. Not all kinds of work can be done in such an environment. But startup culture will inevitably do away with a lot of inane bureaucratic megacorp policies. Especially if all the trophy kids stop swallowing the bullshit. Most large organizations would be much more efficient with a different structure for incentives, and they'll start realizing it when they get hammered by others. Outraged news stories like this one is the first indication that something is happening. You aren't outraged unless you fear something.
        fallentimes 18y ago
        Not all kinds, but more than what currently is.
- irrelative 18y ago
  I can't believe they used those exact quotes, but sure enough they did. I think the idea that young employees can be as valuable as seasoned veterans is really disruptive to people who've had to deal with the system all along. This is really prevalent among doctors (but appears to be trickling down to less prestigious jobs) -- they don't think the hours demanded as residents make sense, but they had to do it, so it only make sense.
- time_management 18y ago
  "They want to be treated like colleagues rather than subordinates" "They would renege on a job-acceptance commitment if a better offer came along." "Millennials also expect ... time for their family and personal interests." Through my mind as I read those quotes: "[Baby Boomers] want to be treated as superiors rather than colleagues." "They would rescind an offer if they found something embarrassing on Facebook." (This has happened to people I know.) "Baby boomers also expect ... others' lifestyles to be arranged for their purposes." In any case, I'm surprised but not amazed that people are willing to say things like this. The problem is as follows: consider that a money economy is essentially a computer, designed to allocate resources to the most productive individuals and institutions; e.g. those who make the best decisions with them in the past. Of course, this process is filtered through large corporations... Most people would agree that, unless there was a specific, well-defined goal of high potential value, working at immense sacrifice is unwise. Most higher-level corporate work is not toward a well-defined goal of value; in fact, most of it's so generic and abstract as to be pointless. But large corporations often value sacrifice over productivity, shifting the money and (much more importantly) power over to those who were most willing to sacrifice themselves. What does this mean? Well, becoming a "company man" in a large company, with all the personal sacrifices that entails, is actually often a bad decision. Thus, decision-making power is allocated to those who made bad decisions (about the relative value of their personal existence vs. corporate goals) in the past. In large big-box companies, power shifts to the defective rather than the productive. Hmm. That definitely wasn't supposed to happen. This article is the voice of Baby Boomers who made bad decisions with their lives and, out of regret and reflective bitterness, have chosen to chide those who wish to explore other options, falling back on a "because I said so" attitude. People veer toward authoritarianism when under psychological stress, and that's exactly what we see in this article.
  - dla2000 18y ago
    Your argument above seems to miss at least one thing. A corporation wants to reward people who value the company. At the upper eschelons, they may reward people for independent thinking, but in most cases, people are hired to perform a job to meet a corporate goal. I recently had to reprimand a person because she missed a client meeting to attend Junior Achievement. I praise her for her efforts with that organization, but it doesn't pay her $100K salary, and my organization does. It's not that any of these ideals being mentioned are terrible, it's the juxtapostion of "I want salary X" and "I'm going to wear offensive t-shirts to work because I'm expressing myself" and "I want to take off time whenever I want". Having compared many fortune 500 companies, I can tell you that at a company with flex-time in place, it's hard to schedule meetings for a 20 person team. Effectively 2 days out of a 5 day work week were "unavailable" and therefore lost. I love flex time. Love it. But I can also point out the very real reasons why a company would not be able to support it. So there's a lot of trade off and I think it's killing our ability to be competitive. Power shifting to the defective is more a matter of the Peter Principle than any person's ability to separate personal time from corporate time.
- jbrun 18y ago
  This reminds me of the 60 minutes segment on millennials which, amongst other things, accused us of being unable to use a fork and knife. I kid you not. http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/113/millennials http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/113/millennials
modoc 18y ago
While I sure there are a lot of "entitled" feeling people entering the work force, and frankly some of the examples they provided are simply idiots, I think the article is really missing the point. The employment field has changed dramatically. You are VERY unlikely to work at the same job in the same company until you retire. Companies aren't supplying reliable pension plans. Many hot fields aren't unionized (I'm not saying unions in their current US form are good, but it's a big shift from the work my grandparents were doing) so you have much less job protection (this in many ways is actually a good thing, imho). You're also often expected to work in excess of 40 hours per week. Many fields have common 50-60+ hour work weeks, on the same salary. In short, companies are giving less, are less loyal, and are asking for more. At the same time, in many new job fields, it's been discovered that you can work smarter, not longer. It's been proven that flex-time, working from home, lax dress codes, etc... don't always hurt productivity and success. In many cases it improves it. It's not that I feel entitled to anything special. It's just that I've made a choice to not spend 60 hours/week wearing a suit in a grey cube under fluorescent lights, filling out TPS reports (I did that for a few months, and quit). Thankfully the employment field has supported my choice. A lot of the requests make sense: Waiting 6-12 months to get feedback on how you're doing at your job (as perceived by your boss and coworkers) is silly. Short iterations improve quality. Having to dress a certain way if you don't interact with clients who are expecting a suit, is a waste of money and makes many people uncomfortable physically or with their appearance. If listening to music while you work makes you happier and/or more productive, it would be foolish not to. If it (or anything else) makes you less productive then that's something for your boss to deal with you individually on. "They want to be treated like colleagues rather than subordinates". Really? Who wants to be treated like a subordinate? I mean honestly, who WANTS that? If you don't have mutual respect with people you spend 40+ hours/week with, why would you want to be there?
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  In short, companies are giving less, are less loyal, and are asking for more. This. I'm a millenial I suppose. Born in 1982, and now solidly in the workforce. I watched my parents get screwed over time and time again by companies that demanded loyalty without reciprocation. I learned things like the fact that the best way to get a raise or promotion is to leave for another company, and received the admonition to remember that a company is not your friend. It does not have personal consideration. I was taught that I have to take care of myself, and that nobody else will do that for me. Loyalty, like trust, is a two-way street. It is hard to earn and easily lost.
Maascamp 18y ago
You know what, sometimes you ARE a subordinate. So suck it up.
- randrews 18y ago
  Being a subordinate doesn't mean you shouldn't be treated with respect.
  - silentbicycle 18y ago
    People who treat their subordinates like crap are sabotaging themselves, because their subordinates are drastically less likely to give them reliable information or enthusiastic effort. Good managing isn't about indulging in power trips, it's about being able to ensure that a group of people are working in a way that makes sense in the big picture.
- time_management 18y ago
  The corporate structure is inherited directly from that of an army. CEOs are generals, VPs are lieutenants, line managers are sergeants, and line workers are privates. The problem is that people in companies have entirely different motivations from those in armies. In volunteer armies, many people have a strong sense of patriotism or religious devotion and already consider themselves subordinate to their country or ideals, and they are therefore usually willing to respect rank and order. Conscripts and mercenaries, on the other hand, do not have such motivations and are quite often useless, as it is difficult to make them follow orders enthusiastically. A large corporation doesn't stand for anything, aside from making money for its shareholders (and, in practice, officers). Therefore, it inspires little or no loyalty, much less devotion, and it shouldn't. It's employees are effectively mercenaries, not volunteers. Therefore, people aren't willing to clean the toilets with toothbrushes, and understandably so.
quasimojo 18y ago
oh but the young'ns CAN HAVE...most of it they want to be CEOs, so they just end-run around having a real business...they start some dipshit website, call it a startup, call themselves Founder & (CTO | CEO | President)...and sit back and start counting the benjamins....errr...coupons. who needs money? doesn't everyone want to be fifty and still live with the 'rents??
streblo 18y ago
"[Employers] are concerned about this generation's desire to shape their jobs to fit their lives rather than adapt their lives to the workplace." God forbid.
- dla2000 18y ago
  Except that you have to compete with a generation in other countries that don't do that. Who's a better return on investment?
Alex3917 18y ago
Kids in the US and GBR are generally treated like shit, so they damn well should feel entitled. Children here have lots of material goods, but on every other quality-of-life measure they are basically neglected if not actively abused-- by parents, the school system, corporations, religion, the government, etc.
- randrews 18y ago
  In what ways? Could you elaborate some?
yesimahuman 18y ago
I'd rather dream of being "CEO tomorrow" than be content working as a subordinate the rest of my life.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
bjelkeman-again 18y ago
Maybe they read the Maverick by Ricardo Semler and realised that working in a company doesn't have to be shit.
bigthboy 18y ago
This is the most outragous story I've ever read. It's insulting and definitely says something about corporate structure today. I wonder if any of these companies are on the "Best Places to Work" list... I'm technically a millennial and I don't feel entitled to anything. The points this story brings up are actually things that have been shown to improve productivity if done correctly. Look at Google and numerous other successful high tech companies. People work better when they aren't forced into a suit, get to do non-distracting personal enjoyments at work, have time to sit back and just flat out think and relax during their work day. What this article shows is that some companies really are full of stiffs who have a superiority complex and are forcibly conformists to their employees. It should be investigated why these companies are tetering on personal rights violations rather than why their employee's don't bow down to their boss's power.
- paddy_m 18y ago
  I know that Goldman Sachs was regularly on best places to work lists'. They are mentioned in the article.
iigs 18y ago
I'm not sure about this article, I think we're getting trolled here. Some of the quotes are questionable, but some of them seemed to sound like they came from larger "employees are people too" interviews. I don't think all of the people interviewed share the opinion of the author. The "We keep treating them like crap but they keep LEAVING! What is going ON HERE?!?" temper tantrum is pretty bizarre. If you can legitimately hold that opinion and be an HR executive, it certainly implies to me that the problem has existed at least as long as that person has been in the business. Your feeling of entitlement isn't all that different from mine if you stand back a step. If we're so dispensable give us another week off, what's it going to hurt? This is a pretty green field for any big company that would like to improve retention. A fun business hack would be structuring a company so you could dial-a-salary: your salary assumes you work 95% of the year (2w PTO + 5 holidays), and you tell HR how much you actually want to work (down to say 80% of the year -- 9wk + 5 holidays, as a lower bound for benefits). I bet your retention would be invincible. Screw the money, I'd probably be at 85%.
- niels_olson 18y ago
  agreed, and the troll's name is Ruppert Murdoch. Either that, or the WSJ is trying to retain it's old people readership with some emotional bonding article.
  - iigs 18y ago
    That thought crossed my mind as well. I guess there's no point in trying to retain our demographic since none of us read the paper anyway. I don't see how it would really help them, but they've got to do something, and this is something, so yay!
    - dla2000 18y ago
      Newspapers are supposed to print news, not print platitudes. :) I recommend you take at least a moment to wonder why your generation is coming under fire so much.
      - 18y ago
MaysonL 18y ago
A blog post from Mother Jones about the same article which gives a quote from The Organization Man back in 1956 which says the same thing (but without quite as much snark): http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/10/damn_kids.html http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/10/damn_kids.html
- tjmc 18y ago
  By 1956 an economic boom had been going on for the best part of a decade. Sound familiar? It's only natural that graduates of an era where jobs are easy to come by will be more frivolous about where they work and the conditions they expect. When I left school in 1988 it was very hard to get work - there were waiting lists for jobs at McDonalds for example. The "Gen Xers" I know have similar memories and are generally more cautious about quitting a job without something else to go to. Now that the economy's tanking I think attitudes will change. The article's assertion that "their sense of entitlement is an ingrained trait that will likely resurface in a stronger job market" looks pretty bogus to me.
- dla2000 18y ago
  But you could read this in another way and say that this was the start of the decline... and we're just worried about how much farther we can slide... I know I've probably made a lot of people on this board a little irked, but I'm serious when I say I'm worried about how we'll compete.
antiform 18y ago
It's articles like this that make me fall in love with the tech industry all over again.
tyohn 18y ago
They said the same thing when the "X generation" was entering the workforce. They even had HR videos about how bad we where going to be...
anthonyrubin 18y ago
This article seems relevant to some of the comments here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16040492/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16040492/
lutorm 18y ago
I'm not saying that I agree with the article, but it's pretty funny how all those commenting that it's wrong sound exactly like the people they are talking about.
PJGoldwing 18y ago
I don't know if it's warranted, but I'd venture to say that there's an immense disdain amongst millennials for older generations for the state of the world as it is now. The problems left to younger generations are of such magnitude, that, for better or worse, their attitudes towards "superiors" seems natural.
pmorici 18y ago
I think the underlying problem is we've been taught that if you work hard you should be rewarded but what older people mean by "hardwork" is in the sense of hard time as in prison. In their view showing up at 7:00 and leaving at 3:30 each day with a 30 minute lunch is the epitome of a model employee. They expect that by putting in time irespective of their actual work product they should be rewarded. Young people on the other hand expect to be judged and rewarded based on the quality of their work product itself and how much value it contributes to the company. Older workers are many times indignant to this idea because they spent the last 30 years racking up their seniority points.
- dla2000 18y ago
  I have to echo my comment earlier. When you say that young people want to be judged on the quality of the work (only), you're turning your work into a commodity and making it easier and easier for your work to be outsourced.
  - pmorici 18y ago
    I don't mean quality strictly in the sense of workmanship I mean the the sense of the value it provides to the company, including things like efficiency, productivity, etc.... I also disagree that judging on quality would make the jobs more susceptible to outsourcing. Presumable oppisite is judging on chair sitting ability and since I'm 100% sure the one thing that cheap over seas labor has me beat on is their chair sitting skillz I choose to compete in all the other categories.
    - dla2000 18y ago
      A fair point. If you have the talent, definitely avoid any job that can be commoditized. I think there may be as much as a 50/50 split between people who will be able to do so and those who cannot, so those in the bottom face some harsh realities. What I'm also finding, though is that a very large portion of the people I work with aren't able to accurately assess their capabilities. They're ready to be entrepeneurs with no math skills, for example. This is an obvious concern. I think that's why the article resonated with so many who read it on both sides of the fence.
Goladus 18y ago
It's not that people are unwilling to make tradeoffs, they just aren't going to let some guy in a suit with a huge sense of entitlement dictate which tradeoffs they have to make.
blang 18y ago
I find it interesting that traditional media likes to complain about a shrinking consumer base while at the same time they write this story insulting the younger generation every couple of months. Have they ever thought that they would lose fewer costumers if they stopped insulting them?

43 points by nickb 18y ago

Another old people complain about young people story. Its bull. Never in my life have I had the luxury of feeling entitled, and my parents are well off. Its older than Christ, "Times change and men decay." Or at least thats what the old people think. Maybe I should go dig up the last twelve stories submitted here with the same ridiculous premise, and we can be done with this once and for all.

cdr 18y ago
The fact that it was submitted yet again and hit the front page should be evidence enough that we'll never be rid of it.
tomsaffell 18y ago
plus ca change...

randrews 18y ago

What an obnoxious attitude. "They want to be treated like colleagues rather than subordinates" "They would renege on a job-acceptance commitment if a better offer came along." "Millennials also expect ... time for their family and personal interests." None of that sounds like a sense of entitlement to me. This is the third or fourth article I've seen on this meme. Are corporate managers really that outraged that people in their 20s want to be treated like human beings?

modoc 18y ago
This sums up my thoughts far better than my rambling comment: "Are corporate managers really that outraged that people in their 20s want to be treated like human beings?" Exactly!
- randrews 18y ago
  My favorite part was about how "millennials" will move into entrepreneurship instead of working for people who don't respect them. Hope so!
  - modoc 18y ago
    I'm hoping that we see a big shift in the high-tech field away from big companies toward a network of small entrepreneur-driven companies that do one thing, and do it really well. Working with a network of people I trust, who are proactive and motivated to do a great job because they have skin in the game, is a real pleasure.
    - fallentimes 18y ago
      I think it's already happening and will increase even more as very talented people continue to get laid off for reasons outside of their direct control.
      - dla2000 18y ago
        Except that there's going to be very limited start up money available...
    - marvin 18y ago
      This won't happen, it's like the sweet dream of small, self-sufficient communities. Not all kinds of work can be done in such an environment. But startup culture will inevitably do away with a lot of inane bureaucratic megacorp policies. Especially if all the trophy kids stop swallowing the bullshit. Most large organizations would be much more efficient with a different structure for incentives, and they'll start realizing it when they get hammered by others. Outraged news stories like this one is the first indication that something is happening. You aren't outraged unless you fear something.
      - fallentimes 18y ago
        Not all kinds, but more than what currently is.
irrelative 18y ago
I can't believe they used those exact quotes, but sure enough they did. I think the idea that young employees can be as valuable as seasoned veterans is really disruptive to people who've had to deal with the system all along. This is really prevalent among doctors (but appears to be trickling down to less prestigious jobs) -- they don't think the hours demanded as residents make sense, but they had to do it, so it only make sense.
time_management 18y ago
"They want to be treated like colleagues rather than subordinates" "They would renege on a job-acceptance commitment if a better offer came along." "Millennials also expect ... time for their family and personal interests." Through my mind as I read those quotes: "[Baby Boomers] want to be treated as superiors rather than colleagues." "They would rescind an offer if they found something embarrassing on Facebook." (This has happened to people I know.) "Baby boomers also expect ... others' lifestyles to be arranged for their purposes." In any case, I'm surprised but not amazed that people are willing to say things like this. The problem is as follows: consider that a money economy is essentially a computer, designed to allocate resources to the most productive individuals and institutions; e.g. those who make the best decisions with them in the past. Of course, this process is filtered through large corporations... Most people would agree that, unless there was a specific, well-defined goal of high potential value, working at immense sacrifice is unwise. Most higher-level corporate work is not toward a well-defined goal of value; in fact, most of it's so generic and abstract as to be pointless. But large corporations often value sacrifice over productivity, shifting the money and (much more importantly) power over to those who were most willing to sacrifice themselves. What does this mean? Well, becoming a "company man" in a large company, with all the personal sacrifices that entails, is actually often a bad decision. Thus, decision-making power is allocated to those who made bad decisions (about the relative value of their personal existence vs. corporate goals) in the past. In large big-box companies, power shifts to the defective rather than the productive. Hmm. That definitely wasn't supposed to happen. This article is the voice of Baby Boomers who made bad decisions with their lives and, out of regret and reflective bitterness, have chosen to chide those who wish to explore other options, falling back on a "because I said so" attitude. People veer toward authoritarianism when under psychological stress, and that's exactly what we see in this article.
- dla2000 18y ago
  Your argument above seems to miss at least one thing. A corporation wants to reward people who value the company. At the upper eschelons, they may reward people for independent thinking, but in most cases, people are hired to perform a job to meet a corporate goal. I recently had to reprimand a person because she missed a client meeting to attend Junior Achievement. I praise her for her efforts with that organization, but it doesn't pay her $100K salary, and my organization does. It's not that any of these ideals being mentioned are terrible, it's the juxtapostion of "I want salary X" and "I'm going to wear offensive t-shirts to work because I'm expressing myself" and "I want to take off time whenever I want". Having compared many fortune 500 companies, I can tell you that at a company with flex-time in place, it's hard to schedule meetings for a 20 person team. Effectively 2 days out of a 5 day work week were "unavailable" and therefore lost. I love flex time. Love it. But I can also point out the very real reasons why a company would not be able to support it. So there's a lot of trade off and I think it's killing our ability to be competitive. Power shifting to the defective is more a matter of the Peter Principle than any person's ability to separate personal time from corporate time.
jbrun 18y ago
This reminds me of the 60 minutes segment on millennials which, amongst other things, accused us of being unable to use a fork and knife. I kid you not. http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/113/millennials http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/113/millennials

modoc 18y ago

While I sure there are a lot of "entitled" feeling people entering the work force, and frankly some of the examples they provided are simply idiots, I think the article is really missing the point. The employment field has changed dramatically. You are VERY unlikely to work at the same job in the same company until you retire. Companies aren't supplying reliable pension plans. Many hot fields aren't unionized (I'm not saying unions in their current US form are good, but it's a big shift from the work my grandparents were doing) so you have much less job protection (this in many ways is actually a good thing, imho). You're also often expected to work in excess of 40 hours per week. Many fields have common 50-60+ hour work weeks, on the same salary. In short, companies are giving less, are less loyal, and are asking for more. At the same time, in many new job fields, it's been discovered that you can work smarter, not longer. It's been proven that flex-time, working from home, lax dress codes, etc... don't always hurt productivity and success. In many cases it improves it. It's not that I feel entitled to anything special. It's just that I've made a choice to not spend 60 hours/week wearing a suit in a grey cube under fluorescent lights, filling out TPS reports (I did that for a few months, and quit). Thankfully the employment field has supported my choice. A lot of the requests make sense: Waiting 6-12 months to get feedback on how you're doing at your job (as perceived by your boss and coworkers) is silly. Short iterations improve quality. Having to dress a certain way if you don't interact with clients who are expecting a suit, is a waste of money and makes many people uncomfortable physically or with their appearance. If listening to music while you work makes you happier and/or more productive, it would be foolish not to. If it (or anything else) makes you less productive then that's something for your boss to deal with you individually on. "They want to be treated like colleagues rather than subordinates". Really? Who wants to be treated like a subordinate? I mean honestly, who WANTS that? If you don't have mutual respect with people you spend 40+ hours/week with, why would you want to be there?

LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
In short, companies are giving less, are less loyal, and are asking for more. This. I'm a millenial I suppose. Born in 1982, and now solidly in the workforce. I watched my parents get screwed over time and time again by companies that demanded loyalty without reciprocation. I learned things like the fact that the best way to get a raise or promotion is to leave for another company, and received the admonition to remember that a company is not your friend. It does not have personal consideration. I was taught that I have to take care of myself, and that nobody else will do that for me. Loyalty, like trust, is a two-way street. It is hard to earn and easily lost.

Maascamp 18y ago

You know what, sometimes you ARE a subordinate. So suck it up.

randrews 18y ago
Being a subordinate doesn't mean you shouldn't be treated with respect.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  People who treat their subordinates like crap are sabotaging themselves, because their subordinates are drastically less likely to give them reliable information or enthusiastic effort. Good managing isn't about indulging in power trips, it's about being able to ensure that a group of people are working in a way that makes sense in the big picture.
time_management 18y ago
The corporate structure is inherited directly from that of an army. CEOs are generals, VPs are lieutenants, line managers are sergeants, and line workers are privates. The problem is that people in companies have entirely different motivations from those in armies. In volunteer armies, many people have a strong sense of patriotism or religious devotion and already consider themselves subordinate to their country or ideals, and they are therefore usually willing to respect rank and order. Conscripts and mercenaries, on the other hand, do not have such motivations and are quite often useless, as it is difficult to make them follow orders enthusiastically. A large corporation doesn't stand for anything, aside from making money for its shareholders (and, in practice, officers). Therefore, it inspires little or no loyalty, much less devotion, and it shouldn't. It's employees are effectively mercenaries, not volunteers. Therefore, people aren't willing to clean the toilets with toothbrushes, and understandably so.

quasimojo 18y ago

oh but the young'ns CAN HAVE...most of it they want to be CEOs, so they just end-run around having a real business...they start some dipshit website, call it a startup, call themselves Founder & (CTO | CEO | President)...and sit back and start counting the benjamins....errr...coupons. who needs money? doesn't everyone want to be fifty and still live with the 'rents??

streblo 18y ago

"[Employers] are concerned about this generation's desire to shape their jobs to fit their lives rather than adapt their lives to the workplace." God forbid.

dla2000 18y ago
Except that you have to compete with a generation in other countries that don't do that. Who's a better return on investment?

Alex3917 18y ago

Kids in the US and GBR are generally treated like shit, so they damn well should feel entitled. Children here have lots of material goods, but on every other quality-of-life measure they are basically neglected if not actively abused-- by parents, the school system, corporations, religion, the government, etc.

randrews 18y ago
In what ways? Could you elaborate some?

yesimahuman 18y ago

I'd rather dream of being "CEO tomorrow" than be content working as a subordinate the rest of my life.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

bjelkeman-again 18y ago

Maybe they read the Maverick by Ricardo Semler and realised that working in a company doesn't have to be shit.

bigthboy 18y ago

This is the most outragous story I've ever read. It's insulting and definitely says something about corporate structure today. I wonder if any of these companies are on the "Best Places to Work" list... I'm technically a millennial and I don't feel entitled to anything. The points this story brings up are actually things that have been shown to improve productivity if done correctly. Look at Google and numerous other successful high tech companies. People work better when they aren't forced into a suit, get to do non-distracting personal enjoyments at work, have time to sit back and just flat out think and relax during their work day. What this article shows is that some companies really are full of stiffs who have a superiority complex and are forcibly conformists to their employees. It should be investigated why these companies are tetering on personal rights violations rather than why their employee's don't bow down to their boss's power.

paddy_m 18y ago
I know that Goldman Sachs was regularly on best places to work lists'. They are mentioned in the article.

iigs 18y ago

I'm not sure about this article, I think we're getting trolled here. Some of the quotes are questionable, but some of them seemed to sound like they came from larger "employees are people too" interviews. I don't think all of the people interviewed share the opinion of the author. The "We keep treating them like crap but they keep LEAVING! What is going ON HERE?!?" temper tantrum is pretty bizarre. If you can legitimately hold that opinion and be an HR executive, it certainly implies to me that the problem has existed at least as long as that person has been in the business. Your feeling of entitlement isn't all that different from mine if you stand back a step. If we're so dispensable give us another week off, what's it going to hurt? This is a pretty green field for any big company that would like to improve retention. A fun business hack would be structuring a company so you could dial-a-salary: your salary assumes you work 95% of the year (2w PTO + 5 holidays), and you tell HR how much you actually want to work (down to say 80% of the year -- 9wk + 5 holidays, as a lower bound for benefits). I bet your retention would be invincible. Screw the money, I'd probably be at 85%.

niels_olson 18y ago
agreed, and the troll's name is Ruppert Murdoch. Either that, or the WSJ is trying to retain it's old people readership with some emotional bonding article.
- iigs 18y ago
  That thought crossed my mind as well. I guess there's no point in trying to retain our demographic since none of us read the paper anyway. I don't see how it would really help them, but they've got to do something, and this is something, so yay!
  - dla2000 18y ago
    Newspapers are supposed to print news, not print platitudes. :) I recommend you take at least a moment to wonder why your generation is coming under fire so much.
    - 18y ago

MaysonL 18y ago

A blog post from Mother Jones about the same article which gives a quote from The Organization Man back in 1956 which says the same thing (but without quite as much snark): http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/10/damn_kids.html http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/10/damn_kids.html

tjmc 18y ago
By 1956 an economic boom had been going on for the best part of a decade. Sound familiar? It's only natural that graduates of an era where jobs are easy to come by will be more frivolous about where they work and the conditions they expect. When I left school in 1988 it was very hard to get work - there were waiting lists for jobs at McDonalds for example. The "Gen Xers" I know have similar memories and are generally more cautious about quitting a job without something else to go to. Now that the economy's tanking I think attitudes will change. The article's assertion that "their sense of entitlement is an ingrained trait that will likely resurface in a stronger job market" looks pretty bogus to me.
dla2000 18y ago
But you could read this in another way and say that this was the start of the decline... and we're just worried about how much farther we can slide... I know I've probably made a lot of people on this board a little irked, but I'm serious when I say I'm worried about how we'll compete.

antiform 18y ago

It's articles like this that make me fall in love with the tech industry all over again.

tyohn 18y ago

They said the same thing when the "X generation" was entering the workforce. They even had HR videos about how bad we where going to be...

anthonyrubin 18y ago

This article seems relevant to some of the comments here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16040492/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16040492/

lutorm 18y ago

I'm not saying that I agree with the article, but it's pretty funny how all those commenting that it's wrong sound exactly like the people they are talking about.

PJGoldwing 18y ago

I don't know if it's warranted, but I'd venture to say that there's an immense disdain amongst millennials for older generations for the state of the world as it is now. The problems left to younger generations are of such magnitude, that, for better or worse, their attitudes towards "superiors" seems natural.

pmorici 18y ago

I think the underlying problem is we've been taught that if you work hard you should be rewarded but what older people mean by "hardwork" is in the sense of hard time as in prison. In their view showing up at 7:00 and leaving at 3:30 each day with a 30 minute lunch is the epitome of a model employee. They expect that by putting in time irespective of their actual work product they should be rewarded. Young people on the other hand expect to be judged and rewarded based on the quality of their work product itself and how much value it contributes to the company. Older workers are many times indignant to this idea because they spent the last 30 years racking up their seniority points.

dla2000 18y ago
I have to echo my comment earlier. When you say that young people want to be judged on the quality of the work (only), you're turning your work into a commodity and making it easier and easier for your work to be outsourced.
- pmorici 18y ago
  I don't mean quality strictly in the sense of workmanship I mean the the sense of the value it provides to the company, including things like efficiency, productivity, etc.... I also disagree that judging on quality would make the jobs more susceptible to outsourcing. Presumable oppisite is judging on chair sitting ability and since I'm 100% sure the one thing that cheap over seas labor has me beat on is their chair sitting skillz I choose to compete in all the other categories.
  - dla2000 18y ago
    A fair point. If you have the talent, definitely avoid any job that can be commoditized. I think there may be as much as a 50/50 split between people who will be able to do so and those who cannot, so those in the bottom face some harsh realities. What I'm also finding, though is that a very large portion of the people I work with aren't able to accurately assess their capabilities. They're ready to be entrepeneurs with no math skills, for example. This is an obvious concern. I think that's why the article resonated with so many who read it on both sides of the fence.

Goladus 18y ago

It's not that people are unwilling to make tradeoffs, they just aren't going to let some guy in a suit with a huge sense of entitlement dictate which tradeoffs they have to make.

blang 18y ago

I find it interesting that traditional media likes to complain about a shrinking consumer base while at the same time they write this story insulting the younger generation every couple of months. Have they ever thought that they would lose fewer costumers if they stopped insulting them?