Are you a Millennial?

This story was on 60 minutes last Sunday.

[flashvideo filename=/video/millenium-workers.flv /]

Some of it feels relevant, but I am not fully prepared to generalize my entire generation into this ADD/anti-establishment mold.

I disagree that you can’t correct a millennial. You can correct us, but you just have to do it gently because we are more sensitive to it.

While it’s true that most of us aren’t prepared to compromise work-life balance, or give our entire existences over to a company who only sees us as numbers on a page (at the end of the day), it doesn’t mean we can’t be intensely loyal to a company or workplace where we feel happy.

One thing is for sure. I do believe that my generation is going to (for better or worse) redefine the concept of corporate “productivity.”

6 thoughts on “Are you a Millennial?”

  1. This sounds a lot like the kind of fear-mongering I hear from my paranoid grandmother who watches 60 Minutes to find problems with the world to complain about with her two surviving friends. I’m a couple of years too old to really be considered part of this generation, but seriously, people just need to grow up. Companies shouldn’t have to spend this kind of time and money catering to a bunch of slackers. But I’m a crabby old man already, so what do I know.

  2. I completely agree with Matt, and I’m only just slightly out of this age range. (And can I just say I’d be, yes, shocked and appalled if my boss wrote my *mother* a note saying how great I am at my job??) I think if this report is accurate, then there’s a huge opening in the workforce for people of whatever age willing to just get on with it – do your job, be on time, be professional, be independent – and those kinds of workers are going to put ‘Millennials’ out on the street!
    And just as a side note, my hubby manages people of this age with this kind of attitude, and judging from his stories, I’d say these jobs are going to east European and Middle Eastern immigrants who don’t need so much babysitting, who just want to support their families and do well at their jobs.

  3. Productivity…… Well I am reading this at work!
    Thanks for relieving my boredom W.E.

  4. Hmmm…glad I’m a Gen X-er. I’m not gonna lie though, I don’t mind reaping the benefits of the
    Millenials. 🙂

  5. That whole thing made me soooo angry. Obviously there are a huge number of older members of the population who have NO idea how unstable the job market is. I can’t even tell you the number of people I know who have been outsourced or merged out of jobs. I could go on for years about the financial industry’s use of college grads as temps and not permanent employees. The reality is that the vast majority of companies have awful or no benefits, no loyalty to you for a job well done, and there is no motivation to stay with them because you get better raises by switching jobs and there’s no such thing as an employee retirement fund or pension anymore for those that stick it out. Why the HECK should this generation work crazy overtime and make a job that uses them like kleenex their priority in life? I also enjoyed the motivation conference. It is so freaking true that companies think if they give you a stress ball with their logo on it that suddenly you won’t want to leave or notice that they cut your health benefits? AAARGGG!!!!!

    I am fully willing to admit there are more people of my generation that are big babies in the workplace and don’t handle direction. So fire them!! If you treat your employees well and have good benefits then you have people fighting to work there and you will have the option of hiring the best of the best. It’s no mystery- if no one wants to work at your company then you probably will have to mother your crappy employees who are the dregs of the employment pool. I would assume that’s the same in every generation though and not just ours.

    I am soooooooo glad I left the corporate world to become a nurse. I did it because I wanted to change professions, but this kind of crap might have forced me to get my teaching certificate(a whole other topic of annoyance) or move to India to get a job. I hate Corporate America.

  6. Erica hit it right on in my opinion. I personally think this situation our society is in has a lot to do with the breakdown of family values and personal responsibility. most of these people want to wait until they are 30-35 to settle down and be responsible.

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