Gen Whine In The House

Yesterday I made the mistake of watching a video of Penelope Trunk giving a speech about Gen-Yers in the workplace. The same now-cliche stuff about managing 20-somethings: don't expect them to "pay dues" because they'll walk if they have to do grunt work like other generations had to; keep them motivated with treats or special incentives every day or they'll walk; don't hassle them if they seem to be doing nothing but listening to iPods and web-surfing all day or they'll walk. In short, treat them with kid gloves because they are so spectacular that we can't afford to piss them off. The rationale being that they're soon going to be overtaking the workforce so we better just let them have their way.

First of all, bullshit. As far as the whole "soon all the Boomers will be retiring" thing--I think everyone knows that is no longer a valid sentiment, what with the state of the economy. Anyone who was even close to retiring a year ago is now most likely looking at another 10+ years in the workforce before they might be able to even consider retiring. And second of all, bullshit--even if they do retire there are still droves of Gen-Xers who are unemployed and willing--not to mention well-qualified--to do the jobs Gen-Yers scoff at. After all, if you have a mortgage, a car payment, credit card debt, kids, a spouse, etc--you don't have the luxury of hiding out in mom and dad's basement until you find a job that pays six figures and consists of one never-ending brainstorming session while hanging out in a treehouse or some equally cool and laid-back work environment.

Enter the blog post that set me off on this rant. Penelope Trunk has a guest poster on her blog today--a 23 year old writing about why it's smart to quit a job after just two weeks of work. The crux of her rationale being, of course, the tenet upon which the entire Gen-Y work philosophy is based: living with mom n' dad. After all, 65% of new grads do it--so of course it's a good idea.

I digress about the rest of the post; you can read it yourself. And don't miss the comments--those are some of the best parts. Here's one of my favorites:

"I quit a job after two weeks too, but I don't believe the company felt I was doing them a favor. (I was, as indicated in the post.) They are not contemplative enough to consider the possibility that they did something - actually, many things - wrong."

Like forgetting the daily reward or making you spend time at the copier?
Wait--there's more:

"Companies are no more likely than individual people to improve their attitudes or practices when something negative happens."

The "something negative" of course being that the lazy, self-centered entry level person left of his own free will, thereby sparing the company the considerable time, money and hassle it would have taken to fire that person had they and their bad attitude stayed in the job.

Call me a bitter Gen-Xer if you want--I have no problem owning that. And I'm not even one to talk about sticking it out in jobs--I'm the first to admit my resume is filled with jobs that I stayed in for a year before deciding I couldn't stand it and found something better. However, one thing I can say is that I always found a better job, always had health-insurance paid for by me--not my parents--and moving back in with them was never an option.

I've asked this in previous posts: where has the stereotype of the adult loser who lives in his parents' house gone? Have 20-somethings never seen Wedding Crashers? Stepbrothers? Failure to Launch? Call it what you will: saving money, being prudent, giving yourself the opportunity to wait for the perfect job--the fact remains that being 20- or--god-forbid--30-something and living with your parents is nothing to brag about.

Advice from the Millennials

Lately I've been reading a great blog--Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist. She is off the hook successful--wrote a book, launched three start ups, is a columnist at Boston Globe, and her syndicated column runs in more than 200 publications worldwide. Just like me, right?

At any rate, she just launched a new site www.brazencareerist.com which features 50 Generation Y bloggers. Generation Y, by the way, is defined by Wikipedia as children born between 1980–1995. I, born in 1968, am obviously not a Gen Y-er; however, I find Trunk's blogs to be very relevant to my professional and personal experience. At a quick glance, the bloggers on her new site seem a lot younger than I am--but a lot more professionally accomplished--and all seem to have a lot of drive and entrepreneurial spirit, but on their own terms.

Again the operative term being "quick glance", I read the bios and blogs of a handful of her bloggers (50 at this time) and each of them seem like super go-getters--enthusiastic, smart and idealistic. Maybe "idealistic" isn't the right word because they all seem to be pretty successful in shaping things the way they want them to be as far as careers go. It's a little funny to me, though, in an admittedly superior way, to see 20-somethings--some not yet out of college or grad school--writing like they've been around the block 1,000 times and are back to report on the way things really are. But then again, who am I to say that--many of them HAVE, in their short time in the job market, accomplished a lot more than us rule-following Gen X-ers.

Case in point: last week's OnBalance guest blog. That blog alone pretty much defines the difference between Gen Y-ers and the 40+ set: namely, the bitter "don't bother dreaming about a job you'll love because it will never pay the bills" attitude. Reading that blog last week made me shudder--reading post after post about how you're doing your kid a disservice by so much as allowing them to major in anything other than business or pre-law because in the "real world" you can only cling to solvency by going into soul-sucking, 60 hour a week+ professions like law or accounting. Teacher--forget it--you'll never be able to pay the bills. Musician, artist--you name it--if a job involves any measure of enjoyment then forget it--you'll never be able to pay the mortgage and your life will end. Seriously--go read the comments and tell me that I'm misinterpreting this attitude.

At any rate, I'll be interested to see how much of these millennials' (another term for Generation Y-ers) advice is applicable to this baby buster (again, thanks Wikipedia for expanding my vocabulary).