Millenials and especially Gen X had a lot of things easier. You could get some stable job and coast and do fine in the economy 20-30 years ago. I think your sympathies for the way us gens X/Y approached jobs 10 years ago is misdirected (though I suspect a lot of Millenials, especially those such as myself who aren't highly compensated, are taking a more individualistic approach to their careers now as well)
Gen Z is out here trying to survive and they've gotten an incredibly raw deal, I'd sympathize with them instead.
I'm curious what years you think this applies to.
I think this is the first time I get to be like, "kids today don't know how hard we had it", so that's a neat experience I suppose. What I won't say is that I think they've got it any easier; indeed it seems like every generation since X has gotten a worse deal.
Gen X especially had some really amazing opportunities, but income to purchasing power has been more favourable for pretty much the entire time Gen X was coming of age.
Personally, I'm just thinking about what entry-level salaries were 15 years ago compared to the cost of real estate, and I could see a clear path to homeownership for a lot of people entering the workforce at that time, even outside of the top 10% paying jobs
Gen Z unfortunately doesn't really have a practical path to homeownership (in big western cities anyway) outside of A) inheritance/family support, or B) entering the workforce into a position that would put them in the top 3-5% of their cohort
Not sure what sort of rose tinted glasses you have about the 00s but they were a lot worse than today.
Millenials definitely didn't have it as easy, most were in their first years of career (1-5 years) when 2008 happened.
All I remember is a constant fear of cancer, AIDS, and massive unemployment.
This is fair. But it obviously constrains someone to being a worker. You’re not going to develop someone for leadership with that attitude.
There are exceptions where you sometimes get workaholics in high places, especially founders. That can be an advantage or a disadvantage; I've seen at least one founder destroy their own business because they couldn't stop coding, get a regular 8 hours sleep and switch off from time to time. One of the paths from sleep deprivation leads to a rolling crisis and eventual company collapse. They didn't understand that a boundary between work and not-work is necessary for high performance management to happen.
Please correct me if I misunderstood you.
Loyalty shouldn't be freely given. But it's not particularly hard to spot the overly transactional types, and it also shouldn't surprise anyone that while those tactics work for a while, they cliff out before leadership. Again, that cliff is well within the range of a really good salary. But it's a cliff nonetheless.
I really don’t believe this is possible, but maybe others can hide it better.
> People in leadership leave companies all the time, there's no need to be tied to a particular one
Agree on loyalty. But that’s different from holding a limited view of engagement.
Precisely. Compartmentalization is a critical skill at the executive level. You cannot simply let every emotion play out on your face and expect to not be an open book.
Could've ended that sentence there and it would better reflect 99% of organisations, while also explaining part of the attitude you're referring to.
Yes, yes, you can be an informal leader as well, but let's please recognize that not everyone wants to be one, and it's ok to be "just a worker".
Most people will self-develop anyway, and at some point you'll need somebody to fill that leadership position anyway.
So this is not a problem.
Things change constantly, such is life, we'll get used to it.
Software developer compensation spans a very wide range, especially in the USA. Devs with the same years of experience could be earning anywhere from $50k on the low end to $500k on the high end in the same city. The "upward mobility" across the range is relatively easy and not hindered by your credentials (i.e. you aren't permanently barred from the highest end jobs because you didn't do your undergrad at Harvard, Yale or Princeton).
The fact that the USA allows immigration means that this compensation range applies globally. A dev in Tallinn earning €80k can aspire for the $500k role in San Francisco and actually have a decent shot of getting it.
It's almost unreasonable to expect employees to remain loyal in this situation.
The phenomenon where people stayed in the same job forever happened because they couldn't really go anywhere else to make more. Indeed, at high-paying tech companies, you will find many devs who have been there for decades.
Naturally this reflects onto businesses, which of course are made and run by people. Loyalty to employees and vice versa is gone in favour of getting the better deal.
I disagree, loyalty in friendship or with your family is not worth less. Being loyal to human being is not stupid, for me it's being loyal to a company or a brand that is.
When being loyal to your close ones, you create trust and for me this is critical of my hapiness.
I don't get anything from being loyal to a company.
edit: typo
But off course no, it's because our grandparents were more loyal to their companies.
In my own life I have seen the enormous, overwhelming, and abundantly clear difference from when I self-commiserated, lamenting my own misfortune to embracing hardship, explicitly forbidding myself from whining, throwing myself into hard work, foregoing any kind of social life for a few years and eventually it all paid off, only getting better when I decided to be an entrepreneur.
But all my effort is nothing compared to the hard work my dad had to do, and even less compared to that of my grandfather's.
The new deal was all about giving people work, not free stuff.