How Gen Y is changing the corporate workplace | Hacker News Reader

How Gen Y is changing the corporate workplace

washingtonpost.com

46 pointsfreshrap649 comments

One part of this article I want to address is 'respect'. Speaking as a gen y, if I give an opinion at work, I do expect it to be considered - but that's not due to some sense of entitlement. If I've taken the time to give an opinion on a topic at work, I'm jepordizing my reputation; I'm giving my peers and superiors a chance to evaluate me. This neccesarily means I've thought about what I said, I believe it's actually a good idea. Young people often times do have good ideas, and it's important not to dismiss their validity.

It's unfortunate that some older people can't grasp this concept. In business, where adaptivity is key, I find this not to be so much of a problem. However, academia seems to be the exact opposite. Last year, one professor told me to express my opinion once I "have over 30 years of HR experience". Meanwhile I was thinking, "that'll be 30 years too late."

This must be a two way street. Many older people have their ideas and opinions dismissed for various reasons and biases of younger workers, too.

Yes, but there are plenty of times that younger workers come up with what they think is a brilliant idea. In reality, it's the same broken idea that other people have come up with before and it's already proven to not work. Just because you have just now come up with the idea doesn't provide any more merit to it.

I'm not a Gen Yer, but I must respond that the situation you describe really should be a teachable moment to the younger worker; explain to them why their idea may have been tried before and failed, or perhaps it was fundamentally unsound for a reason they hadn't thought of.

I agree that it should be a teaching exercise. But I've seen countless times where it turns into "Those old guys just don't understand!" even when they are explained, excruciatingly so, how their idea has already been attempted.

For example...I've had younger developers come to me with a brilliant new approach to development. Their idea? Basically, it was waterfall. No matter how much I explained to them that their idea had been tried and failed, they insisted that they were on to something new and exciting.

Related Stores about Gen X:

>They don't want to spend a lot of time talking about things or having meetings. They want to get in, do the work, and move on to the next thing. If you're looking for someone to deliver a report every week, you don't want an Xer. I recently brought up the subject of understanding twentysomethings during a coaching workshop. Immediately a manager complained, with a lot of emotion, that kids today don't want to work and will only stay for a week or so and then leave. Well, the job was very repetitive and offered little challenge. No wonder!

http://www.coachingandmentoring.com/Articles/ (click on x's at the bottom, link wont display correctly on HN due to the single quote)

http://www.newbizs.com/pubs/GenX09-02.pdf

Also notable, from the first article:

>In a l995 survey, Babson College Professor Paul Reynolds found that "10% of Americans between the ages of 25-34 are actively involved in creating a start-up company, a rate about three times as high as any other age group...it should help dispel once and for all the myth that today's youth are motivationally challenged."

I wonder what that figure is today.

It seems a bit odd that a generation of selfish free loving hippies are criticizing their spawn.

Folks, you created these princesses then you turned into unethical, money grubbing, conservative capitalists and left a generation of ill prepared people to take over.

Stop whining.

Start paying attention, you're looking at your future.

Well said. The criticism comes from the generation that made us Gen Y's into the adults we are becoming. People born in the 1990's are beginning to enter the workplace, with self-confidence, and a general refusal to be treated like a doormat. If this becomes misconstrued as "entitled," or "spoiled," than so be it.

The notion that there was an entire generation of free loving hippies is over blown. Very much the same way that there is an entire generation of young, spoiled people that refuse to do work without unlimited vacations.

While I would love to see things like a ROWE, better maternity leave, a more thoughtful environment, the reality is, lots of jobs are crappy, and really the work environment is about having a semi-skilled warm body at the desk/counter/whatever. I don't like those jobs, but there are a lot of them, and those employers will be happy to find anyone who doesn't give trouble, shows up on time, and keeps their nose clean.

I think it will become apparent over time that some people are willing to work hard and will reap the rewards thereof, and others are willing to complain hard and will reap the rewards thereof too.

But it's good to work towards having a good work environment when possible.

We even work 59 hours more than the stereotypically nose-to-the-grindstone Japanese.

Statistically true, but not supportive of the point being made, largely due to the difference in employment by gender in the two countries. (Japan: supporting a 55 hour work week by the simple expedient of not letting the wife work more than 10 and not letting the husband work less than 100.)

The reference to autonomy in motivation reminded me of this Dan Pink TED talk I keep coming back to: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

I completely agree with this article. Perhaps we're the first generation to realize the old style of work and business actually negatively impacts productivity and motivation, and we're going to outright reject it. Everything about that is good.

Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. People want them because they're the true ways to success, and they know it. The old fake style of business based on carrot-and-stick mentalities and personal image is going out the window faster than an MBA can climb a ladder... or at least we can hope.

Don't forget that plenty of people are a lot more productive with some kind of structure in place. No amount of 'skinny jeans wearing' gen Y'ers will change that fact.

I am gen Y and I freely admit that I do more work in a 'designated working environment'. I hate monotonous work, and it has led me to building scripts etc to do the boring work for me. Our strength comes from that desire to not be bored, so we come up with creative solutions to bypass them. If a company can't bend to that mentality, and we aren't completely financially stuck with having to work, we will quit for a place that does.

Nah, that's just displaying competence. The vast majority of cross generational pop psychology is just evergreen bs to sell adds.

There are entitled brats in every generation. Put another way, there are plenty of ivy leaguers throughout history who's dads called a friend to get their kid a raise. just keep doing good work, you'll be fine.

> Our strength comes from that desire to not be bored, so we come up with creative solutions to bypass them.

This has nothing to do with your generation.

Maybe it is just the timing of being in our 20s then?

I had a difficult time convincing management that it was worth spending 30 hours developing a script to automate a task that normally takes 10 hours to do, even though we do that task at least once a week. Finally, I just ended up doing it on my own "free" time at work and showing it off in a meeting. I got chastised for spending the time doing it, but they were still impressed that the task now only took 5 seconds to complete. I ended up winning an award for it.

Unfortunately, that didn't mean I had less work to do. If you find a way to make your job more efficient, don't be surprised when management finds a way to expect more work from you.

This is more indicative of your work environment. That said, this unfortunately happens in a lot of places regardless of age, gender or merit.

"Our strength comes from that desire to not be bored, so we come up with creative solutions to bypass them." Ugh, barf. This sort of egomania is exactly what many people don't like about "we" gen Y'ers (I'm 27). "We" didn't invent the concept of creativity or innovation, it makes you sound silly to suggest "we" did.

Sorry to come off so strong; this stuff irks me because I'm from your generation and this sort of self-obsession reflects badly on me and other humble, hard-working gen-y'ers.

Radical-sounding perks such as unlimited paid vacation — assuming you’ve finished your pressing projects — are more common among companies concerned with attracting and retaining young talent. By 2010, 1 percent of U.S. companies had adopted this previously unheard-of policy, largely in response to the demands of Generation Y.

This "previously unheard-of policy" has been in practice for much longer than I've been working - it's called "salary". I'm referring to the department head who takes 2 weeks off in July, 2 more in August, 4 in December, 1 in March, and 3 from May into June. The retail store director who takes 3 weeks for New Years, takes his family to Europe from April to June, and still leaves the office early for his kids's events.

These aren't straw men, and they aren't Gen Y'ers either.

In many companies -- in the U.S., at least -- salary has become de facto a commitment to a minimum of 40 hours/week. In my last corporate gig, I was expected to be "in the chair" at least 40 hours/week. (And there was a butt-ugly HR time tracking application for that.)

If I was short, it came out of vacation time (into which sick time was rolled in an "efficiency" measure), unless a manager chose to "look the other way" as a "perk". (Corporations are very good at using these non-expense "rewards" to tweak behavior.)

Salary, in corporate America, is no longer -- if it ever was -- a "two way street". The employee can be worked extra hours for the same pay but often faces a raft of problems if they try to take unaccounted time off during slack periods.

Higher end professionals may encounter more leniency; don't assume this applies to the masses.

It's also a response to skyrocketing work hours. In my field (law), 40 years ago it would have been unthinkable to offer unlimited vacation. Yet, many firms today do just that. But, back then a 1600 billable hour year was a solid effort. Today, 2000 is the minimum requirement. Unlimited vacation is offered because there is no way you can take appreciable amounts of it while meeting the billing expectations.

The key point of this article is that Gen Y'ers are actually demanding and getting a lot of perks, instead of just complaining about bad working conditions.

This sounds about right in my experience. I've seen some places where the expectation is that seniority = respect, and that younger employees have to go through a few years of "paying their dues." This is stupid and wasteful, so of course we're demanding more. If someone is producing 10x the value of their coworkers, they shouldn't have to wait two years for a promotion just because they joined recently. And nowadays, they won't.

"They expect to be listened to when they have an idea, even when they’re the youngest person in the room."

Speaking as a gen-y-er, I completely agree with this sentiment. From my experience working in offices, there are always two conflicting thoughts I consider when speaking up, however:

1. The established politics of the office and who you are "allowed" to speak to and what you're allowed to say, and

2. The reality of the actual task/goal you are trying to accomplish.

Even if your ideas are good and beneficial to the work at hand, sometimes #1 is more important than #2. If this is true then I will quit as soon as I am able.

It's generally true that I consider my elders peers, not authority figures, as the article states. This does not mean I don't have a lot to learn from them! In fact, I want to learn, teach me, guide me!

However, like anyone and everyone you run into in life, an elder in the workplace has to earn my trust and respect, they need to prove to me that they are worth learning from. Just because you are older than me does not mean your ideas are worth listening to. Sometimes having a higher rank does correlate to being someone worth listening to. Just as often I have found this to be not true.

There's a great scene in Band of Brothers, where a veteran non-com is showing the young privates about to do a combat jump to hold onto their rifles instead of attaching them to their gear. "be ready to fight when you land or die" is what he tells them. The non-com gained that experience first hand after his first own jump and his rifle was lost in the prop wash.

I wonder how a Gen-Y would have reacted to that...

The article doesn't suggest that Generation Y won't listen to good ideas that come from the experienced. Rather, it says that they expect all ideas to be considered based on their merits, not their source.

There's also plenty of young people who expect everyone to listen to them because of their vast entitlement complex, not necessarily out of some meritocratic ideal. I've had 10 year olds give me dirty looks because I didn't entertain their idea of what we should do at my kid's birthday party and I've had 25 year olds with the same look on their face at work.

I find that age only has an indirect effect on respect. People who get respect usually have it pretty quickly when you meet them and are able to retain it through their actions. They don't have to ask people to respect them. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with age, but it is somewhat based on a track record and the confidence that experience brings. A young person usually has no track record yet, but they may be very charismatic or inventive or have other respectable qualities. The respect will come, but It has to happen naturally for us all.

People who talk about getting respect usually don't have any real respect, although they may get lip service from everyone if they're in a position of authority.

I offered lots of opinions in my early 20s. People took them seriously because I was right. One of the things that goes unmentioned is that the latest generation of hires is really smart. Competition at every level of the "educational culling process" has just skyrocketed, and companies have focused more heavily on criteria like school pedigree, etc; at least in professional jobs. Coupled with the low employment rate, the latest generation of hires is statistically likely to have the highest SAT score and GPA's of anyone in the company. Now standardized test scores are correlated with some measures of intelligence, and companies evidently seem to think grades matter otherwise they wouldn't take them so seriously in the hiring process. Bottom line, the common refrain of "I couldn't have gotten hired at my company today" is as a result of increasing competition for schooling and jobs very true.

I can definitely agree with this article, especially since it echos my thoughts about work at 24 years old. The only unfortunate side of the story comes from the people in my age group who will not step up and do the work that comes with the additional freedom. I have seen those kids, and I despise them. I have also seen the young men and women who put forth the effort, and I am hopeful for the future.

Born in 1984, became a parent at 20, went to tech school at 21, graduated in 2009 (just in time for the recession, yay) uprooted family & moved to northeast for work, lived with inlaws a while, worked worked hustled & worked to stay afloat during recession, now I have a pretty good job where I work from home 3 days so I can live outside the city. My point? Stop saying we're all a bunch of lazy spoiled brats!!

Guess what? I'm a "gen y"er and it drives me nuts to see my peers pushing 30, directionless and spinning their wheels at shitty food service jobs.

I understand there's a legitimate trend and it's reasonable to describe it as such, but as one commenter pointed out re: "whole generation of free loving hippies", these sorts of narratives are just the result of journalistic laziness and don't reflect the nuance of reality in a meaningful way. It's notable that the author removes herself from the "gen-y" group, apparently to make it easier to lambaste them. :)

Article Summary seems to be: Generation Y has different expectations/work ethic, therefore the workplace will bend to their demands.

In some cases, employers refuse to provide positions to those who don't fit their current corporate expectations. This might partially be reflected by higher unemployment rates among this age category:

http://bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm

Not saying this is necessarily a good thing in every case. I work with folks (in Software Engineering) from around the globe. There are many people from other countries who happily work extremely hard and make sacrifices that some Gen Y folks from the U.S. would consider unacceptable.

Being a little older myself, this is just a variation of same thing I've heard 3 times now. My grandparent thought my parents generation was lazy. My parents though my generation was lazy. And now my generation thinks gen y is lazy.

This is the same "I walked to school uphill both ways when I was a kid" argument that seems to happen with every generation. Yes, we get it - it was tougher back then old timer!

The funnier part for you gen y'ers will be when the next generation comes along and appear to be lazy in some way. You'll catch yourself saying the same things and have a d'oh moment! And I will laugh so hard that I'll poop in my Depends.

I love reading these Gen Y articles. Me being 28, I am the embodiment of this generation. We, afterall, are the generation of the "can do" attitude.

We grew up on Captain Planet, Ghost Writer, Harry Potter, etc. We've always felt that if the adults can't get it right, we'll just do it ourselves. Like John Mayer's song says, we're "Waiting for the World To Change". But our version of waiting is totally different from our parents.

Waiting means really "until I can get myself in a decent position to thrive". Entry level and beyond are those positions that we're gunning at. Like a virus, we can make a difference once we get past the skin.

I noticed this when I first stared 5 years ago. Here I am, only having an A.A. degree and finally getting a position at a Help Desk. The first day was scary. It was overwhelming, but once I got the gist of it I was alright. But that was the start. Once I got the gist of it I realized what was wrong with it. So I, and the rest of us gen-yers tend to do, took the initiative. I received a lot of flak for leaving my post (I had to answer phones, but knew that I could help fix computers, Google yo!), but I single handedly changed the way we operate. It wasn't an ego thing, I just saw something wrong and NEEDED it fixed. 5 years later I'm leading a team of web developers maintaining a very important system for doctors.

Now, we'll all won't get to that point. But we sure as hell are not going down without a fight. I believe this is great for the office. I see a lot of barriers being brought down because of our audacity. Its exciting to be a part of this!

Offtopic: I never bother to click through to the second page on those newspaper-gone-blog sites. This blatant cry for ad impressions is just disgusting, IMHO.

Generally the changes are good, but I'm seeing one side effect. Some workers in that group feel so entitled that they feel like they can just come in and work on what they want when they want. If you say "here is a goal for the company" they say "eh, not interested" and feel like you owe it to them to let them keep their job.

> [...] Yep, we’re talking about Generation Y — loosely defined as those born between 1982 and 1999 — also known as millennials.

And then 1 paragraph later:

> [...] at age 30, I consider myself a sort of older sister to them

Ummmm...

2012 - 30 = 1982

2012 - 30 = September, October, November, December 1981 && 1982

Dates are weird.

Having a birthday at the end of Dec., 1981, I am close to being the last Gen.-Xer.

I'm more inclined to note the difference as those that were in school when they banned teachers from using red pens because it hurt the students feelings.

That's way before either Gen X or Gen Y, part of the 1960s education movement that also included experimental schools without letter grades.

Gen Y is the wrong answer to the right question.

-Gen X

Gen X created the need to ask the question.

-Everyone

Way to turn an entire generation into a caricature.

I think a more important workplace trend is Gen Y managing Gen Y.

You're seeing fewer and fewer Gen Y vs. Baby Boomer culture clashes and more Gen Y employees reporting directly to Gen X-ers/older Gen Y-ers with each passing year. Consequently, we're starting to see more openness and flexibility in the workplace but the demand for quality work is (arguably) much higher.

I find articles like these obnoxious and nothing more than Another example of cold readings, so to speak

> Our strength comes from that desire to not be bored, so we come up with creative solutions to bypass them.

Wasn't this the war cry of Generation X? The Millennials are very similar, they just seem to get a bad rap for the entitlement part - whether its real or imagined.

I find it odd that the author claims that Gen Y is anyone born 1982 to 1999, and yet that it does not contain herself at age 30.

Given that the author herself stands about a 25% chance of being included in her own definition of Gen Y, she sure seems to hate them.

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