Kids These Days...
Last night, "60 Minutes" ran a piece about the new crop of college graduates entering the workforce. Dubbed the "Millenium Generation" Morely Safer would have us believe they are a spoiled, self indulgent, immature and irresponsible lot. According to the segment, the Millenials hop from job to job throughout their twenties, live with their parents for inordinate amounts of time, prioritize friends and family over work (gasp) and are just generally insufferable.
Listen, I am as guilty as anyone of condescending to the generations below me, but this was a little silly. 60 Minutes failed to examine the material conditions of our society and instead simply assumed the moralistic tone that usually accompanies Abraham Simpson's discussions of his childhood. Had 60 Minutes bothered to get over its Greatest Generation self for just a minute they might have noted the following:
Job hopping is not really a personal choice anymore. Our "independent contractor" economy offers very few positions like the entry level jobs that previous generations enjoyed. Those jobs have been outsourced or placed in the hands of temps. Careers just don't work like they used to. We all get downsized, defunded, or made redundant on a regular basis.
Still living with mom and dad? That could be related to your own internal psychological issues, it could be because you are not as rough and tumble as Morely Safer and his generation, or it could be that the cost of housing has outpaced inflation for a decade, rents have skyrocketed and college graduates today enter the working world already saddled with significant student debt. Combine that with the economic factors I just discussed and I think you can see why it takes the Millenials longer to get on their feet.
Morely's last criticism of the Millenials is that they expect the world without having to pay their dues and they need all sorts of touch feely motivation. Please. As someone who lives and works among Baby Boomers -- the folks who institutionalized the motivational speaker and who invented the New Age and Self Esteem -- this is just the pot calling the kettle black. As to the work life balance the Millenials seek, we all saw the tragic consequences of the Boomers' unbridled ambition. They made Gordon Gekko cool, brought us the 60 hour work week, replaced parents with nannies, and added a level of ossifying ambition to corporate America that makes the previous generation blanch. I cannot blame the Millenials for not wanting any part of that and, frankly, I think America would be better if we were all a little less careerist. Moreover, we also saw what happened to the Company Man of the 50s and 60s. He was downsized, offered a package, or just outright walked Spanish out the door with a little bankers box of his belongings to mark his career. The Millenials have detected that the loyalty most employers want is pretty much one way.
There is no doubt that the Millenial Generation will suffer a longer adolescence than its predecessors. This is not because they lack character, it is because we have made conscious choices over the last twenty years to eliminate many of the handholds people used to climb into the adult world of the middle class.
Listen, I am as guilty as anyone of condescending to the generations below me, but this was a little silly. 60 Minutes failed to examine the material conditions of our society and instead simply assumed the moralistic tone that usually accompanies Abraham Simpson's discussions of his childhood. Had 60 Minutes bothered to get over its Greatest Generation self for just a minute they might have noted the following:
Job hopping is not really a personal choice anymore. Our "independent contractor" economy offers very few positions like the entry level jobs that previous generations enjoyed. Those jobs have been outsourced or placed in the hands of temps. Careers just don't work like they used to. We all get downsized, defunded, or made redundant on a regular basis.
Still living with mom and dad? That could be related to your own internal psychological issues, it could be because you are not as rough and tumble as Morely Safer and his generation, or it could be that the cost of housing has outpaced inflation for a decade, rents have skyrocketed and college graduates today enter the working world already saddled with significant student debt. Combine that with the economic factors I just discussed and I think you can see why it takes the Millenials longer to get on their feet.
Morely's last criticism of the Millenials is that they expect the world without having to pay their dues and they need all sorts of touch feely motivation. Please. As someone who lives and works among Baby Boomers -- the folks who institutionalized the motivational speaker and who invented the New Age and Self Esteem -- this is just the pot calling the kettle black. As to the work life balance the Millenials seek, we all saw the tragic consequences of the Boomers' unbridled ambition. They made Gordon Gekko cool, brought us the 60 hour work week, replaced parents with nannies, and added a level of ossifying ambition to corporate America that makes the previous generation blanch. I cannot blame the Millenials for not wanting any part of that and, frankly, I think America would be better if we were all a little less careerist. Moreover, we also saw what happened to the Company Man of the 50s and 60s. He was downsized, offered a package, or just outright walked Spanish out the door with a little bankers box of his belongings to mark his career. The Millenials have detected that the loyalty most employers want is pretty much one way.
There is no doubt that the Millenial Generation will suffer a longer adolescence than its predecessors. This is not because they lack character, it is because we have made conscious choices over the last twenty years to eliminate many of the handholds people used to climb into the adult world of the middle class.
posted by Jack Reed at 9:47 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home