What Happens When Millenials Run the Workplace?

In today's edition of "this makes my head wanna pop":

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/fashion/millennials-mic-workplace.html?_r=0

Interesting article about lack of boundaries. After reading this, I feel as though the unemployment numbers should be much higher than they are.

 

You are younger than me. Don't forget to turn out the lights the day you retire.

 

thank you for the reminder of why I have hired not even one person under 30 in the last five years.

 

Good call. Over the last 5 years we have had roughly 20 Millennials wander through our doors. 1 was a decent worker, stayed on and is advancing. The rest were lackluster at best...

 

Where's Dits? We need him to go shit in that guy's treehouse.

 

I took a risk recently and hired a 20 yr old for a test engineer position. I have been pleasantly surprised with his performance. He's been doing better than people that have been in the position for >10 years. The longer I've been in this management role the more I've discovered that individuals with personal agendas, no matter what the age, are the ones that don't work out or I have to deal with frequently.

 

It's a death spiral, and you can fix it from the top down. If the new incoming workers are lackluster/unmotivated/lazy/etc, then simply hiring an older workforce is only going to work as a temporary fix and delay the inevitable. Colleges are graduating less and less skilled male graduates and it's not getting any better.

Human capital, I think that's what its referred to as.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital

And interestingly enough, we're headed towards a major demographics downturn. Less and less people are procreating. That means that there will be less and less new incoming workers to support the aging population. The only way to counterbalance that is to have a more skilled, efficient and productive workforce. In other words more human capital to take up the slack of a smaller number of laborers......unfortunately the OPPOSITE is happening. Look up "demographic winter" on youtube, some less than optimistic outlooks.

 

here's the thing i've realized, working in places with various skews towards age groups and various atmospheres. the lazy old guy who doesn't do shit and has a bloated salary just by sheer experience/years-in, and doesn't want to do ANYTHING extra besides his few assigned tasks, and/or does things against the company's interest that are sometimes stupid/sometimes borderline illegal, doesn't ever want to change because "this is the way i've always done it" becomes entrenched. he's more detrimental IMO than the younger guy who may not have the experience and may need some guidance, but wants to be dynamic. the old guy's mentality is toxic and it infects the workforce group mentality.

its that whole "harder to fix old bad habits than deal with somebody with no habits at all" kinda thing. i feel like in any demographic you'll get awesome guys, and shitty guys. old, young, male, female, that's just life. there's plenty of awesome old guys here that are good at their jobs and certainly know their shit. millennials just need the opportunity to be dynamic and not get pigeon holed into some stupid process oriented mundane bullshit. there's a few industries i guess where status-quo and industry standard don't need or allow for this, but most businesses could probably benefit in some fashion. i think the news over hypes the whole laziness thing on a large scale... we had a bunch of HS interns last summer and will again this summer, and they were awesome workers. it naturally weeds itself out i think. the people i know (age 25-35) who are lazy dickheads, are always broke, and work broke ass jobs or are always between work, and they suck... the people i know who take school seriously or want to excel in their job, end up doing well. i don't think it skews one particular way at all.

 

There are young people who will work hard. You just have to know where to look. I employ high school kids from my son's track team. The work ethic necessary to succeed in track and field seems to carry over into other areas.

 

Obama will save us.
Oh wait.

 

The problem isn't their age, it's that so few of them have been forced to develop any critical thinking or problem solving skills. Their whole lives have been "if I do x, I will receive y". You don't develop leaders, movers, or shakers with participation awards, safe spaces, and no judgement zones.

 

Hey, they're your kids.....

 

When you have an entire political party encouraging behaviors that aren't necessarily taught at home, well, that can only lead to future problems as we are beginning to see now. It's only going to get worse too, so strap yourselves in for the ride.

 

Occasionally, and more often than I care to admit, I, along with many other "older" citizens look at today's youth and consider them worthless, spoiled, and unready for the real world. You're right. Some of them are. Then I look at myself in the mirror and smile and shake my head. Who the hell am I to question what young people think? They see the world in front of themselves in a completely different way than I did as a youth yet it's almost the same. As we age we start to become aware of our political surroundings and we just know, without a doubt, that our ideas are better than those that exist already. Often we were right.

We evolve. We've always done so and we'll continue to do so. Failing in that would be disastrous. Over the past year or so I've kind of changed my daily routine and I visit the same small coffee shop in a little city South of my home a couple of miles and have really gotten an education concerning the youth of today. I will admit that there are not many deadbeat kids visiting a legitimate religiously based coffee shop so I realize that I'm dealing with a somewhat different group of kids. These semi/upscale kids are the leaders of our future and most of them are damn smart, friendly, and have a hell of a lot on the ball. I like interacting with them.

 

I hope our future leaders have a little more common sense and discipline than lying about going to a funeral so that they can go build a treehouse and blog about it. That's just plain fucking stupid... And then to double down - justifying the act as "catharsis".

 

I love these threads ..

I see members of each generation everyday. Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Millennial, etc... While every generation complains about the next, after 20+ years essentially people watching, evaluating, and learning, my experience is this: Life is less serious. Seriously. Think about your grandparents and great grandparents who lived through the depression, WWII and the subsequent wars where your life depended on a draft notice. At the ages of 18-21, they were putting bullets in other human beings and spent the next 40 years dealing with it every night they could sleep. Now, 18-21 year olds shame people on the internet.

1. Humans work off of three different total rewards system: Recognition, Responsibility, Remuneration. Depending on the individual, their rewards system is aligned differently, but still involves those three characteristics.

2. People have to be motivated. Success comes in many forms from achievement of personal wealth, to believe it or not, simply being able to make it to the next paycheck. Whatever that goal is, figure it out and manage them to it.

3. Older generations refuse technology because it destroys their sense of hard work. They find comfort, purpose, and solace in bleeding, blistered hands. Each following generation looks at the previous and wonders how they survived in such manual or analog ways. One group is considered lazy, the previous is considered antiquated and obsolete. If you get the job done, and did it well, that's all that matters.

There are still hard workers and still lazy people.

 

Interesting take on it............


http://www.returnofkings.com/83983/...ngle-men-to-drop-out-and-live-on-minimum-wage

 

I'm all for "work smarter, not harder". I don't see them as lazy as much as "I deserve this" before doing anything to deserve it. And when I say "them", I'm obviously generalizing, but there's enough empirical evidence out there to start to piece together a pattern of behavior.

I mean, clearly, the generation is one of instant gratification.

 

I was watching one of those man-on-the street interviews, in this case it was the college kids who like Bernie cause of the "free" sh*t they think they will get. So I figured only working people will actually be able to pay the national debt....At 19 trillion dollars and guessing at 150 million workers that comes out to be about $125,000 per working individual. Those kids need to get a bill handed to them for $125,000 payable now. Oh, there's no way to avoid paying it either, they may not know exactly how it will be paid, either treasure or blood, but it will be paid.....Free stuff only makes it worse