What happens when millennials run the workplace
nytimes.comI'm not seeing anything surprising here. At many small companies, the employees will feel comfortable being frank with their CEO, especially if that CEO is around their age. It's definitely not surprising that a startup with an open office environment and a CEO who addresses the hundred 20-something-year-old employees directly in Q&A meetings would generate a culture where someone would directly tell the CEO that they believed he had been rude. (It's also poor journalism to present that entire anecdote solely from the CEO's POV--leaving the impression that the CEO was entirely in the right with how he answered the original question.)
My biggest takeaway is that Mic needs to rethink their policies and culture around paid time off, since that seems to be the main source of conflict described in this article.
And please, can we stop with the Millennials-are-terrible meme? 40-somethings always think 20-somethings are lazy, rude, and will never amount to anything. Dig into the NYT archives from the 1800s and you'll find articles with similar complaints about The Kids These Days. I'd like to see an article about that.
I am a Millennial and I think Millennials are terrible (and I am not excluding myself). With few exceptions, I have not met anyone from my demographic who is not spoiled by their parents, entitled and has not made poor financial and/or life decisions. Of course there are Millennials that exist outside this stereotype, but I think our reputation has mostly been earned, not fabricated.
What I'm really interested in seeing is a workplace entirely run by Capricorns.
I've never seen evidence that Millennials exist as a group at all. Is it a negative horoscope published once a decade?
As people get older, their brand loyalties are more set. Younger, working folk often don't have the house/family/healthcare/retirement worries of older workers. Marketers often target young folks because they'll spend on new things.
The Millennials are the largest adult demographic: http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/age_structure.html . Their children will be bigger than them (hopefully!).
People of all ages don't always fit into the "generational" niche the media and marketers try to put them in to.
When millennials share a common experience, such as growing up on AOL Instant Messenger, they're going to share common psychological traits and behavioral patterns.
So, yes, don't be surprised that they behave as a group.
The complaints people have about millenials are, as I see it, a reflection of the social policies of the schools they attended. People talk about the "everyone is a winner" attitudes, but I think the effect of that is less than of other attitudes that public schools perpetuated. Because while giving every kid a trophy is going to influence their development, most kids realize that's bullshit by age 12–14.
The subtler things count more. The no tolerance policies are reflected in the SJW silence-everything philosophies. The overly-aggressive anti-bullying campaigns resulted in a "go to a teacher in the case of any conflict" approach and is reflected in millenials who demand to be policed — most prevalent in universities, but also found elsewhere. The restrictions and omnipresent supervision inspired by overly-intrusive laws and liability precedents. The mantras repeated to children from birth "it's OK to be different", "be yourself", "you can be anything you want to be" can be seen in the "personal brands" that millenials create — brands that they live in all parts of their lives, not just as a mask when they need to charm someone.
I'm not saying that all these things are regressions: older generations have as much bullshit to offer, but we're used to their bullshit. But millenials think that they're creating a culture that liberates them from their parents' bullshit, but their dogma is just as bad.
From a quote in the article "We tend to publicize these outrageous acts of defiance, versus emphasizing the majority that I run into and work with, who are very mission focused and value based". Which has been my experience, very few do things that would be close to what is in the article. On the other hand I've met my share of "WTF?" from people 18-70, not sure that millennials have the lock on bad behavior in the workplace.
Well, what happens when it's not millennials that run the workplace? Today's 20 to 30 year olds saw their parents suffer through the transition of 'white collar job for life' to the economy of today, where even IBM lays off people. Why would they want to work for the equivalent of Dunder-Mifflin?
The most telling part is the quote about "strong personal brands". Every millennial should consider their current job as a 2-3 year stepping stone to their next one.
The "Say what you want" experiment is going to die a fiery death. It will, ultimately, make an office culture toxic. Unfiltered talk only works when everyone has thick skin, which is dubious to believe many millennials do. Compound that with the blending of work and personal life, and it's a recipe for disaster.
When everyone says what they want, you will eventually be proven wrong. Being wrong isn't bad, but being proven wrong with a blunt object like social media, hurts. It usually draws recourse.
My thought is that this article highlights a trend in experimenting with an 'anarchistic' structure, that ultimately will not prevail for long. If you look at the history of mission based business endeavors (like co-ops in the non-profit sector back in the late 1960's) they exhibited a similar pattern, and many of them ultimately failed because of a lack of professionalism in their employees' behavior.
I'm curious to know if anyone has any comments on how the Big-4 (google, facebook..) handles their employees 'millennial-ness'. I certainly feel like they must be more strict, but I can only speculate.
Not sure if it's just the article's bias, but these people sound intolerable, regardless of their age.
What CEO does this? What a strange place to work.
"Hence there are office conversations held on Twitter, and the blurring of personal and professional boundaries, such as when Mr. Altchek broadcast his dental examination on Periscope, a live streaming video app."
Tangential, but what exactly makes someone a millenial these days? I was almost expecting a newspaper run by 16 year olds with that title, but that's obviously not the case. Is anyone under thirty a millennial now?
According to Wikipedia[1], Millennials are those born between 1980 and 2000. That would make a 16 year old barely a Millennial.
It would make me a millenial as well and I'm 35.
Seems like a strange unit when you have a range from 16 to 35, I don't have a lot in common with the average 18 year old any more.
Yea, the 2 decade generational period seems a bit long considering the increased speed of development of the technological infrastructure cycle which results in vastly different experiences. A 35 year-old grew up with dial-up internet emerging, while a 16 year-old grew up and everyone had cellphones.
My first modem was 1.2Kbps, now I have 200Mbps.
First PC though not first computer was 1Mhz with 640Kb RAM.
Generational shift is vast, Moores law has been kind!
What the hell? First I was Gen X (parents are baby boomers), then suddenly I was Gen Y, and now they've renamed the '80-'00 group again?
> People are here from morning to night, and we don’t want to leave
This article should have started and ended here. Millennials are doing whatever they can to make their jobs look like their homes with all of the drinking, partying and drama. Then they advertise it as something cool that every company ought to be doing. I don't know how anybody sees this as a good thing.