“Millenials”

This cute little pejorative, one I’d never heard before, is how the generation of kids born between 1980 and 1995 is being labeled, and this 60 minutes segment (via marco) clearly doesn’t think highly of them:

They were raised by doting parents, played in little leagues with no winners or losers or all winners. They’re laden with trophies just for participating, and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you don’t like it, you can take your job and shove it. […]

Because they are tech savvy, every gadget imaginable almost an extension of their bodies, they multi-task: they talk, walk, listen, type, and text. And their priorities are simple: they come first.

Hopefully you can see this already, but this segment makes two big mistakes:

  1. It paints “millenials” with an extremely broad stroke, and anytime to you paint a large, diverse group of people with a stroke this broad, you’re going to make an ass of yourself.
  2. It fails to recognize that every generation says this exact same thing about the next generation: “Kids these days are a nothing but lazy, narcissistic, and immature. They’ll never make it in today’s world.”

This 60 Minutes segment was about little more than a culture clash. Companies want to keep things the old way, and understandably so, because that’s what they know and that’s what they’re comfortable with, while “millenials” want things to change because the way we do things doesn’t necessarily jibe with “classic” office mentality. Sunrise, sunset.

The “fix” for this situation is slow, but simple: companies need to be willing to give a little freedom and leeway to the “millenials”, but we need to be prepared to prove to the companies that giving us these freedoms was the right decision. Ultimately everything will slide into a happy middle ground, but I would expect to see a couple more segments like this one before the dust settles. Just try not to take it personally.

Posted on May 27, 2008 at 11:08am with 7 notes

Post Notes

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    a Millenial (born 1993). The story...based on a stereotype, yes. But, as with all...
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