Quote Originally Posted by ZipZop View Post
Before I started my own comapny 20 years ago, I was in a higher management role with a Fortune 500 company. I was in charge of a team in their early 20s, right out of college. It was like babysitting. I was shocked at the change from when I was their age, because I was only about 15-20 years older at the time. But I suppose all things change. I'm sure when I was 21 and entering the workforce, my manager thought I was a bit different too. Although I was in deadly fear of losing my job so I tried to be a model employee. Sometimes I think fear is a good motivator as long as it is not over the top. Just a little fear is sometimes a good thing.
Just curious here. As a manager of those employees, who's responsibility did you think it was to instill this motivation in the employees beneath you?

As a member of the "younger" generation I find it painfully ignorant to assume that a group of people is just inherently flawed because they happened to be born between a certain time span. Speaking for a group that is perhaps even a little younger than the employees you described of 20 years ago, I entered the workforce at a time when the economy was at the lowest it had been since the 1930's, there was not a job to be had and the entry level positions that were out there were happily taken up by people who had been laid off after working elsewhere for some time. The housing market had crashed which created new requirements to get mortgages (which still exist) that are almost impossible to satisfy if you are under 30 years old and have a short employment history. And then the economy was plagued even more by multiple conflicts internationally that were draining any additional resources that the government may have had to help in any way. When looking for a job I was told that the education i'd been told all of my life that i needed to have was pointless because there were people with experience out there looking for the same job.
None of those situations were created by my generation. In fact, one could very reasonably argue that those situations were all created by the greed of a very different generation. But we as a generation live in this reality and try to navigate it as best we can.
I was one of the lucky ones. I got a job because of pure luck and timing. I also managed to work steady for long enough to get enough credit to buy a home, and a car. But for every person like me there are +10 people that didn't find a job and spent hours and days and months looking for one, constantly being turned down. These people worked no less hard than I, and yet they have to move back in with their parents or other family because they literally have no more money. And now work for minimum wage as a bank teller or convenience store worker, etc. Not because they're lazy or because they're mama's boys/girls but because they've exhausted their options.

It's easy to make blanket statements about groups of people, but it's important to understand that situations dictate our lives and ability to appear successful. I know of no one in my age group that would insult the work ethic of the generations before them. I think perspective is very important before making judgments about a younger generation that may very well be dealing with just as harsh circumstances as any previous living generation, albeit different. and then questioning their work ethic.

I'll get off this big ol' soapbox now. sorry for the long text, but it's an important topic to me