Am I the proverbial 20-something?
It’s a weird feeling to see my generation being described over and over again in the current business and library literature.
Net Generation, Gen Y, Millennials, Echo Boom…there are a million names and the birth-year range is up for debate, but generally accepted to be anyone born about 1980 or after.
The people writing these articles are always at least a generation ahead of me or more, and it’s pretty disconcerting. As much as they try to understand “us”, they never quite get it. And it’s also sort of annoying to be pigeonholed and stereotyped with these strange backhanded compliments (”They’re amazingly creative! They’re incredibly innovative! But they don’t want to do any hard work! They have an inflated sense of entitlement!”) I don’t need to link to any of them. You know the articles I’m talking about.
These articles invariably describe the characteristics of this generation, then offer suggestions or warnings on what to do or what not to do to keep these people happy and productive. Now, I am probably quite different from someone who is ten years younger than me, but I’m tired of all these trite, generalized accounts. Similarly, a friend of mine (who’s one of the hardest-working people I know) told me she’s tired of being lumped into a generation that’s accused of not having a work ethic.
Here’s what I propose: stop worrying about whether we watch commercials on TV or read newspapers anymore. Don’t waste your time trying to identify and reinvent new marketing rules. Start considering your potential staff and future clients as people with varying skill sets and personalities, instead of demographical categories to be neatly plunked into. I know that the nature of market research is to generalize and identify trends, but I just can’t believe that all these assertions about Gen Y are all that useful.
I know plenty of people my age who couldn’t do up a basic Powerpoint presentation to save their life. Likewise, I know fifty-somethings who know that when they’re having a problem with a piece of software, they can Google it, and chances are, someone will tell them how to solve their problem.
I don’t know. Maybe I fall somewhere in limbo between two generations. Maybe I am mistakenly categorizing myself as a GenYer when I’m actually part of Gen X. I certainly don’t feel like a digital native. Anyway, these are just a bunch of things I’ve been thinking about for a while, and wanted to get off my chest.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I totally agree E. I’ve been reading these same articles and I think that they are too general, I don’t think that entire generations (and really, their age ranges encompass more than a single generation) with the same characteristics. The media and marketing groups paint the same general characteristics with Baby Boomers, which as we know is a HUGE group of people who have different backgrounds, experience and knowledge, just like young people of today.
I think that companies should spend less time trying to follow the advice of these supposed experts on how to retain young people as employees and spend some time getting to know employees as people. Different people have different needs and you have to know what they want or don’t want in order to retain them, just because some people may be in the same age group does not mean they will think or behave the same.
And there are going to be people who are lazy and don’t want to work hard, no matter what generation it is.
February 10th, 2009 at 3:12 am
I’m a cuspy. On the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y. I’m very confused and as a result find a lot of people very annoying. I was a latchkey kid and yet my mother was also a helicopter parent. My brother can’t make a decision without my mother. I find myself very confused most of the time.
It’s fascinating learning about the marketing breakdown within the generations while being in a classroom with 20 member of the 25 and under crowd. All the generations stereotypes do tend to be true. Within my class I find that issues like respect are very different demographically. The “gen y’res” believe that respect has to be earned. Gen x and up believe that respect is given and then up to you to maintain. The Y’ers believe that they can multi-task better then anyone (we’ll forget that multi-tasking is a master of none trade) they will spend and entire class communicating with each other on facebook and then get very upset if someone calls them on their inappropriate behavior. My experience with these guys has shown me that they have a very different sense of entitlement then other generations within the class do. It’s been fascinating, it might just be my class who knows! Just some of my observations.
But yes companies shouldn’t treat generations differently. At the end of the day most people want the same thing.