Paying Our Dues

I went to a seminar this morning on the impending showdown between Boomers and Y-ers in the workplace. Although I've read a lot of online articles about the different sets of values that Y-ers bring to corporate America, I was surprised at the level of curiousity the Boomers had about how to interact with our generation. As the only Y-er in the room I definitely felt a big smug at the amount of attention I received from my elder peers. Now I know how the gorillas at the Franklin Park Zoo must feel.

Following the seminar we broke into groups to discuss various work-related topics. One hiring manager bemoaned the fact that his younger employees didn't quite grasp his company's "corporate culture" and as a result he was having a huge issue with turn-over. The X-ers and Boomers agreed that corporate culture was important to any organization and couldn't understand why a young person would simply quit after gaining enough skills necessary to make more money at another employer. "Paying your dues" by being ill-treated or under-paid by your current employer is apparently a very admirable trait to Boomers and Gen-Xers.

Paying ones dues at a new job is obviously part of the learning process and I seriously believe that most of my Gen-Y peers aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. But drinking the corporate kool-aid and buying into corporate culture? At the end of the day, the only thing that Generation Y is buying into is themselves. Until corporate America gets that through their thick skulls they're going to have a very difficult time retaining good employees in this new millenium.

I, like hundreds of thousands of of other people born between 1979 and 1994 love our jobs, our careers, and who we work for (at least for now). However, if we were able to get into our Deloriums and zoom back 40 years then perhaps as a generation we all might be a just a bit more loyal. Health benefits and a pension for 30 years of service? Sign me up. In our modern day reality, we enrolled in college like lemmings because we were told that gaining a college degree was our way to warp zone to success. For our hard work and out-of-the-stratosphere college loans most of us end up in cubicle land being "coached" by some Gen Xer who refuses to teach us anything for fear that we may take his or her job. Spending your days bored out of your mind, unable to even access Facebook or Craigslist because IT blocked it, is hardly engaging enough to make us want to stay at our jobs past 3 years.

Most Boomers and X-ers, especially those who entered the job market in late 70's and early 80's, are quick to point out that we should be lucky to have a job at all. However, if you want to cut our wages and double our work, we'll walk. If you want to threaten lay-offs and refuse to promote us, we'll walk. If you want to raise our insurance premiums through the roof and cut back on benefits, we'll walk. If you honestly expect us to suck it up by working unpaid overtime and Saturdays for the "good of the company" we'll definitely walk. Unlike those generations who came before us, Generation Y-ers are full of self-confidence, and are absolutely convinced that everyone is in love with us. There's no doubt in our minds that somewhere out there is another company who is falling over themselves to hire us.

We want to work hard but we're not going to become workaholics just so some corporate board of directors can become gagillionaires off of our sweat. As the largest generation to enter the workforce since the Vietnam War, we're not going to accept the old-fashioned, out-dated professional practices of yore and dismiss it as "corporate culture". Growing up in a highly adaptive, multi-task culture there had better be something in it for us, whether it's flex-time, a relaxed dress code, the ability to work remotely, or richer financial incentives. In the next twenty years we'll be paying our dues to America by revolutionizing its 21st century workers into a competitive global force.