Tired of Millennial Bashing

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This isn't entirely about work, but I'm posting this here because I am most sensitive to the workforce implications.

I just read a blog post from a U.S. career site about the so-called "Millennial" generation, or those born between 1980 and 2000. For the most part, the specific piece said that the cranky old people are right when they call us "entitled." Basically, it accused our generation members of drifting between school and part time jobs because we have not "found ourselves" yet, and delaying major life decisions a decade or more later than our parents (most of whom were Baby Boomers). All of this is what some older people and bloggers take to mean that we do not want to commit to things.

With respect to the blogger, I am insulted. I am sure there are many who genuinely have no ambition, and many have slipped into drugs and are becoming vegetables. Nevertheless, many of us are either working harder than our parents just to stay in place, or held in place by fear. Maybe some of us go to graduate school because we sense the job market is becoming tough for college graduates. Maybe we do not have families or buy homes until later because we do not know when financial stability will come. Maybe we just prefer renting over buying. Either way, most of us are not making these decisions out of some hedonistic sense of entitlement.

I am also angry. I am starting to realize I had to work harder at school and college than my parents. My college group projects often had to meet after 10 p.m. because that was the only time everyone was free. Many, many people I know worked just as hard. Many of us have nothing to show for it. So for a blogger to suggest we are lazy and entitled is insulting.

Thank you for reading my diatribe. If anyone agrees with this blogger who I do not cite, I am happy to read your thoughts.

I hear you, and I completely sympathize. I took me six years to get a college degree, because the first major I tried turned out to be something I realized I didn't want to do with my life. I also moved to Canada and transferred halfway through, which took some time for acclimatization. As a student, I work very hard-- sometimes, honestly, I'm a workaholic, and I have to remember to take breaks and pace myself to maintain my health and sanity. In my two years after graduating, I lost count of how many résumés I submitted-- and I got one job interview in person, and one over the phone, neither of which worked out. As someone devoted to the arts, I would've loved to work at a bookstore, or a music store, or a gallery, or an art supply place, or something along those lines, just to make some kind of income and pay my bills-- but in my neighbourhood, all the Blockbusters and HMVs and bookstores have gone under in the past few years, and many of the galleries and art supply places are suffering cutbacks so the same fate doesn't befall them. And all the while, I'm feeling like the world's worst son, because I'm still only surviving off of what my parents can put in my bank account. So I'm a student again, as my last resort, trying to broaden my skillset and finally land a freaking job-- only this time I know, in the back of my mind, I can sacrifice my social life and work my fingers to the bone all I want, but there's no guarantee it's going to mean jack in the long run. The only way I stay sane is by deliberately forcing myself to take an optimistic approach.

I think the thing I personally find the most insulting about this "Gen-Y entitlement" crap is the direction from which it's coming-- specifically the Baby Boomers. As if they have any right to accuse us of being irresponsible or slackers. Theirs was the generation that practically wrote the book on gross irresponsibility in the modern age. Theirs was the generation that mainstreamed recreational drug usage and promiscuity. So far we've had two US Presidents from the Baby Boomers (three if you really want to count Obama, but I personally think he's a bit young to be considered a Boomer), and I don't see anything particularly stellar about their leadership style. Countless corporations are headed by Boomers, and I don't see anything particularly noteworthy about the way they've been running things save for their utter disregard for the lives of anyone below them on the class totem pole. And I have a real laugh when they levy the accusation that we Millennials are all fixated on our computers and smartphones. Oh, you mean the computers and smartphones that your generation designed and built and mass-marketed to us as the most essential products on the face of the planet?

Honestly, I think Gen Y gets sold short primarily because most Boomers don't have clue one when it comes to the way we socialize and gather information. We were born into the computer age-- they weren't. There are fundamental differences about our society now, and how information and communication gets passed around. We have opportunities for interaction that they never had-- and to them, it looks like we do it without any effort at all. We can be in a chatroom with dozens of people talking about all sorts of things ranging from the profound to the profane, for example, but when they look at us, they see us sitting alone at a computer. I think, as a generation, we're actually much more conservative than they were at our age, too-- and by that, I don't mean right-wing, or in any sort of political sense. What I mean is, we're acutely aware of their mistakes, and we don't want to repeat them. We care about the environment, because we can see it deteriorating around us. We wait to make major life decisions because we've been forced to by an economy that we inherited from them. Many of us live at home, or save our money from dead-end minimum wage jobs, or delay starting families of our own, because it's just not financially feasible to move forward right now. It's sort of difficult to move up the ladder of social mobility with our elders looking down on us from above and grinding on our fingers with the heels of their $6000 Italian leather loafers.

Lotus and Chevand are very accurate in their assessments. The bright side is that those dinosaurs will retire and therefore be out of the decision-making process when it comes to hiring people. At least some Millennials will pass into corporate authority positions and remember their struggles to get there when considering new hires and promotions.

Then, those retired naysayers will p*ss and moan on forums like the ineffectual busybodies they accuse Millennials of being! :irony: ...And golf, of course.

Sorry, but I disagree. From what I've seen, this so-called "Millennial" generation does feel as though it's entitled to more things these days. I'm even going to go as far as to say that what people in college do these days is nothing compared to older generations (I say this through experience...I graduated from college back in 2005.).

You think things are hard these days? Imagine living back in the Depression era. Imagine living back during the World War II era, when everyone had to sacrifice the things they liked. What's going on today is nothing compared to back then, but people managed to survive.
You do what you have to do even if it's not what you want to do. You'll survive.

To be quite honest, I have a lot more respect and admiration for the "dinosaurs" and "retired naysayers" than I do for the younger generations. Oh, and I'm 34, about to be 35, just in case you wanted to know.

It will probably get worse for Millenials, too, at least in the long run. I just read in The Atlantic about the generation of Japanese who have come of age since 1990, when their economy imploded. Since that time, Japan has experienced price and wage deflation more often than not, government debt is two and a half times their GDP, and the GDP in today's money is smaller than it was in 1992. Anyone who came of age since that time has had trouble finding a real job, as firms are reluctant to hire. Half of all Japanese workers under 35 are temps.

The article related this to the U.S, and their are indeed deep similarities. The U.S. does not have Japan's acute demographic problems, which will help. What it does have are $63 trillion in unfunded liabilities, mostly to our parents. And guess who is expected to work to pay those off? Unless those liabilities are abated somehow, Millennials will see lower take home pay and higher taxes than their parents for the rest of their natural lives.

I am horrified about similar situations elsewhere in the world. China has virtually no entitlements, but the demographic crisis is extremely severe. By some accounts, the Chinese workforce has peaked in size. Much of Europe has the worse of both worlds, and will surely follow the example of Japan.

Let's not forget the environmental degradation that our generation has to deal with, too. And to think we'd be sipping lattes on Mars by this time!

I have to agree with DarkRain.

I work in a college, and the degree of entitlement is astronomical. People throw fits because they don't' get good grades. People have their parents come up and talk to the teacher. People demand their college be paid for, even if they have a major that has no application to the outside world.

I can't imagine what those "old dinosaurs" lived through. My grandma when she was alive would eat anything, even stuff I thought was nasty. Why? Back when she was growing up, food was rationed by the war. Food was rationed by the great depression.

We've come a long way as a society, and that's a good thing. It's good that we don't' have to worry about these things as much. The problem becomes these people are spoiled. They take it for granted, demand it.

There are good things about the millennials, but I am afraid of what the world will be when they are in charge. If they don't loose the entitlement attitude, I'm not sure there's a high enough tax rate to support them.

While I agree things are hard on the current generation in terms of finding work (I am a model employee and it took THREE YEARS to find work) I spend a lot of time around college students and the sense of entitlement is out of this world, especially among males. Most of the ones I know (and I know A LOT) have their own car, apartment, don't work and complain about having to walk 1/2 a km. I'm 30 and as a semi-nerd I could run laps around all of them. The local college and high school have monstrous parking lots that are always 100% full by 'poor' students and that's even when they get free bus service while we were expected to walk 4kms each way!

I even see it in my university student girlfriend. I flat out told her that she has NO IDEA how good she has it and how she gets ten times what I got when I went to university. I also saw a WP member complain that they couldn't find work and said how manual labor is 'beneath them' when I had to do it for 7 years until I caught a break!

I guess the posts against my OP raise an interesting question in my mind: what is entitlement? My fear is that many older generations equate "entitlement" with material well-being growing up. Based on what I am hearing, entitlement is defined as complaining about things.

Here's an example:

In Baltimore, there are still good paying factory jobs. 20-24 an hour plus full benefits.

They are having trouble filling these positions because the college graduates feel they are to good for that kind of work, even though they may be making minimum wage now or competing for a government job.

To me, entitlement is believing you have a right to something you don't have a right to.

Entitlement is living beyond your means and expecting someone else to pay for it.

Entitlement is making poor life choices, refusing accept the consequences and believing others should pay for their mistakes.

Entitlement is having material well being, but demanding it, and not being grateful for it.

Well, everyone has a learning curve. I personally do not believe in ostracizing these people, so long as they do not interfere with my life in the form of higher taxes or something like that.

I notice our assessment of pass generations skip the Baby Boomers. They are who I regard as broadly the most selfish, hedonistic, dim whitted generation, and they mostly created the problems of today. Their parents solved them, by and large.

I, too, admire the so-called "Greatest Generation" and my grandparents' generation, the Silent Generation. The Silents were born during the Depression, and fought in Korea. Both went through a lot, and both were insanely ingenious. I think those broad generations have a lot more in common with the Millennials than either have with the Boomers.

Why can't my professor meet my parents? Also passing costs off as student debt has major negative economic implications for the future because of Ricardian equivalence which is more true than government debt. Also in US there is more government spending going toward older people.

I think "entitlement" is just a cultural/personality thing vs generational, in that it exists in various forms all the time.

For instance, many older people expect me to bend or break the rules and complain about things that they used to get for free now cost money (because customer service goes above policy and rising operational/production costs).

On the other hand, on a personal case I have worked for 10 years and paid into social security, but trying to get assistance with food stamps or a medical card for my wife for her treatments could also be seen as entitlement (because there is a system in place that we have participated in and expect to work for us).

Both viewpoints are equally valid in our minds, and for the core culture and logic of that generation or mindset.

I was shopping a few months ago during holiday season and the store was packed. There was a man old enough to be my grandpa wondering around aimlessly on his smartphone tapping away.

I don't know about entitled... I just know that many people who graduated in my year had a lot of trouble getting jobs in their specific career field, and that it took me three years to find a job that was full time that was a good job.

I agree. I do tend to feel disdain toward the baby boomer gen. I guess in some sense, the baby boomer gen was the millenial gen, ie, born in a time of rapid technological advancement and economic prosperity, who got to f**k around and smoke weed and do LSD. However, they rode a nice postwar train to prosperity.

Anyway, one stat I find hilarious is Spain has 50% youth unemployment. Baby boomers are freaking out because they might seriously have no pensions as there's no jobs for the young people. Young people have to go abroad to find good employment.

I think the issue too is, expectations. We're simply not getting what our parent's generation got handed to them. No baby boomer I know can honestly give sob stories like "we made shoes from old tires" or something. The baby boomers were the first generation with entitlements, they're the ones using the SSI money, they were the first to use Pell grants, first to use unemployment, etc. Maybe they should have bitched about entitlements back when they milked them.

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/ ... 07_320.asp
Check it out.
Total tuition (room and board, too) for an average 4 year college in 1976 was $2275. Adjusted for inflation, it's about $8000 in 2006 according to an inflation calculator. 2006 college tuition? $28,000!