Get Off My Corporate Lawn!

A quick read-through of the comments section of many articles on Millennials show just a tiny bit of contempt that young people are facing today.  Here are my favorite examples on which I have occasionally, and lovingly, retorted on.

• http://awearnessblog.com/2008/12/are-millennials-dumb-or-just-d.php
• http://employeeevolution.com/archives/2008/05/23/10-ways-generation-y-will-change-the-workplace/
• http://www.hulu.com/watch/49387/downtime-managing-millennials
• http://hummersandcigarettes.blogspot.com/2008/12/trophy-kids-entering-work-force.html

And really, the “old fogeys” who are mad have every reason to be.  Why shouldn’t they?  I mean, the current state of our union is unilaterally the Millennials’ fault, isn’t it?

After all, how could such young, naive up-and-comers shake their heads, put in their iPod headphones and just ignore everything that these graying golden gods of the corporate world have to say when everything they have to say is demanding of respect?

Gen-X’ers, Joneses, and Baby Boomers have led some wonderful examples of Corporate Ethics and Workplace Values – just look at Enron, Tyco, GlobalCrossing.

Oh and let us not forget that they really do work much harder than us, as parents, as mortgage holders, as 401K holders.  Never mind the fact that many of their mortgages led to a housing crisis, it was really their friends and occasional golfing buddies, the bankers – also from their generation, who did them in.

I mean, just look at how many jobs they created despite the recent economic crisis, all -25 Million of them!  Look how forward-thinking they were to embrace the trends of Internet Social Media by blocking Facebook at many workplaces, and how half of them at least supported Green initiatives by supporting the candidate who looked hotter in glasses and kills polar bears.  In fact, most older adults don’t believe in any sort of protective actions for the Environment.

Drill baby, Drill – and that should be the mantra, after all – because no one loves change as much as these graying golden gods.  Oh, and let us not forget that these are the same people who, because our future generations would be so unproductive that they couldn’t possibly be expected to innovate or create value on their own, raised the H-1B foreign, high-tech worker visa limits from 60k a year to over 85k a year.  And that’s without taking outsourcing and off-shoring into account.

Oh, and… torture, rendition, domestic wiretapping, the divisiveness of a post 9/11 world, I suppose they could all be attributed to these graying golden gods and their stodgy, non-communal attitudes, but I fear I might stretch my point too thin.  Though, when all of these things were occurring, very few of the “leaders” of these previous generations stood up and called our President to answer for the flagrant attacks on the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.  We, as a people, stood mute.

Not to mention the overly rampant ultra-conservative religious ideals which have somehow found their ways into just about every law and public broadcast which somehow persist, for fear I imagine of the US being hauled off and excommunicated via Twitter.  Believe me, it’s a big deal when the Pope un-follows you.

Truly every generation has its problems, but what the hell happened?  You guys were so cool.  Woodstock, happy trees, outrage over Watergate and Free Love.

No generation has been so fearful of change, so afraid of young people, so afraid of new ideas as some of these boomers and jonses.  Gen X’ers, my hats off to you – Facebook, MySpace, and so on.  Quietly parading on, keeping up the status quo.  Even so, there’s no excuse for keeping quiet today when your sons and daughters are being berated left and right and inheriting all sorts of problems from Over Population to Global Warming and a Credit Crunch.

As for the litigious nature of these generations – suing each other left and right while we have a more laid back approach – really, can we be surprised that you’re now blaming the Millennials for all the world’s ills?

It was Edmund Burke who said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Well, we’ve had enough of “nothing”.  We’ve seen what “nothing” accomplishes.  The decent people among the ranks of the Boomers, Gen-X’ers, and Jonses have been consistently beaten down, drowned out, or silenced over the last eight years.  Forgive me for having the audacity to say that I miss them and that my generation – “coddled” or “entitled” as we may be, is quite pissed off at the legacy those that weren’t so good have left us.

Anyway, like it or not, we are here for good.  You need us.  We need you.  The only question on the table is, how quickly do you want to become irrelevant?  And even then, you have a choice – work with us and you need not ever become irrelevant.