Isn't the first group kind of a fringe portion of Gen X? Though, I have seen some articles stating that there is a group between Gen X and the millenials as well....the creatively named xennials. Which I would fall into: 1979-1983 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/06/28/xennials_a_23006562/
I've heard iGen for the youngest generation of now adults. I think the key event was 9/11. For Gen X, they were in their 20's & 30's, and it impacted their careers. Millennials were in high school at the latest, and we only dealt with the aftermath. iGen were infants, and have never known anything else. You could make the same argument for the Recession: Boomers lost their retirement, Gen X lost their promotion, and Millennials lost their entry-level job. iGen lost nothing. For me, I think it's shared cultural experiences. Boomers & Gen X grew up when the shared cultural experience was largely tv: everyone watched the same few channels, radio stations, etc. Millennials started to fragment, as we were weaned on early internet culture. iGen will likely have very little in common with other generations, because so much of their upbringing and identity was internet-driven. Again, it's YouTube channels and celebrities that seem to be extremely fleeting, as it's all viral. We are just now starting to see the effects of our technology and in a lot of ways it's frightening.
A while ago I read a theory that the Millennial version of hipsters (since each generation has their own) and the defining trait of Millennial taste in general is due to being the generation that came of age as modern technology came of age: they have experience with and memories of life pre-internet and the analog version of everything, but also have been just the right age to first experience and immediately understand new technologies as they emerge. So there's simultaneously an obsession/fascination with the far past and simplicity (with things like records and typewriters and the huge resurgence of DIY everything and the aesthetic of public spaces being all vintage-y) and obsession/fascination with all the latest technology and what's coming next. Like, Instagram was basically created in an attempt to digitize Polaroids. I think it fits. (This was all only slightly related, I know. FWIW I thought Millennials were born in the 80s and 90s and there's a distinct divide between Old Millennials and Young Millennials for the first time within a generation. Then Gen X was born in the 60s and 70s, Boomers 40s and 50s.)
I don't get all the doom and gloom. My last job had a huge portion of gen y workers. Like any group Ive worked with there was about 20% busting their ass and ambitious, 50% just getting the job done, 30% total slackers everyone else picked up for. It is weird to see the generations so disconnected from each other. Something as monumental as 9/11 has become a blip on the radar as far as current cultural impact of gen z (or what ever). While islamic terrorism is still a large piece of the world order it seems to have little to no impact on today's youth in this country, certainly not as pervasive as communism was to baby boomers and gen x.
That's actually good for Muslims because so much of what old school GOP and hawkish dems use is Islamic terror based on 9/11. Once that fades a little, we can still commemorate 9/11 without basing our entire foreign policy on it.
I think this is true, in part because of inundation. We simply aren't equipped to understand the magnitude of this shit or deal with the frequency of it.
I don't know, there has been a lot worse and a lot more frequent shit happening for as long as humans have existed and we've managed to last just fine.
I mean, our brains evolved to manage a certain scale of social networks, a certain frequency of dramatic events and to absorb a certain amount of information in a context relative to survival. We have, in the span of a generation, completely overwhelmed that and I think we're just starting to scrape the surface of mental health issues exacerbated by technology. Also, I don't recall ADD, autism and depression being as common among young people when I was a kid. Perhaps awareness is spreading and treatment is more effective, or perhaps these maladies are made worse by spending 14 hours a day in front of a screen. I think of it like this: we get fatigued by the constant clamoring for attention and the drain on our emotions that being connected 24/7 entails. Just a single visit to Reddit or even Digg has enough content to span the entirety of my emotional range: click on this dog seeing it's owner come back from the military for tears, this video of some asshole being an asshole for rage, this article for curiosity, this gif for giggles, etc. And then, with a click it all vanishes, and my brain isn't wired for that, so it self-selects the things it can absorb, process and assimilate (thus the bias). Then, when I step away from that for a few minutes, how the fuck do I comprehend the real-world? I developed those skills before being connected 24/7, so I fall back on them. For a generation of kids that never really has a compelling reason to disconnect, it must be absolutely bewildering. I'm not saying on the whole things aren't better, they absolutely are. I'm saying it's harder and harder to see that particular forest for the trees. I'm also saying it's much harder to contextualize some massive event like Brexit when it happens nearly every Goddamned day and it resonates the exact same as the last episode of Game of Thrones or a Googler getting fired for having opinions on diversity. How do you determine what's important when it all arrives at the same speed and it has the exact same volume, tone and pitch as the array of infinite noise it came from?
It will probably even itself out after a while. Social media provides a constant stream of little dopamine doses, but overall the vast flood of information is a brand new concept of human history. 200 years ago you had to literally wait for a book to be written by hand before you get to digest it. Now you can spend literally the rest of your life reading absolutely anything and never come close to digesting a tiny fraction of what is available. We are still working out how to interact with this new concept. When cars came out no one really knew what to do with them or could forsee how pervasive they would be come. Then someone figured out how to burn fossil fuels. Then someone else figure out how to cover it with plated armor and a tread to roll over barbed wire. Then seat belts. Then fuel efficiency. Innovation takes time to mature and settle.
I also think that people will eventually not be so knee-jerk in their reactions to someone saying "I'm offended!" Initially there has been an overwhelmingly immediate apology and reversal reaction without regard for any kind of analysis... "oh no! we can't offend someone!" I think you're going to start to see some callouses building up on those responses and reactions. The one area that I don't see changing any time soon is the corporate environment, and all the HR bullshit around not making people feel uncomfortable. Some people become uncomfortable if you smile and say "hello" to them, and the rules are catering to them more and more. Too many HR reactions are a result of mitigating potential law suits, so most companies aren't willing to run whatever risk there is in saying, "sorry, that's your issue". Never mind I find it very offensive when a company makes all new hires go through days of "sexual harassment training", etc., right out of the gate.
I just don't feel you on the sexual harassment thing. While for the most part people tend to know the line, I don't think the line would be there, for people to "get," without clear cut policy and education thereof. I think a laissez faire attitude in the circumstances of work place sexual harassment is viable to solve the issue. The corporate enviroment because of the fear of lawsuits has become fucked in many aspects. It boggles my mind as to why the google engineer felt compelled to share his feelings on the topic company wide on a huge hot button issues. Was there some sort of brainstorming project going on in management about diversity and such? Dude just get tired of the culture and fired a on off manifesto?
Nice. "North Korea reportedly has produced a compact nuclear warhead that can be placed inside one of its advanced missiles – which are already believed to be capable of reaching half of the United States." "Further, it is now believed that dictator Kim Jong Un may control up to 60 nuclear weapons." This would certainly explain all their bluster and posturing recently, or it's another "WMD's are definitely in Iraq" scenario. Either way, it's not good.
That's where Man Management comes in... you hire someone, you give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll act like a respectable human being, you interact and monitor their behaviour, and if there appears to be any issues that may come close to or cross a line, then address them. The default setting of "guilty unless proven/trained innocent" irks me. Besides which the last 2 times I took this "training" it was a half day wasted in front of a computer watching videos and then answering multiple-choice questions on a web app... it was a fucking joke, and had NOTHING to do with solving any workplace issues other than giving Corporate the ability to say, "see, look, he took the training, it's not our fault".
Yeah, the whole "Jerry Maguire" moment baffled me too, until I considered the context. What the whole "diversity" movement is shooting for if I'm not mistaken is for race/gender/sexuality to not be a factor, and those given minorities (for lack of a better term) to have no glass ceiling. I think it's largely successful compared to my father's/grandfather's generation, and where it misses the boat is pointing at specific examples or demanding that a certain individual fit in an organization. For you to be seen as a progressive company you MUST have a female executive or an immigrant executive or on and on and on. So, a win would be a woman being elected president or an immigrant being CEO of Microsoft. But, by highlighting the factor that wasn't supposed to be a factor, it almost invalidates the merit of the candidate. Also, by doing shit like discussing wardrobe, religious practices or family background (shit that has NO RELEVANCE to the qualifications/merit of the individual), it reinforces the notion that this person is there because of a diversity checkbox and not their qualifications. It's the opposite of dog whistling: if racism didn't exist, it wouldn't matter that Obama was half black, it would matter that he was young. But since he's black, let's all dig into that aspect of his family, culture, upbringing, etc. Also, I think this is a common backlash to identity politics: I'm a straight white dude, and if I attempt to further myself based on my gender/race/sexuality, I'm an asshole and part of the problem. And I'm literally the only group that this applies to. So, for me to "win", it can only be because of merit, but for literally any other candidate, it could be because of diversity. I realize this completely bipasses privilege, but for someone at Google, the act of quantifying merit should be an interesting thought experiment. It also seems a bit logical: men and women are different. Races often embody different cultures. Why do we pretend that acknowledging the differences is the same as qualifying one as better/worse or stronger/weaker than the other? These are nuanced and delicate discussions, and I can imagine most management would feel timid about even discussing them in the proper context, much less in a fucking manifesto. So yeah, fire the guy. It's not really about what he said (which is open to interpretation), but the fact that he represented Google (intentionally or not), and fired something like this off in a manifesto that reeks of indignant but latent racism. As ridiculous as it sounds, there is a place for this type of discussion and he ignored that, to his detriment.
I believe the problem is with the pipeline... there just aren't that many women in the role because there aren't that many women who are qualified. My stance is that ANY discrimination or affirmative action that results in not dealing with the most qualified person due to race or gender is just as bad as not hiring someone because of their race or gender. Any fix to this is not going to happen overnight, it has to start with the beginning of the career pipeline... get more women/minorities into the field in school, and as the numbers may increase early on, they will propagate down the chain until they are able to take a C-level position. But then you see bullshit like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/us/black-commencement-harvard.html Harvard had a segregated graduation. What. The. Fuck. Things are going backwards in the name of progress.
I had the same reaction to a coffee shop that charged men like 18% more than women, to make up for the "pay gap". I agree with you, Nett, but that assumes it's easy to measure. For things like leadership, vision or hell, even project management...it's rarely that simple. I would also argue that for women/minorities to be in those roles, professionalism needs to be dramatically increased. Much of the tech departments I've seen/worked alongside border on openly hostile, because their raw skills are so rare or in demand they can afford to be unprofessional. I'm referring to the creepy dude who wore the same Deadpool hoodie and sandals to work every day for a month, or the douche canoe that lewdly hit on everyone and then acted like a child when he was inevitably rejected ("she's just a dumb whore, dude"). This behavior bloats the level/amount of management needed to corral this gaggle of fuckwits into a department capable of producing valuable contributions to a company. The saying goes: professionalism irons out the wrinkles left by personality, so you can smoothly get shit done. Helming a department of middle-school boys is as fun as it sounds, and no seriously career-minded person that doesn't fit in there is going to bother. I read it earlier, and I'm thinking it's true: your workplace culture is your brand, and there's no hiding a bad one.
I don't consider it to be professionalism as much as culture. I've worked on video game teams where the crew was wearing hoodies and bare feet, and had a relaxed sense of authority, but were incredibly respectful, inclusive, and welcoming to any and all that were on the team. I've also worked on similar teams where they were like you described, but had the same level of "comfort" when it came to dress. Basically, it came down to them adopting the culture that was allowed to exist by the leaders of the team. More than anything I think that we are lacking in proper leadership in business. If you take a look at the corporate meltdown that is happening at Uber, it's mostly going back to the "Frat-Bro" culture that was there from the start. (Uber was actually created by a guy who sold his startup, had cash, and built the app to help him get laid at bars by having his driver on call when he was ready to leave). In every company I've worked with or for in the last 20 years, NONE of them ever provided proper leadership training. They didn't teach you how to mentor, or how to look out for your team, etc. They taught how to be more efficient at things, or how to better report on things, but none provided training on the leadership "soft skills". I got a ton of that when I was an officer in the military, and it has done me well over the years, and it needs to be injected into the workplace. Number 1 thing is "lead by example"... because people will follow that example. Instill a good, solid, reasonable set of corporate values, and ensure they are followed. We set up a set of corporate values at my last company in such a way that they were used by individuals in the company to help them make tough decisions. In a startup, you have too few people doing too much, and you have interns dealing with co-founders, which can be incredibly intimidating. Lots of "what does the co-founder want me to do in this case?" type stuff. Well, if you have a nice, clear set of company values (we had them printed up into posters and were mounted on the walls in our office), you can point to them and say, "I did ____ because we have _____ value as a company". And if someone had to make a call (like to roll out a new version of the software that everyone was screaming for in a high-stress environment), our QA person could point to the "we look after user information like it was our own" value and then use it to back up their call to reject the release due to a failed test, or something that would increase the potential for a security leak. Nobody could talk shit or pressure them on it, because the corporate value made the decision for them. Stuff like that. But when your managers/Directors are getting hammered at lunch and being FratBros, the same thing happens, just with shitty behaviours. This is actually a pretty big problem in the Venture Capital community where a ton of the big money guys are douchebags who have shitty moral compasses, so it trickles down into the companies they run.
It's not just businesses reacting to lawsuit fears and cultural pressure - unscrupulous organizations benefit from having such an environment. If the most innocuous word or gesture can become a sexual harassment claim, it gives organizations an easier time making cuts and terminations for financial reasons. Fred's a good worker but if we outsource his function we can save a bunch of money. But if we lay him off we're going to have to probably offer severance and pay unemployment. On the other hand, if Fred had a sexual harassment investigation open on him we'd be able to fire him for cause with no severance and have a lot easier time contesting any unemployment claim...