Your Employer Is Not Your Friend, and Young People Know It

http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/your-employer-isnt-your-friend-and-millennials-know-it.html/?a=viewall

by jrs235 • 11 years ago

99 67 11 years ago

beat4• 11 years ago

A while back, my Millennial daughter had a conversation about finding jobs and building careers today with her Boomer grandfather. At some point, he stopped and said that he had no useful advice for her, because he'd only had two job interviews in his entire life. He went straight from college into a career, and he retired from that one job.

It's been interesting watching her deal with her career (in cooking) with her GenX mother too. Her mother can't quite imagine that you do something other than go to college for a four year degree and then get a corporate job. The idea of a career based on experience and networking is rather alien.

magic_beans• 11 years ago

"The idea of a career based on experience and networking is rather alien."

It's been that way since the before Industry, and it'll stay that way after.

beat4• 11 years ago

True. But for her mother, the college -> career in something you didn't study path is "normal". Jobs are found via resumes, not networking.

Interestingly, my spouse found herself unemployed for the first time in 13 years recently. She's since become much more understanding of my dream of creating a startup, and our daughter's dream of becoming a chef. She's realizing just how much she hated her old job, how hard it was on her soul.

stephengillie2• 11 years ago

Every single job I've ever gotten has been from:

1. Cold applications - find a job posting (usually on Craigslist) that you could fit, send cover letter as email body + resume attached.

2. Cold recruiting - Recruiter contacts me by email with a job that looks like a good fit.

I've never got a job from knowing someone. Everyone who has ever worked with me has done so without knowing me beforehand. My experience helps me get jobs, but then, doesn't experience help everyone? I've got 6 jobs this way since 1998.

columbo• 11 years ago

Serious question: Is this significantly different from all the similar-themed articles in the 90's and 80's? It seems like the more things change the more they stay the same...

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19980412&id=...

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1309&dat=19941224&id=...

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&dat=19881231&id=...

yellowapple3• 11 years ago

It's actually not significantly different, AFAICT. History is a series of infinite loops.

aetherson• 11 years ago

I'm sorry, this is complete pedantry, but I can't help myself:

I think that you mean history is an infinite series of loops. I don't know how you'd get to the second in a series of infinite loops.

onewaystreet• 11 years ago

No, this isn't a new trend. The end of job security started in the 80s. Millennials are just the first generation to have no doubts otherwise.

dataker2• 11 years ago

Maybe 90's and 80's, but if it was truly cyclical, one'd have to notice the same with Boomers, who retired in the company they interned

stephengillie2• 11 years ago

Everything that's new is old already.

gavanwoolery• 11 years ago

On the flip side, your employer can be a valuable resource, even after you leave the job (moreso at small companies). I still maintain connections to past employers that have remained legitimate friends and valuable resources.

dataker2• 11 years ago

social media itself is the tool younger workers use to make sure they have contacts in place

I know the articles tries to depict this as 'innovative/cool', but it's the same issue of crony capitalism vs true meritocracy.

makerops• 11 years ago

Having the wherewithal and self awareness to develop a professional network is meritorious.

whatshisface• 11 years ago

In some sense yes, but not in a way relevant to most jobs. Knowing which officials to bribe might also be considered a form of merit, but it adds nothing to the world and should not be rewarded.

hvs2• 11 years ago

To paint this in starkly generational terms seems counterproductive. No one that I know (in my "Generation X" circle) thinks that your employer is your "friend". Companies will often play that up when you get out of college, but it is obvious to anyone with a brain that companies do not hesitate to sacrifice employees at the first sign of dipping profits. I'm not putting a value judgement on that, but you don't need to be a "Millenial" to realize that only you are responsible for your career.

My point is that these are structural changes in the work force. They will affect different age groups differently, but to pretend that it is somehow due to the "Generation" they are in is ridiculous. Those labels just encourage lazy thinking.

halviti• 11 years ago

"To paint this in starkly generational terms seems counterproductive."

.. which you proceed to do in the next sentence.

"They will affect different age groups differently, but to pretend that it is somehow due to the "Generation" they are in is ridiculous."

I don't know if you're going out of your way to contradict yourself, but for all intents and purposes "generations" and "age groups" are the same thing.

LockeWatts• 11 years ago

It sounds to me like he's challenging the conceptual idea of a generation, which to be fair is a kind of difficult line to draw. Instead, he's saying that if you're 20-25, regardless of generation, you'll see things one way. 25-35 another, etc.

shit_parade22• 11 years ago

Unemployment numbers throughout the developed world strongly reveals a generational bias.

Add in age related benefits and median income by age, and it is undeniable that the older generations suck the productivity and wealth from the younger like vampires.

jkyle3• 11 years ago

This is highly prone to speciousness. A 5 year old may not have benefited from a system as much as a 50 year old...but how much of that is a reflection on the fact that they've only been in the system 5 years?

Long term benefits are part of the negotiation. That some have been around long enough to realize those benefits while others are still working towards seeing them vested is not an indication that one is draining from the other.

Unemployment sucks for younger generations in the developed world because we just had a huge economic bust...of course it's easier to keep a job then to get a job. You've already proven yourself.

jkyle3• 11 years ago

Everything old is new again if you do a s/gen X/millenial/g on the article.

You can seriously do a google search for 1990's and find all the articles saying basically all the same things.

30s of googling and here's an article from 1998 saying the same things about Gen X: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/9760?gko=fea27

sdm• 11 years ago

It's tradition. Every generation complains about the next one and worries their children will be the first to not do as well as their parents. Most of the complaints and worries are standard and have been for some time. I remember in university reading articles by mid-19th century parents complaining about kids not reading enough because the kids were spending all their time going to plays...

yellowapple3• 11 years ago

This article is hilarious with the millennials -> snake people browser extension.

ubertaco• 11 years ago

I forgot that I had that extension until I clicked "comments." I had a couple of moments of confusion around sentences like "I had a conversation with my Snake Person daughter...."

z3t4• 11 years ago

It's very interesting to read about union history, where sometimes the military was called in to stop a work strike. We have come a long way in the last 100 years.

justizin5• 11 years ago

takes deep breath

Mostly, people have learned that is bad press, but the national guard were called into Baltimore what seems like days ago to stop black people from protesting the war waged against them.

Labor Day is an artificial holiday, while May Day, a holiday created by the American Labor Movement, is celebrated in basically every other country in the world.

If you're going to read about union history, really read about union history. Do you know anyone who is a union organizer? Buy them a shot and a beer and listen up. ;)

Kalium2• 11 years ago

Labor Day is an artificial holiday, while May Day, a holiday created by the American Labor Movement, is celebrated in basically every other country in the world.

And in the US, it's celebrated by riots and burning cars! I gotta say, that really makes me appreciate freedom and want to join a union...

Practicality• 11 years ago

This idea of "loyalty" is just bizarre. An employment contract of any sort is just a monetary transaction. They are paying for time or productivity, or both.

It's like complaining that people aren't loyal to Wal-Mart, or loyal to Amazon, or Apple. Or why aren't people "loyal" to the bank foreclosing on them?

There doesn't need to be any animosity, but the idea that people should somehow be beholden to the person on the other end of the transaction is irrational.

shmerl3• 11 years ago

This idea of "loyalty" is just bizarre.

That depends. If company positions itself as "money for the sake of money", then you are right - being loyal to such idea is weird. But some for instance are interested in advancing other goals (example: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/). Does it make sense to be loyal to such goals? I'd say yes.

justizin5• 11 years ago

It's dangerous, however, to allow an employer with "mission fit" to get away with things you wouldn't take from another employer.

For instance, in recent years, in the US, we've taken a hard stance that interns who perform essential job functions - which basically all interns do - must be paid. Should this requirement be relaxed for a non-profit? How does the way I feel about that change if I'm a donor to that non-profit? I care about the mission, but I also care how we get there.

I'm fairly sure that internal to Mozilla, Wikimedia, ahem the Association for Computing Machinery (promoting computing as a science AND a profession!), and any other non-profit corporation you can find a lot of the same internal struggles that employees everywhere face.

Further, you have a leadership team who believes it's OK to pay people below market because they "love" and "are loyal to" their job.

It works for a lot of people, and I know / have known a lot of folks very happy with such choices, but it can be a dangerous alleyway to wander down as well.

jdmichal2• 11 years ago

I'd like to take this moment to point out that Mozilla is a community, and not a company. The community called "Mozilla" is supported by the Mozilla Foundation, which as a foundation and not a company, can actually hold goals other than "money for the sake of money". The Foundation also controls 100% interest in the Mozilla Corporation, which means that it's not beholden to any interests other than the Foundation's and so it can stay pure.

I'm not sure how to keep a company pure short of controlling 100% interest, and I'm increasingly thinking that there is no way to do it. As soon as you let external shareholders in, you are beholden to their ideas of what the company should be doing. And the vast majority of the time, that thing is making "money for the sake of money", because that's the only reason the shareholders are putting up their capital in the first place.

rifung• 11 years ago

Well, that's true in the US, but I don't know if that's necessarily true for any job.

For example in Japan, companies actually go out of their way to do things for you outside of your work, like find you a significant other.

If a company actually did things for me to try to keep me happy and treated me well, I think I would feel some sense of loyalty too. Unfortunately it seems hard to find these kinds of companies nowadays.

Xylakant• 11 years ago

There are a lot of midsize german companies where loyalty is actually a value that is ingrained in the company. They're often family/privately owned and while they will let employees go if there's no other way, they'll try and keep them as long as possible. Often the owner feels personally responsible for doing so.

This behavior also makes sense from an economic perspective: It's much harder to find new personal and train them to work with your team and technology than bridging the gap for a while and taking profit cuts, especially for smaller companies with less marketing/hiring power.

There are actually state-controlled instruments that support this: Kurzarbeit (where everybody gets to work less and the state pays a subsidy) and similar support.

wvenable• 11 years ago

Human's aren't rational and they're inherently social. As much as you are right that you can really think of it as a monetary transaction most jobs and workplaces go beyond that. You have social relationships with people you work with. You work on tasks not merely because you get paid for it but because you genuinely want to make things better.

And it's not just employees that are loyal; I've know of many companies that go above and beyond for their employees when they need it. I definitely know companies that keep around long-term employees out of a sense of loyalty when younger employees would be both cheaper and more productive.

It's not completely black and white.

arca_vorago2• 11 years ago

I agree, and I think a large part of this is that people aren't taught one of the most important things in life... how contracts work. I took a business law class that really helped me understand it, and I really berated myself for some of the things I signed in the past in retrospect because I understood finally that a contract is between two parties and you DO NOT HAVE TO SIGN ANYTHING YOU DON'T AGREE TO! Of course you might not get the job, but if they're the kind of people to not let you make any changes to a contract I don't know if I would want to work for them in the first place.

After spending my time in the Marine Corps, where I was basically a slave, I know I will never allow anyone to take advantage of me that much, as I have too much self respect and realize the difference in the contracts.

My tactic is this: I imagine what would a CEO of a fortune 100 do during the employment process? It really makes a difference in how you negotiate things. Also, never forget the power of a good negotiation. (eg: schedule extended time off starting the day of an annual review, and the last thing in the review say you will not be coming back unless some reasonable balance of your demands is made.) The more you value yourself the more others will be willing to value you for too.

FlannelPancake• 11 years ago

"At some point, millennials are going to grow up. They’ll start caring about stability for the sake of their families, and they’ll make decisions that likely look more and more like that of their parents."

Uhhh why? Wasn't the whole point of the article that you're basically better off job-hopping?

If I live in or around any sizable metro area, it's incredibly likely that I can find another job in the same area. No need to uproot the family, and in fact changing jobs often increases the financial stability of my family (one notable reason millenials job-hop is it's an incredibly effective way to get a salary increase).

SixSigma• 11 years ago

Employers are in the loop already and way ahead of this journalist.

That's why there has been a shift in workplace culture. Employers are working hard to develop and communicate to potential and existing employees that they provide a workplace higher up Maslow's hierarchy of needs than previously [1]

Take GM, in 1985 General Motors’ considered workplace mentoring as “divisive and not based on meritocracy”. Today GM’s Director of Social Media, Digital Communications, Research and Reputation Management says that mentoring is a priority at GM. [2]

With layers of management being stripped away, shop-floor workers being replaced by machines or offshoring big employers are ready. Adapt or die.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs [2] https://fastlane.gm.com/2014/03/08/mentoring-matters-mary-he...

mikestew• 11 years ago

I'm glad to hear that "young people" have finally caught up to the generations before them. My 70 year old mother, who worked in software for many years and even benefits from a pension from a previous employer, said decades ago: "my loyalty extends to the day the paycheck clears. On Monday we start all over."

Employers have never been your friend, nor have they necessarily been your enemy. Your job is a business transaction, and to try and make more out of that relationship than it is should be considered foolhardy and more often than not will lead to disappointment. This is not the news flash the clickbaitish article makes it out to be.

makeitsuckless• 11 years ago

Yeah, sure, "young people know it". Because they invented unions, labor laws etcetera.

This self-congratulating bs is an insult to the people who have quite literally laid down their lives for workers rights.

If anything, most of the young people around me are totally naive when it comes to their relationship with their employers and the economic consequences of lack of job security. It will hit them hard when they want to buy a home and start a family, but by then it will be too late.

Sure, some will have cool careers and write awesome blog posts about it. But the vast majority of millennials are getting screwed hard exactly because of this clueless attitude.

If you are this naive and self-involved, you lose the right to bitch about selfish babyboomers taking all the things.

arca_vorago2• 11 years ago

"quite literally laid down their lives for workers rights."

Too many people don't know about this or don't care, and I largely blame the educational system. When is that last time you heard about J D Rockefeller and the Ludlow massacre in school? Oh yeah, that's right, never.

justizin5• 11 years ago

This post makes me sad because I caught myself using the term "young people" the other day. I get to catch the blame for all things Millenial and Generation X, so I tread carefully.

All young people are naive and self-involved. Naivete shouldn't be used as an insult, because it is the natural state of things, wiped away by life experience.

Oh Wise One, grow up. ;)

itsybitsycoder• 11 years ago

I feel like the people who laid down their lives for workers rights might be more upset about their work being slowly undone and rampant anti-union bias than they would be by some fluff article on a blog.

cryoshon• 11 years ago

FTA: "At some point, millennials are going to grow up. They’ll start caring about stability for the sake of their families, and they’ll make decisions that likely look more and more like that of their parents. Isn’t that the circle of life, anyway? But with every generation comes a few changes. What makes millennials look “reckless” or disloyal now might actually be the key to their success, especially because corporations are never going to be their friend, no matter the generations of change."

There is some confusion here. Millenials don't dislike or disregard stability, they've learned by watching their parents and peers that job stability is not something an employer is interested in providing as part of the compensation package.

The lack of loyalty is a result of being or seeing others get cut loose, not of some chaotic-neutral desire to jump around depending on the mood of the day. This isn't a matter of growing up, it's a matter of learning that loyalty earns you nothing.

Then there's the adversarial and asymmetrical relationship that exists between employer and employee in the US, generally speaking. They control the flow of your life's time, your effort, your income, your healthcare, and your future job prospects in the same field. They are purely indifferent to you, because you are (relatively) easy to replace, whereas you may struggle to replace them. If they ask for more, you must acquiesce to their demands or risk being released. If you ask for more, they have the power to say either yes or no, and exercise both options as convenient.

wahsd• 11 years ago

That's what I find most amusing about people who don't get what's going on. Employment is a relationship, if there has been significant back-stabbing, lying, deception, deceit, fraud, abuse, exploitation, etc. then people will simply not extend trust. The trust relationship of American corporations is almost irreparably shattered and destroyed. Not least due to corporate policies, but also due to baby boomer "leadership" that exhibits very little more than incompetence and project the entitled, spoiled lives they were allowed to lead.

I have my own difficulties overcoming that perception that people hold, but I see it everywhere. Unfortunately, people are also getting fooled by the sham benefits, concern, and care that the likes of the big corporate tech companies like facebook exhibit. Employees are lulled into thinking that the corporation is young and dynamic so it must "get it", but there is still a stone cold corporation behind it all that will slit the throat of your newborn if they need to. Just look at the rise of facebook, it's just the same kind of sleazy, deceptive, conniving, heinous corporation as any other; maybe even worse, considering they are complicit in the greatest threat to human liberties and freedom humanity has ever witnessed.

icanhackit• 11 years ago

Then there's the adversarial and asymmetrical relationship that exists between employer and employee

Until you're engaged with and benefit from a system, it's an adversary of sorts. You might be an anarchist until you have children, at which point apparatus of the state (e.g. police) suddenly holds value. You might be against forms of financial leverage until you're able to take advantage of the system (i.e. you have capital to play with).

On the flip side, a corporation might see young people as threatening or non-ideal until they have a need for new skill-sets, youthful energy, fresh perspectives or there's been some sort of normalization between the two entities. I think the effect is pronounced more than ever because there's a disparate rate of cultural evolution between generations, and corporations are responding to young people the way an immune system might respond to a foreign body.

mcv3• 11 years ago

I'm 41, so not a millennial, but I do switch jobs often. I don't consider this a lack of loyalty; I am loyal, but only while I work there. No, actually I still feel loyalty towards previous employers (if they were good, which many are), but my loyalty does not mean they own my life.

I've learned that the best way to get a raise is to get a new job. And I like a change of scenery and learning something new. But my father and brother have stayed with the same employer for all their lives.

Having kids does not mean I stay at the same job longer. It does influence my choice in jobs, however; I'm more likely to choose something close to home, and more likely to choose higher pay over interesting technologies or cool coworkers (though those are still big factors).

dmgbrn• 11 years ago

This is all true, and it's wonderful!

I fired my previous employer for unethical behavior. They told me to settle down and act my age, so I responded with my two weeks notice, at which point the asked me to leave immediately.

The following job search consisted of one phone call to a friend who was working on a promising startup. The job search was a bit of luck of course. It usually takes me at least a day or two and multiple phone calls, emails, and messages to find a new position.

toolsadmin2• 11 years ago

Loyalty = Monthly Salary/ Monthly Hours Worked.

If you're following any other model while working for someone else (without equity), I got bad news for you.

toolsadmin2• 11 years ago

Unless you're working for equity this is the formula you should be following:

Loyalty = Monthly Salary / Montly Hours Worked

chrisbennet• 11 years ago

Supposedly, when asked about loyalty to employees, Jack Welsh said:

"It's Friday and you got paid so we're even."

http://thenewgildedage.blogspot.com/2011/08/jack-welch-forme...

Your Employer Is Not Your Friend, and Young People Know It

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