I’m 54. I have been a leftist and a punk rocker all my adult life.
I know that I maybe don’t represent a predominating segment of my demographic, but for what it’s worth:
I respect you guys. A large number of you are far more politically aware than I was in my 20s. You are facing way tougher prospects than my generation did – and my generation was, they said, the first one that could not hope to own our own homes like our parents did. (My parents had their house built for $15,000. By the time I was grown up, it was ten times that. Way worse now.)
Not only are you aware of the situation and how the cards are stacked against you, but you are also amazingly immune to the same old tired lies about why that is.
You will never catch me calling you guys “entitled,” “slackers,” or “snowflakes.” That is all bullshit. You have the courage of your convictions, and the spirit of disobedience is just strong enough in your generation to keep my hope alive. And thank you for that.
The millenials I know are absolutely crushing it !
I cannot wait for them to take over the world, wish they’d start tomorrow. I think you get a happier world when the crushers get to crush it, and the slackers get to have a happy low key life that suits them. So I don’t have a problem with either group, to be honest.
I kept hearing how lazy the 20-somethings are, but I know at least 2 who defy that stereotype. There are 2 engineers in my group who graduated last May and they both work their respective asses off. They come into the office, sit at their desks, and commence to engineerin’. I’ve tapped into their young brains for some computer help from time to time, and I always learn stuff from them. What really surprises me - they’re the only ones in our group who don’t wear jeans to work!!
I know there are lazy slackers out there, but these two guys reassure me that all is not lost!
I’m in the crack between Gen X and Millennials–sometimes called Gen Y or the Oregon Trail generation. Millennials are definitely different than me, and I like them.
I feel a little sorry for them, too. I barely escaped the “you must have an after-school activity every day, worry about your GPA, and start researching colleges by your sophomore year because every decision must be RIGHT!!!” culture, and from the outside, it looks suffocating. Especially considering the actual world y’all got turned out into.
I’ve had dozens of Millennials work for me over the years, very nice kids, smart, mostly polite, and they worked hard.
I feel a kinship with them, when we came out of high school in the 70’s there were no jobs, mortgages ran 15%, and our savings were (and still are) worth nothing. My parents could have lived on the interest income from the amount in my savings account right now, I barely get enough interest to notice.
I feel for you kids, and hope you do it better than we did.
I’m a Gen-X’er, and another co-signer to the OP’s sentiment. The millennials I work with are smart, savvy, and have their crap way more together than I did at that age. I like their energy and enthusiasm a lot. I find the older generations’ finger-wagging at them as tedious and condescending as when they bitched that Gen X didn’t do as the Boomers had done.
Just one caveat: Please, millennials, don’t sell out like the hippies who turned yuppie. Please don’t. Please, please, please.
At 54, I’m at the tail end of the Boomer generation and I’ve never agreed with the generalizations spouted off by my generation about the Millennial generation. Especially in the workplace. When I was a young career person, I wanted better pay, fewer hours, more leisure time, more recognition for my work, and better work/life balance. Hell, I STILL want those things. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut after being pummelled as a naive ideallist when I mentioned stuff like that at work, but I’ve never lost sight of of wanting it. When I hear Mills saying they want that stuff, I mentally pump my fist in the air and yell “preach it brother!”
It’s silly to expect people to masochistically give up their lives for a corporate job. Fuck that noise.
Agree with this. I’ve long wondered where the “buck the establishment” hippies went to. I guess once they got jobs Stockholm Syndrome set in.
