House of Eratosthenes

Millennials comprise 19% of the workforce

God help us all.
- Physics Geek | 11/23/2013 @ 15:08
Is this your actual experience with millenials? Or just your favorite stereotype of them?

And just how much of this portrayal could have been used on your own generation, your father’s generation, your grandfather’s generation, at at an early age? It wasn’t the millenials who pushed through government education, social security, the welfare state, the legalizing of abortion, social security, the free-love revolution, the subsidizing of unwed motherhood, government education loans and grants, no-fault divorce, easy-out bankruptcy, zero-competition dogma, and a thousand other abdications of personal responsibility. It was yours.

We have photographs of Woodstock; don’t get uppity, grandpa.

If there’s anything that hasn’t changed over time, it’s that the older generation always has plenty of time to talk about how stupid, lazy, immature, and corrupt the up-and-coming generation is… and no time at all to recall that the young are only following the example they led.
- rhjunior | 11/24/2013 @ 23:52
Ah, you’re personalizing it too much. I’ve yet to meet anyone bitching about the millennial generation who failed to put the blame where it belongs: On parents too lazy to parent, and a school system too lazy to teach. I’m a parent of a millennial myself. Take my word for it, if you happen to be one of the non-lazy parents, you get fought at every turn, you really do. Lazy parents and lazy teachers have connected to form a sprawling, leviathan beast whose tentacles encroach on everything. Turn the discussion to where it is supposed to belong, which is how successful of a career path will sugarplum have, and all the other players who are supposed to be so concerned about it look at you like you’ve got something growing out of your forehead.

And you’re right, a lot of this stuff has been decades in the making. I agree with you there a hundred and ten percent. Also, there’s a lot of truth to the notion that I’m just the latest in a long line of forty-somethings, probably going back to the invention of the wheel, murmuring the same dirges over and over again: Those kids don’t know how to do shit, these must be the end times…

But can it be doubted that something is cresting out right now, or at least, some of the ramifications are new? There are differences you know. Those previous generations you mention, at age ten or twelve or so, if they had to sit & watch something that wasn’t doing anything in the moment, waiting for a change of state — they’d be able to. Wait for the sun to rise, see it when it happens…wait for the fish to bite, pull the line in when it happens…this generation has a real handicap here. Perhaps our worries will turn out to be for nothing, but we should be worried. Every generation should have some capable lifeguards in it, and this generation can’t lifeguard. If what they’re watching doesn’t provide them with a constant flow of entertainment, they don’t know why they’re watching it and they move on. That’s a real problem.
- mkfreeberg | 11/25/2013 @ 04:31
There are new ramifications, there’s no doubt about that. If, after all, my generation is the Dumbest Generation of Narcissists in the History of the World, then what does that make my kids?

[As a side note, I do wish Millennials would decide whether social media and general tech-savviness make them precious and unique snowflakes or not. On the one hand, we’ve got rhjunior saying that all old people say the younger generation is going to hell in a handbasket; we’re no different than you were when you were our age*. On the other hand, I’m routinely informed by the Millennials in my life — and yes, there are many — that Facebook and whatnot represents some cultural sea change that fossils like me can’t possibly understand. I get confused so easily at my age….. 🙂 ]

*n.b. Woodstock was a generation before us, kiddo. Those were our folks. And you wonder why we’re so screwed up.
- Severian | 11/25/2013 @ 09:09
That is MY actual experience with millenials. If 95% perfectly match, is it still a stereotype? What about 50/50? While I do agree that lazy parenting and bad example-setting accounts for typical millenial behavior, I disagree with the implied premise that “every” generation was bad and it has always been the same. The percentage of laziness, bad-behavior and socialist groupthink has been increasing exponentially.
- P_Ang | 11/26/2013 @ 11:57

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Millennials in the WorkplaceSaturday, November 23rd, 2013

Millennials in the Workplace
Saturday, November 23rd, 2013