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The Impatient Generation (Part 1)
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A lot of the articles I have read recently about the current crop of 20-somethings in the world have described us as impatient. We want change, we want promotions, and we want to be on top of the world as of yesterday. While many of these articles take two angles, presenting both positive and negative viewpoints of this attitude has affected society already, they all seem to skip past why so many young people are like this, how it will affect things over the following decades, and what needs to be done to lessen the glaring negative attributes. To figure out what’s going to happen, we should look at how this attitude could have come about in my generation, going backwards: our perspective of the job market (our ‘now’), our experience paying for college (the recent future), and how we were raised (the foundation, or lack thereof).
It’s been shown that people like my parents, the baby boomer generation, will have taken on an average of two or three career changes in their lifetime, while people in my generation will embark on at least half a dozen career changes. At that time people put in their 40 years and retired with a pension, social security out the wazoo, and a gold watch. Decades into their careers a thing called outsourcing began shifting the makeup of America’s workforce. In the 90’s, corporations readjusted what people were making, realizing that someone with 20 years of experience was no better at their job than someone with 5 years experience, except the person with less experience did not come with an extra 15 years of raises from simply showing up every day. These two events caused some to have a career change, maybe each time. It did not affect everyone, though, and many continued down the same career path. The majority of them will not be able to retire at 65, a dream that was sold to them from the day they were born.
Now, picture growing up in this world: you realize from day one that your employer will not offer you job security – forget about loyalty. Your dream job might be obsolete or outsourced in five years, and at any moment your paycheck could be cut in half because someone in another country, or even another cubicle, can do your job cheaper. Odds are you’ll pay tens of thousands into Social Security and Medicare and not receive a dime yourself.
There’s more to our perspective than just an unstable job market and economy. When the boomers were entering the workforce they left college with little or no debt, good pay, good benefits, and often times were already married or were about to get married and could afford to buy a house. We’re graduating with an average of $20,000 in debt, which is less than half of what we’ll make a year to start out, nothing in the bank, living constantly on the verge of financial ruin. Inflation has outrun starting pay since the year 2000. I’m no exception to this rule, and I found out what it’s like first hand to go from treading water to plunging into debt, just to eat, pay for my car to get to interviews, and find a job. My paycheck is a step up from where I was before, but it’s not enough to get me anywhere, and if I were getting married I could forget about buying a small condo, never mind a house.
Go back to how many people in my generation were raised, which is how the current group of high school and college students is being raised. Our parents were immediately dubbed ‘helicopter parents,’ flying in to save their children at the first sign of danger, giving them whatever they ask for, never really letting them experience how harsh life can be. My parents never did this, and I’m not sure why anyone would do this – eventually they have to face the real world head on. Still, someone growing up in this environment does not understand why the world will not simply bend to their beck and call.
The other overwhelming factor: keeping up with the Joneses. My parents never fell for this one either, but it’s the harder one to deal with. I was bombarded with sophisticated television advertisements since birth. In school I was surrounded by people who had parents willing to buy whatever sneakers or clothes were cool. By the time I was in college I had to laugh off the fact that I drove a car that was as old as me (and somehow uglier). It’s not being picked on or laughed at or feeling left out that still sits with me; what still lingers in my head is that I wanted those things, and I want to make sure my kids are not left out because I, as their parent, refused to drop a few extra dollars on the sneakers they’ll wear. Psychologically, it makes sense to me, even though it makes little rational sense. Even if I sit here and say I have no interest in keeping up with the Joneses, I want certain (nice) things for myself since I never had them. Pushing back nearly thirty years of social influence is harder than quitting cigarettes – at least you can make a simple choice to not buy cigs. I’d have to pull a Thoreau and live in the wilderness to avoid society.
The contradiction in all this is that the bosses who are complaining about dealing with a demanding and impatient group of young workers are the ones who gave birth to us and raised us in their own homes with the rules they decided on. They created their own problem, and now that we’re adults we realize that our parents had no more idea as to what they were doing than we do. Add in how connected we are as a generation and we’re quite the force. We are definitely the product of our upbringing.
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