Will Your Gen Y Workers Be Your Economic Salvation?

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  jcmaestre10/28/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Will Your Gen Y Workers Be Your Economic Salvation?

  even beign born in the middle of crisis is not an indicative that you know how to handle with it. That would be better if you can mix both experience and newbies to help pass the situation and don??t repeat errors due to inexperience.

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  Thom5510/28/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Will Your Gen Y Workers Be Your Economic Salvation?

  Please.. this is absurd. Gen Y isn't redefining work...they have no clue HOW to work. this is simply "trend setting" PR hack spin by Kirk Snyder, who desperately trying to carve a niche for himself and the Gen Y crowd by throwing boquets at them.
  Remember the "dot.com ..New economy, the old rules don't apply any more" theory. that was blown up pretty well, wasn't it. The same with this balderdash.

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  CC Holland10/28/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Will Your Gen Y Workers Be Your Economic Salvation?

  @ Thom55: Well...before you write off Synder's theory, consider that many other experts and pundits have in fact noticed differences in the way Gen X and Gen Y workers approach the workplace. Specifically, Gen Y workers are much more likely to seek a work-life balance, more open to social networking as a work tool, and better at juggling multiple short-attention-span challenges. In some ways, these are indeed new ways of defining work and may actually create fundamental changes in how our economy is structured down the road.

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  RE: Will Your Gen Y Workers Be Your Economic Salvation?

  @ jcmaestre: I agree that just being present in a crisis doesn't qualify one to solve it. However, I think the main idea behind Snyder's assertions is that the new "work think" evidenced by Gen Y workers may hold the key for restructuring our workplaces down the road, and potentially helping with a recovery from today's economic messes.

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  Bebedo10/29/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Will Your Gen Y Workers Be Your Economic Salvation?

  There is nothing substantive within this article; no indication of how anything will be solved, simply a palliative sentence that somehow Gen Y will be salvation.
  OK, so the newbies can mouse click, but can they think strategically? Can they work well with others? Do they possess the initiative and motivation to transform business?
  Undoubtedly some do -- see Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and others. But the vast masses do not. They bumble from paycheck to paycheck, personal drama to personal drama, without substance or consequence.
  Another article here on BNET mentioned that individual character will be the defining criteria, not simply being born into a particular decade strereotype, and I agree.
  There are plenty of young entrepeneurs out there, but they would be self-motivated enterprising people no matter what generation they were born into.

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  Parker5110/30/08 Report as spam
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  Are you kidding me?

  If the author's logic is any indication of Gen Y's brainpower, we could all be in trouble.
  
  "Gen Y holds the secrets to economic recovery because they were born into the future...Gen Y instinctively possess solutions to recapturing and sustaining our greatness."

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  RE: Will Your Gen Y Workers Be Your Economic Salvation?

  @ Parker51: If by "author" you're referring to me, I should point out that I was merely summarizing a position staked out by Kirk Snyder. (And anyway, I'm a Gen X-er ).
  
  As for Snyder, he has some creds to back up his assertions; a business prof at USC, he just completed a three-year project delving into the impact of Gen Y on the transforming world of work.

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  RE: Will Your Gen Y Workers Be Your Economic Salvation?

  @ Bebedo: You're right, individual characteristics are far more important than a date of birth. But I think what Snyder is trying to say is that by virtue of being born into a more multitasking, modern, paradigm-shifted era, Gen Y'ers have a different take overall on what business and success means to them. The best parallel I can think of deals with computing. My parents' generation grew up without computers, and when technology in the workplace rose up many got left behind. On the other hand, Gen X'ers embraced computing as a normal part of life, thus launching a huge portion of the economy that is now focused on technological development.