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Gen Y Workers Reinventing IT for the Better
buzzardsbay writes "We all know the complaints about young employees. They depend too much on their parents' money, they need constant hand-holding, they have no job loyalty, they demand more than they're worth, they disrespect older employees, and they're naive about corporate culture. But despite this conventional wisdom, there's growing evidence that the different working styles of Gen Y workers might be causing fundamental — and beneficial — changes in the way enterprises run, especially when it comes to IT. For example, they may show better judgment when making tech purchases and are often better with green IT initiatives. This is a nice counterpoint to a previous story (and resulting incendiary comments) that dubbed young tech workers a risk to corporate networks."
I don't deny that Generation Y workers can provide value. The question is whether that value outweighs the detriments. The overwhelming sentiment among them is that "I won't be loyal to a company because it won't be loyal to me." or restated as "Me first." The problem I see with that attitude is that they project their own disloyalties onto the company. They're job hopping because they assume the company will dump them.
They can't understand that a company will actually be loyal to them because they don't stay long enough to enjoy having seniority. An entire career built around perpetually being "The New Guy". A good company will be loyal to you, especially for specialized skilled workers. The people who get screwed out of companies are (usually) middle management as their job functions often become blurred and overlaps with the administrative duties of top-tier production workers (For example, Project Leader vs. Lead Programmer). Engineers, developers, technicians, and any sort of production workers are usually the last ones to lose their job and that's only if the company is truly in dire straits.
Look at people like Andrew Koenig, Barbara E. Moo, Bjarne Stroustrup, and John Carmack. They've been loyal to their companies and the companies have rewarded them handsomely for it, allowing them to work with virtually any technology they want to. As a counter-example, look at John Romero. Brilliant guy, but his lack of loyalty and over-confidence in his abilities lead to failure. And that's where I see the majority of Generation Y workers headed, careers like John Romero's, except without ever hitting the high note. What a Generation Y worker "could" do or "might" bring to a company is meaningless if they're going to leave for a different company before any of it comes to fruition.
Generation Y workers have the potential to bring valuable ideas and contributions to a company, but they need to temper those ideas with a traditional work ethic so some of that potential turns into real value.