Change is what we want to believe in

By Jen Emge

During my grandmother’s generation, any job was a good job. Coming out of the Depression wasn’t a time to be choosey; it was a time to be thankful.

Our parents had it ingrained in them that they could lose their jobs and the Depression, Part II could happen at any moment.  A steady career was a life essential.  If you happened to love your career, it was just an added bonus.

Now, after decades of a relatively stable economy, the young generation can put those Depression fears aside and actually enjoy life and work.  And, we get criticized for it.

“Generation Y is entitled, lazy, selfish, tech savvy, and incompetent,” wrote New York lawyer and not-Member of Generation Y, Scott Greenfield.

Some of us have been spoiled and told we’re special, so we deserve better when it comes to careers.  Some of us remember seeing Mom and Dad come home exhausted after work and don’t want that for ourselves.

But all of us are used to change – rapid change, at that.  We grew up rewinding Boys 2 Men tapes and now we download our music. We went from using technology to creating it for ourselves.  We went from thinking Presidents could only be old rich white men, then Barack Obama appeared.

So the thought of slowly degenerating in a six-by-six cubicle, processing status reports every Friday afternoon for the next twenty years, answering to the old man who didn’t get the memo about suspenders going out of style, and attending company Christmas parties isn’t exciting to us.

It may be stable, but it’s not fun.  Change is fun.

Maybe switching from job to job means you’re looking for change – or maybe you’re still searching for life’s purpose – or maybe you really are a “deadbeat” and you just haven’t realized it yet.  But whatever the reason, it’s not just our ADD tendencies to blame – it’s the other generations’ influence as well.

We switch from job to job because our college applications told us we needed to be well rounded.  Because the restaurant manager said we needed experience just to seat people to their tables.  Because our parents told us they wanted better for us than what they had.

“Whatever it was that influenced us, it is time for us to start our own journeys, make our own mistakes, and eventually give the generation after us their very own list of problems to avoid!” said Gen Y entrepreneur Tina Paparone on Under30CEO.

So maybe we won’t work for The Stable Work Corporation, Inc for 30 years or sign up for the 401K plan. But we’ll come for two years, open our mouths with fresh ideas that will help the company grow, and when we leave you can just say, “She’s young, she just needed a change, but she sure did a helluva job while she was here!”

Photo Credit: Beverly & Pack