Posted by Is there such a thing as millennial culture or is it merely the stuff of wishful thinking? From an advertising point of view, the concept is very useful – although there is an ongoing debate about how much money millennials either have or are willing to spend (“The Cheapest Generation,” The Atlantic, September, 2012).
Wishful thinking, believable myth or worst nightmare, there are reports of a culture clash between millennials and everyone else.
Dan Lyons’ new book, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble tells the tale of a mismatch between the culture of a start-up company staffed mostly with millennials and a guy (Lyons) in his 50s with a more traditional corporate background. According to an interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s April 8 Fresh Air program, Lyons’ experience at the start-up is an example of the sometimes hilarious, frequently frustrating and ultimately untenable clash between young and older employees.
Lyons’ experience is certifiably true, but is it true of millennials in general? Is there such a thing as a millennial culture, and if so, is it at odds with business as we know it?
My latest job – at a leading IT research firm with a traditional corporate culture and a large number of millennials – serves as a counterpoint to this. It could have been difficult, at best, for those coming straight out of school – or those coming from a more innovative corporate environment (like entertainment, advertising, agency or new-age publishing), or those coming from a different country, as many of our employees were – to adjust to a very stratified and circumspect corporate culture. It could have been, but in most cases it wasn’t. Why?
There was a corporate culture at the firm that encouraged inclusion. There was a feeling of comradery among employees of all ages; there was mentoring; there were group events like race car driving, rock-wall climbing, IT project competitions, and karyoke. These are all things that surely a start-up culture could easily embrace.
As a worker over 50 who also happens to be a mother of two millennial daughters, I may be biased, but I personally enjoy working with younger people. I think we can learn as much from them as they can from us. Oh, and by the way, as I believe Lyons points out in the interview, we know as much about technology as they do, plus we have a lot more experience in dealing with people in particular and corporate cultures in general.
So even if there is such a thing as a millennial culture, non-millennial workers are still required.
In “Corporate America Chases the Mythical Millennial,” by Farhad Manjoo (New York Times, May 25, 2016), Manjoo refers to the fact that “Google’s human resources department, which the company calls ‘people operations,’ is famous for collecting and analyzing data about its work force to empirically back up its management techniques. Google’s workers range from recent college grads to people in their 80s.”
According to Google’s head of human resources, Laszlo Brock, “every single generation enters the work force and feels like they’re a unique generation, and the generation that’s one or two ahead of them looks back and says, ‘Who are these weird, strange kids coming into the work force with their attitudes of entitlement and not wanting to fit in?’”
Manjoo says that as far as Mr. Bock has been able to tell, “millennials, as a broad category, simply aren’t very different from everyone else.”
All of the Above 