i was poking around on twitter this morning when i came across @FHinnovation, the twitter account of the director of innovation here at fleishman-hillard.  one of her tweets drove me to the FH innovation blog where i stumbled on a post about millennials (aka generation y, aka yours truly).  having spent a couple years of college researching and writing about generation y and their buying habits, etc i was intrigued, so i took a peek.

unfortunately, what i saw hurt my heart a little bit.  the post is great, and i wholeheartedly agree with what stephanie says but what inspired me to write this post wasn’t the blog post, but an article that, i believe, is totally unfounded, ignorant, and quite pig-headed.  i’m assuming stephanie felt the same way, as obviously, she too was inspired to blog about it.

so here it is: “Entrepreneurship (Or Lack Thereof) In Millennials” by stephen berglas, phd

first of all, stephen (i hope he doesn’t mind if i call him stephen), i’d like to point out that smack in the middle of your article there’s this little box… entitled “article controls”.  i’ve included it here, in case you couldn’t find it.  see where it says “share” (circled in red, again, in case you couldn’t find it)?  i’m going to break this down in terms of generations:

delicious: founded by joshua schachter, born in 1974 (which makes him allllllmost generation y)
digg: founded by kevin rose, born in 1977 (which makes him generation y)
yahoo: employs/employed people like joshua schachter (and they bought delicious for about $30 million, because it was that brilliant)
facebook: founded by mark zuckerberg, born in 1984 (making him not only generation y, but making him only 24 years old)

okay, so i think (hope) i proved a bit of a point there, but moving on.

some of my previous posts touch on the resentment of generation y – which fascinates me.  stephen berglas’ article calls us the “everybody gets a trophy generation”, mellow, soft, and states that “millennials may have been reared in a way that makes it impossible for them to conduct business negotiations in an entrepreneurial manner” (that was taken from two other morons (imo at least), winograd and hais).

well, gentlemen, i take offense.  i think that mark zuckerberg, kevin rose, and joshua schachter might too, but that’s not my business.  if nothing else, take mark zuckerberg… who managed to build the single most popular social network, period.  is that not entrepreneurial?  is his $1.5 billion net worth not the result of likely professional and entrepreneurial business negotiations?  if it’s not, then enlighten me, what is?

okay, so my generation whines and complains.  well, that’s what my baby boomer/generation x parents taught me.  so you can gripe about how we all want trophies all you’d like, but when it comes down to it, it was your generation that taught us that mentality.  i was taught to never settle; and honestly, i don’t see anything wrong with that.  i believe that that’s made me a very strong and assertive woman – for lack of a better way to say it (and if you don’t like profanity—earmuffs): i don’t take shit.  and i’m proud of that.

however, the fact that i don’t take shit definitely doesn’t mean i don’t know how to conduct myself professionally in the workplace.  it doesn’t mean that i think i can skate through and get away with sub-par work.  what it does mean, though, is that i go out of my way to be professional yet approachable in the workplace, i don’t stand for sub-par work, and it means that i always, and i mean always give well over 100% effort

these winograd and hais guys get worse… the article goes on to quote their book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics in saying that:

“millennials seem devoid of an impulse to fight and prove their superiority over others–not a surprising outcome when everyone gets a trophy”… now, i’d like to think that i am “devoid” of no such thing. i don’t settle, and i most certainly am a fighter.  i’m as feisty as they come, and i’ve worked hard to achieve everything i have.

i find it nothing short of humorous that two baby boomers are denouncing my generation the way they are… we’ll be the ones paying your social security, boys.  it’s funny to me that two aging men seem to think that they have me figured out.
i think the point here is that society doesn’t have us figured out, and that scares you, doesn’t it? baby boomers and generation x-ers seem to have this silly fear of the unknown.  granted, we all have it to an extent i suppose, but here’s what i think about my generation… the millennials.

i think we grab the bull by the horns and show it who’s boss.  i think that we have no problem haggling for a better price or negotiating a better salary.  i think that we’re inspiring because we take that fear of the unknown and use it to conquer feats that generations before us never even dreamed of.  i think that we’re creative and savvy, and that that is something to admire.  i think that we are entrepreneurial in every sense of the word – we want new things, better things; so we establish them ourselves.  i think that we want the best, because we were taught never to settle for anything less, and i think that’s the right way to tackle anything and everything.  i think that we’re intimidating; and that’s why older generations resent us so much.

in an economy/society where we should apparently be afraid and conforming to our previous generations’ norms (as they’re the ones supposedly hiring us after college), we often choose to blaze our own trails and create new norms.  these old dudes (berglas, winograd, hais… and tons of others i’m sure) just don’t get it.

we don’t settle for mediocrity because we watched barney growing up (which i, for the record, did not), we aren’t soft because of the way our parents raised us, we’re just as diverse as generation x and the baby boomers – some of us are inspiring leaders and others are couch-potato losers.  i don’t have to look too far to find a couch-potato baby boomer loser, i’m pretty sure i could shake some out of my own family tree.

the fact of the matter is this: no one, under any circumstances, can legitimately and accurately stereotype an entire generation… regardless of which generation it is.

yeah, across the board, we (generation y) might want everything, but that comes with the times and the emergence of technology.  keep searching for things to blame, but i’m telling you: it’s not barney, not obama, not entirely our parents either (who, may i remind you, are part of your generation(s)).

i, mister berglas, am not soft.  i am not an overachieving “nobody-tells-me-what-to-do” type.  i am not devoid of the desire to prove my superiority and fight for what i deserve. i do not strive for consensus, and honestly, i don’t give a shit about your so-called “warm and fuzzy win-win” approach that you claim i prefer.

so, mister berglas, you ask “Do members of this generation have the inner fight to make it on their own?”
my answer? i sure as hell do.  just watch.