
Red, Jackson, Gen Y & Loyalty - astrec
http://calacanis.com/2010/04/27/red-jackson-gen-y-loyalty/
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jdietrich
My generation grew up in a world where employers have never shown loyalty to
their employees. We're a (human) resource, as subject to the whims of
management as any piece of machinery. You show us loyalty, real loyalty, and
we'll show it back.

If you're paying us peanuts and make it up in stock options, we're going to
cash them out when it suits us. If we have no guarantee of more than the
minimum redundancy pay when you lay us off, you have no guarantee of more than
the minimum notice when we quit. If you cut costs on furniture and equipment,
we're going to cut corners when recording our hours.

A select few companies demonstrate loyalty and get it in return. I'd wager
that Joel Spolsky has no trouble retaining employees. Plenty of Googlers seem
to me like they'd take a bullet for Larry or Sergei.

I'm from an old industrial town - a town largely built by "The Corporation"
that employed it's citizens. "The Corporation" mended the roads, ran the
amenities and the social clubs, sent your wife flowers when your child was
born and guaranteed your child work when they left school. If your pipes
burst, "The Corporation" sent their own men to fix them. For over a century,
they demonstrated absolute loyalty to their employees and got absolute loyalty
in return. My generation missed the boat - "The Corporation" sold out to
foreign owners and left town ten years before I was born.

It's the boomers that dismantled this apparatus, who broke up the trade
unions, who coined 'downsizing', 'human resources', 'creative accounting' and
any number of other vulgar euphemisms for stiffing the workers. Personally, I
can live with all that. What I can't abide is the hypocrisy of expecting
respect where none is due. You'll get from me what you have paid for, and not
an ounce not more.

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billswift
He claims to be "brutally honest", but that doesn't explain his immediate
firing of someone who gave a perfectly reasonable 2 weeks notice, and telling
him not to come back to the office, even though he had personal effects there.
This is obviously just another jerk trying to spin his reputation since his
jerk-ness has been made public.

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sophacles
The boomers were commies, "me generation" was greedy, gen-x were slackers and
gen-y are entitled. How about instead, middle-aged bosses hate the fact that
younger people learned to game their system, and are creating a new system.
It's more or less how it always works -- to the point I'm fairly certain there
is a genetic component to it.

~~~
dennykmiu
a dick is a dick, regardless of age, race or gender. even jason deserves a
break. let's move on, guys.

