ArunRocks

Gen Yers

Arun bhai | Sat, Jun 18, 2005

Q. What happened if suddenly all Marketing people became unemployed?

A. They would become Taxonomists

I made-up this PJ*, when I found out that I belong to a category of
consumers called the Generation Y or Gen Yers. In short if you
are born between 1979 and 1994 (exact dates are debatable), you are a
Gen Yer. In America, Gen Yers are more than three times the size
of Generation X or “Baby Boomers”. It is found that Gen Yers tend
to be more conservative (old-fashioned?), multiculture
tolerant and less rebellious that Gen Xers. It is said that
they prefer humour, irony, and the (apparently) unvarnished
truth. This explains why the Sprite tagline ‘Image is nothing. Obey
your thirst’ has become such a hit.

It is true that we (I mean Gen Yers) have a different outlook on life
and our career. We have been driven to achieve success in
everything we do. Many of us might not desire overnight success but
success nevertheless. This makes us extremely competitive and
cautious. As a result, we demand such high starting paychecks and
perks that Gen Xers find it so ridiculous to accept. I’m sure many of
us know that our bosses find this hard to accept. How can a rookie
Gen Yer be better than that experienced Gen Xer?

Of course, the Gen Xers would quitely accept that they have to work
twice as hard these days because they try to catch up with the
feverent pace of the Gen Yers. They will of course always attribute
this to the faster pace of life, without even bothering to explain
why is life too fast anyways. It is, they would irritatingly say,
because of technology, of course. But duh isn’t technology supposed to
make your life easier? Um… well.. no… this would be followed by
some baseless anecdotes to prove you wrong.

The fact remains that mankind continues to evolve stride after stride
with technology. We squeeze in more to our lives. An invisible force
prompts the economy to shift gears. This force is the fresh blood or
the emerging generation. They might be Gen Yers or even Gen Zers (post
September 11?). But surely they have evolved. They work better in the
current environment because they grew up in it.

I know this sounds like alarm bells for the Gen Xer reading this
post. Didn’t mean to, but weren’t you extinct?!

*PJ - A slang popular among the Hinglish speaking
community that stands for ‘Poor Joke’. Often used when the joke sounds
very contrived esp for the purpose of making a joke.

2 responses

Try taking off your rose colored glasses. You are the

J. Stinson | Sun, Jun 11, 2006

Try taking off your rose colored glasses. You are the “MTV generation”, also the first to have been target marketed since you were zygotes. Your gen has hijacked gen x culture & combined w/ a boomer consumption mentality.With a prefabrocated view of any movement as something “cool” and marketable,movements such as rap and punk have become “sellout”,laced w/ materialism stemmed from a consumption mentality.The difference between X&Y is X takes the time to break down anything through experience,not just something to be read about on the net or some hearsay from our pals.Experience w/o the umbelicle cord(i.e. helicopter parents) or from the comfort zone=substance.Substance is not a concept,it’s gained through the hard times and questioning everything.(i.e thyself & Boomer fiction).If your up for the challenge respond, otherwise get real and care for something beyond yourselves.

Will GEN Yers ever understand they are the first generation

LNTaylor | Wed, Jun 28, 2006

Will GEN Yers ever understand they are the first generation of its kind - in the entire history of mankind? The first generation where knowledge is attached to a machine?

Of course this would mean they would understand that while knowledge is attached to a machine, wisdom is attached to a person.

So while Gen Yers might have great tech skills, their true impact will be measured by their people skills.

Wisdom, not knowledge. Wisdom. Learn to compete for something that means something.