Thursday, September 1, 2016

The stupidest sentence I read yesterday

From a press release:

"Millennials want transparency, flexibility and the ability to work for multiple employers simultaneously if they chose, anywhere they choose."

Actually, I suspect that younger people want the same thing as most folks: to be able to work at a stable job that pays well with good benefits. 

30 comments:

  1. No, what we want is no job security, no social security, a destroyed global environment (thanks boomers), and for all previous generations to constantly tell us that it's all our fault because we aren't tough enough and have short attention spans

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    1. 1) Yeah, I love hearing this stuff on Facebook. You forgot "entitled", though. Of course, if kids today are so worthless, weak, and entitled, where'd they learn those traits from? Not me, of course. It's never my fault.

      2) No one wants to admit that their well-being is predicated on making someone's else's nonexistent, so you just have to shift the blame elsewhere. Lots of other more odious situations require the self-justification "No, they like it that way."

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  2. Midwest CRO bench chemist:
    I once heard one of our customers (senior manager in big Pharma) spout a very similar statement at the start of a project. I did my best to not appear hostile, but I couldn't stay silent. It may be true some millennials enjoy the flexibility of the 'gig economy'. Most of us want job security and the ability to make long term plans, just like everyone else.

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  3. "Millennials want transparency, flexibility and the ability to work for multiple employers simultaneously if they chose, anywhere they choose."

    sounds like the past few girls i dated, just replace "employers" with "men".

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  4. Is this a cart and horse argument where it not a sign of what is wanted but reflects more what many business employers are offering (although might suggest the transparency and flexibility components are more illusionary than reality at many companies who view workers as disposable/replaceable with cheaper labor)

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    1. i tend to believe that is the case. managers and c level folks propagating more millennial mythology. it really seems to me that the "gig economy" is largely born of necessity. being able to convince the media, policy makers, and older americans that this myth is true allows executives and management types to offer something substandard in terms of employment. In truth this is all self serving for them, but they will claim this is what people (millenials)want.

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  5. No no, it's true, millenials are going to completely change the workplace......

    .....just like every generation before them.....

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  6. Millenial here. You're right, CJ. All I want is a stable job that pays reasonably well and is not in the middle of nowhere.

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  7. This sounds like a great line to attempt to force millennials into zero hours contracts.

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  8. You Millennials need to relax. Just do what I did when I was your age: walk up to your boss (you have a job, right?) and demand a 10% raise each year. If he says no, just threaten to take one of your other lucrative offers. Do this for a few years while investing in local real estate and upgrading your two-story suburban house (you don't live in an apartment with 2 room mates, or with your parents, do you?). A few years later (and a few kids, am I right?) retire and take the generous lump sum pension your life-long employer agreed to give you when you were hired. Liquidate your houses, move somewhere warm, and stark cashing those sweet sweet SS checks. Nothing to worry about!

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    Replies
    1. SS checks? Try gold-plated pension! (kids, have your grandparents describe this to you, they don't exist any more)

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  9. I think this is a very telling post that shows why a lot of comment-ers on this blog are missing out and disgruntled. If, in this developing global economy, your biggest dream is to spend your life working for someone else, then you are hosed. The good news for us is (as George Whitesides is always going on and on about) all of the greatest challenges confronting the world are chemistry problems. It is now easier than ever to make your own opportunities, be your own boss and work on the biggest problems there are. Maybe that quote isn't so stupid after all.

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    1. Every man is his own company. /s

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    2. You and What Funding?September 1, 2016 at 2:28 PM

      Who's going to pay and provide the dedicated space for you to be a chemistry entrepreneur? Unlike tech, where anyone with a toaster/potato/garbage PC can code a prototype, chemistry needs some real infrastructure to make any progress. Further, most investors subscribe to the Andy Grove Fallacy, so they will not be willing to put money into basic research after the first few companies don't hit their milestones. Barrier to entry is way to high for someone to start in a garage in Palo Alto.

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    3. "It is now easier than ever to make your own opportunities, be your own boss and work on the biggest problems there are."

      This sounds like nothing a chemist, or anyone without family money who's been in a workaday world a few years, would say.

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    4. Oh, and all this time I thought the great challenge of our time was getting everyone on social networks.

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  10. Every man is a company,
    Entire of itself,
    Every man is his own multinational corporation,
    No part of the main.

    If my coworker loses their job,
    My organization is none the less.
    As well as if anyone's were.
    As well as if a position of my friend's
    Or of yours, for that matter:

    No company's layoff diminishes me,
    Because I am my own company,
    And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
    It tolls for only me.

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    1. Would John Donne be proud?

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    2. That's a famous remake of the poem by an anonymous author in the 19th century robber baron era. It was critically praised at the time and received glowing wikipedia reviews. It's widely assumed that it was on the remake, that Ernest Hemingway's famous novel was based.

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    3. See, this is why I miss Poetry Fridays here at CJ's.

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  11. Noncompetes (which even Jimmy John's employees have to sign these days) kinda take the threat of leaving to work for a competitor out of the equation.... #welcometorhe21stcentury

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    1. Come to California baby!

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    2. Rohm & Haas used to threaten lawsuits against people who went to direct competitors all the time. Noncompetes are pretty much unenforceable, and they did sue a few people, but as far as I'm aware the cases were always dropped. I only know of one successful lawsuit, and it was against a guy who blatantly stole IP and copied a product. Regardless of anyone's attempt to intimidate you, a noncompete can't stop you from working in your own field.

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  12. HAHAHAHA. oh jesus, mary, & joseph, thanks for the laugh, that was hysterical. absolutely brilliant. great satire there. really good stuff.

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  13. Said no one... ever! Such BS. These are those HR/free market business assumptions that get perpetuated and just cannot die. I remember being told at Dupont, years back, that BS chemists were too mobile to be considered life long employees. Twenty years later, the majority are still around contributing. Yet, all those HR jobs have been outsourced.

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  14. https://hbr.org/2016/08/research-millennials-cant-afford-to-job-hop

    Almost sent this to the folks in HR the other day. They don't seem to believe me when I tell them, but maybe if it's from the Harvard Business Review...

    What sort of sick individual spreads this garbage in a press release?

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    1. “We cross-train our Millennials to keep it interesting for them. But we hesitate to send them off to far-flung places for two years, because they won’t stay with us. We’re not going to see the payback. Their next employer will.”

      So, your plan is to hold them back from professional development opportunities? Tell me more...

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    2. Wait, so you don't want to have to employ people for the long-term but you want the option of keeping them (without negotiating power, of course) for however long you want? Wow, it's like indentured servitude without the certainty of having a job. This sounds great!

      I wonder how long you have to do what he does to have that level of willful blindness. "Our employee motto is 'You're like Kleenex: use once and discard, because there's always more.', and then we wonder why our employees won't stay loyal to us."

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    3. "Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to."

      As tired as this meme is on LinkedIn, it's a good mission statement for any HR organization.

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  15. That press release statement might be true for the youngest Millenials who are in high school and looking for a part-time job. For others, it's just a bunch of FBS (flagrantly blatant statements).

    The philosopher-musician Robert Zimmerman had noted about things like this press release

    "While money doesn't talk, it swears
    Obscenity, who really cares propaganda, all is phony"

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20