Unbound Edition - Who We Are

Who are you calling a big headphone, hipster clothes wearing, yoga mat and laptop carrying, crackberry and designer coffee addict, digital camera and iPod fanatic?

Fortune recently had a cover story about baby boomers trying to manage the Gen Yers. I am a Gen Yer, so I guess I’m totally unhip (or Fortune doesn’t know what it is talking about). I do not wear, nor do I like, big headphones that remind me of the 80’s. I don’t tote around a yoga mat. (I don’t even own one.) My laptop lives in the closet, and I would rather wear big headphones everyday than have a BlackBerry and constantly be connected.

All that said, I still have the sensibilities of Generation Y. I think there’s nothing wrong with being unapologetically who you are all the time. As the article said, “The kids - self-absorbed, gregarious, multitasking, loud, optimistic, pierced - are exactly what the boomers raised them to be, and now they're being themselves all over the business world.”

Honestly, should we have to change who we are just to conform to the old standards of doing business? I don’t think so. And since we’re younger and outnumber everyone else, even if we have to make some short term concessions, we’re still going to have the last word.

five to one
written by john ono, June 05, 2007 12:16 PM

Love this line in the article: ""This is the most high-maintenance workforce in the history of the world," says Bruce Tulgan, the founder of leading generational-research firm RainmakerThinking. "The good news is they're also going to be the most high-performing workforce in the history of the world. They walk in with more information in their heads, more information at their fingertips - and, sure, they have high expectations, but they have the highest expectations first and foremost for themselves."

It's like my boy Jim said:

The old get old
And the young get stronger
May take a week
And it may take longer
They got the guns
But we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah
Were takin over
Come on!