What Gen Y Wants from Work

July 18, 2007 · Comments

I’m a HUGE fan of GigaOM’s Web Worker Daily, and this guest article by Ryan Healy illustrates part of what excites me about their content:

clipped from webworkerdaily.com

What does Gen Y want from work? The same things many web workers look for: the ability to work wherever they like, an identity that isn’t defined by a particular profession, and flexible ways of experimenting with entrepreneurship even while benefiting from traditional employment.

  blog it

Sounds like a lot of US, right? And I’m in GenX, and you might be in the Boomers, but I think a lot of us want what Ryan wants. Read the full article here. And consider adding Web Worker Daily to your reader.

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  • speaking as someone who does live this kind of life, i would never, for any amount of money, go back.
  • Both Web Worker Daily and Ryan's own blog, Employee Evolution, a regular part of my daily reading. They're excellent.

    But are you really part of Gen X, Chris? What if it's more about the way you use media than the year you were born that defines the generation you belong to? Check out the "Generation Y Quiz" on Penelope Trunk's blog - http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/06/25/what-generation-are-you-part-of-really-take-this-test/ - and I think you may be singing a different letter of the alphabet very soon.
  • And yet, we still need things in our life that happen on a schedule. The garbage needs collecting. You need to see your doctor not at 2 am ,when he might feel like seeing you, but when you're actually sick.

    The tension comes from all of us who are happy as clams working on our passion projects whenever and perhaps even all the time (probably much longer than a 40 hr work week, since we are our work), interacting with a larger world that operates on a fixed schedule for many logical and reasonable reasons. Infrastructure. Governmental functions. Things we can't do by telecommuting.

    So how do we create a world that is happening more and more 24 x 7 with golbalization, with our need to sleep and not miss anything? Our circadian rythms that say a regular sleep wake cycle keeps us healthy and sane? Do we let our kids of -gen whatever we are calling it now- eschew all schedules all together?

    I don't know the answer, but I do know it's about more than old vs. new. It's about work creep beyond 9 to 5, doing what you love so there is no boundary between work and play, yet making sure some sort of understanding exists where companies support your boundless enthusiasm for work and compensate you accordingly for work done.

    And some things, we'll always want to happen during daylight hours- like trials- do you want Jury duty on the weekend? How about 2 am to 6 am? Do you want the only available pediatric appointment to be at 4 am on Thursday?

    We've just got to find a way this all works logially and together, and where the entrepreneurial don't feel needlessly constrained by what they see as outdated rules, and the traditional work hours don't totally go away so we still have sleep and work/free time boundaries.
  • I agree Chris, I love WWD. Of course it's been inspiring me to get back to my telework book.
  • kitykity
    ...what Drew said. Summed up in one sentence. With my job, as a system admin, I could literally work from anywhere (thanks to my Sprint broadband card)... but my company hasn't completely embraced that notion yet.
  • Holy smokes . . . I have never been able to put into words what I am looking for in life, let alone had someone ELSE sum it up in such a neat and tidy sentence. Ryan was right on the money with this, I am literally shocked it was so easy to put in words! Thanks for the share . . . (I'm Gen Y, by the way)
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