[wdewind]

As a millennial who actually works his ass off I always feel somewhat compelled to respond to these. Many of my friends who just graduated, especially non-developers, actually want nothing more than to put in hard work and get stuff done. Unfortunately the few jobs that are out there for young people rarely actually involve working hard if it is building towards a career. Sure, you can go off and work your ass of as a waiter, but if you want to go into something that's going to give you a long term career (an internship or intro office job), guess what: you wont be required to work nearly as hard as you can, and it will fucking bore you, and will not require even 20 hours a week of actual work, and in the end you will have pushed some papers around. When you compound this with the fact that the cultural presentation of work that we've gotten for our entire lives is that "it sucks and there's nothing you can do about it" (something I whole-heartedly disagree with), it's no wonder our generation is "lazy."

Millennials "lack direction" (at least in work) because they are being told over and over again that they are in the most fun time of their lives, it's all down hill from here, and that there is no chance at a fulfilling work life. Outside of software engineering, there is little "hard work" available that actually builds towards a career. Finally, when you add in the massive moral ambiguity of working at many companies (Philip Morris seems to own half the country), it again becomes very difficult to become motivated about work. I think most of us really do want to work hard and accomplish things but it is really not clear how to do that.

[quanticle]

I also have to wonder how much of this perceived lack of hard work is because of changes in the social contract between workers and employees. As late as the '70s, there was an implicit contract between employers and employees. Employees work hard, and in return, employers take care of them.

Starting with the '80s and continuing through today, that contract (outside of a select few firms) has been thoroughly eroded. We are no longer workers, we are human resources. It doesn't matter how many years of service we have, the next senior management shuffle can mean the abrupt end of our employment with that firm. These changes mean that there is no payoff in being loyal to an employer. Given that, its no wonder that others see Millenials as being shiftless and disloyal. What's the reward for hard work in a corporate environment, when the continued existence of your job is more dependent on the vagaries of senior management politics than your performance?

[wmat]

Here, here! I've worked at large, enterprise organizations for 15+ years and always resented the concept of Human Resources. At the enterprise level, there is little to no payoff for loyalty other than possible redundancy, when HR found someone who could do your job for half the pay. I suspect this is all a symptom of business school education trends over the last 40 years or so. I don't think there is any fault or blame to lay, but rather we as a society have to step back and begin doing what's right socially instead of economically. Do that, and economics will likely take care of itself.

[j_baker]

I tend to agree with Daniel Pink's assessment[1]. The reality of the situation is that us millenials have grown up in an age of instant feedback.

Older generations tend to view this as emotional neediness, but the reality is that feedback is necessary for a healthy work environment. When we don't get that feedback, we tend to disengage and assume we're either not important enough to get feedback, or our workplace is ambivalent to our presence.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8113600/Think-Tank-F... - just posted it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2773834

[jjanzer]

I think the problem here is that not all employers will challenge you. In my mind, the key to finding enjoyment in your work if it's not challenging is to challenge yourself. Unless your job is oppressive to self direction there is nothing stopping you or anyone else from creating or doing something that is positive for the business and challenging for you. As a few examples you could find ways to optimize a system that is inefficient (it doesn't even need to be at the software level), analyze information about your customers, find ways to save money, research ways to get new clients, etc. A side benefit to challenging yourself is that you will find it quite rewarding. I can highly recommend Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book on "flow" in regards to the phenomenon around it.

I think what I'm trying to say is by challenging yourself to be more than what it is your employer expects out of you results in a net win for both you and your company.

[wdewind]

This is a nice idea, but unfortunately in many cases getting the information and power you require to solve the problems is blocked by seniority. You have to keep in mind, outside of development many many industries are still essentially seniority not performance based. For instance, if I work in HR and there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we are recruiting, it's not as simple as whip up a prototype, in many cases you'll actually need for someone (ie: a superior) to be fired in order to really affect change. It's not easy to address important inefficiencies within the company without pointing out that someone is fucking up their job.

As for the inefficiencies you CAN fix, this seems like a standard part of any job (and life to be honest). If you see problems in your job that you actually can and know how to improve and you aren't improving them, that's an entirely different issue.

[janesvilleseo]

I agree completely. I work at a company that is small about 25 people, but I engage in this quite often. The company is rather open about everything. I have access to just about everything I need except for the company bank accounts, which I do not want. This provides with a lot access to do a lot of this flow analysis. However the two greatest challenges I still have to overcome are 1)Buy-In from the higher ups to actually use the data/analysis and 2)the time to keep it up. I often feel, for multiple reasons, that I shouldn't be spending time on these endeavors. However, I still seem to always have a 'project'.

[jbl]

I also agree with the grandparent post. There's always something to do, and something more that could be done to make a project interesting.

However, I've often been frustrated by the effort required to get buy-in or recognition from higher-ups. I often found myself wanting to contribute more, but sometimes it seemed like a sisyphean task and not worth the effort (especially once you start balancing compensation and effort).