Forget that I ever existed

Aranyani

ushjr said:

74jax said:

Are you linking this to a survey or something in the news - I haven't seen anything recently on this?  Could you maybe post a link to the report, a we don't know what you are referring too?  My daughter is a millennial and loves her job, as do her friends, I don't think any are unhappy (that I know of).  But if you post a link to what you are debating about we can all chip in.  

There's lots of articles about it, just google millennials unhappy at work and you'll find loads.

I think lots of people pretend to love their job. I too have talked about what excites me about work at interviews but the only thing that really excites me is money going into my bank.

I’m technically a millennial, although at the upper end, and I love my job.  I also loved the job I had before this one, and in fact all my jobs since I first graduated.  

It’s a sad fact that not everybody can have a job they love because a lot of boring stuff needs to be done by somebody, but I don’t think that’s unique to any generation.  My grandad loved his job, my grandma never did.

thegentleway

I’m a millennial and my job is great.

Mickey666

ushjr said:

TELLIT01 said:

Now retired, I enjoyed aspects of every job I ever had.  There were also elements which were less enjoyably, generally the mundane repetitive, boring bits.  To suggest that older people never expected their jobs to be 'fun' is totally incorrect.

Really? My dad said he's glad there wasn't such nonsense in his day it was labour in exchange for money.

getmore4less said:

There used to be middle tier where the technical skilled jobs lived, go back before they messed up education there were technical colleges where skill and educations were combined.

Nearly every one did an apprenticeship of one kind or another even the top professional jobs are a type of apprenticeship. 

We ended up with shortages of skills in a lot of sectors, wages went up and importing labour became the cheaper option. 

The transition to education first then on the job results in a lot a attrition where the jobs are quite hard. 

Pick the right subject at the right further education establishment for the right jobs and you can do very well. 

Things to watch are can the job be exported or cheap labour imported. 

If the job can be automated then that opens up opportunities for new skill sets. 

My last company was obsessed with automating things and outsourcing things to cheaper countries so that it could free up our time for more meaningful work. Still not sure what exactly what that meaningful work is supposed to be, but the automation never worked properly and the outsourced work was never done properly. 

Thrugelmir said:

getmore4less said:

There used to be middle tier where the technical skilled jobs lived, 

As a result of both work and industry knowledge and experience. Now automated. People are clones reading and responding to scripts. No longer empowered to make decisions. Instead completing service requests for others to action. Squeeezed like sardines into overcrowded offices where cost comes before environment. No longer fun to go to work, to be challenged, to progress, to feel self satisfaction at ones own achievements. Nor to be rewarded. As someone from Eastern Europe is more than happy to work for less than a native to perform the same role. Economic migrants are nothing new I should add. In the past majority moved permanently. Now it's out of short term convenience,  

Some good points.

Mickey666 said:

TELLIT01 said:

Now retired, I enjoyed aspects of every job I ever had.  There were also elements which were less enjoyably, generally the mundane repetitive, boring bits.  To suggest that older people never expected their jobs to be 'fun' is totally incorrect.

Exactly.  All jobs have elements that are boring, heck even some parts of retirement can be tedious, but you have to consider things in the round.  Perhaps I’ve been lucky in that my jobs were always creative and I had lots of scope to define how to achieve the objectives.  Also, each project was very different so there was plenty of variety.  It was also fun travelling all over the world on expenses and getting ‘behind the scenes’ in many diverse industries and environments such as airport control towers, financial trading rooms, undersea robots, space centres, railways etc.

I went on a work trip to Spain that I looked forward to. I hated it though. We arrived in the evening and went to a tapas bar so didn't eat proper food. The next day we had little sandwiches for lunch, dinner was better but we didn't eat until midnight. I can't remember if we were provided with lunch the final day, but on the flight home I was in the middle seat on the last row meaning I was one of the last to get off the plane then had to queue for ages at passport control when all I wanted to do was get home as quickly as possible to cook my dinner. I was so stressed by the time I got home.

I can imagine a one-off rushed business trip might not be much fun.  But when done regularly they come with lots of perks.  Business class for a start, then airline reward ‘gold cards’ giving access to airport lounges as well as free flights for family holidays, plus I often arranged to stay over a weekend so I had time to explore wherever I was visiting.  One of my favourite trips was Washington DC.  The flight back to Heathrow was 7pm so I’d get to the airport by 5pm and go straight to the airline lounge that was right opposite the departure gate.  The lounge chef would prepare a freshly-cooked fillet steak meal washed down with a decent bottle of red wine.  About 5 mins before the aircraft doors closed someone would call the lounge and the few people in it would walk the minute or so to the aircraft and settle into their seats-!!!!!!-lay flat-beds.  I’d tell the cabin crew not to wake me for breakfast and promptly go to sleep.  About 20 minutes before landing I’d be woken up for landing and after passport control (fast track of course) I’d go straight to the arrivals lounge.  There I could have a shower and my fresh shirt pressed, followed by a freshly cooked breakfast while waiting for my limo driver to call me.
Those were the days

greensalad

I do enjoy my job to a certain level, though it's not a "dream job" by any standard. It's fine, I don't hate it, and it's good money. That was all I wanted from work. I'm not a "live to work" person.

However I wonder if the general consensus around millennials being unhappy in work isn't so much about work, and more that millennials are generally unhappy.

It's not true for all, but there is a large chunk of the millennial generation who have never really seen any financial prosperity. Who have never been able to get into good senior roles in the same way other generations could, who haven't been able to "climb the ladder" and stay in one company long-term like a lot of our parents did. I finished school in 2009, so in the aftermath of the recession and couldn't even hold down my Saturday job any more because they tightened all the hours due to economic downturn. It was very disheartening. My parents always pushed me to go out and get a job and earn my keep as soon as I could and then I couldn't even do that... I ended up going to university and am now trained to a professional level and employment has been fine, but there are many not like me. 

When I look at what my parents were able to achieve in their mid-tier careers in the 90s (my Mum was a secretary and my Dad a construction foreman. Skilled jobs but not exactly "elite"), I get depressed that it's taken me so long to get anywhere near where they were (debt aside... there are a lot of my friends who don't have any debts and are still only really now being able to do things like buy a house in our 30s, and my friends are largely a successful bunch). My Dad bought his first house at 21, he was working at Sainsburys. My aunt & uncle bought theirs at 24, she worked on the tills part-time in a supermarket and my uncle was a postman. They didn't even have to put down a deposit, in fact they got GIVEN money by the bank, something my millennial brain can't even compute.

I wonder if millenials in general feel depressed at work because our work isn't getting us where we think we should be. Our parents pushed us to go to university because they saw people who went to university from their younger years as the elite, high earners. The lawyers and the doctors. They told us if we worked hard and went to university we'd be successful too, and now we don't feel anywhere near as successful as we were told we would be.

getmore4less

ushjr said:

My last company was obsessed with automating things and outsourcing things to cheaper countries so that it could free up our time for more meaningful work. Still not sure what exactly what that meaningful work is supposed to be, but the automation never worked properly and the outsourced work was never done properly. 

Many places get this wrong because they don't plan and resource properly.

Outsource projects need extra management and project leads, depending where you send the work you often need to put people on site to make sure it is getting done and people are actually working on your projects.

IT projects are particularly bad for this as some outsource places  outsource again to even cheaper places or double stack people across multiple clients.

Automation needs a permanent budget and staffing with people assigned that know what is needed

That uses up some of the people freed up when it starts working.

NBLondon

getmore4less said:

Many places get this wrong because they don't plan and resource properly.

Outsource projects need extra management and project leads, depending where you send the work you often need to put people on site to make sure it is getting done and people are actually working on your projects.

IT projects are particularly bad for this as some outsource places  outsource again to even cheaper places or double stack people across multiple clients.

Agreed, the overhead required to properly manage an outsourced activity is usually under-estimated and the decision is made based on bottom-line figures by people somewhat remote from the actual doing of the whatever it is.  They rely on either the outsourcer squeezing their labour pool or endless arguments about whether the SLA is being met.  The amount of effort needed to manage your own customers also increases if you are serving them through an outsourced partner.

That project/supplier/customer management activity is the high-value stuff that you are supposedly freeing up your expensive graduates to do.  But if the graduates you've got are not suited to that role, because you recruited them as doers not managers, it's not optimal on either side.

I think the OP has a point that perhaps more of the millennials have initially unrealistic expectations of work life compared to Boomers and Gen X;  it's distorted by the millennials who got media jobs but didn't get the lifestyle they thought they were owed and then bleat about in the media.

Thrugelmir

I left school at 16. Clueless as to what I wanted to do. Ended up as a bottom level grade clerk at Friends Provident Offfice looking after 3 East African country premium ledgers. Very quickly learnt it was a job no one else wanted to do. As was in a complete mess. Punch cards and listing paper back in those days. By sheer chance I found myself in my element. Spent best part of 2 years working with a colleague elsewhere in the organisation totallly straightening matters out. My appitude was noticed. Got called in one day to a meeting of senior managers. Would you like to work on a one off project I was asked. We are implementing GLADIS I was told.  The General Life Administration Display Information System was totally built in house and ran on two back to back mainframes. My assignment was two fold, Firstly to test the financial system, finding solutions and workarounds. Secondly to ensure that all live policy records (manually kept until then) were correctly loaded up onto GLADIS. Best part was that I was given unlimited overtime unsupervised. Some 10 months had completed the task. Was then transferred to property acccounting. Only been there a couple of months and my section head, who was also the internal auditor broke his ankle playing football one weekend. I was called into the Chief Acccountants offfice and asked if I would like to conduct branch audits in Scotland the following Monday. I wasn't going to decline!  Was told to speak to his secretary who would arrange my travel, sort out a cash float etc. Spent 4 days on an intensive crash auditing course being trained up. Left Gatwick at 6.30 on the Monday morning on the oil flight to Aberdeeen. To be met by the branch manager.  Whatever I asked for had to be shown. At 20 I was the internal auditor which caused some consternation on my travels around the UK. 

To this day I feel very fortunate. As many doors subsequently opened. Just because people gave me an opportunity..............

kiddy_guy

ushjr said:

I'm slightly older than millennials but I have my own theories.

As far back as I can remember my understanding was that jobs weren't supposed to be fun, they were what you did for money. Even the jobs that required degrees weren't supposed to be fun, they were just supposed to pay more money.

Then at some point that all changed. Everyone was encouraged to go to university and a job was no longer described as a way of making money. It was now a career full of exciting opportunities and challenges.

Once people graduated, you first have those who never managed to find a graduate job and probably never will. They'll be unhappy that they're working at Burger King despite having a degree.

Then you have those who did manage to get a graduate job. Maybe they had to do a masters too, maybe they did unpaid internships. Then after several assessment centres full of interviews, role plays and tests they final get offered a graduate job. They have a fancy job title and the duties of the job sound quite technical, but it quickly becomes apparent the job is nothing more than glorified data entry. It also barely pays any more than a Data Entry Clerk too. 

After a year or 2 they search for something more worthwhile and land a job somewhere where everyone's passionate and excited by their work. But once again it's nothing but glorified data entry. It also becomes apparent the 'skills' they acquire are actually pretty useless in the real world.

A few years later their friend from school who decided to leave at 16 to become a Bricklayer is earning twice as much money and he is currently building his own home. They realise that Bricklayers, Electricians, Plumbers etc will always be in demand but their 'skills' will probably be replaced by a computer one day.

I would suggest that there are lots of articles about this sort of thing because social media allowed any old idiot to write such rubbish. I think 20-years ago go the forums on which you could make such wild claims didn't exist, or less less widely read.

If however you were looking at why millennials might be less happy in the current world compared to their predecessors...

Everyone now has a degree so the value is degraded.
Brexit has reduced their chances in life and their ability to reside freely in another country.
They won't benefit from the massive price increases in houses that some others have in previous generations.
Many industries I have left the UK in the last 30 years, to be replaced by call centres and warehouses. The high street is dead as a dodo and therefore jobs in retail are disappearing rapidly.
They can perhaps see that this country has been mismanaged for at least a decade and see their prospects as poor.
People are now living longer and retirement age is a lot later so the opportunity for them to progress in their career is stymied by people not retiring.

thegentleway

ushjr said:

thegentleway said:

I’m a millennial and my job is great.

Why is it great?

Lots of reasons! I do research in lithium ion battery modelling. I work on what I want, it’s interesting and intellectually stimulating, I get to see the impact, I have a lot of flexibility in how or when I work, etc... There’s obviously bits I enjoy less than others (like writing papers, I prefer the research) but overall it’s great. Can’t think of many jobs I’d rather do, maybe a racing driver.

Aranyani

ushjr said:

Aranyani said:

ushjr said:

74jax said:

Are you linking this to a survey or something in the news - I haven't seen anything recently on this?  Could you maybe post a link to the report, a we don't know what you are referring too?  My daughter is a millennial and loves her job, as do her friends, I don't think any are unhappy (that I know of).  But if you post a link to what you are debating about we can all chip in.  

There's lots of articles about it, just google millennials unhappy at work and you'll find loads.

I think lots of people pretend to love their job. I too have talked about what excites me about work at interviews but the only thing that really excites me is money going into my bank.

I’m technically a millennial, although at the upper end, and I love my job.  I also loved the job I had before this one, and in fact all my jobs since I first graduated.  

It’s a sad fact that not everybody can have a job they love because a lot of boring stuff needs to be done by somebody, but I don’t think that’s unique to any generation.  My grandad loved his job, my grandma never did.

What do you love about your job or previous jobs? Would you still do the same job if you won the lottery?

Its interesting, challenging, I meet lots of different people, I have the opportunity to be creative and I get to make a positive difference to people's lives. 

If I won the lottery I would probably cut back to 2 days a week and set up a not for profit with my winnings working within the same sector.