There’s no shortage of headlines about millennials—who they are, what they want and why they’re so different from any other working-age generation out there. Maybe it’s because millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000) are now the largest working population. Or that they’re a little too comfortable with technology. Or that they’re pushing back on what a traditional day of work looks like.
It’s created plenty of tension—and plenty of assumptions about this generation. For the summer issue of our magazine, Business Altitude, we asked five millennials about their careers and the myths they’ve had to bust since they entered the working world. Below, see what one had to say about every myth circling Gen Y.
Andrew Freedman is colloquially referred to as Colorado’s marijuana czar. On behalf of the governor he works across 10 departments to ensure marijuana laws are safely and effectively enforced. Prior to this, he focused on education policy under former Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia, acquiescing that the two areas are very different.
Millennials are lazy and entitled
I never quite got why people think millennials are lazy because they are a very hard-working group. Now, I think they work differently than other groups—maybe in a way that seems lazy because it’s maybe not the back-breaking work that other people grew up with, but a lot of internet research and a lot of learning to get things done in a more efficient manner. A lot of that’s not a negative quality; it’s just finding a new way to get work done.
That’s what I’ve found with a lot of millennials today. I’ll give them a very hard project, and they’ll come back with a seemingly simple solution that didn’t take nearly as much time but is what I asked for in a much different way.
I would say we’re an ambitious group, and maybe some of this all comes from that fact that we want to change the world right away and feel like our voices should be heard, whereas I think the generation before us either did or perceived that they did wait in line a little bit longer for things to happen.
Millennials job hop
I’ve not held a job down for more than three years, to be clear, but I’ve worked for the governor for six years and done whatever he asked. What I worry people are saying is that people don’t have loyalty. I have a tremendous amount of loyalty. The governor could ask me to do anything and that’s what I’ll do for my next job, but we crave experiences and we crave them fast. I think it is true that there are very few of us who want one set of skills and just to hone that set of skills for the next 30 years. I think we want to figure out how to do things 80 different ways. So while I think it’s true, I’m not sure it’s the worst thing in the world.
I think we look at jobs and jobs don’t offer themselves that way anymore. If you stay at a company 20 years, the company doesn’t reward you for staying there for 20 years. They reward people who go out and get different experiences. I don’t know why someone would want to settle down at one company if the company’s not going to say thank you.
Millennials all live in their parents’ basements.
Here’s what I’ve always wondered: Why is it a problem? That changes from country to country and generation to generation all the time. Some people like living with their families. There are three-generation households as a matter of course in tons of countries across the world. I don’t see the link between wanting to stay close to home and laziness or lack of adventure. I left Denver to go to undergrad and law school and … I now live back in Denver … because my experiences are a lot better here than there.
I get to oversee the implementation of a brand new piece of policy in the world, and that has nothing to do with my proximity to my house. I like that my parents are nearby and I like to play golf with them on Saturday; there’s some great things about it. That statistic never bothers me.
If the parents are happy and the kids are happy, why do we care?
A piece of advice for millennials
My piece of advice is I think one of the things we fall into is a search for the best title, and that goes straight into our identity. The way I got my jobs was I started off as an intern for (Gov. John) Hickenlooper’s first gubernatorial campaign. I was a Harvard Law graduate at the time. I could have said, hey, this is too small of a job for me, but I really committed to serving the lieutenant governor in that job. At the end, the lieutenant governor recognized that I could be a chief of staff, and he made me a chief of staff. I think if I had done it the other way and come in and said, I can be your chief of staff, I would have gotten shut down at the door.
What I would say is I think people are going to get worried they’re going to put hard work into something and not be recognized for it, when actually the world is really good at recognizing hard work. It doesn’t matter what your title is. Over time, not even that much time, the title will begin to reflect your abilities.
A piece of advice for employers
Millennials are really eager to own something, so if you give them a task, they’ll do an OK job at the task. If you have them own an issue, they’ll learn how to do the tasks around it. I very rarely give one-off research projects without expecting what I’ll get back will be very perfunctory. But when I assign people to specific areas, they become experts in those areas and really are able to then do quality work product in those areas. I think my advice would be to give them a bit of a mission, because they will go for it.
Parting thought
My guess is this is a conversation that’s been had by almost every generation about the laziness of the people beneath them and how they don’t show the same sort of loyalty or they don’t show the same sort of appreciation. I imagine that we will be saying it 20 years from now about the new, crazy generation beneath us. I just urge everybody to take a few deep breaths.
Sara Crocker is the communications manager for the Denver Metro Chamber.
Want to learn more about the making of a millennial? Check out the Summer issue of Business Altitude.