Let me preface this by saying this is only my thoughts and opinions. Yes, they will probably differ with yours, and that's OKAY! Really, it is, take a breath, really, its okay that we have different opinions. I do not claim my thoughts and opinions are any better, any more correct than, any worse, or any more wrong than anybody else.

So someone way back when, explained to me that they always ask a persons job, to kinda profile the person. Their claim was you could tell a lot about a person by what they did for a living. This was back when I was 15 years old, which was 16 years ago (go ahead and do the math I don't care)

Most of the people that play here are the ones that have played since the beginning. Yet occasionally you run across a player that you just really haven't had a good conversation with. You haven't quite figured them out yet. So I go to my fall back, well what do you do for a living? Really the main reason I ask this question to people now, is to select what level of vocabulary to use.

I feel like I am constantly in that awkward middle ground where I am either talking down to, or using overly complex language that the listener does not understand. I have seen the eye rolls when I dumb things down too much, and I have been told, multiple times by co-workers not to use such big words, that I make people feel dumb by how I talk to them. This mostly makes me mourn for our educational system, but that is another crisis and I don't have time for it today.

Instead of continuing to suffer this embarrassment, at about 20, I realized hey, ask what they do, then you know how to talk to them.

******* UNTIL "THE GREAT RECESSION" HIT *******

<sarcasm> I heard Obama call it that during the government shutdown, so it must be true. </sarcasm>

I asked an earther today what he did for a living. Never had much of a conversation and well, fell into my old tactics of using job to profile. He gave me an answer that is NOT one of those common jobs. You just don't run into a person with this type of job every day, and there isn't really sufficient data to even GUESS. Which got me thinking.......

Like me, most of you were teenagers growing up in a time of record low unemployment. It shaped how we perceived people and our world. Now, we have a generation that has GROWN UP with highly skilled, highly educated people that are UNDEREMPLOYED or even NOT employed. Thinking of us as a generation in the workplace, how do we view skill and education in the workplace? Now think of these young adults growing up in a time where skill and education mean nothing, that you could still end up without a job, or getting paid less for settling for a job below your skill set or education level? When these people enter the workforce, how will it change the culture of the workforce?

There will be a clump of older workers doing crappy jobs for lower pay because that is where they learned to settle. Their most productive, ambitious and explorative years were spent on a treadmill getting nowhere, burning hope, and dropping expectations. It becomes impossible to believe the ideals which were inculcated throughout their educations. They become detached, determine that kicking against these pricks is not a worthwhile fight, take crappy jobs and adjust their patterns of living. Maybe once they start to hit 35 they settle down, their drive to buy status defining consumer goods abated, and just focus on the things they have come to value. Maybe they've started off their work life detached from the rat race, merely observing, because their momentum was lost so early.

Will 35-40 year olds be the ones competing with 22-25 year olds for entry positions with growth potential? Will employers value the naive but eager 22 year olds and vault them to supervisory positions over the 35-40 year olds whose lives are more complicated and less dedicated to climbing the workplace ladder? Maybe the younger people will give up before even trying, noting the lack of success for the cohort that precedes them.

And let's recognize that 15 year olds now have been saturated with computers and cellphones their entire lives. Since birth. Most of us here had much much less digital attachment during our most formative young years. How is that dynamic going to influence communication and understanding between generations?

f;uff

Wow oats..... Mind = blown

Oats, that was well thought out and articulate..... I now think Hell must freeze over because there was a civil and intelectual exchange of ideas on AT. Someone must troll soon or it could be the start of the apocalypse.

stfu and make me a sammich hoe

Haha count on mrford..... Ok the world is right again

Wow, that's a lot of words. And it's split into paragraphs separated by an empty line. Very visually appealing.

The biggest shift has to do with the length of time a person stays at a single job and how many different jobs they will have during their life. That is rapidly evolving. A previous generation might have worked life-long for one company. My generation changes jobs every 7-12 years, 5-10 "major" employers. Younger folks may only stick with a company for 1-3 years and may also work for multiple companies simultaneously as contractors.

The knowledge economy and virtual work has made it easy for a tech-savvy knowledge worker to work for 3-5 companies (anywhere in the world) at once from a home office or shared workspace. Plus they may be starting their own venture on the side.

The lower classes lose out. Without access to higher education, truly robust technology, top-notch digital literacy skills and virtual collaboration skills, they may be destined to stay out of the knowledge economy and work in more traditional "service" jobs.

Check out freelance.com and guru.com for examples.

what's this work stuff? thought we invented machines to do all that? push buttons. no work. no pensions. push buttons.

There are jobs that require skill.
And there are jobs that require education.
And there are jobs that require neither skill or education.

You need people of all types, both with skill, education, or without any of them for society to function properly as a whole.

A balanced economy, a balanced workforce. Over here in Singapore, most Singaporeans are actually highly educated and skills, leading to everyone wanting office jobs that require these skills and education, and no one wanting to do menial work. In comes the foreign workers to fill in these jobs, and then everyone gripes about "foreign talent" not doing their jobs well.

Honestly, we only have ourselves to blame.

I THINK THAT KIDS THESE DAYS NEED TO PULL UP THEIR BRITCHES

nope, it's much easier for me to run away from them this way. go ahead, wear them around your knees ya bloody crack addict wannabe.

It's dangerous to profile people based on what they do for a living and this can often lead you in the wrong direction. Even before "the great recession".

Does the fact that I tell you I am an "actuary" change they way you talk to me?

In some respects you can divide people by the way xinhuan says as people with common interests/goals/motivation tend to aggregate in the same kinds of jobs. On the other hand it's not as strict as you might believe. The media and politicians play this a lot in order to score point/sell papers/divert attention away from real issues.

I socialize (irl) with people ranging from construction worker and airplane pilot all the way up to (income wise): oncologist and comptroller (the financial kind). If you put them all in a room and mix them together you generally wouldn't be able to tell because they are bound together by other common interests (such as culture, travel and gaming and beer).


"Like me, most of you were teenagers growing up in a time of record low unemployment. It shaped how we perceived people and our world."
When I was a teenager it was the early 90s. That was hardly the case. Especially not where I was living.

Regarding your final point about high youth unemployment and underemployment I'm going to sound mean about it but I'll be very blunt about this: That generation tends not vote and prefers to protest on the street. No one is power is going to represent their interests. When they finally enter the workplace they will be at a disadvantage because of the large supply of them. Will it change workplace culture? No more so than it's already been changed. With the loss of steady jobs in the 1980s along with the loss of defined benefit pension plans there is no company loyalty anymore. We trade employers like they trade employees. Also think about this: there is no plan to do anything to address the issues facing that generation and they are generally ignored. What's worse is government economic policy is geared towards supporting boomers (since they vote)....
To top that off, we've been in a low interest rate environment since Clinton and this eventually will ruin us.. maybe not in 1929 apocalypse style, but slowly over time.

Voting data by age, November 2012. (martian isn't wrong, but it isn't just baby boomers voting).

Total 18 years & over: 132,949

18 to 24 years: 11,353
25 to 44 years: 39,941
45 to 64 years: 52,013
65 to 74 years: 17,182
75 years & over: 12,460

Birthdate 1982-1995: Echo Boom. Roughly 80M Americans. Currently age 18-31. Largest generation in U.S. history since the Baby Boomers.

It looks like ~37% of the Echo Boom is voting today, ~30M voters.

http://echoboombomb.blogspot.com/p/who-are-echo-boomers.html

@atryn: that data is I thousands I take it? I think more than 133K people voted in the last US presidential election:P

In the future, everyone will work for Big Brother in some way, shape or form, for example Ford will work for the Ministry of Truth.

The very idea of private enterprise will be obsolete when you wind up dealing with the "Party" and the "Proletariat" as the only two classes of people. There will be no middle class, or middle ground for that matter. You will behave as the government tells you to behave, you will eat what the government tells you to eat and you will think what the government tells you to think.

OBEY! OBEY! SLEEP! SLEEP!

SHEEPLE RULE!

Martain, thank you for the response. I can see that you took some time to type it out and think about it. Thank you also for offering differing points, some I would like to continue dialog on them because the subjects actually interest me.



I don’t disagree with that statement except for “the great recession” statement. My statements on why would be better placed in a different part of my response though.




After reading what an “actuary” does for a living, potentially yes. Not because of any types of profiling previously discussed, which I just want to throw it out there, everybody profiles. Now I will not put the details I have read up here, if someone else wants to read what an “actuary” then fine, but yes I firmly believe there would be certain characteristics of your job, present in your life outside of work.



I agree with people with common interests/goals/motivation do tend to aggregate in the same kinds of jobs. One of the things I love about my job is that it is not age restrictive. As I am entering into management, I am in a training program that will take 6-9 months for me to complete. One of the courses I had to take was managing multigenerational workforces. On the following PDF:http://www.lhh.com/...enerational-workforce.pdf
On page 3 there is a graph showing the workforce broken down by age group and the name for that generation. The place I work has a representative from each category, and at near equal proportions than the national average. On page 8 is the Gen Xer profile and page 9 is Gen Y. We can see that Gen X and Y have very different work characteristics. I will expand upon this more later.





In my initial post I was trying to imply in a round about way that I had in fact come to the conclusion that profiling a person based on their career choice was silly for me based on a conversation with an Earther earlier that day. The whole process of starting to think about it because he gave me the name of a profession I had no idea about. I apologize for not making it more explicit that yea, I kinda got that.



According to the Buearu Labor of Statistics for New York State, where I grew up, in the early 90’s when you said you entered the workforce unemployment peaked in July of 1992 at 8.9% When I entered the workforce at the turn of the millennium, unemployment was at an all time low from December 2000 to April of 2001 where it maintained 4.3%. I actually started my first job in 1998 so I experienced a time where finding jobs was exceptionally easy.

http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet




Silent generation employees were saying the same things about Gen Xers in the 70’s, as what you are saying to a demographic group more accurately defined as millennials now.



You don’t think a generation that has grown up with high unemployment that are defined as a generation to “Jump from job to job, are unwilling to conform to organizational demands that do not suit them, and leave jobs that bore them and are not “fun” has any effect on the culture of the workplace. You said yourself there are no steady jobs and a loss of defined benefit pension plans. Do you think a generation that views nothing is permanent has nothing to do with it? GenXers are the primary type of generation in managerial roles. Gen X ers are in positions that make those kinds of company changes. Of course business will be run that way now, look who is running them. I promise you when Gen Y has a greater percentage of managerial roles nationwide, business will be different. When mellenials take it over, again it will be different. The economy for the recorded history has always run cyclically. What if the economic cycle, creates workers with certain “perceptions” about work as a general rule of thumb. This is a general template for how that person will feel about the work environment and prospects of success. As the economy changes, you have generations defined by different perceptions. Now, as those generations come into, and fade from being “the ones that control corporate America” and the decisions they make on how to run business and invest money, could that in effect be the cause of the cyclical nature of the economy?

I think that is true because never in the history of the United States has there been so many generations in the workplace. As a nation preparing the next generation of workforce has never been a priority.


I know nothing about interest rates and how they effect….well anything other than my checkbook and have nothing intelligent to contribute to it.

jesus......

He isn't here.

I would think 37 % of those under 30 are voting is probably a High mark for that age group. I would think historically that age group voted at lower %. The older 50 + crowd tend to show up heavily.

You looking for me, ford?

I think (in the US) the higher voting percentage of the under 30 demographic is due to a new strategy from Obama and some democrats in the us to bring out the youth vote. Here in Canada that strategy has been used to varying degrees of success in the past but not so much recently. That may change for our next federal election in 2015 with the new Liberal party leader but we'll see.

Reven: I will respond to your response in more detail tomorrow, I'm tired from studying insurance law.
" Gen X ers are in positions that make those kinds of company changes"
Actually no, it's mostly boomers right now. You can't just look at the CEO and reach that decision. You have to look at who is controlling the company in terms of Directors and the most senior officers as well as who the majority share holders are. Of course there are exceptions but I promise you that Microsoft and apple computer are not them anymore. Gen Xers won't be for another 10 years or so. In any case the generational thing works differently for the top levels anyway. The people who control the top levels of companies are generally not all over the media. This isn't a conspiracy theory thing as much as a practicality thing.

Are you doing this to complete some kind of course work?:P

And are you studying HR?

I will say this about my field in particular:
1) it's one of the few gender balanced professional fields out
there and this isn't done by any kind of design.

2) it has been voted one of the best fields to work in. The reason being that although the workload is probably above average, you have a lot of control over your time (except at certain times of year depending) and there is a lot of variety of work ranging from hiding behind a computer to spending most of your time talking to people about when bridges attack.


Like I said, I'll give you a more detailed response later, need to study and kill brain cells with beer.

Martian, a lot of what my job is about is looking at numbers and recognizing patterns. They are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time bound metrics we refer to as key performance indicators or KPI's. Many are probably familiar with a similar term. I monitor the agent, I will have up to 18 on my team. Over the course of a week I am required to monitor at least 2 calls remotely that were recorded previous in the week, and then listen to 2 calls side by side live with the agent.

I find behaviors that are are causing a key performance indicator to be not at goal. I then coach that agent on that behavior to help them succeed. It all starts with identifying that pattern with numbers though. Then I can determine the root cause or pattern of behavior that causes the problem. We receive training such as managing multigenerational workforce to assist us in identifying how to approach that individual. For example a typical Gen X er needs a lot of feedback from their boss. I would not go more than a day or two without giving them some kind of update. A millennial though, will not necessarily want a sit down one on one conversation, but would prefer information be sent via email.

I have developed an eye for patterns and behaviors, and I think there is a psychology, a relationship between what the economy was doing when a person first enters the work place. Just like in middle school we encounter things that form our personalities as adults, I think the environment of the economy, those first impressions of what "work" is, forms the attitude of the worker through their entire career. I think the cyclical nature of the economy is related to those first experiences.

I look forward to reading anything you have to add to the conversation.

Youth is wated on the young
Retirement is wasted on the old
So I retired young

Ffs.

root cause of behavior? trying to get rewarded again because it feels good. think i might have to pay more attention to when people are talking to me. they might just be doing it to hear themselves think.

Good logic Dibs. :) LOL +1

Youth voter turnout was lower: http://www.pewresearch.org/...us-bureaus-voting-report/ .

Quite frankly, the 25-44 bracket (sort of Echo-Boomers) has even lower participation relative to declines in general voter turnout.

No idea where you guys have come to the conclusion that the trends are higher. They may have temporarily swept up in 2008, but then they also did that in 1992 and during other periods of economic turmoil (causal relationship or simply a coincidence, I don't know).