Thanks, everyone, for your comments. You are all entitled to
you opinion, but I do feel like I would be doing my generation a disservice if
I do not make one thing clear: I never, ever said Gen Y’ers don’t value hard
work. In fact, the thesis of my last article was: “Gen Y’ers have a
deep, unquenchable thirst for challenging work.”
What I find interesting is that people in these threads seem
to be using hard work and boring work interchangeably. In my experience, it’s
the opposite. Hard work IS generally exciting, challenging, and entrepreneurial.
Boring work is generally “easy” work: repetitive tasks, manual labor, etc. When
I talk about boring work, I’m talking about mindless, repetitive tasks. It is
the opinion of my generation that our time (and everyone’s time) is better
spent on tasks that require a brain.
On that note, here’s another piece of Gen Y advice: If you
want to become Gen Y hiring magnet, forget about pay, forget about titles,
forget about benefits. Instead focus wholeheartedly on ways to remove tedium
from your daily work environment. Sound crazy? That’s exactly the strategy one
top Gen Y hiring magnet has already employed to wild success. Without further
ado, let’s talk about robots.
One can hardly think of a more quintessentially Gen Y
company than Zappos. Why? The pay is crap, the benefits are so-so, and who
wants to spend their day selling shoes online in Nevada? Answer: we all do. Why? For one
thing, it’s because Zappos is clearly committed to removing tedium from the
workplace. So much so that the company invested in a fleet of bright orange
robots to handle the most tedious part of daily tasks: order fulfillment.
Bottom line: Do Gen Y’ers want to work hard? Yes. Do we want
to spend the day collating and stapling paper and organizing them into piles? No,
and we don’t think you should have to either. The real way to become a Gen Y
hiring magnet? Forget about pay, forget about benefits, and start thinking
seriously how you can incorporate your own version of “little orange robots”
into your dealership.
And for the record, Jeff, if I see you at Starbucks, I
promise to notice you.
