That said, I’ll be very surprised if my generation treats young people as badly as the baby boomers treated us. And I think it is important to look at the errors made in the last 30 years so we do not duplicate them. In public policy this means determining an equitable division of tax dollars for the elderly and the young – from college aid relief to accessible transportation options for the elderly.

The persistent negative attitudes about young people says more about this culture than it does them. I’m pretty sure they’re not the squeaky-clean superheroes Howe and Strauss make them out to be, but they are not the vacant blocks of negativity and narcissism that the media often presents, either.

How do we learn about this new generation? Here’s a novel idea. Let’s listen to them

Randy Moser

As someone who writes about generations in the workplace, I am very sensitive to generational talk. How do we talk about difference without relying on negative portraits of the "other"? A raft of academics and consultants for years now have been emphasizing the shortcomings of Millennnials, something I have spoken against for some time. On Tuesday Feb 27th the Globe ran a story about yet another "study" purporting to "prove" that young people are more narcissistic than previous generations. The lead author, Jean Twenge, author of the book "Generation Me," is a leading proponent of the Millennials are "defective" school of thought. Not very subtle.

To the extent that many of us construct our social identities as the "NOT" (I am not one of those), it will be hard to move away from the first narrative of inter-generational conflict. When one builds a bridge it is not just towards someplace, it is also away from another place. Perhaps subtlety is enough. But I'm not sure this is the real solution.

You state in this piece that you can't believe that someone would think you were a certain way because you are young, then you later rule out the possibility that ANY baby boomer could be a good president in the eyes of Gen Y!!

Do you ever "listen" to what you write??

You close with the comment:

"We all come to the table with preconceptions and biases, but we all have to work together. So, in the near future, at lest, it’s the people who are best at building generational bridges who will succeed. This is something I personally work on every day, and Obama is a great role model."

So, besides the poor spelling ("lest"), it seems you really need to work harder on building those bridges!

So…I say to you…gen X and gen Yers…here you go. Its your turn…I'm just about ready to take it easy now. As my mom always told me…"take a page from them to learn" not a book. Good luck with the "teamwork in the workplace", balancing work with parenthood, and managing the expectation of profits versus the good of the people nightmare.

Remember that being a boomer also coincided with a period of tremendous upheaval in the workplace and it's implied social contract. We went fom an era in which there was a lot of bidirectional loyaty in the workplace (The Company was loyal to its employees and employees were loyal to the company. We stuck with each other through thick and thin for the common good.)

Today I see award-winning middle-aged managers with 30 years experience and great skills shown the door without as much as a 'thank-you'. The social contract has changed beneath our feet. The rules changed in the middle of the game. The smart and the quick adapt and survive. The rest are casualties. This has been true of any era with tremendous workplace upheaval, even the Industrial Revolution.

In short, I think it is unfair to blame us boomers. When we reached adulthood, we were given a copy of the social contract. We arranged our lives so that we could live by it. If there is any anger it is because the contract changed. It is as if, after paying 4.5 years on a 5-year auto loan, you are told that at the end of the five years you won't own the car after all. You'd be angry too.

Thank you for the invitation to LinkedIn. As you know, I'm a big fan of the service. I am pretty careful, though, to only link with people who I know personally, or at least know their work well. Otherwise,  I can't really recommend them to anyone. So, I'm going to take a pass on this invitation, but maybe we'll get to know each other better in the future, and then LinkedIn will make more sense.

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I like this comment a lot, Dave. Because there is a lot of anger in this comment section, coming from the baby boomers. And there is not a lot of analysis about the core cause of this anger. Your post is a great explanation about why baby boomers feel ripped off. Your analysis rings true to me and it helps me see the preceeding posts in another light. Thanks.

–Penelope

Generational changes in attitudes, values, and interests is only natural and can be viewed as a form (if not THE form) of social progress/reform. Baby boomers implemented tremendous change from their parent’s generation which has resulted in much progress for the betterment of society.

However, boomers need to remember this - generation Y is a direct result of being raised by THEM. Is it any wonder that kids growing up watching their parents work 60-80 work weeks, being stressed out, dying young, and (most importantly) spending less time at home would want something different from a job? We watched our parents define themselves through their work by constantly trying to “succeed” by spending more and more time at work.

I can only speak for myself but, I want to be judged by the quality of my work and not the number of hours I work. I want a job that encourages collaboration and rewards teamwork (after all, one of us in not nearly as smart or creative as all of us). I was deeply distraught by a previous post which stated that making one mistake in their line of work could “ruin” their lives. Well, we all make mistakes. As I see it, as long as no one got hurt, we learn from our mistakes, and don’t repeat them – success is inevitable.

The bottom line is this – change happens and history has shown that those who embrace it, encourage it, and learn to harness it will be successful. I fully expect that my children will want to do things differently than I do and I am excited to see what they come up with.

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This is an amazing comment. Thank you, Jaerid.Please, everyone read this comment. It is thoughtful, balanced and optimistic. And Jaerid is a great example of how each one of us can learn so much from the youngest workers. We just need to pay attention.

I am so disappointed, another person that dislikes me for something that I can do nothing about…Sigh

It's fascinating to me to see the generational divide. Like Penelope, I sit firmly in the baby bust. In fact, as a 1974 baby, I come from the single most sparsely populated birth year in recent memory.

When I first came into the workplace, I worked for baby boomers. My first boss often commented, "What's wrong with you kids these days? When I was your age, I was busy partying and smoking pot. All you guys do is work."

Now, standing astride two generations that dwarf my own (Boomer and Y), I can definitely see that a generational divide exists.

I have dealt with boomer managers who were shocked that someone took a week off for paternity leave, because "Hey, when my son was born, I was back in the office that afternoon."

I have also dealt with teens and 20somethings who swear that they will never have a real job, and are instead building companies that let them live their lives. Loyalty to one's company is as dead as the dodo, and I can't say that I miss it.

The younger generations envy the Boomers because they got to enjoy the Austin Powers era ("As long as people are still having promiscuous sex with many anonymous partners without protection while at the same time experimenting with mind-expanding drugs in a consequence-free environment, I'll be sound as a pound!") as well as the unprecedented global domination of the US economy and military.

The Boomers envy the younger generations because they have freedoms and possibilities that the Boomers never had, thanks to the Internet, and because, well, they're YOUNGER (aging well has never been a Boomer trait).

And because they have such different expectations of the workplace, Gen Y employees think Boomers are boring martinets, while Boomers think Gen Y employees are impertinent know-it-alls (ponder the irony of that for a second–Boomers resenting the young for believing that they know more than the old).

And don't forget to shed a tear for the poor Gen-Xers, who grew up being punished for the sins of their parents (thanks AIDS and the Cold War), then had the good fortune to enter the workforce during a gut-wrenching recession, and get tabbed as "slackers" to boot. No wonder Nirvana albums sold so well in the 90s.

But while the generations are different, and conflict exists, we as individuals don't have to fall into it. Avoid the "us versus them" mentality, and concentrate on working with people you enjoy and admire, regardless of their age. Find a company that respects your values (because as Bob Sutton points out, when you work with assholes, you don't change them for the better, they change you into an asshole). Above all, do work that you can be proud of, and that makes you happy.

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Thanks, Chris, for working so hard to lay out both perspectives. In this string of almost forty comments, it's clear that the most important contributions to the conversation are from people who can see multiple perspectives at once. This is true in life, too. We should all look inside ourselves and answer, truly, if we are trying to understand the people we disagree with.

–Penelope