If it makes you think, good.

If it makes you uncomfortable because it contradicts your thinking, great.

If it stretches your imagination, fantastic.

If it makes you see a different paradigm, you've been blessed.

If it tells you what you want/like/expect to hear, ….. QUESTION IT!

Don't kill the messenger, debate the author!

Advice from the boomer fringe:)

Phil's link above says Penelope was born December 10, 1966 (Happy Birthday in advance, BTW.) So even if she was in grad school for part of 1995, she could have been in a corporate job for a full year and a half while still in her twenties.

Personally, I wouldn't answer the question. If her answer was deemed inadequate, it would be followed by more detailed questions, requests for references, whatever. Penelope is not running for office, and none of you are personally paying her. She is merely offering her own personal opinions and perspective. You are free to disregard all of it as bunk if you wish. Why is that arrangement unacceptable?

The Boomer Box couldn’t contain our Slack,as in not (up)tight thus slack.

Give your life to ONE meaningless corprate machine with no hope for reasonable promotion?
No–color me SLACKER
–Not willing to give away life energy for naught.

Give your kids a key and tell them you’ll be home before dinner.
No–color me SLACKER.
–Not willing to put safety aside for work,or money.

Consume, and Consume and Consume AND Consume.
No–color me SLACKER
–We know the true pleasures in life cannot be bought. This doesn’t mean we don’t spend or buy.

Buy a great cup of coffee.
Yes–color me slacker.
Did the boomers buy good coffee? NO, not until the SLACKERS set the bar(ista).

Make a mix tape.
Yes–color me SLACKER.

Live cheaply instead of work more.
Yes–color me SLACKER.

OF COURSE WE REVOLUTIONIZED BUSINESS AND PARENTING BY BEING SLACK, LOOSE, DIFFERENT.

We are now in the process of revolutionizing healthcare, housing, spirituality, death and dying.

Our voices of authority may be quiet, but they pervade popular culture, literature and well, just about everywhere.

We’re memetic.

SLACKER. Use it with pride.

SLACKER does NOT equal LAZY.
SLACKER does NOT equal EVASION OF DUTY.

SLACKER means to HANG LOOSE, WITHOUT STRAIN.
SLACKER means to DEFINE OUR OWN DUTY, without comment from the overly authoritarian boomers.

Boomers know how do everything, drugs, booze, sex, fashion, write, teach, business, law…etc. and they will definitly tell us about it. Look at your blog. Hell, half the boomers who comment miss every point you make. It’s all about them and now their children.

Penelope, you are a slacker. Come on, your office was a coffee shop. That is so Slack.

* * * * * *

This is such a fun and creative comment. Thank you.

–Penelope

Your comment is well written, and it sounds like you put a lot of thought into it. However, I disagree with you on several points.

I'm not sure where you are getting this "old way of thinking about authority", in my tenure in corporate America, I have never seen anything related to authority that is "static and hierarchical." It is very common that people are promoted ahead of their peers, and likewise some are not promoted at all and are stuck in the same position for a very long time. As an auditor I witnessed this not only at my own firm, but within the structure of all of my clients as well. There is nothing automatic about corporate America, people have to put in the energy, and not just the time.

However, one must also respect that with seniority comes experience, and background/experience is one of the many factors in commanding authority. I have seen a few first year people come into my firm with the attitude that they know everything and are here to save us from our own mediocrity. However, reality hits them firmly in the face once they realize they don't know as much as they though and have to ask a more experienced person for advice.

My beef with Penelope has never been her work experience, it has been the content of the advice she gives. I read this article 3 times now, and I still see no point to it besides directing web traffic to her friends' blogs. Instead of writing about what makes authority, or how to earn/handle it properly, she basically just concludes that we should be like these bloggers since they present authority to other bloggers…I don't see how that could translate into a career in banking or accounting.

I enjoy reading your observations, which, unfortunately, have lately become less frequent. I imagine you are working hard to start your company. Clearly, there are other major issues that are occupying your time, too.

With respect, I suggest that you do what you can to stem a huge volume of negative publicity from your Yahoo column. You are writing in the same space as the business you want to launch. In particular, it can't be helpful to have questions raised about your credentials and career timeline. You should set the record straight. Also, I believe that your last column was uncharacteristically weak. Yahoo is the big time, and readers there aren't going to be as sympathetic as your blog audience. It takes time to write good columns; you know how to do it.

Best,

Get over the Gen Y thing. Just becuase you are working with some fabulous people, doesn’t mean you have to beat the damn horse. It is dead.

I do like the generational information,just wish it was more about Generation Slacker, aka Gen-X.

Maybe the trouble you have is finding a business blog by a Generation Slacker?

I look forward to more Gen X stuff…

* * * * * * *

Thanks for the comment, Stevie. I think you're right that I should write more about Gen X. So here's my first thing: I would never use the word Slacker to describe Gen X. We revolutionized business with the Internet and we revolutionized parenting by actually doing it instead of just talking about it during long work hours. The Slacker term comes from Baby Boomer media trying to marginalize everyone who doesn't think like Baby Boomers.

-Penelope

The old way of thinking about authority was static and hierarchical. Seniority and rank are crude, linear, black and white tools. While they have the advantage of being simple and clear, even organizations that are thought of as being strictly hierarchical, such as the military, have long abandoned such simplistic thinking.

The Web has brought a new form of contextual authority. Mike Arrington has tremendous power in the Web 2.0 world. This is not because he has any great experience. While Mike is a smart guy, before he started writing TechCrunch, he was just another ordinary lawyer and entrepreneur. In the grand scheme of things, his background is no more or less impressive than Penelope's.

Mike gained authority because his writing ability (and hustle) allowed him to build a massive audience which trusts him to bring things to their attention. Ultimately, I doubt any TechCrunch readers care about whether or not Mike was successful in his prior life; what we care about is whether or not he keeps delivering scoops and insightful analysis.

The same holds true for Penelope. Does it matter whether she is a 17-year-old kid from Bangladesh or Jack Welch dressing in drag and writing under a pseudonym? The point is that while I may not always agree with everything she writes, I know that she spends more time on these issues than I, and can help point me to interesting ideas.

Can you give the gushy Gen-Y fan-girl thing a rest? Truly, I’m sick and tired of hearing about the 2nd most self-centered and selfish generation in modern American history. What ever individual 20 somethings may have to offer (and please tell us about them) the repeated annointing of glory to those-fabulicious-everyone’s-a-winner- gush gush gush Gen Y as a group is sickening.

You know what? There are people who aren’t BABY BOOMERS or GEN Y who are interesting too!

* * * * * *
Hi. To clarify, when it comes to giving people credit for being revolutionaries in the workplace and in family life, I have given credit Gen X, not Gen Y. Here are two posts:

–Penelope