I am a 30something gen-x'er. I entered the workplace when the world was so excited about the internet - and computers and Windows. Then the tech-boom - and the subsequent bubble - came. Suddenly, things were not so good as they were supposed to be.
Gen-X'ers I believe are far more controlling - far more independent and far more of a gamesman and a gameswoman than the "corporate, yes men and women" that the boomers were. We challenged the status quo - asked questions - and never really got answers.
Some of us had given up - and were assimilated by the big companies and borgs. Some of us are still struggling with the challenges of being independent. Some of us are still straddling between being our own person - and a corporate executive Monday to Friday - that sometimes we are scared of change - and yet clamor for change.
And the balance - that darn balance between work and personal life - is still out there somewhere.
Argh.
In this article from Tammy Erickson, there are ten reasons why Gen-X'ers are not entirely feeling the love - in spite of companies needing our expertise.
One thing that Erickson does not mention - that I think should be there in the list of reasons why Gen-X'ers are not feeling the love - is because we're too fed up with hypocrisy. It's no fault of the companies - it is perhaps the result of the system that we are in.
We hear of companies that are saying "our number one resource is our people - and our employees are our talent" - to the point that they set up talent management divisions, team-building and skill-enhancing projects, and on-job/classroom style training.
Only to be discarded and disregarded at the lower levels of the management rung.
Let's be honest: Gen-X'ers wanted to change the world. We wanted the world to be a different place from our parents. When Gen-X'ers came to be, we were on the verge of a technological and sociological mindshift - that suddenly stopped and we all stumbled.
We still want to change the world - but we've been stymied and and we've seen through the facade and the hyprocrisy of companies that say "we value you" - words that do not get translated to real actions and policies that affect us personally.
We've dreamt so much of a better world - and we've been disillusioned once. We've tried to straddle several aspects of our lives - hoping that one of these - or ALL of these - will coalesce into one big whole that will be different from the lives that our parents and older siblings have led.
But still, we're not being heard.
Come on. Give us some credit.
And to my fellow Gen-X'ers... it still is not over. There is still an opportunity to change the world - and make it all different for us and our families. We may not be the most tech-savvy and most digitally-savvy generation there is (hey, boomers don't even know how to program their VCRs and have given up; at least we tried - and we kept on trying until we got it right). But we surely have the guts to get through this again.
We've gone through a lot. And we can go through more. A lot more.
