Gen Y

Anna,

I read your blog before making the decision to attend law school and right on through my 1L year. I've learned a lot. Thank you.

I attend the [deleted] School of Law and received a public interest fellowship to do a summer internship at [deleted], an NGO that provides free legal services to poor farmers in Cambodia. I'm part of the land law unit, which tries to protect rural farmers from land seizures.

In a nutshell, I signed on for a summer internship in a foreign country and have done almost no substantive legal work, partly because I was placed in a dysfunctional unit, partly because of the low English level of my colleagues, and partly because I'm having a hard time creating good opportunities to do legal work.

My dysfunctional unit. One problem is my colleagues and supervisors don't seem to do much. I nicknamed one attorney "man that stares at his cell phone" in honor of his 8 hour a day activity. The lack of work is partly due to the fact that government doesn't respond to motions, follow its own laws, or respect the court system. It's common to wait months for rulings, only to find out the court is "too busy" and will not issue any ruling at all, or the case file has been lost. As a result, the attorneys often wait around and do nothing.

I think my boss is depressed about the corruption. The program's two showcase lawsuits have been going on for 7 and 4 years respectively. In the first case, the local prosecutor has refused to correctly implement the presiding judge's verdict, and in the second case everyone involved in facilitating the fraudulent sale of indigenous land has admitted to taking bribes in a transaction that was, on its face, against the law (the land was sold to the sister of the Minister of Finance).

I should provide a little more context. At the end of the Vietnamese occupation following the Khmer Rouge, there were only a handful of lawyers in Cambodia. By 2007 there were 574. A good number work for NGOs and legal aid organizations. So it's understandable that attorneys have only a shallow pool of legal experience to draw upon when considering legal strategy, but we mainly do nothing. (A side note: At our organization the lack of activity is partly due to poor organizational structure. The bylaws allow the employees to elect the management team, which creates a huge disincentive for the management team to "crack the whip" leading to the current very weak executive director).

I know that one of the themes of your blog is that Gen Y's self-involvement leads to unreasonable expectations and more than an acceptable level of complaining. So I decided to create a writing project for myself where I would investigate how to go about filing a complaint in US courts against a Cambodian-American that dispossessed 23 families using armed men and bulldozers. I thought several allied NGOs were representing the families. I went to the province and met with people from the 3 other NGOs, but no one spoke sufficient English to discuss the case. I had to get the moto taxi driver to translate, which of course didn't work since the taxi driver's English was limited to "right, left" and not "motion, complaint." Then I went and interviewed an American ex-pat restaurant owner who witnessed the seizure. He was smoking pot during the interview. Anyway, long story short the NGOs weren't representing the families anymore because they never had actual title to the land and the Cambodian-American is politically connected and paid an acceptable bribe to the local families. The memo, while a nice academic exercise, would be functionally useless. Instead I'm writing another grant proposal and shadowing my boss to his infrequent meetings with court officials (going to an hour meeting in the provinces can take 3 days after factoring in driving).

But that's it. I've got an interesting story or two about the outrageous facts in the cases, but I haven't done much substantive legal work. In on campus interviews, I can show an attorney a picture of a client meeting with a monkey in the background but not a legal memo.

I am concerned about on campus interviews. Although I am doing public interest work this summer and will have meaningful service in my legal career, I would like to have the opportunity to work for a mid-size to larger local firm next summer and after graduation. My big hairy audacious goal is to be part of the legal community that shapes [US city's] land use regulations to meet the transportation and environmental challenges of the next century.

What advice do you have? I'm actually pretty down on my summer experience. The land law unit has a poor reputation with its donors and will probably lose its funding because of its failure to do much for its clients. For me personally, the unit's inactivity means I have a lot of dead time. I also haven't learned directly from any legal professionals that speak English well. When I'm asked to comment on what I did and how I liked it, I don't want to be too negative or dishonest. But honestly: "I sat around a lot in a foreign country, went to meetings that I didn't understand, and helped absolutely no one, in part, because the judicial system is utterly corrupt" is probably a conversation killer.

A final thought. Friends and family point to the value of a foreign experience and I think they're right. But for me, I think the marginal value of this experience is low. Like a lot of students that graduated from college around the time I did, I was fortunate enough to study abroad. I went to [deleted] for a semester. I also taught English in [deleted] after graduation for six months. Granted Cambodia is very different from either of those countries, but I still have a hard time saying with conviction that for me just being in a foreign country is a good use of my 1L summer.

I look forward to your thoughts. Any advice on how to spin gold out of this straw will be carefully studied. Thank you.

Holy cow, you've lived a lifetime in a summer. The only thing that could have been worse is if you'd spent the summer at Latham/Cravath/Kirkland/Perkins/BlahBlah. Seriously.

To prepare for interviews, you need to take the email you wrote me, put a far more positive spin on it, and outline at a practical level the barriers that stand between land-reform-in-theory and land-reform-in-practice. That’s the perfect (short) law review article to start writing now, and the fact that you've got it under way is a great talking point during an interview. "What did you do this summer?" "I started the summer trying to protect rural Cambodians from property seizure. The summer I got was more interesting than what I signed up for – I ended up studying what’s broken about the Cambodian legal system in practice, and now I’m writing an article about it." You're going to call it "Three Barriers to Real Property Protection in Cambodia," and I will be expecting a signed copy.

I also told a lawyer friend of mine about your predicament, and here's what he said:

It’s interesting because we’re trying to get a legal clinic going in Tanzania; that’s my next uber-project, I think. Same challenges all around, though we do expect less corruption than in Cambodia. We also expect just as much inactivity, lack of movement in the courts, etc. Property rights is a big thing.

If you take the narrow view of "what law did I practice?", then yeah, his experience is limited. But that’s not what law is in developing countries anyhow. My work in Tanzania so far has been spent trying to *see* a copy of the Tanzanian legal code. I finally did in South Africa, at the supreme court.

Incredibly experienced lawyers have a tough time getting anything done in the developing world, and you are at the teeny, weeny start of that learning curve. You have to start there, so try not to get frustrated just because you're facing as many hurdles as the superstar lawyers who are also getting stuck in the mire of "international law."

Back to interviews. What else can you do? You can talk about how grateful you are to be an American living in a country with laws and rights. You can talk about how hard it is to do any real legal work in a country where the government and the courts are hopelessly corrupt and no one bothers to do much about it. That’s not an interview killer; it’s an interview opener, especially if you approach it with humor and grace.

In the meantime, there's no need to mope around being depressed. You're there to help people, right? OK, you can’t do much legally, and I think you're right about that part of it. But you can do two things – you can learn and you can help. You should learn all you can about Cambodian law and government so that if it ends up being a country you care about, you can work for change there the rest of your life. You should go out into the community and do anything you can to help them. Teach English. Help with infrastructure projects. Pitch in at the local medical clinic. Anything. You went there not only to get experience for yourself, but to serve, right? So serve in whatever way you can, whether it's through your NGO or not. You'll be helping the people you came to help, albeit not in the way you originally intended. Add to that a positive attitude, good war stories, and a sense of humor, and law firms would be crazy not to hire you. They'll see a self-starter, a team player, and a smart guy who knows how to make lemonade. What more could you want in an employee?

You are also infinitely wiser than you were at the start of the summer. You've been up to your elbows in the glamorous world of "International Law" that every law school applicant and his brother swears he wants to practice. Good for you that you've gone out and done it, and figured out what that really means, and have a bunch of stories to tell.

And to think you could have been sitting around in some air-conditioned American law firm writing memos that no one will read about Section 226 of the Labor Code ("Social Security Number Truncation on Pay Stubs"). You are way, way ahead.

It's an interesting day when a fifty-something federal judge commits the same sins as the Say Everything generation. Remember this awesome article from New York magazine a while back?

Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another.

Turns out, the Hon. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, got busted posting his own dirty pictures online. He's no technophobic octogenarian, either. He's very tech-savvy, so it's a weird mistake coming from him. Password protection just isn't that hard.

The timing, for my modest purposes, couldn't be better. This past season, a number of applicants have written me because they've gotten into a spot of trouble after posting things online that they shouldn't have. Sure, they use cutesy handles to hide their identities on discussion boards, but as Prof. Brian Leiter reminded us in the wake of the AutoAdmit discussion board scandal (see here and here), posters are just two subpoenas away from having their identities exposed.

Will Kozinski survive this scandal? Yeah, probably. He's a bigwig. Mere mortals generally don't.

Learn from Judge Kozinski, young grasshoppers. (And from Whole Foods CEO John Mackey.) Don't assume you have any real privacy online. You don't.

Edited to add: Updates here and here.

Mary Abraham, who blogs about knowledge management at law firms, writes:

I can't wait until Generation Y lawyers start flooding through the doors of big law firms. We're told that just about everything about Gen Y runs counter to the work ethic and environment of these firms. So a showdown is inevitable. It will be very interesting to see which force prevails.

I'd put my money on Big Law. All this talk about "Gen Y works to live" just doesn't reflect the weakness of any twenty-something, of any generation, in the face of six-figure paychecks right out of school. Are they all tempted? Of course not. And they're not all in the running for those big paychecks either; most people don't even come close. Still, unless there's a fundamental change in the business model of Big Law, or a big drop in the number of law school students graduating with boatloads of debt, Big Law will continue to have the leverage. (I've written more on that here and here and here.)

Of course, retaining their associates is a different matter entirely, and Big Law will continue to get clobbered on the retention front.

From my colleague Marla Gottschalk, our awesome career and workplace coach:

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Watching television the other night I had to laugh out loud when I saw a new IBM commercial. A young employee is noodling around on a social networking site at work when his boss walks in.

Boss: "What are you doing?"

Guy: "Social networking."

Boss: "Social networking?"

Guy: "Everybody's doing it. I have 826 friends."

Boss: [surprised] "That's a lot of friends."

Guy: "Well, I can find anyone."

Boss: "OK. I need to put together an international team of finance experts who know merger arbitrage, have 10+ years experience, speak Cantonese, and can hit the ground running Monday."

Guy: [blank stare] "I don't have any friends like that."

OK - so what can we learn from this mini job preview? As someone who studies work behavior, I have to say: Plenty.

1. Have a realistic view of your skills and abilities. Yes, you may be experienced using the Internet, but be sure that your skill is really work relevant before you brag about it. If the skill is not work relevant, try thinking of ways to make it relevant. Only then should you show it off.

2. If you really want to get ahead at work, innovate. Take what you do well, apply it to your role at work, and figure out a way to fix problems or challenges. Use flexible thinking and a fresh perspective on problems to really make an impact. Find an appropriate time and place to communicate your suggestions. Even the toughest of issues can benefit from a different point of view.

3. This one is obvious: don't spend time on a social networking site at work unless it makes sense for your job. That is a sure way to make a poor impression, or worse.

Overall, new hires should be highly valued. But they, too, may have something to learn after they land the job of their dreams. Rounding out a skill profile with things that you pick up from watching others and asking great questions never hurts. In fact, it will offer you a competitive edge. Never stop learning. Never.

I love The Office Newb blog, a "twenty-something's guide to the corporate life." In a post called "Age Is the New Glass Ceiling," the Office Newb pondered "why are we all so quick to judge people based on age? Why do we favor the potential of 'experienced' employees over the proven track record of younger ones?"

It's a great question to ask, and I would reply that younger employees don't really have that much of a track record yet. I know it doesn't seem that way from their perspective, which is why Office Newb is frustrated.

In her great follow-up posting, she writes:

I feel that there are lots of mid-level or managerial positions I qualify for based on my skill set, interests and previous experience, however, they usually require 2 – 3 more years of professional experience than I currently have. What exactly can I do about this? Nothing but wait. And I think that is at the root of the frustration for many young people.

Is it a millennial thing? Is it just the folly of youth? Most likely it’s a combination of both. And for a generation that was taught “if you can believe, you can achieve” being told to wait can be a hard lump to swallow.

From the manager side of the table, I often get an earful about Gen Y'ers who show up in the workforce right out of school and expect management experience right off the bat. That was, in fact, the biggest complaint I heard from a group of managers I gave a presentation to at conference a few weeks ago. So Office Newb has tapped into a more widespread, two-way frustration.

It's a conflict I see over and over again. Gen Y doesn't value or respect experience the way older generations do. That outlook is of course inherent to twenty-somethings of any generation, but it seems to be more pronounced with this one. And that causes a certain amount of friction for everyone involved.

There are a lot of fabulous twenty-somethings out there -- and thank goodness for that. At the same time, it's true that many of them have been raised to think they are more capable than they are at their level of experience, and that they deserve the benefits of experience right away. But life doesn't work like that. Those benefits have to be earned, and earning them often takes time. Not always, but often.

That doesn't mean that every person who is older is necessarily the best at what he does -- competition is a beautiful thing, and it's great when talented people of any age rise to new levels of responsibility. Talent is age-blind, but talent is not the same as experience. They are two totally different metrics. Age isn't just a number. Age means experience, and the working world still values experience.

Good luck Office NewB. I'm rooting for you. And you are right: patience is hard. At any age.

I'd like to welcome my colleague Rose, who is going to guest blog today. Welcome Rose! - Anna

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I couldn’t help but write a few notes about a recent WSJ article: “Avoiding Conflicts, The Too-Nice Boss Makes Matters Worse” by Jared Sandberg. After I read the piece, not only was I humming the Janet Jackson song ‘Feedback,’ but I also reflected on what Anna blogs about concerning the workplace, management, Gen Y, etc.

The need for feedback is one Anna has talked about here and in other places as well. Sandberg’s piece points out that the kind of constructive criticism and constant feedback Anna wants us to give Gen Y really is crucial to their growth in the business/management world. After all, this 80 million strong generation (100 million by some counts) will eventually include the next Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, and Martha Stewart. Paradoxically, the article also makes clear that perhaps it’s not just Gen Yers who need to hear critical feedback; so do all employees.

We’ve read the pieces about Gen Y’s narcissistic tendencies and strong sense of entitlement. If that’s true, and Gen Yers are likely to overreact to negative feedback (because mommy and daddy told them they were geniuses and professors gave them all inflated As), then corporate America has got to get on the ball and figure out how to train Gen Y more effectively.

I have a lot of experience in restaurant management. The majority of my staff have been Gen Yers. When I tell you I’ve blushed at the things they’ve openly told me… I’m not exaggerating. They are all educated, bright, and extroverted people. As this article really hit home with me, I decided to share a few things I’ve learned:

1. I’ve learned you’ve got to apply the rules equally (as the article suggests), rather than bend the rules for a few. When one staffer finds out that I overlooked the 5 minute tardiness of another staffer, after I had punished the first one for tardiness the previous week, I will hear about it!

2. Also, fixing little problems is important. For example, we have a uniform. Every so often someone comes into work without proper attire. What pops into my head? Is it so hard to come to work with a proper, clean uniform? Is that really asking too much? Managers don’t always want to deal with fixing the little problems. It’s stressful. It is much easier to turn your head and say, “I didn’t see that.” This is where good and bad managers differ. If a manager cares about her job and her mission, she won’t try to please everybody. In the end turning a blind eye carries a hefty price for everyone. I agree with the complaints of the employees in the piece that a manager who turns a blind eye to low performing workers, in an attempt not to ruffle feathers, not only creates poor morale for the rest of the team, but also shows the manager’s self-centered need for people pleasing.

3. Our job as managers is NOT to be their BFF. I find myself repeating this rule to myself when an issue arises. All I ask of my staff is that they come to work focused on doing their job and providing great service. I don’t want to hear about who you are sleeping with, how you won the beer drinking award at the bar last night or that …..ahh. Let me stop here. ☺ This goes against what we read about Gen Y, as managers are advised to create relationships with their Gen Y employees [and we even have professors trying to reach out to Gen Y students through very personal Gen Y-style Facebook profiles – Anna]. The article points out that your boss might make a great neighbor or friend, but that’s not what you are looking for at work.

A perfect example: we initially had a very cheery people-person as our staff manager. The outcome was two-fold. She became everyone’s friend, got to know the staff very well, but nothing ever got done correctly. There were always ‘little issues’ or sloppiness. I couldn’t stand it, so we changed managers to someone more direct and aggressive, and we have seen a big improvement in process and employee camaraderie. Staffers may not initially like the nit picking and direct feedback, but I’ve heard more than once how they appreciate it. They know in the long run they will be that much better at what they do. They also see the fruit of their labor when their gratuities go up.

4. Gen Y very much enjoys working for a company that cares about its employees and its mission. They also like to be involved in decision making. You’d be surprised how late an employee will stay or how much harder he’ll work when he feels a part of something. I’ve involved my staff with everything from menu ideas to expansion plans, and the difference in output is astonishing.

5. As the article points out, we’ve all worked for the ‘Devil Wears Prada’ type boss. I know I’ve had my share of 90 hour work weeks with no such thing as work-life balance. Would I trade that experience for the types of managers mentioned in this article? Not a chance. As the piece points out, most employees want to hear how they are doing. They want to know what they can fix. After all, most of us look to advance at our jobs and beyond, right? The duty of our bosses is similar to that of a mentor/teacher: Pat me on the back when I’ve brought a great idea to the table (not every 5 min), but also point out what I am doing incorrectly so that I can improve.

At the end of the day, I think we can agree that Gen Y is not the only group looking for feedback. We all crave it.

BusinessWeek continues the debate about Gen Y's "narcissism." (I put that in quotations marks because it's a loaded term, but also because it comes originally from Prof. Jean Twenge's study about Gen Y, not from me.)

The author of the BW article ("Gen Y: Really All That Naricisstic?") points out that there's a nicer side to this phenomenon, that Gen Y really just has a sense of "healthy self-esteem."

I'm not a psychiatrist, so I won't try to diagnose a person, or a whole generation, with a clinical disorder. However, as I've written about often, I do think that what we're seeing is an unhealthy level of self-esteem, self-esteem that is fake and fragile when it has not been earned. And I don't think it's crazy to spot elements of narcissism in an entire demographic that thinks the world wants to read blog postings about what they had for breakfast. An exaggeration, perhaps, but not far off. If lay-people want to call that narcissistic, I don't really have a bone to pick.

The comments to the BW article have already started coming in, and they are (as is often the case) just as interesting as the original article. ("Just like to point out that the Gen Ys are the kids of the original "Me Generation," the Boomers"...)

The boomer connection is an interesting one, and I've been mulling over the role of helicopter parents for a while now. I had one of those a-ha moments at a wedding I went to last year. Some of the younger kids wanted to perform. Some of them played piano, others hopped around on stage doing funny dances. It was funny, sometimes cute, sometimes not, and standard wedding fare. What seemed different from weddings many moons ago was that the parents expected the whole world to stop and watch what their kids were doing, and naturally they zoomed in with their camcorders to document every minute.

As I was watching, it dawned on me that an entire generation of kids has had every little gurgle and tap dance recorded for posterity, and I wonder what it does to a developing sense of self to be treated like a little celebrity from day one. Their every move has been documented and oohed and aahed over since before they emerged from the womb. It's like growing up with their very own paparazzi and publicists rolled into one.

I don't fault Gen Y for any of this. And even parents aren't completely to blame. Technology plays an interesting role here. Older generations didn't have access to cheap camcorders, for example, and one of the reasons previous generations of college students didn't talk to their parents six times a day was because you had to use a public phone booth -- down the hall! -- and pay a lot of money to make a long-distance call. Technology changes everything, obviously, and in this instance it enables helicopter and paparazzi parenting. Maybe it's not just a boomer thing, but I suspect it's a combination. Boomers + technology = helicopter/paparazzi parenting. It's interesting to me that so many of these articles about Gen Y and its "narcissism" seem to assume that this behavior springs forth sui generis.

More postings on Gen Y narcissism here and here. Postings about helicopter parents here. A post about real celebrity parents, Hilton/Lohan-style, here. And a post about the Say Everything phenomenon here.

One of the really interesting things about Gen Y is how dramatically its preferences are driving changes in everything from workplace policies to luxury goods marketing to real estate development.

Last week, I headed over to the Boston Society of Architects to hear a talk by a woman named Persis Rickes about ways in which architects who design for universities need to be thinking about what Gen Y wants out of its academic and living spaces.

The talk was in many ways a primer on Gen Y for an audience that didn’t know much about this generation. Dr. Rickes did a great job pulling together some of the basic information about Gen Y (much of it culled, with attribution, from the seminal work Millennials Rising by Neil Howe and William Strauss). I was most interested in the following points from the talk (and for clarity, I'll break out the parts that are my own editorializing):

Many buildings will be around for 50 or 100 years -- how do you design a building that may already be outdated 10 years from now?

Just ten years ago, university architects were putting jacks in every wall on the assumption that everyone would want to be able to plug in anywhere for internet access. Of course, today everyone expects wifi, and all that wiring isn't getting used. Wired? That's so last millennium. Trying to predict what people will want out of their spaces for the next half century is perhaps a quixotic exercise, but architects are trying to be as forward-thinking as possible.

What about the ideal architecture for Gen Y? Part of that depends on their aspirations, which brings us to:

Gen Y is civic minded, socially conscious, dedicated to justice and the environment, and involved in a variety of causes.

Gen Yers expect to learn in real-life scenarios to prepare for their careers after college, and colleges need to be building the equivalent of “moot court” classrooms for students to get hands-on experience that approximates what they’ll face out in the real world. Students expect opportunities for real-world internships and service work. Schools need to offer “blended spaces” for teaching and learning a mix of academic and practical skills.

Anna says: This desire flies in the face of the mission of a liberal arts education, which values teaching you “how to think” over teaching specialized or pre-professional skills. But even at staunch liberal arts colleges, students are demanding hands-on experience through their extracurricular activities and internships, even if they don’t receive academic credit for them. Schools will need to think about what kinds of spaces they’re offering for hands-on training and learning, whether that happens as part of the curriculum or as an extracurricular activity.

I also wonder what it means for business schools that an entire generation is obsessed with social or environmental justice jobs (that's not the best short-hand and doesn't really cover the whole range, but I'll use it for these purposes). I personally think it would be impossible to do good without the private sector, but I suspect that business schools have a marketing problem on their hands with this cohort, and it explains the big uptick in social entrepreneurship and corporate citizenship offerings at business schools.

It also explains why so many college students are flocking to law school. I often talk to people who think they can litigate away the world's big problems -- poverty, hunger, international conflict, and war -- and they have every expectation that they’ll do so while making six figures or more in the process and living a somewhat glamorous life. (Brangelina and Bono have created some unreasonable expectations.) The social justice jobs are definitely out there, but many people I hear from struggle with the paychecks associated with those jobs. Sometimes people come out of school with unrealistic expectations about what kinds of salaries they can command in a certain job or with a certain diploma hanging on the wall, and those expectations (reasonable and unreasonable) are a big subject of this whole blog more generally.

Because realistic expectations are so important, it is absolutely necessary for college students to observe different jobs first-hand, whether it's through an internship or some other avenue.

Gen Y is obsessed with achievement and is really, really stressed out.

Gen Y is under a lot of pressure to achieve and excel. They like conformity and rules, because conformity and rules relieve some of that pressure. They have an overachiever culture. They know that they are being measured. They want constant feedback.

That means schools will need to offer a lot of tutoring and testing help, as well as spaces where those services can be accessed 24/7. Students also want a lot of very nice extracurricular spaces to blow off some of that steam, and there’s also increased demand for spirituality and meditation spaces. They also need spaces to be overachievers and show off their work, for example through state-of-the art performance halls.

Anna says: This has absolutely been my experience counseling Gen Yers for the last eight or so years. They are so worried about making the slightest mistake, because they feel that the stakes are so high, and I continue to grapple with the best ways to deal with their high anxiety levels.

This is a generation for whom mental health treatment and mental health prescription drugs are fairly routine, and I wonder how people who work with, manage, counsel, teach, and mentor Gen Y can best prepare themselves to work with these high anxiety levels. It's not specifically what most of us are trained to do, but maybe we need to be. From time to time we hear awful stories about college students going over the edge in one form or another, and I'm intrigued by Cornell's efforts to train the university community to deal with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.

More generally, these are the most risk-averse people I’ve ever encountered, and they fear doing things on their own (more on that below in the teamwork discussion). The kinds of questions people run by me every day reflect that fear. (“The application instructions say to put my name in a header. Could you please look at my header and sign off on it before I submit?”) Part of that phenomenon I also attribute to their parents (more on that below too). Part of our challenge as mentors for Gen Y is to help them develop their confidence to make decisions on their own when they are feeling that immense pressure to spread the risk. It's an interesting contrast to the strong confidence they feel in other ways (the next topic).

Gen Yers all think they’re special, don’t leave their parents behind, and want everything tailored to them and at their disposal 24/7.

Gen Y requires constant praise, much of it gratuitous, and feels entitled to it. Their parents have fed this sense of entitlement by making their kids feel as if they are the center of the universe, and the parents’ lives do indeed revolve around their kids. Gen Yers are sheltered and overprotected. They expect everyone else to jump at their say-so and are supremely confident -- some would say over-confident -- in their abilities.

For space planning, this means that Gen Y students expect 24/7 access to people and spaces and services, and schools will have to provide the technology to enable that kind of access. They expect private bathrooms and showers, single dorm rooms and apartments, and customized everything (such as cafeterias with 24/7 access to vegan food or whatever the case may be). They expect top-of-the-line health and wellness centers, academic support centers, and larger admissions offices (because they bring their whole families along).

Anna says: Yep - I’ve already said plenty on this subject (here and here -- note that the posting you're reading now will show up at the top of both links, so you'll have to scroll down for the older postings). The brouhaha over this recent voicemail is the perfect example. (Gen Y high school student finds it completely appropriate to call the COO of his county school system -- at home -- to complain that classes haven’t been canceled after three inches of snowfall; COO’s wife leaves an angry voicemail telling the kid to “get over it”; kid then posts the COO’s email and phone numbers on facebook.)

I'm also reminded of something an admissions officer once said to me: "With Gen Y's parents, their kid is always gifted or learning disabled. Those are the only two options." It's no accident that their children take that self-perception with them to college and into the workplace.

Gen Yers are always part of a group.

As much as they all want their own dorm rooms and bathrooms, they spend all their time together, travel in packs, work together, and study together. They therefore need lots of informal spaces that let them learn and study in groups.

Anna says: I've noticed that they also like to work on their applications in groups. Their college and grad school essays get passed around all over God's creation for feedback from parents, friends, neighbors, you name it. That's why so many essays read as if they were written by committee... because they were written by committee, and that rarely makes for a good essay, because the applicant's voice gets completely lost in the shuffle.

Gen Yers multitask.

They need blended spaces for work and play because they’re never doing just one or the other.

Anna says: Definitely true. Whether they’re surfing the internet while in class, writing a paper at Starbucks, or instant messaging every five seconds while studying for an exam, this is an "ADD" generation that can’t focus on one thing for any length of time -- not necessarily because they literally have ADD (although some of them do, and that can compound the challenge), but because competing technology is always pulling them away from the task at hand. In that sense, young or old, we're all ADD'ers now, certainly in the workplace, but Gen Y takes multitasking to new extremes.

I wonder whether it’s a good idea for schools to accommodate this need to multitask. I know professors don’t like it when their students are buying shoes online during their lectures, and there has been some research showing that the human brain just doesn't do things all that well when it's multitasking (a lesson for us all, myself included). Just because Gen Y (or anyone, for that matter) wants something, does that mean it’s always good to give it to them?

On an unrelated note: I've observed that Gen Yers also like to date in packs. In a way, it's not even a date at all, at least as someone Gen X or older would understand it.

Gen Yers are respectful of authority.

I’m not sure how respect for authority plays itself out in architecture and space planning, but the architects in the room found this characteristic very interesting.

Anna says: I disagree strongly with this characterization of Gen Y. I think the confusion on this point comes from a Boomer baseline of what it means to defy or disrespect authority. I suspect that in Boomer minds, if college students aren't lighting fires, smashing windows, and threatening to burn down Yale like in the Boomers' college days, then Gen Y must be pretty respectful of authority. And it's true that Gen Y, because of that risk-aversion I discussed above, doesn't like to rock the boat the way Boomers seemed to take a certain kind of pride in doing. But I would argue that Gen Y's admirable refusal to destroy things doesn't mean that they are respectful of authority.

Aside from that voicemail example I linked to above, I'll also point out the following:

I get an earful all day long from employers when they hear that I write about Gen Y. I hear about Gen Yers marching into the workplace thinking they can do the CEO’s job better than the CEO, and sometimes even saying so out loud. They expect management responsibility their first day out of college. I’ve even heard one employer tell me about a recent college grad who, on being given certain instructions, rolled her eyes, threw her pen on the table, and said, “That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard.” That loud thud you hear is the sound of jaws dropping at workplaces across the country.

I routinely have applicants tell me, in effect, “Yes, I know you were an admissions officer, but here’s why I think you’re wrong.” I get some level of push-back just about every day. I do want people to disagree with me, because I know I'm not omniscient and often the input is helpful. Still, I'm curious that there is so much push-back when it's my expertise and experience they're seeking out in the first place, and I get that only from Gen Y, and the younger set of Gen Y in particular. It's interesting.

I hear this kind of feedback from professors as well, who are also surprised by the way in which their students communicate with them, and the ways in they make demands. For example, I have heard from several professors who are shocked to receive what they consider shamelessly casual emails demanding (not asking for -- demanding) special considerations, extensions, etc. These professors are also, in some cases, shocked to be referred to as "hey john" or whatever their first names happen to be.

Over the years, all this leads me to conclude that this is not a generation that as a group respects authority, experience, age, or a higher position on the org chart, although individual differences certainly occur (as with any of these generalizations).

On this subject, one of my Gen Y colleagues pointed out the following to me -- great food for thought:

While Gen Yers may not have respect for the trappings of authority (emailing profs with first names, office etiquette, etc.), I think they have tremendous respect for the value of authority. That is, they know what it means to be ranked X, or in position Y, or to be offered a job at a particular bank or office. They also know what it means to "know" someone in authority -- how to pull strings, ask for favors, and use connections to authority figures to advance their careers, percentages (of admission?), etc.

I recognize that this is a wholly different "respect for authority" than that term usually involves, but it it still a type of respect. It's a respect for the power of authority -- for the access, advancement, and "step skipping" that authority can grant you (i.e. if you "know" someone you can avoid some of the bottom rungs of the ladder).

So in that sense, I don't think Gen Y is entirely disrespectful of authority. I think the concept of "authority" has changed; instead of authority being representative of "the man," it's about "the connection," the "hookup," or the favor. Why apply through HR if your father's partner can put your resume on the desk of an executive? The recognition of the executive's power is a certain "respect" for his authority. Not the same type of respect we're talking about, but a respect nonetheless.

There were a lot of other interesting nuggets at this talk, but I’ll conclude by asking the following:

Anna Also Says: This stuff doesn’t come cheap. Who's paying for all of this?

I know applicants who decide where to go to college because one school has a cool rock climbing wall or that other school’s dormitories have seen better days or that school has the best cafeteria.

Somewhere in the application frenzy, the big picture seems sometimes to get lost. This country club approach to college doesn’t come cheap, and when Gen Y complains about its staggering student loans, I have to wonder who they think is financing those Olympic size swimming pools, state of the art performance halls, 24/7 access to freshly prepared vegan menus, spa-like wellness centers, and so on. That lifestyle is very expensive, and college students are paying for it with a staggering amount of borrowed money, plus interest.

It makes me wonder what some people's priorities are, what they're looking for in their college experience. Sounds to me as if some of them want a 4, 5, 6-year stay at Canyon Ranch rather than the best education they can find. I don't knock any of those wonderful features -- I know I would have loved them when I was in college too -- but I see some people focusing a lot on the immediate benefits and not on the long-term costs.

It also becomes very clear to me why many college students find it such a shock to join the real world after college, when they no longer have student loans to fund such a posh lifestyle. No wonder most of this age group moves back in with mom and dad for some period after school. This goes back to my theme of expectations and figuring out what's realistic and what isn't.

I heard one university representative at the talk say that her college had to offer this lavish lifestyle because that’s what they have to do to compete for applicants. Having been an admissions officer, I understand the pressures schools face to attract applicants. I do wonder, though, about the college administrators and trustees who are perhaps allowing their educational missions to be compromised too much, the parents who are letting their kids pick a college based on a rock climbing wall or a cafeteria menu, and the magazine rankings that reward schools for increasing their expenditures per student. Something is out of whack.

17-year-olds are 17-year olds, and I don't fault them if they are still figuring out what their priorities are, how compound interest works, and what kind of life they want to be living five or ten or twenty years down the road. And it’s our job, as the ones with a bit more life experience, to help them think about those things (even if they're not always inclined to listen to us).

It's been a busy weekend, wrapping up Round 2 business school applications and responding to people whose December LSAT scores came out yesterday. (Admissions officers love to mess with our holidays, don't they?) On the LSAT front in particular, there's been some ecstatic news for some, and some not-so-happy news for others. And for the not-so-happy folks, let me remind you not to wrap your whole identities around this test. It's a big world out there, and you don't have to let one test determine your place in it. (More on that here and here.)

In the universe of workplace issues, I gave an interview recently for a human resources magazine about Generation Y in the workplace. If you want to see what's on their minds over in HR, take a look here (SMB Human Resources). The same issue, at the same link, also has an interesting article about Facebook and MySpace in the workplace, and why some employers are saying, "no thanks."

And while I'll likely be posting again before Christmas, in case I don't, I'll close with one of my favorite pastimes, making fun of the worst of academia. From The Independent (London), "The Snowman: A Tale of Modern Masculinity":

Dr Tricia Cusack, an art historian, has, for the periodical New Formations, discerned inappropriateness in the very nature of Christmas: "Some members of cultural minorities in Britain find the central power relationship of Christmas threatening, not to speak of its whiteness - a white Christ, a white snowman."

It is the snowman that bothers Dr Cusack most - not just his threatening whiteness, but also his masculinity, his "phallic carrot-nose", his location in a semi-public space or garden "to substantiate an ideology upholding a gendered spatial/social system, marking women's proper sphere as the domestic/private, and men's as the commercial/public." The snowman "animates the garden or field with an anthropomorphic presence, a household god keeping nature in order."

Surely it was no accident that "in view of the western narrative of actual masculine domination of nature/female, ... out of virgin snow a male icon is built."

Merry Christmas, everyone!

The WSJ had a great interview recently with the VP of Industry Relations at the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) about how business schools are adapting to the preferences and quirks of Gen Y. She talks about the same tendencies I've noticed about Gen Y in the workplace ("Memo to Corporate America"), although it's clear to me that some of those tendencies have special significance for MBAs in particular. As I've asked here before: how do you develop leadership in MBA students when they're showing up at orientation with mommy and daddy, even at places like Harvard Business School? What does it mean when a generation of people expects to be doing CEO level work within a few years of graduation and thinks it's above grunt work?

On a related note: I had a conversation with a law school professor the other day who told me, in shock, how a parent had called to argue with her about a grade she had given a student on a contracts exam. I wonder whether those parents are also going to call up and complain to the judge when he rules against little Karen or little Jon on a 12(b)(6) motion? Not to mention that most parents aren't in a position to debate the finer points of contract law with a law school professor (have they even heard of promissory estoppel?), but that's where we are right now. I warned her that she is going to hear from many more parents in the coming years.