Millennials didn't kill the 'organization man' after all. Federal data reveals it was the boomers all along
Long before quiet quitting, boomers rejected "working for the man," says UNC sociologist Arne Kalleberg, "which is exactly what’s happening now."...
Pay—the reason most humans work—remains a major motivator today. When consulting firm McKinsey earlier this year asked workers why they took a new job, nearly all groups gave the same No. 1 reason: More pay.
Getting a new job is usually the easiest way to get a raise, with pay for job switchers consistently rising faster than for those who keep the same job
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I have the very slight suspicion that it’s not actually the workers to blame for not staying at a company their whole life.
Pretty much.
The only difference is how much each generation realizes what’s going on. Surprise surprise, as the disparity in wealth grows, more people are realizing we shouldn’t support it.
Exactly. I'd bet good money most people don't get enjoyment out of job hopping, but it's almost necessary these days because companies have become increasingly disloyal and stingy towards employees.
If companies would just offer decent raises, meaningful career progression, and two-way loyalty, I'd bet most folks wouldn't job hop at all!
There is a contract that is broken today
The implicit contract used to be 1- the employee stays in the same company for years. Staying loyal and gaining experience that benefit the company. 2- in exchange the company is improving the life of the employee, pay raise above inflation level, better benefits and better working conditions.
Today companies refuses to do their part of the contract and complain that employees don’t do theirs.
I think everyone’s forgotten about pensions here too because it’s been so long since they were commonplace.
Pensions used to be part of the contract as well.
Pay at levels which afforded having children, buying a house, two cars, a stay at home spouse, while vacationing once or twice every year.
And a pension. Don’t forget the pension.
We’ve falling a looooooong fucking way.
Objectively speaking, boomers have caused pretty much everything, though. Corporate leadership, it kind of depends, but most large corps use (or used,) boomer ceos.
Boomers also dominate politics etc, meaning they’ve had a disproportionate impact on current us society…. And a lions share of the blame. This has been true for as long as I’ve been alive, more or less.
Yes but those boomers had CEOs with the same age difference. There’s a correlation with age, but I don’t think there’s a causal link with generation. Like with politics, it’s typically dominated by people that are older - but also people of a certain social class. Different generations feed through but it’s primarily the same class of people dictating things and making things shit for everyone.
Most boomers are just people like everyone else, they’re trying to get by, the only difference is the opportunity afforded to them. They had more opportunity, and it’s the people in charge of their generation that are causing a problem now, but it was the people in charge of the generations before them that caused them problems. The problem isn’t the different generations, it’s the people in charge, regardless of generation.
They dominate politics because they more or less out numbered everyone. Only now that they’re starting to die off are they starting to slip. This is why we’ve been setting records for oldest-everything.
Further, in corporate life, boomers never retired in the way that the silent generation did. They’ve stayed in positions of power far longer than prior generations.
Finally? In politics- which enables most of the corporate douchebaggery- boomers dominate. This is why the civil rights movement happened; their political will had to be followed as they were voting in “their”. And that has continued to day. This wouldn’t be true if your assertion that they’re the same as me is true.
I reject the notion that “most” boomers are “just people”- not because it’s wrong per se, but because they retain that political power. The boomers really are the generation of “got mine, fuck you.” And you see that as a voting bloc when they were gen z’s age pushing for things that benefited that age, and now that they’re old pushing for things that benefit- as a whole- people of that age.
Which is why you see assholes blocking and cutting welfare but not social security, for example.
It wasn’t the employees who killed the “Company Man”. It was the companies themselves. Corporations value short term profit above all else, including long term stability. This means that the older, higher paid employees are a liability, not a benefit. So, they get shown the door the first time the line doesn’t go up. Loyalty is a two way street. If the company isn’t loyal to it’s employees, the employees won’t be loyal to the company. Once people woke up to the fact that the corporations are fully mercenary about employment, it was a natural reaction for the employees to become mercenary as well.
This is also why every company pushes bullshit about “we’re a family”. It’s a bald faced lie to sucker gullible employees into thinking that the company wouldn’t gut them and sell their organs at the first sign of that making a quick buck.
Every worker should watch this video at least once. It was speaking to designers, but is applicable everywhere.
Seriously. I watched both of my parents get their "good jobs" sold right out from under them to private equity firms that laid off all the older, more expensive workers immediately. I, myself, was laid off twice before I turned 28 years old.
I have zero incentive to be "loyal" to any company when they so clearly will never be loyal to me. What a load of horseshit.
This is literally the definition of a liberal market economy. Bust unions and make it easy to hire and fire, and what you'll get is a highly mobile and vibrant but unspecialised workforce. Great for quick innovation like silicon valley, less great for traditional manufacturing that requires specialized talents.
It's all wanted politics - maybe more than anything, this is what they busted the unions for.
Corporations value short term profit above all else, including long term stability.
It didn’t used to be this way. I mean, all Corporations need to be profitable, of course, and the successful ones are more profitable. But using Shareholder Value as the main (perhaps only) metric for decisions didn’t really come around until the 80’s and Jack Welch at GE started talking about it extensively.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value
This focus on shareholder value exclusively also implies that Corporations do not have any responsibility to anyone except its shareholders. You can see the effects of this philosophy even today, where Republicans attack corporate ESG initiatives because they feel that they undermine this commitment to increasing shareholder value. It even extends to the Twitter mess: Twitter’s board felt they had to force the sale to Musk at the inflated price he offered because it was so much higher than the company was objectively worth, and would be the best return for its shareholders, even though they probably knew he would end up wrecking the company (and screwing over employees). They felt they could only make decisions for the benefit of shareholders, and not employees or users.
for the benefit of shareholders, and not employees or users.
there used to be much more focus on building a long term relationship with customers, at all levels of business
all Corporations need to be profitable, of course
This is not even true. In fact, the fastest growing companies are the ones that have the potential to be profitable in the future. The established ones that are run into the ground are often profitable, but it makes more money in the short term for vultures to dismantle and sell off the parts.
The real issue is that the tax structure incentivizes terrible business practices that rapidly funnel money into the wealthy instead of rewarding ownership of businesses for that are successful in the long term.
Republicans attack ESG initiatives because their constituents are hot garbage. Shareholders are the ones demanding ESG principles.
You’re correct, of course. But they view that a public corporation’s sole responsibility is to increase shareholder value, not do what the shareholders say. There can be no other priority.
What they said is a lie, anyways. Collective action is the core of worker power. “Mobility” is a feature of a low worker power environment where we aren’t able to extract our demands from our work places. Who would want to spend time looking for new jobs if we could just get good raises, advancement, and work life balance out of the jobs we’ve already got?
Don’t trust fortune.com to talk about worker issues honestly, it’s a rag for the other side of the equation.
yeah, loyalty is earned. You can’t get loyalty unless something bad happens and then the company makes a decision in favor of the employees at the expense of the company
I just never see that realistically happening
It usually doesn’t, but it is possible.
Not with any publicly-traded corporation, though. They are legally obliged to do whatever will maximize profit for their shareholders.
I just have to say, while most companies operate exactly how you describe, that is certainly not all of them.
It’s sad. Even the word ‘company’ should mean that you’re in this together. It’s what it means in militaries. It’s what it means in social settings. It should also mean it in businesses. It used to, at one point. At one point people actually did work together and enjoyed a fair return on their labor. It was the only way to reliably get things done. People had to be dedicated.
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