<p>My husband is also an early bloomer but he rarely ever worked more than 40+ hours. Where he came from he only worked 35 hours per week and got one month vacation. When he came to the US, he more or less kept the same format, did great at many jobs. His philosophy is his brain is still working while he is doing dishes, much more effective.
One time he had a tyrant boss who had the audacity to tell him to work overtime w/pay of course, but he told the boss, his eyes were tired after 5 days of work and he couldn’t do it, he needed rest. So he did get laid off when they were laying off people, so what, he found other job and got laid off when a project funding was cancelled, and then he found other job after that. All of this happened when he is 55+.
During my whole marriage, he rarely travelled more than 4 days a quarter. I told him my dad was gone a lot when I was younger and I didn’t want my kids to experience the same thing. I don’t care if he is not super successful either. As long as we’re both working money is not an issue.</p>
<p>I will add that when we were looking to buy a house back in early 1980s the mortgage rate topped 18% . Yes 18%. </p>
<p>I’m quite lucky in that I’m able to work from home or remotely many hours of the week. I manage a project, a lab, and all the undergraduates in it- but it is a computer lab and anything I can do there, I can do elsewhere. I probably put in even more hours because I don’t have to do 2 hours worth of commuting every day and I’m always, always accessible by email or phone. In fact, the students I manage lovingly make fun of how little life I must have given my ridiculously quick response times. </p>
<p>An organization that I worked for over the summer (and am hoping to work for post-graduation assuming that funding comes through) works 100% remotely. The entire organization consists of about 5 staff members flung all over the state. They each have their own projects and don’t log hours. There were days where our projects were done in a few hours and then there were days where we worked for 12+ hours. </p>
<p>This obviously doesn’t work in all industries, but I hope that we start moving towards this model of doing work remotely. It’s not because I’m lazy and don’t want to get out of my pjs (though it’s a nice perk!), it’s because commuting and “face time” seem like outdated concepts to my generation. </p>
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<p>Yes, we were thrilled to get an ADJUSTABLE rate of 11%! My husband’s student loan interest was 8% - I thought that was very low!</p>
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<p>He’s full of it. D2 is 20 and she hyperventilates if she thinks she is going to be late to something (and that only happens if she is having to wait on someone else). On the other hand DH is chronically late and this has caused a lot of stress and tension in our relationship and that of DH and our daughters. I think the tendency to be tardy is a personal trait, not a generational one.</p>
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<p>Just so you know, this is long gone, and it’s because of the attitudes of the executives at the top of the company (usually boomers). A publicly traded company only cares about its profits for this quarter, because that’s what its big investors care about. My husband has been a high-up exec in a couple of different publicly traded companies and has seen this attitude in the CEOs, CFOs, etc. He’s been in the position of being forced to lay off employees in order to meet a company-wide dictum of cutting expenses by X percent – even though that meant they’d have to contract out the work and it would be lower quality because of all the experience they’d lost with the laid-off workers.</p>
<p>So millenials are wise to skate from job to job and not care about the long-term success of the company – the company sure doesn’t care about them.</p>
<p>I’m also pleased to hear that millenials are actually demanding a reasonable work-life balance in high enough numbers that companies are forced to respond to them. For years we Gen Y-ers have been hand-waving and moaning about trying to do more and more on less and less time, but because when push comes to shove we always knuckle under and meekly accept whatever the workplace is willing to give us, we never get anywhere. (I’m speaking in societal terms – I’m lucky enough to work for a nonprofit where I do have a reasonable work-life balance.)</p>
<p>Yes 8% was low. Interest on my first car was 21%.</p>
<p>I have been working with many millennials in the software industry. I think they are creative, responsible, and self-managing very well if they work in a democratic environment. In the SW industry, many employers apply the agile development principles to empower individuals. Individuals work as a team and they control the schedule and progress of the project. Managers don’t dictate what can be done. Team members seriously break down the big tasks into smaller tasks and determine how long it takes to get them done in realistic and measurable paces.</p>
<p>It’s not fair to say millennials don’t work 40 hrs/week. Well, old managers don’t work 40 hrs/week either. I have seen many mangers who do nothing and are away from their office most of the time.</p>
<p>I also think that a lot of the stereotypical millenial behavior is a response to the fact that the world is more complex and uncertain than ever before. Some millenials respond by relying on their own flexibility and quick responses, which comes across to Boomers as superficiality and lack of dedication; and other millenials respond by demanding more feedback and reassurance. I think the latter trait especially is something that we as a society have created with our educational policies, in which we are constantly setting up hoops for kids to jump through and then awarding them a precisely metered-out modicum of praise and reward based on how well they performed. No wonder millenials, after being raised and trained in this environment for 20+ years, are still looking for where the hoops are and asking how well they performed.</p>
<p>Just to comment that there are more millenials then there are boomers. So they will change the workforce just like the boomers did.</p>
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<p>Aren’t many managers’ jobs to go to meetings, so that other employees’ time can be spent on more productive tasks? :)</p>
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<p>In a few former offices, it was the silent/boomer generation senior/middle execs who started leaving the office as early as 2-3 pm after starting at 9 am like everyone else. The younger employees/managers were the ones to stay till 5:30 pm or if overtime calls…stayed as late as “needed”. </p>
<p>The director I used to work for, trade stocks during the work day. Working hard or hardly working. He was well respected and got promoted. The executive assistant to him told me she did not like that, I think she got access to his computer or something close.</p>
<p>“I think someone who wants to demonstrate leadership and initiative would then take it upon themselves to find something to do, rather than announce they want to go home. Re-organize something that needs organizing. Do some extra thinking to come up with a more efficient way of doing X. Ask if other people could use your help on something as you seem to have freed up. Think ahead and see if you can work ahead on an upcoming project. If you were my employee and had that attitude, I’d hope you’d participate in proactively finding things to do instead of just sitting at the desk for those 2 hours (or going home).”</p>
<p>I do all of those things already–I work in an industry where you can’t work ahead, as you’re waiting on responses from time zones that are currently sleeping. I already have taken initiative to take on 3 additional R&D projects. I don’t take lunches, I don’t take coffee breaks, and I’m not surfing the web for several hours a day–I’m working solid all day. I don’t see why, if I’m putting in 40+ hour weeks already, as well as weekends during crisis situations, I need to sit there just to put in the face time because that’s how it’s always been done.</p>
<p>I value work life balance, and I have to since my industry doesn’t always emphasize it. Majorly high leave balances of 300+ hours are common and a badge of pride. If I have a day or 2 in a row where I’ve cleaned out my inbox and progressed as far as possible, I think I should be able to go home and spend some downtime and not be looked down upon for it</p>
<p>You know, the issue is that trying to compare what the kids are walking into today to some old model of work is silly. They are never actually out of touch. Back in the day, we were either in the office or out of touch. They can leave and still check email, be texted, called, whatnot. It’s not really the same thing.</p>
<p>My oldest works as a project manager and coordinates many creatives in fulfilling her and the rest of the design team’s vision. the “standard” work week is four days, ten hours a day. Nobody only works when they are at work. They all bring in ideas, whatnot, send them to each other. Some Sunday nights they are all sending back ideas and sometimes, when things get heated up, they work seven days or ten days in a row for more than ten hours. </p>
<p>Work isn’t assembly line work any more. It’s not the same thing. It’s not come to the typing pool, come to the mail room. It’s a completely different thing.</p>
<p>And all of these kids know they have no pension, no job security, but they do want the best product, not for the company, but for their portfolio or resume. They are their own brand. It’s the biggest difference, and I think it’s the smartest way to go, and we don’t fully understand the mindset, but they are responding to market conditions, not creating them, and responding well. </p>
<p>oh, and let me just add, a lot of boomers considered it work to spend long martini lunches, too, and expense account dinners were “work.” I mean, honestly. The booze soaked work life of the early age boomer is astonishing.</p>
<p>So much of this is industry-specific, employer-specific, and (of course) employee-specific. My own millennial D is a CPA at a Big 4 firm. Sounds like everyone there works at 50-ish hour week in the off-season and a 70+ hour week during busy season. </p>
<p>If I were her employer, I would have no complaints about her work ethic (or those of her coworkers). I just hope they don’t burn out…</p>
<p>CPA is a very hard job. </p>
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<p>Some of my coworkers and I were just talking about that the other day. We all worked in ad agencies or publishing firms when we started out (and we are not that old–not talking the Mad Men era). It was completely customary to have drinks at lunch, and for lunches to stretch out over hours. Now we all eat at our desks. :(</p>
<p>In my job, you were lucky to get a lunch at all (rarely did), much less a multiple hours lunch with alcohol!</p>
<p>I’m sure my ICU patients appreciated the last part of that sentence above.</p>
<p>My current nursing job is the first one I’ve had where they insisted you take the whole 30 minutes lunch rather than racing into the break room to shove a few bites in your mouth before heading right back to the unit.</p>
<p>A break for lunch? What the heck is that? That hasn’t been part of my working life, ever. </p>