<p>Uh yeah. I’m not saying these martini lunches didn’t ever happen post-Mad Men days, but they certainly weren’t and haven’t been the norm for many many years.</p>
<p>Some of you must be in the wrong industry because some of places I’ve worked in the past we even got to play ping pong at work. Some companies paid for employees to listen to famous rock band at work. And the Christmas parties were some best that I’ve been. Yes I’ve always been just a low life non executive employee.</p>
<p>@Garland, I thought you taught at a university? You work at a desk, in an office, for hours on end? No.</p>
<p>I think when I hear these generational laments they sound ridiculous. The older I get, more I see the world change, the more ridiculous older people complaining about the younger ones sound. No generation in history has ever been saddled with so much debt, as the Millennials. Top that off with the tepid economic growth the boomer political agenda and corporate agenda has created in this county, and the complaints sound like the laments of the most spoiled generation ever, complaining about the people picking up their tab.</p>
<p>“Some of you must be in the wrong industry because some of places I’ve worked in the past we even got to play ping pong at work.”</p>
<p>I hate stuff like that. I’d rather get my work done and then go home, than spend half an hour playing ping pong. </p>
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<p>There’s a good reason for providing all those “perks”. It’s to encourage employees to spend most/all their waking hours at the office so they can put in more work for companies like Google. </p>
<p>IME, it’s fun when you’re just out of college, single, and in your first job. It gets old really fast, however…especially if one has an SO and/or family/social obligations outside the office. </p>
<p>@sax: " know that my spouse has always worked 60+ hours a week for the last 35 years. So have his friends. I will say he and his age group have always put in big hours in order to get things done. This is nothing new. And no there was never any overtime. It was also done with the hopes of promotions and raises. Was this worth it? For a few it was. For others not so much." </p>
<p>I could have written this word for word, as well as your post #41 on interest rates. My dh still works crazy hours and brings home so much reading material every weekend. He’s well paid, but I don’t think it nearly compensates. My hours were also long back then and drinking at lunch was a terminable offense. </p>
<p>As for the high interest rates, when we bought our second house we did so under a mortgage program that qualified buyers at a rate 5% below the accrual rate and for the first five years there was built in negative amortization. We paid extra each month just to keep even. My kids cannot imagine double digit mortgage rates.</p>
<p>@scout59: There’s a great deal of burn out in the Big 4, just was there was in the Big 8 back in the day. One of my kids just left (Yay!) for a 20% raise. Unfortunately, the hours at the new job are just as bad but that appears to be temporary due to a crisis the new kid was hired to resolve. By year end things should be much better.</p>
<p>One of my kids has a great deal of flexibility working for a large employer. Perhaps because the company has other locations that are union shops, and they do a lot of government contract work, even the non-union locations do things very differently than dh or I have ever experienced. The company permits flex schedules for employees to pursue advanced degrees and even pays for programs that relate to the job. Most people work 40 hrs./9 days and take off every other Friday. I was concerned at first when I heard about not working overtime since I thought it might imply laziness. Then I learned that everyone has to track hours and OT can only be worked with prior approval (due, apparently, to govt. contracts.) Subsequent promotions, raises and bonuses have reassured me that there’s no issue with laziness. ; ) </p>
<p>Like sax and silpat, most of the boomers I know have a strong work ethic and even though they have put in their time/paid their dues (as it were) working long hours when they were the low men/women on the totem pole, they continue to do so, working 60+ hrs/week to get the job done. In many cases, working for international companies involves not only a good deal of travel, but being on conference calls/meetings at all hours of the night and day, with frequent weekend responsibilities. I don’t believe work ethic is age-based.</p>
<p>I believe that those who think that the perks offered by some of the top employers are merely to keep the people on sight are ill informed and narrow-minded. And probably jealous. Some of these companies have the highest employee satisfaction ratings and the employees report a comfortable work-life balance, with little turnover. Some of these companies offer incredible perks that encourage employee dedication and loyalty. This is not hard to understand. Or at least it shouldn’t be.</p>
<p>The tech companies are all about results. You can spend 100 hours and the next guy spends 10 hours to solve the same problem then you are not being efficient. It’s not always work harder but smarter. At least that’s what I learned from my first job.
Cobra, it’s true playing these games could be old but it’s also bring a lot of team bonding. So it’s not all bad.</p>
<p>I don’t know what bee got in your bonnet, @poetgrl. I did not say everyone works chained to desks. I said that three-martini kind of lunch does not seem to exist anymore and didn’t when I was younger, iether, in any of my experience. Because I don’t stay in one palce doesn’t mean I don’t work 50-60 hours a week, just like the young’uns do. </p>
<p>Hey, I’m for anyone figuring out how to make work/life work better. I don’t think one or another has figured it out. I do think that a responsibility to do what you sign on to do is very important, wwther your 25 or 55.</p>
<p>Very good points, DrGoogle. And whether a company has on site ping pong or foosball, or another has a company softball team (replaced in some cases in this generation by ultimate frisbee teams), its all good. Allows for some stress reduction, team building and a balance of camaraderie and healthy competition. Many companies focus on wellness- they offer on site gyms or off sight health club memberships, and will pay the monthly membership if the employee attends a certain number of times a month. My s’s run and bike ride with their boss. Again, its all good.</p>
<p>*** edit-- well all good except that Uncle Sam wants to tax these corporate benefits as income… <a href=“Silicon Valley Cafeterias Whet Appetite of IRS - WSJ”>http://online.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-cafeterias-whet-appetite-of-irs-1409612488</a></p>
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<p>Eh, this whole conversation annoys me. we should be teaching and bringing these kids along, learning from them, and listening. We should understand they face such an entirely different set of circumstances and work environment than in the past that we can’t even hope to judge. That’s why I brought up the martini lunches. Work changes. I’m glad these kids are refusing to be imprisoned by their corporate overlords. God knows our society is more and more feudal, with the executive lords and ladies up there on their thrones. It’s good to see the kids refuse to get in line for once. </p>
<p>Well, I don’t disagree with you. But I don’t think you or anyone is going to change corporate culture by individual choices from the inside. No one in my family chooses to be part of it, so in some ways the whole conversation is foreign to me.</p>
<p>I’m not even sure what you are arguing, since you say on one hand people always futzed around with work (martini lunches) then say that young folks are changing things by doing similar things.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t know what I am supposed to learn here. I don’t understand why anyone buys into corporate culture, but according to half the articles cited here, new workers are there because they expect to get rich.</p>
<p>There’s nothing to learn here. You can be the one saying “boy kids these days,” or you can say, “kids these days,” I guess. I think these articles are stupid. I don’t even know any kids like this and I know a lot of working kids in their twenties. </p>
<p>On another Kids these days thread, apparently a girl named Sally cant get a good job because…wait for it…she didn’t major in STEM. I’m sure you will be surprised to hear that. I know I was.</p>
<p>The only thing I really, truly want out of an office environment in my future is the lack of need for “face time”. I don’t know if that’s a representative of me or my generation but I want to get in, do my projects, collaborate with others, etc, etc but I don’t want to have to spend 9+ hours at the office every day to show my “dedication” to the company. If I have to because I’m working on something, by all means! I don’t want to do it to show some sense of loyalty. That should be apparent in the quality of my work rather than the time I’m sitting there with nothing to do but pretending to be “productive” </p>
<p>This happened quite often at my last job with the state. I was an hourly worker and there were days when I would come in and be told that there was literally nothing for me to do. Due to my position and the incredible bureaucracy imposed by our governor (long story) I couldn’t even be helpful if I wanted to. Every single project needed to be approved by an overhead before I could work on it and he was only in the office a few days a week. If he wasn’t there, I was out of luck. I submitted projects early but he underestimated how quickly I could get things done and wouldn’t approve the next until I completed the first. I can’t tell you how many times I rearranged the file cabinets because I couldn’t just sit there staring at the wall. But, I needed the money so I had to be physically present each hour to make money. I don’t ever want to do that again or anything close to it. </p>
<p>Outside of that, I don’t really care what amenities my office does or doesn’t have. </p>
<p>Government jobs. Whole other can of bureaucratic worms.</p>
<p>Romani, I am a boomer. None of my friends ever had jobs where they got a pension OR worked 40 hours. We were always expected to work far more than that…and for free, of course, because we were “professionals.” The prevalence of high-paying union jobs in Michigan–at least in the old days–was highly unusual. Most of us did not work for giant corporations with fabulous benefits. It is true that when we started to work, medical coverage was offered with most jobs. But that started to disappear for a lot of us just when we needed it.</p>
<p>And frankly, employers always made it clear that boomers were a dime a dozen. There were too many of us. As soon as we got to our forties, they started to fire us in droves because they could hire someone who was cheaper. Meanwhile, our parents’ generation rode the great wave of post WWII prosperity into retirement, although some of them ended up on the corporate rubbish heap also.</p>
<p>I can assure you that millennials do not work harder for less.</p>
<p>This argument is starting to remind me of the “mommy wars,” where stay-at-home moms and working moms take potshots at each other over who has it easier/is a better parent. Can we please just agree that nobody should have to work 80 hours a week just to get by?</p>
<p>I heard on the news today that the average number of hours a week worked in the US – including BOTH full-time and part-time workers – is 41+ hours. When you consider all the part-time work that’s included in that average, you realize what long weeks many full-time employees are working.</p>
<p>Neighbor’s brother retired many years ago with a full, HUGE pension form a state govt job (one of those 75-90% of last years pay) and then went right back to work for them as a contractor, essentially double dipping. And the state has had significant financial problems. No surprise.</p>
<p>romani, I am with you about trusting people to do their jobs no matter where they are and without rigid adherence to a schedule. I will say, though, that managing people who want to work at home can be a royal pain, especially in environments in which face time IS important and collaboration happens spontaneously.</p>
<p>jym, that practice happens in many states. I think it should be banned. If someone retires from the state as an engineer and then wants to go back to the private sector and do similar work, fine. But to game the system by “retiring” but then becoming a highly paid contractor while drawing benefits seems wrong. </p>