In this YouTube monologue, Tom (Ph.D.) reflects on a Boston Globe article titled “The New Me Generation,” which characterizes recent graduates—particularly those born after 1975—as narcissistic and entitled. He contrasts the traditional corporate advancement model (starting as a “nobody,” waiting one’s turn, gaining experience before earning a voice) with the attitudes of many younger workers who reject waiting and want immediate autonomy. Tom notes that some corporations label these younger employees as problematic and attempt to force them to conform to established rules. He invites viewers—especially those born after 1975—to share their thoughts on being called narcissistic, on the desire to bypass traditional hierarchies, and on whether they are entering or avoiding corporate careers, asking how they navigate or reject the longstanding corporate rule set.
Chapters
¡Hey, guys! It's Tom. You know, one of the things that I find most interesting about working with companies in our management consulting practice is that corporations have to deal with the same social issues that we all have to deal with in our lives because they're embedded in the culture, and the people who work in corporations are people who live in contemporary culture. The thing that brought this to mind today was an article that I read yesterday from this past weekend's Boston Globe. And the article is entitled "The New Me Generation." And the subtitle is, "The crop of talented recent graduates coming into today's workforce is widely seen as narcissistic and entitled." And those are their best qualities. And the article goes on to talk about this trend, social trend of young people, people born after— in my designation here— after 1975 coming into the workforce who are not as eager to buy into the traditional corporate rules for everything, for advancement, for determining what kind of work they do, and so on. You know, those rules pretty much say you wait your turn. You start off as a nobody and you are told what to do, often even how to do it, and then you get experience, and as you get experience, you earn the right to have a point of view, and you have a right to contribute, and you have a right to make choices about your own work, and so on. Now, according to this article, and according to my experience as well, there are young people coming into the corporate environment— if they're coming into the corporate environment at all— they're coming into the corporate environment and they're not all that enamored with those rules. In fact, they don't like those rules at all. And the article goes on to quote a lot of people who are trying to come to terms with this reality. And one of the ways in which the corporation is coming to terms with this— some corporations are coming to terms with this reality— is by calling these people narcissistic and saying, you know, this is a problem. You have to, you have to learn how to be a good corporate citizen and you have to, you know, you'll get your turn. So they're trying to use the same rules. Now, I'm really eager to have a conversation about this issue, but I'm really first of all interested in your thoughts. First of all, if you're born after 1975, what do you think about this idea of calling you narcissistic? And what about this idea of not waiting your turn, of just wanting to be able to do whatever you want when you want to do it? I'm very interested in your thoughts about that. I'll put the link to the article over in the description, and I'm really interested in your ideas about going into a corporate workforce and your thoughts about, um, if you are in a corporate workforce, how you're dealing with this set of rules that has always existed in corporations. And secondly, if you are not considering going into a corporate workforce, how come? What do you think about how you might want to work, um, that is more in keeping with your own sense of yourself, uh, as maybe, um, more entitled than previous generations have been. So thanks a lot. Looking forward to your thoughts on this one a lot. So take care. Bye-bye.
