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J.T. O’Donnell is a career coach, advice columnist and author. In addition to her book, 
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Managers: What’s Your Definition of ‘Grown Up?’
I was chatting with Ryan Healy this week about his post on moving back home. Given my line of work, I know the number of college grads who are returning to the parental nest is high. I even heard once that more than 70 percent of the graduating class of one of our most prestigious and expensive American universities said in a survey they planned to move home too.
There’s actually a term people are using to describe college grads who move back to take advantage of nice living quarters, laundry service, good food and the various other perks living at home provides: KIPPERS. (Which stands for ‘Kids in Parents Pockets Eating Retirement Savings.’) A more commonly known term is ‘Boomerang Kids.’ Both are meant to be humorous, but we all know, humor is usually rooted in truth – or at least in perception. Which leads to one of the major concerns I hear from corporate managers today: When will Gen-Y grow up?
Yes, clients I work with all seem very focused on getting Gen-Y to realize they need to be responsible for themselves. They are frustrated by the fact that when they graduated, they were forced to, as one client told me, “live in a roach infested apartment, eating Ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” They see Gen-Y heading back to the comforts of home and start to think this will be the generation who ‘fails to launch’ into adulthood. Moreover, they view Gen-Y’s job hopping as a product of how they are able to, ‘take this job and shove it,’ because no one is making them pay the bills and survive on their own.
In short, managers don’t think Gen Yers are acting grown up, and they don’t want to invest in them because they consider them unreliable. As I told Ryan, I actually have personal experience with this mentality. Let me share…
In the very first years of my own career, I went in and proposed myself for a new position that was being created in the start-up firm I was working for at the time. I had been with the company a little over a year. I told my boss, an ex-marine and former Fortune 500 manager, I was perfect for the job because I was young, single, and had no spouse, kids, or mortgage to worry about. I stressed that this made me totally available to give the job 200 percent. His response: “That’s the exact reason why I don’t want to hire you.”
I almost fell off my chair. He proceeded to explain, “I want to invest in someone who will stay put. I don’t want you to get the job up and running and then just take off for a better opportunity. So, I want someone with a big mortgage, a spouse, AND kids. Someone with personal obligations that will keep them loyal and productive.”
Without saying it directly, I could tell my boss did not see me as a ‘grown up.’ Which also meant, I wasn’t going to get any sort of position of significance until I met his definition. What do you think I did? I’ll tell you shortly, but let me offer this first:
There have been endless discussions on turnover and the lack of loyalty amongst Gen-Y being attributed to their child-like acts of entitlement on-the-job. Corporate America, it’s time to take a closer look at Gen-Y’s current career reality and what’s driving those actions.
Today, the average college student has $17,000 in debt upon graduation. In the last 20 years, the cost of inflation has severely outpaced the increase in starting salaries. And let’s not forget that our society expects everyone to have a degree, which means a diploma doesn’t give you a “leg up,” just a ticket to the career starting line.
Finally, we must recognize that universities don’t prepare every student for the workforce. Colleges focus primarily on teaching students how to learn, not how to find the right career and be a good worker. For many, their first job after college is also their first experience in the professional world. Therefore, every college grad today is bound to mistakes and adjustments to their careers over the first 5-10 years, which will hopefully teach them how to identify and achieve the personal and professional satisfaction they seek.
I suggest companies recognize that Gen-Y needs your help gaining their independence, not your criticism. Offer professional development opportunities in the forms of customized career and financial coaching to your young professionals. Give them the chance to learn how they can achieve their goals with your help.
Yes, they may still leave you, but I assure you, they will remember you fondly and recommend their peers to you. And any HR manager will tell you, WOMP (Word of Mouth Potential) is the best recruiting and retention tool a company’s got. As the saying goes, “if you set them free, and it’s meant to be, they will come back to you.”
Young professionals often need to jump jobs in order to leverage what they have learned, not to mention, be able to have additional experiences that will make them a more valuable asset (potentially for you!) in the future. I know many, many people who have left firms only to return to them several years later, prepared and excited to do great things for the company who has welcomed them back. So invest in Gen-Y employees, regardless of whether or not you think they’ll stay, and you’ll see a return one way or another.
I’ll end by telling you that one week after meeting with my boss, he brought me in his office and said, “Against my better judgment, I’m giving you the job.” I spent the next nine months building, learning, and growing in the position. And then, I took that experience and landed myself a new job someplace else.
Yes, I left him, just as he predicted, for the reasons he outlined. He wouldn’t speak to me for my final two weeks. I’ve never seen him since and I wasn’t comfortable ever using him as a reference. I just couldn’t be sure he would talk objectively about my skills and abilities. On that last day, I made a promise to myself that I would never do that to a young professional in my employ when they gave their notice – and I never have. In fact, at my subsequent jobs, I actually became known as the manager to reach out to if you wanted to leave because I would help individuals find a new job on the condition they would help me find their replacement.
Eventually, I left corporate America and became a career coach and HR/workplace consultant. I honestly think my experience with my former manager is one of the reasons I do what I do today. So, I hope somewhere he is out there, reading this post, and knows that I am actually grateful for the entire experience - all of it. And, I hope all managers reading this will think seriously about the long-term benefits of investing in Gen-Y as well.
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“There’s actually a term people are using to describe college grads who move back to take advantage of nice living quarters, laundry service, good food and the various other perks living at home provides: KIPPERS. (Which stands for ‘Kids in Parents Pockets Eating Retirement Savings.’)”
Just to be fair: it’s easy to roll your eyes at the KIPPERS described here, but I doubt that this describes the majority of graduates moving home. Certainly, some folks move home after college for while to take advantage of “nice living quarters” while they look for employment, but they are often doing their own laundry, cooking their own meals (for themselves and their families), and often paying rent, albeit a reduced “token” rent that may at least cover a fair share of heat and electricity. I suspect that the picture painted here of the video gaming couch potato may only be a small minority.
“… we must recognize that universities don’t prepare every student for the workforce. Colleges focus primarily on teaching students how to learn, not how to find the right career and be a good worker.”
“I suggest companies recognize that Gen-Y needs your help gaining their independence, not your criticism.”
This is where I start getting frustrated, not with this article so much — trying hard not to shoot the messenger — but with recent parenting methods. So the schools are expected to teach all social skills, universities are supposed to teach career skills, and the workplace is now supposed to help GenY gain its independence. Where is the role of the parents in all these life lessons, or even — dare I say it? — personal responsibility?
I am one of those people “with a big mortgage, a spouse, and kids” and I will still switch jobs if the opportunity is there. I bought the house, got married and became a stepparent while switching jobs and then switching managers. It’s hard for me to know if the added responsbilities would have made my previous managers take me more seriously.
Unfortunately, even with a house, spouse and kids a lot of managers refuse to accept that people will look elsewhere. So many companies these days are more worried about their profits than their people. In an ideal world, shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Maybe it’s just my cynicism, but I think a lot of the criticism continually repeated about Gen Y is absolutely true. It’s funny that while I adamantly disagree that I fit into 90% of the stereotype, I was initially willing to extend that same benefit of the doubt to other young professionals as I was looking for a job. But as I hit one year in the corporate world, I see that more often than not, the criticism is deserved.
About 2-3 months into my job I took over the significant responsibilities that I have now and transitioned into my role extremely well. Within a month I had one of my team members jokingly ask my manager if I had a girlfriend. “Why?� he asked. “Because I don’t want him to leave Chicago!� was the answer, as they knew I had no family or strong ties here. Obviously they feared what is typical, that I’d be leaving them much too soon.
And sure enough, I will be. At just over my year mark I’ll be leaving for something I’ve always wanted to do, something that I’ll now be able to do and that I’ve been looking forward to for years. But I can absolutely see it from their point of view. Their initial worry had nothing to do with being grown up, it had to do with impatience, another dreaded Gen Y criticism. And while my answer to their question “How long would you intend to stay before searching for other opportunities?� was an honest “year and a half, two years� I still feel as though they expected more, even if I didn’t allude to it.
The irony comes that so many people want to be taken seriously, and talk about how they won’t leave jobs, etc, and yet they all have firsthand experience with it, myself included. It’s just not productive to always be saying “but that was an exception!� when it isn’t. Instead we should focus on doing quality work, being honest about timeframes, and changing the perception that staying at a job for years is the only acceptable option, and anything less reflects poorly. The problem, as I see it, is the expectation of years of service to someone who hasn’t even gotten their feet wet.
I don’t think I (or young professionals I know) need help gaining independence, we just need a little understanding that we might give a position a fair shot, and not have it held against us if we want to leave after a year. That’s a bigger problem than any other.
I think J.T.’s story is very telling. Common sense would tell you that managers want the best employee possible. They should want someone devoted to the job, someone flexible, and someone who will put their career first.
In reality, many managers want someone who needs the job. They want employees who are dependent on the company to survive. They don’t want a young single go-getter who could “survive” in a variety of different roles.
Maybe this is why everyone is so frustrated with Gen-Y. Maybe this is why they call us entitled. Why don’t recruiters just come out and say,
“I want a mediocre worker who will put blind faith in my company and go through the motions 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, because they have too.”
If this is kindly explained to us “entitled” Gen-Yers, then maybe we won’t try to perform exceptionally. Maybe we won’t continue to look for a great job when we already have a decent one.
Wait, who am I kidding? If they did that, Gen-Y would no longer have the upper hand. Everyone would stop talking about us and we would follow the status quo, go through the motions and accept mediocrity. That doesn’t sound like very much fun to me.
-Ryan
“I want to invest in someone who will stay put. I don’t want you to get the job up and running and then just take off for a better opportunity. So, I want someone with a big mortgage, a spouse, AND kids. Someone with personal obligations that will keep them loyal and productive.�
This is pretty much what my fiance’s boss said to him. They were THRILLED when he proposed to me, and are trying to get him to move up closer to work. But, they’re making him work 70 hours a week, so if we had kids, it would be a mess. It’s gonna backfire on them, he wants to leave because of the crazy schedule. It’s too bad, it does pay well.
I have to think this issue more than anything is a huge dividing line between GenX and Millennials. When I got out of college (with uncertain ambitions and no “real” job), moving back in with the folks was NOT AN OPTION in big, throbbing capital letters. It wasn’t on their radar and it sure wasn’t on mine. Whatever I paid in rent for my crummy third-floor walk-up on 145th street was a bargain compared to the “rent” of living at home for “free.” It’s not that my parents weren’t supportive - rather the opposite. They did not consider it helpful to prolong my adolescence. This was pretty much the experience of my entire peer group in my 20s. It was much better to live poor than “surrender” and move back in to the old rambler.
I have no issues with people doing what they have to do for economic reasons, but it definitely strikes this hardcore Xer as strange to make boomeranging an affirmative life choice for aspiring professionals. I tend to see personal independence is a fundamental ambition. As an employer looking for hungry young talent, I’d be inclined to wonder if someone were willing to compromise about that, what else might they compromise? Other GenX employers I know share this same attitude. For what it’s worth, I recognize this as a generational bias, but it’s definitely one that takes some work for me to get around.
I agree with Sean. I don’t like that people make excuses for our generation about why the majority are under-prepared for the real world, blaming it on colleges, parenting, whatever.
By the time you get to college, you are old enough to be responsible for yourself. No matter how your parents raised you, you decide what kind of person you’ll be. I’ve known people who have grown up basically without parents who have gone on to do wonderful things, so hearing stories of helicopter parents hindering their children from future success is ridiculous to me.
And it is certainly not your college’s job to make you an adult. That’s not what you’re paying them for. Becoming an adult is your responsibility. If it’s a problem that your first professional experience is after college, do something about it. Get an internship. Find out what your field, and work in general, is all about.
The biggest problem that other generations have with ours seems to be pretty justified. Lots of us would rather spend our time blaming others for our issues than “growing up” and taking responsibility for our own successes and failures.
What I find telling is that older generations seem to ignore that they are one of the main reasons for this very Gen Y mentality that they so decry. We’re called Boomerang kids for a reason - our parents Helicopter us and beg us to come back home. They work themselves to death, setting the anti-example, and tell us to keep our options open.
Most/many boomer managers are also boomer parents. Is the disconnect just that they don’t want to face their role in creating this mentality that they seem to disagree so much with?
Not that I’m saying that boomers’ impact is a bad thing - hey, we have more opportunities than any other generation before us too, and that’s also thanks to them, but someone has to realize that good, bad and ugly, we didn’t get ourselves in this boat all by ourselves.
“We’re called Boomerang kids for a reason - our parents Helicopter us and beg us to come back home.”
Tiffany makes a great point. I realize this site is EMPLOYEEEVOLUTION, not PARENTINGEVOLUTION, but many of these issues seem to stem from the faulty parenting techniques of the 80s and 90s. “Self esteem” was elevated at any cost. There were no consequences for wrongdoing. Mediocrity was celebrated as “a different kind of special.” Parents who worked hard to keep food on the table were taught to feel guilty because “quality time” and their children’s happiness were sacrificed. When grades slipped, first teachers were blamed, then school systems were blamed, then government was blamed, leaving only the parents and the students themselves without blemish. What a scam!
And now these poor GenY-ers, who have never EVER been told that they are anything less than shining examples of humanity (I realize that I’m starting to over generalize), are out in the working world, competing with people who may in fact have more talent, more drive, and more ability. And we wonder why they’d prefer to live in their parents’ basements?
But here’s the silver lining: GenX (and even GenY) are starting to have children of their own, and I see a lot of my peers who are parents turning their backs on that kind of parenting. Accountability and discipline are starting to mean something again. I guess we’ll have to see what happens, and I realize the pendulum might swing back too far in the other direction, but I’m encouraged and optimistic.
Understandably, companies just want efficient cogs in the wheel who will stay in the wheel and won’t need replacements any time soon.
Hi Everyone,
Thanks for the great commentary. I am in agreement that their should be accountability across the board. Everyone (young people, their parents, the education system & corporate America) share in the blame. I’ve personally experienced the following:
1) Had college seniors stare at me in disbelief when I show them how to create a personal budget so they can determine what they’ll need to earn in salary in order to live on their own. For many, it’s the first time they’ve had someone walk them through the process. And, when I tell them the average starting salary for a college grads these days is $40K and then show them what that breaks down to against living expenses, they are shocked and often angry because no one has introduced this to them sooner.
2) Had parents call me shouting and cursing, saying, “I can’t believe I paid that much money for a college education and my kid doesn’t even know what he/she wants to do for work or how to find a job.”
3) Been told by campus career centers that they don’t need a professional development program because, “We have plenty of career resources, the students are just too lazy or not interested in thinking about their careers until after they graduate and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Yet, all that being said, I still feel corporate America needs to ’step up’ and start providing some better professional development for Gen Y, especially since they need them to keep their businesses growing both now, and in the future. Boomers have been focused on the bottom line their entire careers. But now, with more than 80% of the industries in America being led by Boomers who plan to retire in the next 5-10 years, it’s time they switched gears and started thinking seriously about succession planning, which starts by investing some significant time and energy in the development of talent…younger talent.
“Yet, all that being said, I still feel corporate America needs to ’step up’ and start providing some better professional development for Gen Y, especially since they need them to keep their businesses growing both now, and in the future.”
It’s sure to change as the decades pass and the boomers retire (assuming they’re ever able to retire; don’t get me started), but a philosophy I’ve been overhearing lately is that in terms of succession planning, some companies would like to “skip” GenY. The boomers will retire, handing the reigns to GenX. GenX will eventually retire, and hand the reigns to whoever comes after GenY.
Obviously, this is unrealistic, short-sighted, and far too pessimistic. The people from whom I’ve heard sentiments like these have often never managed or even worked with a GenY person. But that “immature and entitled” stereotype that you read about does linger.
Fascinating topic. As another GenX manager, I agree with Rob about being a little skeptical when GenY’ers are so willing to live at home. I don’t immediately jump to this conclusion, but it does cross my mind to wonder whether they’re not willing/able to tolerate some hardships in pursuit of a larger goal (i.e., tolerating ramen and a really crappy apartment with too many roommates for a few years in exchange for independence), and how that might manifest at work.
That said, I also agree that companies need to be more realistic and supportive of exiting employees. Frankly, there’s a selfish reason to — if people know that they won’t get the silent treatment when they announce they’re leaving, they’re more likely to give us a lot of notice, which is great because it gives me more time to find a replacement and train them without having a vacancy meanwhile. I love it when people give huge amounts of notice (I’ve had people give six months notice before, when planning to go back to grad school), and I know they do it only because they know they won’t be penalized for it.
In fact, our staff manual includes this paragraph: “We hope good employees will stay with us for a long time. However, if you at some point decide that it is time to move on, we strongly encourage you to feel comfortable being candid with your supervisor when you begin to look for other opportunities. Not only does this give us advance time to plan, but it also allows us to offer you assistance in your search when possible. (In particular, our hiring staff is always happy to provide advice about cover letters, resumes, and interviewing.) Although we hate to lose good employees, we want to do what we can to help you along your career path.”
I wish more companies did this.
I think it’s smart to move back home if your parents are ok with it, as long as you can get along with them, and they aren’t too restrictive. Working all day for independence isn’t much of an independent lifestyle. When you do make it financially, if you end up with a mortgage and kids, that’s not much of an independent lifestyle, either, but I guess that’s what companies want.
Much of this discussion — living at home, paying bills, parenting, etc. — is interesting, but I think misses the central point of a worker (Gen Y or not) being able to do the work. Can this person perform on this job?
When I’m evaluating a person, I need to evaluate the performance against the requirements of the job. End of story. And if I can provide growth within the job and help a person increase their job skills, then all the better to help that person both be more successful in a career and perhaps help the company. That’s called on the job training and it includes skills, working with a team, learning about processes, and solving problems. From that, we all learn.
So managers who want someone with “a mortgage, spouse, and kids” is certainly clueless and falls into the category Ryan points out above. This is, unfortunately, more prevalent that it should be in the workplace.
And as for leaving, Corporate Earth has proven time and again that loyalty to the corporation does not pay for the employee. Corporate Earth will transfer you, downgrade you, promote you and lay you off in a heartbeat for the benefit of the corporation, not for the benefit of you. Given this reality, it should be no surprise that people take responsibility for their own careers and will show the same loyalty to a company as the company has shown them: none.
Working for a company has become a transactional loyalty event; I will do the best on this position as a transaction in my career and then move on to the next transaction in my career — whether it is with this company or a different one.
Not much of that is Gen Y specific, except that the on the job training aspects are different because this is typically early career training.
So my definition of grown up: can you do the work the job requires?
I agree with you, Scott, except that a hiring manager is always going to be looking at additional factors, not just a straight assessment of whether the person can perform a job — i.e., how will they take criticism, how will they handle mistakes, what level of commitment will they show if the work sometimes requires working late, what will they be like to work with every day, do they have an abrasive personality, and so forth. In most jobs, witih most hiring managers, it’s going to be about a big picture picture than just competence.
Dovetailing a bit with Ask a Manager’s response to Scot Herrick: I’d submit that the concept of the “transactional loyalty event” is too pessimistic. It’s true that corporations have broken the trust in many ways, but down here at ground level, the folks making hiring and firing decisions for their individual segments and project teams are still thrilled when we find someone willing to develop with us and stay for the long haul. Of course nothing is guaranteed anymore, but don’t believe everything you hear about the gloomy corporate picture: loyalty is still desired and rewarded.
@Ask a Manager — I include all of those things mentioned as part of being competent to do the work. There is the job skills of a person as well as the people skills of a person fitting into the job with the team. I, perhaps, wrote the comment a bit narrowly and didn’t define competence for the job so that these other factors were clear.
Also, I’m a big, big fan of figuring out what a person likes to be working on and then providing more of that type of work — they do well at it and will learn more from it.
@Sean — I don’t think “transactional loyalty” is overly pessimistic; but I do think it is a good reality to keep in mind. I have worked on some really great teams, with each of us demonstrating great loyalty to each other and to the work being done. The “transactional” part of it comes with the fact that (larger) corporations tend to reorganize themselves every 6-9 months and the team composition that you were loyal to is now significantly changed and the loyalty needs to be rebuilt. I love to be loyal to my teammates in the work that we are doing.
I’d add that at the team level there is only so much growing that can be done by a specific individual and to continue learning in a career path, it is necessary to leave the team to another department or to another company. I consider it a shining success for me as a manager to have one of my people do well in my group and get promoted to another group — and I don’t want to hold a person back because of loyalty to the team or to me.
One level above the team, however, is the reality that a company will lay you off in a heartbeat if the need is there. Witness Countrywide laying off 500, then 900 more, and now 12,000 more just in the last three months. This, after hiring 6,000 people from January to June of this year. There is no loyalty at the corporate level at all and each of us needs to be cognizant of the fact.
Hope all this helps in terms of understanding. There are some really good comments on this post.
“There is no loyalty at the corporate level at all and each of us needs to be cognizant of the fact.”
@Scot: I don’t mean to minimize your experience, but mine simply hasn’t been the same. I do see reorganizations in my company, and of course people move around from group to group as you describe, but generally to their own benefit and the benefit of the company; actual layoffs have been few and far between. Countrywide is good example of one extreme, but bear in mind, there are major problems throughout that entire industry. The media has focused on a few “big problem” companies over the last few years, but I’m not sure we can paint every company with such a broad brush … again, for those of us in the trenches: it makes far more fiscal sense to hire good people, to train them up as necessary, and to keep them as long as they will stay with us.
First I’d like to say I enjoyed reading this post and all of the discussions.
One thing that I would like to add as a reason that GenYers opt to move back home is I believe we are planners. I have seen too many boomers work day in and day out just to find that at the end of the road retirement is not really an option at the age they were hoping. It is a fairly new concept to start planning for retirement at age 25.
From what I have seen some people from generations before us have a so-so job and wake up one day and they have been there 5 years which turns into 10. Myself and my friends on the other hand consult our plan at each milestone. I just hit the 1 year mark at my current job and my thought process is: have I gotten everything out of this job, is there room for me to grow, does this provide stepping stones to my ultimate goal.
I may be classified as an “entitled” Gen Yer but I feel like the employee/business relationship should be win win. If I know on day 365 that I don’t want to be at a job for 4 more years than I feel like it would be just as fair to assume that someone else could provide a better service to that company.
The age of growing old with a company has come and gone. This year I watched my step-mom who has worked for 1 company for 33 years get left out to dry. The company went through a buy out and she was given 6 weeks severance. This does not give me any motivation to stay at a company in hopes that my loyalty will beget loyalty to me.
For me it seems that changing jobs provides us more of an opportunity to ask for what we want. I don’t feel like I could go to my boss who has owned this company for over 50 years and say so I’ve decided that 401k matching is important to me. The best I can do is realize that when I started this job that wasn’t a priority to me but on my next job search that is something I will want as a benefit.
GenYers are surrounded by people who tell us, “I wish I had …,” “you can be whatever you want,” and “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” I think we are acting out the wishes of our parents which sometimes our employers resent because those employers are from the same era as our parents.
If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten … I have no desire to get what my parents have gotten, consequently I must do things a different way. Figuring out my own way is part of the growing up process.