The young people now entering the workforce have been called Generation Y. Many of us call them the Entrepreneurial Generation or the “E” Generation due their high rates of business start-up right out of, or even while in school. An article from the Boston Globe argues that the “E” stands for Entitlement just as much as it stands for Entrepreneurial.
They are…the upstarts at the office who put their feet on their desks, voice their opinions frequently and loudly at meetings, and always volunteer — nay, expect — to take charge of the most interesting projects. They are smart, brash, even arrogant, and endowed with a commanding sense of entitlement.
Perhaps their entitled attitudes are part of what is making them so entrepreneurial as seen from this quote from that same article.
“They have been groomed, they’ve been told that they are the best, and they’ve seen people from this same generation make millions of dollars just before them. They think, ‘I want to be the next Google, Amazon, or eBay. After all, these companies were founded by young people. Now it’s my turn.'”
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal examines how employers are changing benefits and perks to meet this new generation of workers.
And family-friendly companies are looking very different today than they did a few years ago. The waning of boomers with their uptight ways, and the rise of the we-want-it-all millennials, are spurring major shifts in employer programs.
Whether they are entrepreneurial, entitled or both, they sure are keeping those of us who teach entrepreneurship busy!
(Thanks to Steve King who writes Small Biz Labs for passing the Globe along).
Sense of Entitlement
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