"Millennials in the Mist... My Letter to the Wall Street Journal" from [the website] If We Ran It

by Alex Steed

Published October 23, 2008 @ 03:02PM PT

Michael Romanowicz of If We Ran It just sent a link to a post called Millennials in the Mist... My Letter to the Wall Street Journal. I loved it so much I asked if I could post it here. Needless to say, they said yes.

Check it:

Millennials in the Mist... My Letter to the Wall Street Journal by Michael French

…weeds rustling…

Australian accent: “Alright…everybody be very quiet. We’re now approaching the jungle grove. Wait! What’s that over there?! Everybody down! Crouch down! Crikey…if you look over there, just beyond the brush…it’s…it’s…it’s a pack of wild millennials!”

I feel studied…and thrown into a cage with a bunch of really stupid apes that look just like me.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from Ron Alsop’s book “The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace,” creatively titled, “The ‘Trophy Kids’ Go to Work.” The following is a response to the article we’re submitting to the Journal’s Op-Ed Department:

Dear Wall Street Journal,

Thank you for publishing an excerpt from Ron Alsop’s latest book “The Trophy Kids Grow Up…” in Monday’s Careers section. I, as well as many of my millennial peers, enjoyed the comments, quotes and insights from a perspective other than our own.

I am writing this letter on the behalf of If We Ran It, a platform for showcasing the personalities, trends and ideas powering youth culture.

While “The Trophy Kids Grow Up…” seems like a very well-researched and put together book, I do take reservation with the excerpts provided in Monday’s paper as I believe they discount the importance (and influence) of motivated millennials in the workforce and paint a portrait of snotty, crib-rocking goldbrickers expecting to work 20 hours a week and collecting $100,000 a year upon point of entry. The millennials I know and work with on a daily basis could not be further from this generalized definition.

My colleagues and I certainly believe in hard work and earning our keep, sometimes working 10-hour days to go home and hack away on our side hustles and sister projects for 3 hours before getting 6 hours of sleep, to wake up and do it all over again.

Our reluctance to stay at one job for too long comes from our desire to be inspired and to do interesting things with our lives. Stagnancy is a curse. Interdisciplinarity is the way of the future.

Our desire to be involved in company-wide decisions and quickly ascend the steps of the corporate temple stems from our belief that collaboration, transparency and multi-faceted skill sets will provide the boost this country needs to maintain its greatness.

A percentage of youngters certainly do wave flags of unchecked entitlement. But they feel entitled the same way that the Boomers feel entitled to social security taxes coming out of all our checks, and the same way I feel entitled to have mustard with my hot dog at the ballpark.

I think millennials are not “entitled” as much as we are “expectant.” We expect the best out of this country and the system we’ve inherited. Because our parents were (and are) such inspirational, caring and hard-working individuals, we expected to inherit a secure future. For this belief I will never apologize.

I will also never apologize for not coveting a job where I will essentially do the same thing for 40 years, waiting for my pension. My parents have always encouraged me to be the best I can, as often as I can, so I’ll never have to suffer the way they did, or their own parents did. They wanted to provide me with the most sanguine reality possible.

If optimism = arrogance, please consider us the most arrogant group of individuals on the planet. It is our belief that the structure of operating a business needs to be changed in order for this country to adapt to the needs of a perpetually evolving world.

All we are trying to do is carve our own path, outlive the long and monolithic shadows of our parents and provide your grandchildren with an incredible, and acceptable, inheritance. Thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts with your readers.

Very Best,

Michael James Francello