The Panel “Why Gen Y wants to work with you, not for you” kind of turned into a very lightly moderated conversation between panelists and audience members. Some people just started shouting questions and unfortunately panelists rewarded this by answering back. It was less about why Gen Y wants to work with people, and concentrated more on one of two things.
1) Gen Y rules!
2) Gen Y sucks!
Early on in the panel, I tweeted out “Web entrepreneur @Jason Calacanis calls us Generation Suck, I hope to see evidence otherwise at this panel #sxgeny”
To my surprise, I get a response from the entrepreneur Mr. Calacanis himself “@scott_leighton I’m not at sxsw!” (I don’t know if he thought I was saying he was at the panel, but I was just using his quote as context that some people don’t view us favorably at all.)
So I sent back “@Jason Yea, I’m at a panel about Gen Y at SXSW, I just remember you saying that on a TWiST (Jason Calacanis’ weekly Podcast about startups).
Jason: “@scott_leighton well most of gen y has no work ethic, yes. But internet/sxsw peeps are exception and small % of gen y me thinks.”
Me: “@Jason I hope your wrong. Maybe a bit too early to tell. I have mixed views on the matter”
And Mr. Calacanis responded by saying: “@scott_leighton the good news is a lot of dolphins and the rain forrest will be taken care of! :-p Gen y loves the causes and free time!”
So while my impromptu conversation with Mr. Calacanis was not an official part of the panel, I think it sums up the panel conversation that did happen.
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I have heard from many older people that our generation is lazy and in my opinion it is both true and untrue. I believe that a lot of our generation does take things for granted and feels like we are entitled to things without having to work for them. I also believe that a lot of our generation has a great work ethic and that we do understand that we can’t just expect to be given everything on a silver platter.
Sometimes I think that people from different generations think this because our generation does have so much more technology at our finger tips and truthfully that can make a lot of things easier for us, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we aren’t willing to put in the work. Also things are just different for our generation then for those before us. We’ve grown up in a different world than our parents and I do think we are more for causes because we like to see change and know that we were a part of it and thankfully the media is a great tool for us to use to make that impact.