The other big reason is that, with the time I do spend in front of my Macbook, I’d rather be reading insightful posts than trying to craft my own. Reading, I’d say, is about 95% of the reason I use the internet.

Yes, Viriginia, I do enjoy reading on the internet

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about. It’s something I’ve been seeing again and again from so-called ‘business leaders’ (who like to talk about ‘integrated verticals’ which, I think, breaks the record for two words who, together, mean absolutely nothing at all) who fancy themselves exports on the web. They claim that people do not read on the internet.

Not to single anybody out, since I came across this quote as the result of a random search, but take this article from masternewmedia.org titled Online Reading Habits: How much content do web audiences read?:

Though hard to believe for most, a recent research study shows that “on average, users will have time to read 28% of the words if they devote all of their time to reading. More realistically, users will read about 20% of the text on the average page.”

I don’t quibble with the result of the research, but what I do quibble with is the conclusion that’s often reached as a result. It’s the Pro Blogger mantra, calling ‘wordiness’ a sign, and recommending lite content, full of easy-to-digest lists and giant pictures. In essence, it’s calling for an almost-illiterate web.

I’m not an elitist. I like lists. I like pictures. I skim articles when I come across them. But I also, and I am going to bold this, like to read on the internet. I like reading long, interesting articles. I like encountering so-called “walls of text” when I know it’s subject matter written by a talented writer. Never have I encountered a post by Gruber or 37signals and thought “Damn, I wish this content was presented in the form of a Top-10 list.

I like to read on the internet. I like to read paragraphs on the internet. Maybe I’m not a large audience, or even a common audience, but I am an audience, and I hope that the talented writers out there, drowning in a sea of advice calling for short, easily-digestible, content-free writing on the internet, are aware that readers like me exist.

Postscript: What makes a good blog?

Man-about-town Merlin Mann has a post titled What makes a good blog?. It’s really good. The best bit:

Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated. They show some level of craft, thinking, and continuity beyond the word count mandated by the Owner of Your Plantation. If a blog has fixed limits on post minimums and maximums? It’s not a blog: it’s a website that hires writers. Which is fine. But, it’s not really a blog.

Exactly.

As we move through new generations, blogging is going to become a very common tactic for businesses. It works better than the traditional brochure-style website, because a blog creates a strong connection with the reader. It’s more like having a conversation than viewing a commercial. It gives your business personality. And personality on a corporate level is more important than ever. (Look at Apple versus Dell, as an example.)

But if we let blogs descend into a swamp of nothing but links, lists and funny pictures, we’re never going to get anywhere meaningful. To be honest, I’m a little concerned that maybe we’ve already passed that point of no return. But, hell, all I can really think to do that might help is say, proudly and over and over again, that I like to read on the internet.

Photo by rosefirering. Licensed under Creative Commons

The Nova Scotia government is looking at switching to a four-day work week in a bid to conserve energy.

Energy Minister Richard Hurlburt said Thursday the idea came up during a brainstorming session at Conserve Nova Scotia, a government agency that encourages people to use energy more efficiently.

Of all the reasons to consider a four day work week, I think energy savings is probably the weakest — especially in a more rural province like Nova Scotia, where people will likely spend their extra day off driving around.

But I do think the four-day work week is a great idea for a lot of industries. Working four 10-hour days as opposed to five eight-hour days means more ‘core time’ and less time winding up and winding down. Plus, three days gives people the chance to actually get away on the weekend and come back feeling refreshed.

I know it’s something 37signals has done to great success. I’d be interested to hear about other examples.

Studies continuously show that we’d rather feel like we’re contributing something or building our skills than we would just sit around, twiddling our thumbs, collecting a salary while waiting for those higher on the ladder to either retire or get high by a cement truck. Even if that salary is large, we’re often still not content: only about 20% of the interviewees stated that salary levels were “very important” to them.

Is this a bad trait? Not really. The same studies also show that Gen Y employees are completely willing to work their asses off if the right opportunity comes their way. It’s only if we feel stuck in some soulless, static position that we start to show off some of that now-infamous Generation Y laziness.

Where things DO become problematic, though, is that I think we often don’t give our employers a chance. We can be impatient, and we can be impulsive. If we don’t feel immediately like we’re being valued in a position, we’re liable to job hop, skipping from one employer to the next in the hopes of finding the position that does give us meaning right away.

The reality is that most employers are not going to thrust their new employees into important and meaningful work from day one. And their reasons for not doing so are actually pretty solid. First, because it can be business suicide to give something that could seriously impact your company’s bottom line to a untested newbie. Second, because they’ve likely been burned before by people leaving less than a year into the job.

You can see the Catch-22, can’t you? It’s that big, obvious thing heading straight at us. Young people don’t want to wait around for meaning, so they leave. Employers don’t want to give their new people big projects, because new people are notorious for leaving after a few months on the job.

It has all the qualities of a vicious cycle, and indeed, I’ve heard anecdotal reports of people bouncing around, from entry-level position to entry-level position. These are often talented, well-prepared, skilled individuals, but after eight months of doing nothing but shuffling paper around and watching older, more seasoned employees juggle all sorts of meaningful projects, they bail out.

I think this is one situation where the younger people need to adjust more than the employers do. Gen Y needs to remember that it can’t be so idealistic to think that they can just slide into a high-paying, high-responsibility position² and that, in this case especially, patience is a virtue.

However, employers need to understand that this attitude is commonplace, and adjust for it. Even just a little communication goes a long way here. Give constant feedback, let your young employees know where you see them going in the organization. The absolute worst thing you do is just leave them behind their desk, convinced that all they’re ever going to do is staple, copy and add formulas to your spreadsheets.

In sum: patience and communications. They just might be the fundamental building blocks of the effective intergenerational office.

Photo by gilberts. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. NGO is a really stupid, term, by the way. Here are a list of literal non-governmental organizations: Wal-Mart, McDonalds, The Pittsburgh Steelers, Sony, Ben & Jerry’s. But I digress.
2. Yes, this is true even if you went to Grad School. I know they might have tried to convince you otherwise.

Lying during the interview process it’s so common it’s almost not worth talking about. Some studies peg “the rate of lying on resumes or in job interviews at 20 to 44 percent. That includes lies about past degrees, jobs and responsibilities.” And that’s just outright lying — the kind that you really probably shouldn’t do, because it’s not entirely ethical. And it can get you fired.

Add to that, though, all the casual lying that occurs as part of the process. These are omissions, small mistruths and skillfully engineered negatives that become positives. Job education practically recommends applicants do this kind of lying: how many strategies for answering typical job interview questions recommend being straight-up? Almost none of them. Otherwise people would be answering that damned “What’s your biggest weakness?” question with honest answers like “punctuality”, “personal hygiene” or “a tendency toward white-hot rage.”

That never happens.

The job interview — and the whole hiring process, really — has become a game of deception and often lies. And Generation Y is the first generation to really embrace that. Because, hell, we’ve been trained to approach it as such by our boomer parents and our Gen X siblings and friends. It’s become a simple formula: play the game, win the company over, get the job.

The problem, of course, is that it never ends there. You have to go on to work at the job, and it’s there that conflicts arise. Because your employer will inevitably find out that you’re not quite so proficient in HTML/CSS, that your biggest weakness is NOT that you’re ‘a perfectionist’, that you’re not really a “self-starter with excellent communication skills” and that your “three years of management experience” really amounts to two years of summer camp and a string of nights where you were the designated driver to a group of very, very drunk friends.

And that tie you were wearing during the interview? A clip-on. That you borrowed from your dad. Then spilled coffee on.

I ask the question in the title of the post: Should we present ourselves more honestly? Wouldn’t it be better if job interviews were more like conversations, rather than performances, and we just lay our true personalities and views on the table? If they’re compatible with the company’s aims and vision, then you’re a strong candidate. If you don’t quite ‘fit’, you shake hands and move on. No trained responses, no fancy buzzword-heavy language, no creative spinning of experience — just down-to-the-brass-tacks conversation about the things both parties are passionate about it.

I think this would help us a lot as a generation. Gen Ys get a bad rap because we surprise employers. We’ve been taught to interview in a tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear kind of way, which doesn’t often gel with our true attitudes and work styles. So the employer has no real idea what they’re getting into when they hire one of us.

I already know the answer to my question, though: No. We can’t present ourselves more honestly. Because the other candidates won’t. They’ll continue to lie. So while we’re saying that we don’t really like to work before 10 a.m., they’ll be claiming they love to start the day at 4 a.m. with a 10-mile run and a stint at the soup kitchen. There’s just no balance.

I wish I had more answers. Is it smarter hiring managers? Is something rotten in the world of HR? Are some companies taking alternative approaches to the old interview equation? Let me know if you have any thoughts.

Photo by ld. Licensed under Creative Commons

At my old job, I had my own office and there was zero IT oversight. My new job has me in a cubicle–at least my screen isn’t facing outwards, but I still have little warning when someone will walk up to me (but at least I’m fast with Alt-Tab). I made friends with the IT guys, who basically said, “Don’t give us a reason to check your browser activity, and we won’t do it. We have better things to do.” So for the time being, looks like things are safe.

There’s also discussion in the thread about writing a browser plug-in that will insert random “business-looking” graphs and buzzwords into internet pages to make everything look work-related.

I still struggle to understand why this seemingly never-ending game of cat-and-mouse is worth it.

Some see the debate as pie in the sky. “The suggestion that Generation Y isn’t just different by degrees, but that this is a disruptive generation, is clearly constructed by someone who doesn’t remember the mods and rockers, the teddy boys, the hippies, the punks and the student revolutions in 1968 Paris,” says Valerie Garrow, associate direct of the Institute for Employment Studies.

I struggle with this idea, because there’s a ring of truth to it. I doubt any young generation in history has conformed easily. What makes Generation Y so different, when every other generation has essentially had to give-in and start playing the same game that’s been going on for years.

The boomers speak loudly about this, because they were quintessentially counter-culture. They were so loud and unwilling to conform that we still make movies about their exploits and adventures in the 60s. But look at them now: they’re Gen Y’s bosses, whining about our lack of ‘work ethic’ and our damned iPods.

Will history, in effect, repeat itself?

I can’t answer that definitively. My time machine is mostly useless. But my gut says it won’t. I think some sectors will see more change than others, but I think overall Gen Y will work as a change effect across the board. Primarily, it’s demographics. We’re in a climate where employees are given little alternative but to look closely at Generation Y when hiring for prime positions. (This goes a long way to explain why we’re so often described as cocky and brash, too.)

More than just demographics, though, I think one of our chief qualitative differences is that we, as a generation, find our nonconformist roots not in anything societal or political but rather (mostly) technological. It’s a little less noble, but more laden with potential.

With the 60s, business didn’t have any real need to change to accommodate younger workers. Because they didn’t really need them. And, well, the changes the then younger generation was asking for seemed so out-of-this-world. The boomers asked for change, but it was not specific — it wasn’t backed up with real, tangible solutions.

Technology is the game changer, because technology is change. For better or for worse, all of business is going through change as a result, and now, as a Generation, younger workers have the opportunity to drive that change.

That’s new. That’s different. That’s powerful.

Despite the ability for many people in my industry (and other industries) to work from home everyday if they wanted to, they don’t.

Why?

Because nothing beats a face to face conversation.

I think it’s dangerous to conflate ‘working at home’ to ‘never leaving your house for work-related reasons’. The Generation Y-fueled change is not necessarily a shift towards impersonal business, but rather toward increased fluidity between work and life. Depending on the industry, your office can be a kitchen table, a coffee shop, a hotel lobby or a rented meeting space. Or, when it works, a virtualized online space.

It’s about being flexible and being open to new ways of work. Because, really, is there any real logic to the belief that work needs to be done collectively at a physical location with a water cooler and fluorescent lighting?

The comment:

Bluntly put, nobody gets a free pass on anything, until they can prove to me that they can deliver results that positively affect my goals and bottom line.

In other words, show me you why deserve these exceptions from what everyone else has to adhere to, and then we’ll talk. And it’s still not guaranteed you’re going to get any of them.

I think this is a dangerous attitude that’s been cropping up a lot as this Generation Y hysteria works its way through businesses. It’s almost as if there are three stages of reaction to Generation Y in the workplace.

It tends to go:

1. Shock & Outrage - “When I was your age, I was damn lucky to get the job I had! I worked sixty hours a week breaking chunks of coal with nothing but my forehead. And at the end of the week, when my boss came by, I said THANK YOU.”
2. Dismissal - “Ha ha, whatever you say, kid. You just wait until you get a little older and see what’s out there in the REAL WORLD. Then you’ll be singing a different tune!”
3. Begrudging Acceptance - “Okay, sure, whatever. If you want to be a lazy jerk unlike EVERYONE ELSE IN THE HISTORY OF WORK than I GUESS you can have some slack. Provided you prove yourself to be a model employee under our current structure first. I’ll do you a FAVOUR.”

I think getting to stage three is enough for a lot of Gen Ys. Even though it comes with some passive aggression, at least your boss or manager is giving you the freedom you need. And, sure, it kind of sucked to have to slog through energy- and morale-sapping months to “prove yourself” but, if you’re creative and talented, you got through it. And then you were able to develop a situation that gave you at least some of the work-life balance and structure you were looking for in the first place.

But this isn’t how it should be.

Generation Y is not asking for special treatment. We’re not asking that you give us freedoms that other employees don’t have. Absolutely, things need to be broken down based on the type of responsibility of each job — if you’ve been hired to answer phones or paint cars, you probably can’t work from home — but that doesn’t mean things can’t be flexible, equitable and universal. Everyone who works for you should be afforded the same arrangement, within reason.

Quite frankly, this is the only way it can work. If you start letting your 23-year-old employee go home early because that’s the way he works best, your 10-year-veteran sales person who likes to stay a half hour after work hours just to show the bosses how dedicated he is (this is absolutely GROSS behaviour, by the way) is probably going to get upset.

Which tends to be where it gets complicated.

Look, I’d never argue that management is simple. With multiple generations in the workplace, it’s only going to get more complicated. But going the easy route, where you set blanket policies and only give flexibility when your younger employees demand it, is not a viable solution. To truly make the intergenerational office work, Generation Y needs to accelerate change for EVERYONE in the office, not just themselves.

Photo ‘Office Hours’ by shawnblog. Licensed under Creative Commons

When you were an entry level worker, maybe you wouldn’t have dreamed of calling your girlfriend to say hello right after lunch or dialing up your mechanic to schedule a time to drop your car off for service. But work and life are no longer two distinct entities and this goes for both the office and at home.

Related: Older Generation needs to let go of rigid definitions of ‘work’