slides 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29 - Virtual U - Prasena

Who r u hiring as teachers : X and y gen
Generation X (born 1960-1975)
A category of people who wanted to “hop off the merry-go-round of status, money, and social climbing that so often frames modern existence”. Such people are described as “underemployed, overeducated, intensely private and unpredictable”.
People born among analog technologies (telephone, TV). Witnessed and participated in development of digital technologies.
Although it is the "Silent" (1930-1945) and "Baby-Boom" (1945-1960) generations who invented the technologies that enabled the Cybernetic Revolution, it is difficult to include them in the "Cybernetic Revolution generations". Indeed, it is as if they had unleashed a monster that they fear is uncontrollable, and they often have the greatest difficulties to enjoy the effects of their creation. The first transition generation is therefore the famous "Gen X". It is famous especially among HR Managers, because it is the first generation of employees that started to really question authority. "Xers" appear unmanageable because the traditional carrots and sticks do not work with these "hard-heads", whose personal goals and professional aspirations are so different from their elders'. While teenagers, Xers witnessed the emergence of the digital technologies that demonstrated the uselessness of most of what they were learning at school, as well as the irrelevance of their elders' advice and guidance. They started to collect with relish the famous "last words" or blunders such as the quote from IBM founder Thomas Watson predicting that there was a market for about five computers in the world. At this early stage of the digital technologies, new solutions were sprouting and dying so fast that no reference seemed reliable. Hence the X-ers' tendency to do everything their own way, and take nothing at face value. X-ers constitute today the core of the so-called "workforce". They still often have difficulties with elder management, but they begin to have power enough to change rules and policies towards their own beliefs and values. In doing so, they need to be careful, because the new generations are as different from them as they were from Silent and Baby Boom generations.
Characterized by individualism, resourcefulness, cynicism, selfishness, result-orientation, taste for experimentation, tendency to question authority, relatively high education, deep-seated economic insecurity, lack of social trust and confidence in government, weak allegiance to country and political parties, tendency to marry and have children late. “Go-getters who are just doing it… but their way” (Time Magazine)

Generation Y (born 1975-1990)
People born among first generation of digital technologies. Witnessed and participated in development of networked technologies
Successors of Generation X, children of Baby-Boomers. Grew up in economic expansion, end of cold war, blooming freedoms
Characterized by high self-esteem and confidence, multi-tasking ability, capacity to process information very fast, urge to develop a career fast, tendency to expect to be given high responsibilities immediately, arrogance, upbeat character, individualism, impatience, boldness, tendency to overestimate themselves, tendency to expect employer to adapt to them, optimism
The Generation Y constitutes today the junior part of the workforce, which it has been entering for about five years. In fact, it might have started to impact the corporate world much earlier, whether it was invited to do so, or not! Y-ers are the first people in History that have spent all their lives among digital technologies. They take them for granted and show an uncanny ability to use them in ways and in a scope never imagined by their elders. And they are much less patient than the X-ers. Because the Gen X grew up in an environment where processes were first manual, then became digital but with severe limitations in memory and reliability, X-ers developed a careful process-based analytical approach to issues. For them, things need to be conceptualized first, then implemented, then tested. Y-ers have no taste or time for this. In the view of Gen Y, digital technologies are reliable and conduct most of the analytical process - Humans don't test them, they use them, play with them. Gen Y hackers are not Gen X hackers: they don't try to demonstrate that a system does not work and make fun of the failure, they just use the system as it is to go wherever they want and do whatever they want. A Gen X hacker would crack into the CIA just for the fun of showing that the CIA's security systems are not secure. A Gen Y hacker would crack into the CIA to access information he/she wants to change a file, watch the ripple effect and feel the power to change the world. Y-ers are in a hurry to seize the power and change the world. The more so, maybe, because they know that once the next generation comes in, they won't have much to say anymore...