The Purposeful Career: Gen Y’s Aversion to Corporate America
Via Wikipedia
I opened my local Sunday paper to find an appeal to young people to see reason and submit to the inevitable, the driver of our capitalistic system: the ubiquitous corporate job. The column, entitled Corporate America deserves unprejudiced assessment was written by David Noer, a local business leadership professor.
I’m proud that so many members of my generation–including myself–choose to pursue careers of service in the nonprofit and public sectors, whether it be education, providing arts to the community or serving the disadvantaged through AmeriCorps or Teach for America. Many of us, indeed, actively choose not to pursue careers in corporate America.
According to Noer, the “misleading dichotomy between organizations that make money and organizations that help people” is propagated by people who have never worked in the business world and “have only a fuzzy and distrustful grasp of the underlying economic reality that capitalism is the engine that drives our economy and our standard of living.”
Young people should want to work for business because businesses DO help people, writes Noer. The tangible examples that Noer cites: they pay taxes, provide jobs and fringe benefits.
That is precisely the problem: young people don’t want to invest thirty years working at a corporation which has no relevance or significance to them other than paying their income. A life spent increasing market share and sales of widget 54-A by .7 percent each quarter to please shareholders doesn’t appeal or motivate. Many nonprofits generate revenue as well–profit that is reinvested in the “real issues” and community programs that Noer’s students are so interested in addressing.
Noer’s tone of mild hostility and condescension toward young people’s desire for service approaches that of (though doesn’t reach the level of demagoguery of) Glenn Beck’s gaudy attack on Americorps and Rush Limbaugh’s foolish assertion that nonprofit employees are “rapists” of the economy. I can’t help but conclude that when you find yourself on the opposite side of service and work for your community, you have made a wrong turn.
Noer cites Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism to argue that to work for a nonprofit is to fail to contribute to what matters: America’s capitalistic system. “Unless we want to make Rand’s nightmarish vision a reality, we need to stop stereotyping corporate America as a land of greed, evil and ruthlessness,” writes Noer.
Actually, “today’s sound-bite-conditioned and attention-span-challenged job seekers” probably wouldn’t get very far into Atlas Shrugged, according to Noer. (Note to writers: condescension toward the audience you are addressing usually doesn’t help your cause.) Never mind any of us who don’t share Rand’s ideological tendencies.
Nonprofits, according to Noer, are merely organizations “that pay no taxes and use tax money to fund their operations.” Again Noer raises the issue of taxes. This attitude assumes the sole role of a responsible citizen or organization is to pay taxes to keep this great capitalistic machine going at full speed rather than, say, to better our nation by reducing homelessness or educational inequalities.
In fact, Generation Y young people aren’t as naive or misinformed as Noer and other media coverage implies–many of us are informed by our parents’ long and tedious careers in corporate America. They received good benefits and were able to upgrade to a new car every two years, but at what cost? We were reaching puberty as Enron went bust. We saw the weariness on our parent’s faces as they returned from another ten-hour work day. We saw how jaded they were as they spoke of the bureaucracy and politics at work.
If current trends are any sign and Gen Y has anything to do with it, change is in store. At the very least, corporations will need to adjust to continue to attract young talent. Most corporations can’t offer the mission-oriented work that nonprofits can, but the leadership can integrate more authentic corporate social responsibility initiatives and better practices of managing and motivating employees, for which nonprofits are known. (See a recent post about Nancy Lublin’s book which shares nonprofit best practices with private companies.)
Young people aren’t only drawn to meaningful work, but they also seek a work environment that affirms their values, where they are treated as a human rather than producer of quarterly sales figures as they work toward a common goal. As the title of another of Noer’s columns states: “Change is inexorable: How will we respond?”
Noer’s bio informs readers that he is a business professor at a Elon University and adviser to the Center for Creative Leadership. Interestingly, Noer himself is employed by and affiliated with two nonprofit organizations.
The full text of David Noer’s column is available by accessing News & Record’s free E-edition feature to see the Sunday October 10, 2010 “Ideas” section.
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Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments
Tags: Career, Gen Y, Job Search, NC Triad, Nonprofit, Purposeful Career
The real reason, that no one wants to state, about Gen Y wanting to work for a nonprofit is “Nonprofits require less work, less effort to operate than a corporation.” I have been in nonprofits, and realize that the LAZIEST people work in the nonprofit sector, rarely is there a hard working person in the corner. There are some nice people in NPOs, but let’s be honest rarely are they willing to put in 16 hour days.
WasANPODirector,
Thank you for visiting and thank you for sharing your thoughts. I have to disagree as the most hardworking people I know work at nonprofits and have let work seep into every aspect of their lives. Those working at small nonprofits in particular can often be found on the job late into the evening and on weekends preparing for fundraisers or outreach events, meeting with clients or working to meet a grant proposal deadline. Thanks!