On the train ride home, I hear all of these other business professionals complaining about millennials… it’s so very strange… even today:
“and of course they’re gonna hire the damn millennial over me, even though I have the experience! because why have me, the expert, for only five years when they can have him for twenty, right?!”
“ha ha as if they’ll even stay that long, those millennials…”
Pro tip, dudes on the train: they hire the young guy over you because they can hire him for cheap cheap cheap and they know that the job market is such that we are desperate for work and they will put up with just about anything for a couple of years to pay the bills. They leave when they have more experience because they are hoping to find a job that will treat them more like human beings and less like cattle, not because they are inherently disloyal.
Those companies don’t want to pay anyone what they’re worth. The experienced employees know better, so they take advantage of the youth who have no choice. And when they complain, they’re told that they’re lazy and entitled.
But the truth is that a lot of those companies have no loyalty. Not to their veterans, not to their new recruits. They like to burn out the young ones. Squeeze a couple of years out of them and make their time miserable so they leave as soon as they can. Then they complain about millennials, hire new ones, lather rinse repeat, perpetuating a cycle of distrust and bitterness when it’s really not warranted.