Next Gen News

[[[What's Next, Gen X?: Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want]]]

Description:


More review coming soon.

Tammy, you 'Ve larded the book with a quote from your target market, but it doesn' t give the feeling that you understand what people have told you.

First...this has the sound of a book written by a particular class in the northeast and select parts of California. But to an extent greater than what you knew growing up, various parts of the country were invisible to each other in the decades you're discussing. The 1970s-90s were very different for people in different parts of the country, and, what's more, we didn't know it. There was no "Roger & Me" in other parts of the Midwest. There was no "Bright Lights, Big City" in the devastated farm economies of the 1980s. There was no "Less than Zero" nihilism-lite in New England. Greed was de rigueur in certain areas, but power was the signature of evil and patriarchal oppression in the progressive North. (Remember, there was no widespread NPR till the mid-90s to tell the East Coast such places existed.) And Coupland...I don't know, maybe it resonates with young Xers, but I don't know anyone over the age of, say, 35 who finds it interesting. The child of 1965 and the child of 1979 grew up in very different worlds.



Third, I'm not sure you appreciate the extent to which unavoidable economic realities will blur these generational distinctions. You guys are going to have no choice but to become more self-directed and entrepreneurial. Your Boomer parents are going to continue to try to help you out, but the fact is that they can't afford their own retirements and won't be able to keep their jobs, and they're quickly finding out that the money is simply not there for their promised pensions, medical care, social security. They've also, if they weren't smart, mortgaged themselves to the hilt to send you to school. So you're going to have to get out there and fight, and you may wind up being their main supports, psychological and financial. (A lot of them, I think, will get to the psychological reality ahead of you. Their parents tended to be thrifty, and they remember how to worry about money. I think quite a lot of them will snap to when the reality's unavoidable, and you guys will wonder where these Depression-era strangers came from. It's just your grandparents' teaching, that's all.)(This is my hopeful prediction, by the way. I'm cringing in advance of a fifteen-year Boomer's lament/journey-of-self-discovery about the lost golden 30-year retirement to which they were entitled.)

Fourth, by and large, the helicopters are your parents, not us. We tend to think they've damaged you by this behavior and left you seriously unprepared for what's going on now, and what's likely to be for the next decade, and we're aghast at both the way they still try to do your thinking for you and the amount of money they've let you borrow for college. And by how many of them have signed their retirements away to send you, too.

Speaking of which....You and your college-grad cohort will have known parents who were ever-ready to write a check and sign a charge slip or student loan papers for you. However, by and large, they've managed their finances appallingly. I mean shockingly. This retirement debacle? It wasn't necessary, but it was fuelled by Boomer hope and optimism. In my 40s now, I hear my 50- and 60-something friends, who've worked professional, dual-income lives for decades, tell stories of financial ruin. To an Xer who learned thrift early, their fears seem totally overblown -- they still have many healthy years, they make good incomes. However, they are certainly vulnerable to layoff, and they really have no sense of scale when it comes to spending. They won't want to lean on you, but they won't have anyone else to lean on. You and they will have to learn thrift together or reality will not be kind.

I would suggest you start talking with them now about their retirements, how they're going to take care of themselves, what they will do when Social Security and their pensions don't pay out as expected. (They won't.) And talking about delaying retirement. These are conversations they'll want desperately to avoid, in part because the discussion has to do with aging, loss of beauty and vitality, loss of dreams. But since you will ultimately be responsible for them, and many of them will go leaping into retirement and then find they're financially unprepared, you guys really need to have these discussions. This'll be a little difficult for you, too, because your impulse will be to think, "We'll get through it, something always comes up." And that's no longer the reality. "Something came up" before because we were borrowing like mad, but that's stopping now. You'll also have children, and the expense of kids, in terms of time, energy, and money, is something that most of you don't yet know about; you may wind up assuming you've got much more to give your parents than you do. In time, of course, that will be corrected too.



** and yeah. Again. Keep the copyright in mind.

Erickson does a superb job of explaining how Gen Xers can "keep up, move ahead, and get the career you want." This latest in the triology of her generational career books, first defines the unique qualities of Gen X and recaps how they contrast with Gen Y and the Boomers. With that as a back drop, you can gain practical insight how you can find your passion, establish your priorties, take advantage of the changing workplace, decide whether you want to leverage your position internally or pursue external options, and become the leader you have waited to become, given the prevailing presence of boomers in leadership roles. This is an encouraging look at what is next for your generation -- all you need to do is evaluate your next steps and move on to the career you desire.

Sheryl Dawson
COO, Total Career Success, Inc.
Co-Author Job Search: The Total System (3rd Ed)

In this handbook, author Tamara Erickson presents a comprehensive look at the childhoods, mindset, culture, school environments, expectations, and habits of a large portion of Generation X in America. She also backs up her information with a well of statistical data and includes useful information to help X-ers to find satisfying careers.

Though at times a tad repetitive, the prose not only describes Generation X, but runs informative statistical comparisons on the generations before and after--the Baby Boomers and Generation Y. This skillfully illustrates how generational differences effect the groups' ability to interact in the workplace. As a parent, I appreciated Erickson's accolade of Gen X parents, citing that, due to their own largely `latch-key' upbringing in single-parent homes, many X-ers choose family over ambition and favor entrepreneurial roles over corporate counterparts. Erickson includes just enough humor, lauding X-ers as the most innovative generation, as well as the one which, on the whole, feels the most disenfranchised.

Reviewed by Meredith Greene



Buy Here (for discount) What's Next, Gen X?: Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want