It's sad to see that this is turning into millennial-bashing, both from the disclaimer the author had to insert at the top and the first few comments here on HN. The interns learned a valuable lesson about the way the world works: there are people who both possess authority and value customs like placing particular styles of cloth on your feet; and if you decide to work for such people and don't show them the proper deference, you might get fired. Sometimes, you are in a financial and/or life situation where you have to shut up and take it. But it's asinine to trumpet this as millennial entitlement. It's millennials asking perfectly reasonable questions about why certain things are the way they are. Some of these questions are about trivial things, like an innocuous dress code. Other questions are about incredibly meaningful things, like how forcing women to wear heels is a product of patriarchal culture and can drive women out of particular careers (disclaimer: I have no idea whether that was the case here). If your only response to an office custom being questioned is to tout your authority and sneer at the insolence of the youth these days, it's clearly not the youth that believe they're entitled.
According to the original letter, the writer and other interns did ask their individual managers, and were told no, without repercussion. Their response was to band together and create a petition to 'argue' their point. The petition, not their discussions with the manager, got them fired.
Taking collective action to try and overturn your manager's decision to enforce pre-existing and clear company rules, is pretty entitled. To do that when you're an unpaid intern, suggests a high degree of entitlement to me.
Whether that justifies millennial bashing, or whether all generations are like that at 18, is another matter.
Because they do not provide significant value to the company that isn't fungible.
They learned how valuable they were to the company: less value than the hassle of dealing with their petition. They dramatically overrated their value, what the company thought it was already giving them, and what they deserved as a result.
Entitlement can mean various things, but in terms of acting entitled in the workplace, it's a pretty good example.
Unpaid internship usually means they need the job more than the job needs them. This is not the best situation to be in, for sure, but that's the power dynamics usually.
While it's true that in the short term the position benefits the intern more, I think that internships can be a significant part of an effective college grad recruiting program. Not just directly, but from mindshare and word of mouth.
This is true, and I've worked in a company that had a very successful internship program and hired very good people as a result of it. However, when people start with pressuring you on dress code being interns, you can't help but wonder how the matters would be developing further... And then you ask - are they really that good that I should take a risk, or it's easier to me to just pass on them? Looks like in this case the decision was "pass".
> But it's asinine to trumpet this as millennial entitlement. It's millennials asking perfectly reasonable questions about why certain things are the way they are.
from point of view of more conservative generations or people from more conservative backgrounds the mere asking of such questions may seem like the "millennial entitlement" (a part of the traditionally more known as "questioning the authority" behavior exhibited by young generations through the history)
Depends on how it's done. If they had made a casual inquiry and asked sincere questions in an attempt to learn why attire is important, they would have gotten sincere answers.
But a petition is a way to force an answer to a specific request on your terms, without leaving much room to listen and learn.
And dress is not trivial. It may take more than a one-sentence explanation to describe why. Consider, for a moment, that people are not robots and changing attire may have real impact on how people behave and interact in a social environment like business.
> Consider, for a moment, that people are not robots and changing attire may have real impact on how people behave and interact in a social environment like business.
It might, certainly. But on the other hand, there are countless other issues that could be brought up—open office plans, office fraternization, expectations of late night email responses, working hours, salary, and so on—that are directly about how people behave and interact, or do business, that something like dress codes that reach no further than "may have a real impact" kinda fade in importance.
I think more important lesson is not in the what but in the how. And that IMHO might be millennial problem. Or maybe just young problem, which I guess in this case is the same.
> It's millennials asking perfectly reasonable questions about why certain things are the way they are
Ah, but that's the point! The weren't asking - they were telling that this must change, because so many of us tell you so! You don't need signatures to ask a question. You need signatures to pressure.
> how forcing women to wear heels is a product of patriarchal culture and can drive women out of particular careers
I seriously doubt this is the case for "women". Some women, of course, can't stand wearing heels - just as some men can't stand wearing suits - and they choose careers where it is not customary or required. But generalizing on all women doesn't seem to be prudent. I am sure there are a lot of very motivated and driven women who won't let such things as heels derail their chosen career.
> If your only response to an office custom being questioned is to tout your authority and sneer at the insolence
If you, as an intern, question the authority of the company's management, you probably will be shown the door. There's being right, and there's being right in the right way. Hierarchies exist for reason, relationship and organizational culture are important, and the probability of an intern being so right that the company must abandon their culture and listen to the intern over the management is in general much less than the probability the intern is too green and doesn't understand a lot of things. Thus I would take an an important lesson here is that it's important not only to be right, but also to present it to other people in ways that they will be willing to accept it and that will be beneficial to them too.
If the intern's proposal is beneficial for the firm, the the firm's stakeholders should be co-opted, not bashed over the head with signatures. If it is only beneficial for the interns themselves - one would be asking, why the management should care?
>It's millennials asking perfectly reasonable questions about why certain things are the way they are
No, it isn't. They never asked about it at all, that was very much part of the point the author was making. They signed a petition demanding a change to the dress code. That is absolutely entitlement, and it is beyond naive to believe this is not more common in this generation. The generation demanding everything change so they never have to hear an opinion they disagree with.
>like how forcing women to wear heels is a product of patriarchal culture and can drive women out of particular careers (disclaimer: I have no idea whether that was the case here)
You do have an idea if you simply read the article. But no, lets try to shoehorn more identity politics in, we can never have enough!
What value do restricted "dress codes" have other than as a symbol of authority and an economic burden on employees?
These employees didn't have a functional dress code and it didn't seem to be in service of a brand. They were petitioning to wear reasonable footwear. And whole you may shy from such discussions, dress codes disproportionately impact women and transgender people, so it's no surprise that we note that impact.
It's also worth noting how quick Americans are to dismiss any collective action as "entitlement" to be derided. It is not a new phenomenon.
Why wear clothes at all? I mean when it's cold outside, fine, but indoors or in countries with comfortable temperatures... I can get a loin cloth, or like these guys[1] (may be NSFW) you know, hygiene and stuff, but beyond that? That's a cultural thing. We live in a culture.
Some parts of the culture pay more attention to stuff we cover ourselves with that others. Maybe in some places what tattoo you are wearing on your cheek is much more important than what cloth you are wearing on your feet, but in many Western workplaces that's how the culture works. Substantiating culture from rational principles is very hard (why is it ok for Western people to eat chicken but weird to eat parrot? Because. Why it's ok to women to wear pants but weird for a man to wear a skirt? Because. Why we use zippers and not codpieces, why we once wore wigs and hats and now we rarely do so? Because!).
That doesn't mean culture doesn't exist or it is just stupid (unless you think whole life is stupid - which is a valid approach, but then there's no reason to single out this part of it ;). And for people that probably heard words like "diversity" and "tolerance" every day in the school, it should not be hard to understand the value of not dismissing other's culture as "this is just a stupid prejudice" and not approaching it with the posture of "now I'll show you how to do things properly". If a western person did it to a non-western person, they themselves would call it "cultural imperialism" or something like that. But they did exactly the same and don't even have enough self-reflection to realize that. That's a major failure of their education, and hopefully this life lesson would work to correct it at least partially.
> It's also worth noting how quick Americans are to dismiss any collective action as "entitlement" to be derided
It is also worth noting how some people think if 10 people do same thing it is somehow better than one people doing the thing - somehow "collective" is better than individual.
Arguments that uncomfortable shoes put on young people is "corporate culture?" They fall a bit flat in the face of, "Could we please wear non-leather footwear that is comfortable since we walk around a lot?"
This isn't forcing women out of their hijab. This is letting interns wear sensible footwear and not wear blazers in the summer.
I don't see why you don't have problem seeing uncomfortable pieces of cloth wrapped around your hips, torso and neck as culture, but the shoes is where you suddenly have a problem. What's so special in the shoes that they can't be culture while others can? When the last time did you see your banker barefoot? Would your opinion change if you came to talk about a million dollar business and you banker were barefoot and in his pajamas?
Maybe it is sensible to slightly alter the dress code, maybe not - it's not the point. The point is the interns failed to even realize what the issue at hand it - they just assumed everybody by them are being stupid and only wait for them, straight out of the hight school, to set them straight. Sometimes it's exactly the case, but overwhelmingly more often it is not. Even where it is the case, changing the established culture is very hard, it's much easier to grow your own to replace it.
Linux wasn't born as a division of Microsoft that convinced Bill Gates to change his ways. And if you ever want a bank where bankers are barefoot and wear pajamas, it may be a coolest idea ever that will upend all the banking world - but don't expect the president of Wells Fargo or Chase to be excited about it. That's just not how culture works.
>What value do restricted "dress codes" have other than as a symbol of authority and an economic burden on employees?
Why are you asking me this? I have nothing to do with it. I am not talking about dress codes, petitioning is the problem. If you don't like the dress code, try asking why it exists. We have no idea what value it was adding, because the person involved who had absolutely no experience and was there to learn, never bothered to learn. They just created a petition.
>dress codes disproportionately impact women and transgender people, so it's no surprise that we note that impact.
Again, trying to inject identity politics into everything is disgusting and contemptuous. Quit trying to pull a victim card out to declare yourself special, and thus nobody else can understand the "impact".
> I am not talking about dress codes, petitioning is the problem.
Heaven forbid people express a mutual desire clearly to their management. Far better to be shot down individually so the manager can control the message to their management.
> Again, trying to inject identity politics into everything is disgusting and contemptuous.
It is not politics. Brexit was politics. This is societal contracts.
>Heaven forbid people express a mutual desire clearly to their management. Far better to be shot down individually so the manager can control the message to their management.
No, common etiquette forbids it. A guest given an opportunity is not in a place to make demands, especially without even bothered to ask about what they are demanding first.
A petition! And mostly from interns! On a mundane topic about dress codes!
Hopefully these interns learned a hard lesson. Talk to the manager first. Find out what flexibility you might get from these clothing code. If none, just go through the summer and leave with some understanding how to deal with this in the future.
Sucks it had to end that way, but an important lesson to learn now rather.
You CAN negotiate just about anything but you need to have the political capital to spend. Knowing when to pick your battles and which ones you can win is also an important life lesson.
I agree 100%. This is why I say "Yes" to every single meeting request and mostly don't question the way things are done for the first few months of any new job. You have to get established before you can even hope to influence how things are done.
I do feel that firing the lot of them was really an overreaction. What they should have done was treated it as a teachable moment and explained the situation and why their response was exactly the wrong thing to do.
On the other hand, in their place, I'm not sure I'd want to work for someplace that would fire a whole group of people for something so small. As another comment puts it, the best places to work are those that treat interns the same as other junior employees.
It may have been an overreaction in the abstract, but they are trying to run a business. If things like this had been going on for a while, then eventually someone is going to say "this isn't a political campaign, it's a business, and these interns are in the way".
You can't give due process and full consideration to every inane idea. The business will come to a standstill.
A petition isn't the best way to go about it, but, a lot of the comments in the OP about this imply a workplace that employees aren't able to bring their concerns up to management. Of course, this was just a dress code, but that works both for and against the reaction to it: it was just a dress code, how will you treat me if I bring up a more serious issue?
> it was just a dress code, how will you treat me if I bring up a more serious issue?
They did bring up the dress code issue to their managers, and it was dismissed. Petitioning it is a level above that, and while I agree that firing them is a bit much, it doesn't mean they can't take feedback necessarily. It sounds like they would still be receptive if you bring up a more serious issue in the proper way (i.e. talking to your manager).
Couldn't they have just ignored the request like politicians ignore many things asked for by their constituents, or is firing the intern the easiest way because an intern isn't a full-time employee anyway and it will mute the discussion?
Indeed, the better way is to unionize and bargain. Work contracts and conditions are a matter of haggling between self-interested groups, and while the interns should certainly accept dress codes as conditions of employment now, they should be testing the limits of their bargaining power together to see what they can accomplish for the future.
Having worked under a union contract for 13 years (as a member of the Animation Guild), I hope that this suggestion gets taken more seriously -- not over dress codes, perhaps, but over issues of workplace safety; and that includes the damage done to young tech workers asked to work 80+ hour weeks for months on end at no cost to the employer over a 40 hour week. It's damaging both physically and mentally, and the companies that do it should know better.
(Startups where all parties have honest information about the gamble they're taking are an exception -- and startups are typically not the kinds of places that unionize because the process takes longer than the startup lasts.)
>that includes the damage done to young tech workers asked to work 80+ hour weeks for months on end at no cost to the employer over a 40 hour week.
That is not really a union issue, what we need is a few tech workers to push for IRS Exemption rules and sue over it, to get some clear established case law on who and who is not exempt from overtime.
The IRS and DOL have been woefully derelict in their guidance on this issue, and I personally believe that many of the IT workers that are classified as exempt today should not be.
The Bush Administration passed a regulation exempting "computer professionals" broadly from overtime pay in 2003.
It is really a union issue: the government can't be counted on to have workers' interests at heart when workers aren't the ones running the government. Workers should do it ourselves.
> exempting "computer professionals" broadly from overtime pay in 2003.
I don't understand why this is still a thing. How have we, as a group, not gotten such a horrible law overturned.
Oh right, some people think working 60 hours a week is okay. sigh.
>I don't understand why this is still a thing. How have we, as a group, not gotten such a horrible law overturned.
It's not that loads of people think 60 hours/week is ok. It's that lots of people seem to think there's something immoral and mafia-esque about collective bargaining and organized labor. Labor rights don't get improved because people walk away from bad jobs (there will always be someone sufficiently desperate as to undercut everyone else, even if the employers have to change a bunch of laws to make it happen), and they don't get improved because the government sees just how lovely and moral it would be to improve labor rights.
They get improved because workers unite and fight for our collective interests. To my mind, people who don't admit this have a strangely romanticized conception of how business works.
I get that, but there is a gap between all salaries and promotions are based on seniority and firing a lousy employee is impossible vs. an organization of professionals who will fight for lousy employment laws.
You also have wage fixing/anti-poaching agreements that could potentially be more effectively fought. Overly broad non-compete agreements are another obvious target.
>regulation exempting "computer professionals" broadly from overtime pay in 2003.
I am aware, I am also aware the "computer professional" is narrowly defined and simply because you work with a computer does not make you a "computer professional" I am aware of several companies that do not classify their employees properly
>> Workers should do it ourselves.
Workers should by refusing to work those jobs, I myself am Salaried Non-Exempt. I personally disagree with the concept of unions, and find they are often worse over the long term
Imagine showing up to a dinner party and trying to create a lobby of other guests that don't want to take their shoes off in the house. The entitlement of the interns is astounding.
Then I hope they learned a valuable lesson about political capital in the work place.
I'm a full time employee who is well accomplished, and even I still realize that there is a limit to how much influence I can exert over the business before I get the boot.
And unless you're forming a union, ganging up with a bunch of peers and going over your managers' heads (especially for something as trivial as a dress code) is probably the worst way to approach such a situation.
Approaching HR, or discussing the situation with your manager's manager in a 1 on 1 situation is a much better approach.
No! Never talk to HR unless there's a problem with your benefits or something. They are never on your side; they're basically there to protect the company from you. If you ever get into a situation you feel can't be resolved without involving HR, just start looking for a new job.
I understand the manager's frustration. But, I think taking that kind of action sets a dangerous precedent.
IMHO, no matter how hard criticism may be to hear, (especially when it is entitled and baseless), you still want to encourage and reward employees and interns any time they go out of their way to try and make the company better, stronger, or a more enjoyable place to work. Not because you agree with what they're proposing, but because you want to encourage the free flow of ideas, and the voicing of concerns.
Moreover: When you take on interns, you take on the role of mentor and teacher, for better or worse. I seriously doubt that firing them was the best way to teach them anything.
I get overruled almost on a weekly basis, there are ALOT of things I wish my company would do different, I make these suggestions, I explain my reasoning, and if my boss accepts my reasons and approves the change happens, if not well thats the breaks. He may have a perfectly valid reason why what I suggest will not work for reasons unknown to me that is why he is management and I am not (thank god)
I however never circulate a petition to my coworkers asking is they agree with me, or my boss. I never circulate a petition to my coworkers and then present it to my boss as if my work place was some kind of democracy in which is my coworkers all agree then my bosses veto is somehow over ruled.
>>>I seriously doubt that firing them was the best way to teach them anything.
It should have taught them that when you are a new employee and something you request is denied, that is the end of it. You do not circle the wagons and attempt to force the issue.
It should have taught them that the work place is a heirachy with Interns at the bottom,
It should have taught them that the real world is a cold ruthless place and your feels are irrelevant.
What’s done is done. But it would be smart to write a letter to your manager explaining that you’ve learned from the situation and that you appreciate the opportunity they gave you and are sorry that you squandered it.
The manager's decision to fire the interns was entirely within their right and the interns should have seen it as a possibility, even if it was a little extreme. But even though it has essentially no bearing on what happened, the interns were in the right. They saw unfairness in the office, confronted the superior about it, and were ignored. Obviously management needs to protect the privacy of the injured employee, but for the sake of dignity and good communication, they could have at least said "that person has a special circumstance which warrants an exception". Their reaction to being ignored violated social conventions, but was a civil, meaningful expression of dissatisfaction.
The quote above takes the wrong lesson from this story. It encourages apologizing for organizing the petition, but they absolutely shouldn't apologize, because they were in the right. Unless they want to try to still get a good reference out of this employer (which would be characteristically naive), they have no reason to pander. Instead, they should thank the manager for giving them a reality check about how business operates, while holding firm to their convictions. It would take care to not come across as passive-aggressive, but full repentance would only serve to reinforce the manager's authoritarian tendencies.
An awesome learning experience on where not to work. Internships can be a trial period for both the employer and employee, before leading to a job offer. A bullet dodged I would consider this.
Wow, I don't know what is more shocking. The fact that the company fired an entire class of interns, or that the advice columnist would side with the managers and chide the interns further.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with the interns' proposal... regardless of whether the issue is important enough to start a petition for, it is NEVER ok to fire someone for making a polite and respectful proposal. It is NEVER ok to make someone feel as though they aren't important enough to put forward suggestions.
Not only is it morally disgusting, it is organizationally dysfunctional. Teams operate best when every member feels empowered to make suggestions and improve upon the status quo. Teams operate best when those in power don't use their power to intimidate and silence those with less power.
If there's one takeaway from all this, it is how dysfunctional the the workplace is for most people, and how important it is to protect yourself by planning ahead. Work your ass off and attend an elite university. Pick a profession that's in-demand, so you'll have plenty of options. Otherwise, you're going to be at the mercy of egomaniacs who have no qualms over firing you at the drop of a hat.
The response here is spot on and, although I wouldn't say that firing every single one of the signatories of the petition was an optimal strategy, it's an understandable one.
As an intern, you are lucky to have an opportunity to learn and to prove yourself. Don't squander that opportunity on something as little as a dress code.
At least one of you was wise enough not to sign it. I would bet that person's still an intern there.
"Half of engineering team fired for starting a petition demanding higher class shares in equity compensation. Apparently nobody in management knew of the petition as the letter of notice originated from the email of one of the engineer's mothers and was accidentally logged in a spam folder. Management only found out after engineers failed to show up to work in protest.".
My last job had a relaxed dress policy that allowed people to wear jerseys during football season. Not being a football fan, it felt really oddly unfair in ways I'm not really sure how to describe.
I asked them if it was fine to wear a League of Legends jersey, since there was a huge tournament going on in Germany at the same time. The head of HR actually said yes. Wasn't expecting that...
I'm not surprised that the interns got fired. Not because of the topic at hand, but because of the petition.
In many ways, an organized petition could be seen as the beginning of union organization. Forget about opinions about unions for a moment. The fact is, most companies do whatever they can to squash a union as early as possible.
Shoes are expensive. Even if you are working a low-paying job along with the unpaid internship, it isn't something that most folks can get when they are just starting out.
And even harder to find is a tailor, unless you are in a decent sized city. I had access if actually needed - my mother. My mother did tailoring work off and on to make ends meet, and more later on for herself, excluding bridal shops. Often, there were between zero and one other person in the area doing the work. Most were just to make pants shorter, and few were willing to pay a fair wage for the bigger tailoring.
I wonder if he or she wondered why that worker was exempt?
There are medical conditions that prevent people from wearing leather shoes my partners sister is alergic to pretty much anything and if she wears leather she gets blisters within minutes.
There are also people who will not wear leather due to religious and ideological reasons.
It seems very childish to start a petition because one employee gets treated differently, that's life your boss can also leave early and take a long lunch maybe it's another petition....
>The worst part is that just before the meeting ended, one of the managers told us that the worker who was allowed to disobey the dress code was a former soldier who lost her leg and was therefore given permission to wear whatever kind of shoes she could walk in. You can’t even tell, and if we had known about this we would have factored it into our argument.
The answer to your question is right there in the article
There is clearly some unstated circumstances here.
One shot in the dark: what if the company was concerned for legal reasons? Since the issue had a connection to a disabled employee, is it possible the company could have fired them to avoid any legal conflicts?
I disagree. Having interned 6 times at 5 different companies, the best ones by FAR are the ones where interns are treated exactly the same as full-time employees. The reality is that interns are not that far off from the new-grads, why would you treat them any differently? Interns should be treated exactly like a new hire, with the exception of the fact that they are temporary, so obviously you don't have to assign them to long term projects or anything like that.
I hope this is a joke. Interns deserve the same respect as full-time employees. Old school management is old school for a reason, not because its been pushed out by less efficient processes...
Doesn't sound like my current employer (well known Silicon Valley tech firm) We have internal groups for feedback and discussion, suggestions, and constructive criticism on almost everything.
Of course, being civil and respectful still applies but it seems the OP was, too.
In my experience with east coast companies, that's where the dress code nonsense comes from.
I had a similar problem - ridiculous dress codes that made no sense at all. I fought it the best that I could. I worked for a defense contractor as part of another business unit, and the dress code policy was basically "match the site that you work at." Except that they were trying to tell me that I had to adhere to their dress code policy anyway. How dare an employee wear a nice pair of shorts during a 110 degree Texas summer day! They tried to tell me the dress code was a safety issue. I balked and pointed out that the Union employees on the production line were wearing jean shorts and t-shirts, so their argument was flat. A manager two levels above me said something about the fact that she said that she was appalled that I would dare show up to work in shorts. I informed her that I worked in the Silicon Valley before, where dress codes like ours were almost non-existent. She said that she was appalled that I would dare show up to work in shorts. This back and forth went on, and they finally just admitted "This is always how we've done it" and there really was no reason whatsoever for the existing dress code.
I signed up for the voluntary layoff package and didn't regret it at all. This was in addition to a time where we had to go digging in the library for OSHA lighting standards just to get upper management to tell one supervisor that didn't work in our area to stop flipping on all of the lights when he walked by.... but that's another story. Just about as stupid as most dress codes.
You mostly have a reverse dress code in Silicon Valley. Just start showing up to your job as a Software Engineer at an SV startup in a suit and tie and see how people react.
This is being linked everywhere and it smells like total bullshit. First, I thought unpaid internships were illegal in the US now. Wasn't there a court ruling on that a few years back?
This seems like it's fiction to bait the millennial haters, "Get of my lawn" crowd.
Something sounds very off about it. I call copy-pasta
no, unpaid internships are very much alive and well. The federal judiciary uses them extensively, calling them "externs" instead of "interns" and it's up to the law school to give credits for the work. The entertainment industry also has a ton of such positions, usually the first step into studios, production companies, record labels, etc. This sounds like an advertising agency to me.
My understanding is that unpaid internships associated with an academic program of study are legal. What is illegal is an unpaid internship not associated with formal education, e.g. an unpaid internship for a recent college graduate.
In many disciplines, paid student internships are highly coveted and many available student internships are unpaid. Social work comes to mind.
Comedy gold! Mind-boggling! I know employers can be idiotic, I know managers can go on power trips, but this time the interns (not even full-time employees) take the cake. Firing may seem harsh until you look at it from from the manager's POV. You have a bunch of INTERNS coming in, banding up, and trying to essentially coerce the manager into changing a company policy involving dress norms. Not only is dress code not a big issue for a full-time employee (frankly it simplifies getting dressed in the morning), but a couple of interns that will be gone in a couple of months and thus have no shared fate with the company and its employees think they can come in and stage a campus rally to accommodate some petty inconvenience? What utter arrogance! How self-absorbed! How socially challenged! What do you imagine the situation would look like if the manager hadn't fired them after pulling a stunt like that? The interns have already created an awkward situation. Instead of focusing on important things entailed by the purpose of the internship, they decided to start a confrontation over dress code at a company they have no full-time employment at. Asking whether they can wear X for reason Y is acceptable in my mind, but the petition was utterly ridiculous. They pretty much forced the manager's hand by communicating to the manager that they weren't serious about their internship and were going to waste the company's time with frivolous crap. Manager 1, immature interns 0. Perhaps they will eventually learn from this experience, though the stubborn, overconfident tone of the article suggests that it may take some time for the wisdom to sink in. They seem either unwilling to see their error or unable.
Talk about dodging a bullet. Is a petition about dress codes whiny and lame, sure. Firing everyone is just a sign of a place that is shitty to work for.
I'm not a manager, but you're being incredibly antagonistic and insulting to a huge amount of people. You're also quite arrogant, and it makes me ashamed to be part of (presumably, given that this is HN) the same profession as you.
Your comments in this thread are breaking the HN guidelines by being uncivil and unsubstantive, as well as complaining about downvotes. Please (re)-read and follow them:
This site is not a vessel to spew rage into, so please don't. It disrespects everyone else (manager or not) to use it that way.
Obviously there's quite a spectrum—nearly every possibility that exists—between not doing that and becoming a sycophant, so I'm pretty sure you're ok there.
A note about this post, which is being linked to from all over the internet: This situation is not about “young people today.” The letter-writer’s generation is far from the first to bridle at dress codes or misunderstand office culture or start out with little knowledge of how things work in offices. This is about being young and new to the work world, not about what generation they belong to. Most of us made plenty of mistakes when we first started work — I certainly did. So please go a little easier on this person.
Saying "it isn't about this generation" doesn't change the fact that it does sum up this generation very well. The level of entitlement is unreal, with people demanding history classes in universities not teach parts of history that they don't like. There has never before been such wide spread self-importance in any other generation.
I agree that the whole notion of petitions being an effective tool is a recent phenomenon but I feel the general premise is the same: The older generations have always criticized the younger generation of refusing to embrace the rules, having it so much easier, being disrespectful, wanting what they haven't earned, etc.
Though I do think the advent of upvote/downvote discussion forums has emboldened the attitude of "I can just downvote/ignore/blockout anything to which I do not agree". That's an annoying and recent behavior (which affects us all, not simply the millennials) which really drives me crazy.
>The older generations have always criticized the younger generation of refusing to embrace the rules, having it so much easier, being disrespectful, wanting what they haven't earned, etc.
And that's not what is happening here. This is the younger generation criticizing other members of the younger generation for being spoiled, self-absorbed narcissists. I criticize the older generation for making them this way with their helicopter parenting and their special snowflake "everyone wins" nonsense.
Perhaps this younger generation really is the worst younger generation ever, but your comments in this thread fuming about it are still lowering the quality of discussion here below acceptable. Please don't do that on HN. If you comment on a common rage inducer, make sure you have something new and interesting to say, and are not just venting with clichés.
>Perhaps this younger generation really is the worst younger generation ever
Nobody suggested anything of the sort.
>but your comments in this thread fuming about it
I have made no such comments.
>are still lowering the quality of discussion here below acceptable
Just because you don't agree with my opinion, doesn't mean it is lowering the quality of discussion. I have read the rules, and I do not see any way in which an objective third party could interpret me as breaking them. Please step back and read what I actually wrote rather than interpreting it.
Indeed not. And thus the post is accurate. It has always been accurate, and it will remain accurate for many years to come. Let us hail the poster for his/her perspicacity, today, tomorrow, and yesterday.
Their user name may also be relevant. But I'm going to have to sleep on that one.
EDIT: The key word is "today" ;)
Exercise for the reader - figure out why the grand parent post very obviously and highly deliberately does not mention that.
> The worst part is that just before the meeting ended, one of the managers told us that the worker who was allowed to disobey the dress code was a former soldier who lost her leg and was therefore given permission to wear whatever kind of shoes she could walk in. You can’t even tell, and if we had known about this we would have factored it into our argument.
