“With that said, I will note that my generation and older valued hard work, diigence, and that you had to earn your promotions. The young now are an “entitlement generation” who embody the opposite.”
As a 22 year old recent college graduate, I agree with that statement. Unfortunately that stereotype is branded onto those of us who eschew that type of behavior and we suffer for it.
I spent the last four years of my career trying to hire qualified, dependable college graduates all the way from bachelors to masters and PhDs. I had over 33 people working for me when I retired, 1/3 hired in the last 5 years. The goal was to bring in the top 1-2% of academically prepared people and to get them trained to replace the older generation people I had who were going to retire.
My biggest problem with the newest group is that they have been coddled virtually all of their lives. They had to stimulated, praised constantly, etc. just to make them feel like they had a good job. We called them the Millenial Generation. Our company even recently gave a seminar for older managers on how to coddle, praise and reinforce them.
When I had a young engineer complain about the draft in his/her office, the decor, or a scratch on their desk, I found that hard to reconcile with being an 18 year old draftee back in 1968 and what I had to do during the ensuing years.
All I can say is that a job is what YOU make it. And, I can promise you, although you might not think so, good diligent work DOES get rewarded by the higher ups. It may take a while but your performance is not oblivious to those in charge.
Another excellent point...the younger ones that DO 'get it' are going to be screwed by the 'entitled ones'.