Monday, October 16, 2017

Talkin' 'bout My Generation

People try to put us down.....

"Millennials drag their bosses into the 21st century" by Kevin Roose New York Times   October 15, 2017

NEW YORK — Junior office workers once had a fairly predictable set of daily tasks. Write the sales memo. Build the PowerPoint. Make coffee.

Now, many young professionals have a new mandate: Drag the boss into the 21st century.

It's the world’s most pressing challenge.

As businesses chase evanescent market trends and grapple with a fast-moving future, millennial mentors, as many companies call them, have emerged as a hot accessory for executives. Young workers, some just out of college, are being pulled into formal corporate programs to give advice to the top ranks of their companies.

Millennial mentorship programs represent a formalized, mildly absurdist version of the advice junior workers have been giving their older colleagues for ages. Some executives want young people’s advice on catering to new markets and developing new products, while others seek glorified tech support — Snapchat 101, Twitter tutorials, and emoji lessons.

These programs are not just a departure from the business world’s traditional top-down management style. They are also a sign of just how perplexed some executives are by the young people in their midst.

Inga Beale, 54, chief executive of the investment bank Lloyd’s of London, has said that her junior mentor, who is 19, has a “totally different perspective” and leaves her “inspired.” Melanie Whelan, 40, chief executive of SoulCycle, holds monthly meetings with her younger mentor, whom she has credited with helping her get “hip with what the kids are doing these days.”

“It’s like reconnecting with your lost youth,” said David Watson, 38, a managing director at Deutsche Bank who has been mentored by Fernando Hernandez, 29, an engineer in the Wall Street bank’s global markets technology division.

Well, it is now clear that the pre$$ is for a certain cla$$ of people.

I don't blame them. They are only serving the only readership they have left. That's why the insulting elitism is unmentioned.

It was perhaps inevitable that older executives would turn to their young employees for advice. As technology has changed the way businesses run, it has also put power in the hands of digital natives, and left older, less tech-savvy executives angling for ways to keep up.

Could these executives just ask their children for tech tips? Sure. But workplace programs allow executives to peer into the future of their industry and bond with a junior colleague simultaneously, with minimal embarrassment.

Why would they be embarrassed? Weinstein repercussions?

Reverse mentoring — another name companies give to younger people training older workers — is not a new concept. Jack Welch, while chief executive of General Electric in the 1990s, required 500 of his top managers to pair up with junior workers to learn how to use the Internet. But executives are especially eager to learn from millennials, whose dominance in Silicon Valley has given older workers a fear of obsolescence.

Jack Welch phonied up the books.

An entire cottage industry now peddles advice to youth-obsessed executives, with books like “Understanding Millennials” and events like “Millennial Week,” a two-day festival meant to “promote and present ideas reflecting the impact of Generation Y on culture and society.”

Millennial consultants now advise companies like Oracle, Estée Lauder, and HBO, charging as much as $20,000 per hour to give executives advice on marketing their products to young people. Overall, US organizations spent $80 million on “generational consulting” last year, according to Source Global Research, a firm that studies the consulting industry.

Compared with the prospect of shelling out thousands of dollars for one of those outside consultants, many executives prefer the alternative of using the young people on their payroll.

Yeah, the kid is a dream!

“It’s a pretty smart thing for them to do,” said Malcolm Harris, author of “Kids These Days,” a forthcoming book about millennials and the economy. “If you can’t get a 25-year-old to run your company, you can at least tell people your CEO is talking to 25-year-olds.”

Tiffany Zhong, 20, began mentoring Kara Nortman, 41, a partner at the venture capital firm Upfront Ventures, after Nortman asked her for advice on dealing with a new generation of tech entrepreneurs.

For Nortman, who invests in and advises technology companies, Zhong’s lessons are not just academic.

“We spend a lot of time talking about the psychology of a teen,” Nortman said. “It’s influenced a lot of perspectives around how to manage my own time, and how to invest.”

These mentoring arrangements can be initially awkward for executives who are accustomed to dispensing advice, not receiving it. When Watson, the Deutsche Bank managing director, was paired with Hernandez, he was skeptical that useful advice could come from someone nearly a decade his junior. But the experience opened his mind. Recently, he said, he had spent two hours having an impromptu chat with some younger workers in his division, and the traditional mentoring benefit remains in place.

Yeah, maybe the elder can “teach him some stuff.”

Millennials, traditionally defined as those born after 1982, may not have the upper hand for long, though.

That's not what they were saying two months ago behind closed doors (at least Harvey has some character witnesses).

Zhong, who started a consulting firm, Zebra Intelligence, to inform businesses about teenage attitudes, said that she’s already getting inquiries from people asking to be mentored by members of Gen Z, often defined as the cohort born after 1996. 

What is it with the pre$$ and their endless labeling of people by age, race, gender, sexpref, etc, etc, etc.?

She is planning to start a mutual mentorship program to connect teenagers and twentysomethings with senior-level executives, and hopefully outsource some of the work she’s been doing.

“I’m like an on-demand Gen Z support,” Zhong said. “But I can’t keep all my adult friends up-to-date on everything.”

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I'm sorry, readers, but articles like this no longer suit me.

Maybe they could tinker with the jeans, 'er, genes.

So what do those at the top have to say anyway?

"Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve chairwoman, said Sunday that the US economy is in good health in an upbeat assessment that reinforced expectations the Fed will raise its benchmark interest rate again this year.....

"The world economy is the healthiest it’s been in years but could still use help from low-interest rates and higher government spending by countries that can afford it, the International Monetary Fund says. The IMF and its sister agency, the World Bank, wrapped up three days of meetings Saturday. The IMF and World Bank officials say geopolitical risks are rising, including a confrontation between the United States and North Korea over nuclear weapons, and the income gap between rich and poor is growing, fueling political discontent with the free trade and global cooperation that the IMF and World Bank promote....."

Yeah, you kids are being looked after by an elite that takes ‘‘full account of the fact that people are busy, they’re absent-minded, they’re lazy, and that we should try to make things as easy for them as possible.’’

"Las Vegas’s tourism sector is bracing for changes in the aftermath of the massacre that killed 58 people at a music festival. Analysts who track the casino industry say Las Vegas will see a short-term dip in visitors. Casinos and police may have to impose new security measures after gunman Stephen Paddock brought more than 20 rifles into his hotel room and drove a car filled with explosives into the parking garage. The ‘‘What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas’’ slogan has been put on hold, as has one unveiled in the weeks before the shooting by the owner of Mandalay Bay that said, ‘‘We are not in the hotel business . . . we are in the holy s--- business.’’ Electronic billboards that typically promote entertainment are now showing a dedicated phone line for victims and their families, along with words of appreciation for first responders. Airplanes still carry loads of tourists and conventioneers to the desert oasis, but stock prices of the main Las Vegas casino companies all took a minor tumble after the shooting. Morgan Stanley forecast the shooting will decrease demand for the Las Vegas market for about six months and have a 4 to 6 percent economic effect. Las Vegas last year welcomed 42.9 million visitors and hosted almost 22,000 conventions. Clark County recorded gambling revenue of $9.7 billion."

Hey, that's the price of participation in a staged and scripted false flag fiction. 

Speaking of myths:

"New picture emerges of Mata Hari, who faced firing squad 100 years ago" by Rachel Siegel Washington Post  October 16, 2017

WASHINGTON — A hundred years after the execution of Mata Hari, the Dutch double agent who was one of the most famous spies of the 20th century, historians are debunking many of the myths about her that have endured for decades.

It's more likely they are now peddling them if that is the claim from the WaPo.

Mata Hari has long been revered as the ultimate femme fatale — the seductive, glamorous, exotic dancer who spied for the Germans during World War I and caused the deaths of thousands of Allied soldiers.

She has captured the imaginations of people around the world long after she met her fate. This influence on popular culture was fueled by Greta Garbo’s portrayal of her in the 1931 film ‘‘Mata Hari,’’ which was repeatedly censored for its risqué scenes, but earlier this year, trial archives kept confidential by the French were released to the public. And a cache of Mata Hari’s personal and family letters was recently published.

Taken together, the documents recast the Great War’s most notorious spy as a mother who left an abusive marriage and as a scapegoat for war-torn France looking to distract from heavy casualties on the front lines.....

Is it revisionism or were we lied to this whole time, and honestly, who cares about Mata Hari these days?

Mention the name to millennials and they will say "Who?"

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RelatedBoy Scouts vote to enroll girls

It's to prepare them for future military service, and is that a wi$e move

Time for recess.

Be careful crossing the street on the way home.

And stay off the soda!