Making Lemonade

A Ninth Brutal Truth About Millennials

Millennials aren’t difficult to understand. All you have to know is that they are inexperienced, and they have to make lemonade out of a bunch of lemons.

The “gig economy” is just business owners and entrepreneurs trying to reverse 100 years of expensive gains in workers rights so they can retire rich. First destroy the unions. Then tear up the social contract (lifetime employment, benefits, and the 40 hour work week). Millennials get that this is happening and they will have to live in the resulting shithole of a world. Their relative lack of materialism is rational. It’s an acknowledgement that they won’t be able to afford the nice things their parents have. It’s acceptance that they will have to labor like a Bangladeshi garment worker, in the shiny cities their grandparents built by exhausting Earth’s resources, damaging the climate, and despoiling the environment.
The mobility of millennials is doubtless facilitated by technology that didn’t exist for previous generations. But it isn’t a goal. It’s a reaction to lost job security and global outsourcing, about which millennials have little choice. That they navigate this stressful new reality with self-assurance is wonderful, but it should not be mistaken for choice or desire.
When millennials think of starting a business, their models are the predatory businesses that impoverished their entire generation, and the amoral leaders of these businesses. Donald Trump is their mental model of the CEO, and of the politicians who cater to CEOs. No wonder they want to work for themselves.
Like every previous generation, millennials share the exuberance of youth, unmoderated by the battle scars of experience. Right now they are young, low-skilled, interchangeable parts. This, plus technology, accounts for their mobility. What the world hasn’t seen yet is how the serfdom of the gig economy will evolve as the millennial age cohort gains experience and skill, which used to improve compensation, but also reduces the number of jobs for which they are suited.
Also like the young of every previous generation, millennials foolishly think that one gets rich, not by working hard and living modestly over a lifetime, but by serendipity: founding a unicorn startup, being discovered on youtube, becoming an options trader, winning the lotto, inheriting.

What happens to this youthful optimism when millennials discover that unicorns are mythical beasts, the lottery is a losing proposition, and the vagabond life doesn’t work with children? They may become the angriest, most pessimistic generation in a thousand years. Violent revolutions come out of such generations. I am personally hoping to die peacefully in my sleep before this particular shit hits the fan, because I am well enough off to become a target of their anger. But it sucks for my millennial children.

Kurt Guntheroth is an author and software developer. His first book, Optimized C++, was published in May 2016. He blogs on software and corporate culture. If you liked this article, please recommend it by clicking on the little heart below.