Much has been written about how to manage millennials, many of which seem to focus on complaints from the older management styles of X and Y generations. In evaluating the problem, we need to understand the change in the corporate agreement between the worker and the company that was in place for baby boomers.

The change is there is no agreement.

It is understood a company may take down a department, terminate everyone in a geographic or business unit, shift operations to a different state or country, downsize based upon short term stock market issues, or implement a merger with a coin flip of whose department gets to stay.

This is reality. For the worker, there is no long term loyalty since the company offers no long term loyalty. For the manager to threaten job loss, the problem is the same manager has the same threat delivered from their boss.

The worker is focused on their long term interests and goals. These interests are totally about self preservation and growth, keeping a skill set which is current to the marketplace and being agile enough to react to job / management / company changes that may cause a re-evaluation of employment status.

The people who succeed are the ones who understand this and respond to these changes. Long term employment, a sign of stability in the past, is a sign of stagnation without internal growth.

Large companies provide safety in a macro scale, but are even more vulnerable to career changes on a micro scale. Small companies have their own challenges, but have similar risks as large companies for job stability.

Stay current, my friends. Be active in the marketplace, network, and keep your skill sets up to date. Find new technologies to work with and take to the marketplace.