Boomer Feels “The Devil Wears Prada” Movie Gives Good Insight Into Millennial (aka Gen Y) Chicks
Hey Chicks,
WIth my new book out, Millennials Incorporated, I’ve been talking a lot about this topic (Millennials entering the professional workforce and how it’s affecting corporate cultures, management styles, etc.). Plus, people are sending me tons of info and links to blogs on the topic.
Someone just sent me this blog entry written by a female Boomer, who also writes a lot about generations in her Across the Ages blog for the Harvard Business blog. She shares her thoughts about the insights she got into Millennials after watching The Devil Wears Prada.
Her comments are pretty funny and the comment “she quits” is something I talk about A LOT in my seminars targeted at Boomer and Gen X managers about retaining and managing this new generation.
What The Devil Wears Prada Can Tell You About Your Gen Y Employees
Posted by Tammy Erickson, Harvard Business School blog
I hope I’m not giving away any major secret here. I’m taking a gamble that any of you who plan to see the movie or read the book The Devil Wear Prada have already done so.
Bottom line: She doesn’t take the job.
The young woman in the movie (a Gen Y) works so very hard to pursue her dream job. She jumps into an industry with which she has little familiarity and no discernable qualifications. She rises to the most impossible challenges, tackling tasks she had no idea how to do with ingenuity and boundless energy. She relies in part on the wise coaching of a Boomer colleague and skirts the deep resentment of an X’er who feels passed over. In the end, she succeeds in meeting the extraordinarily exacting standards of her over-the-top competitive Boomer boss.
Then she quits.
Okay, so she also sacrificed true love and lasting friendships in pursuit of her professional goal, but — let me emphasize — she won!
And she quit.
Now, let’s fess up. How did you really feel about that ending? I don’t mean in the car on the way home from the theater after you’ve had a chance to reflect. I mean in the moment – what was your immediate, instinctive, knee jerk reaction? It may tie pretty closely to your generational leanings.
Most Y’s I’ve asked have really liked the ending. The heroine rose to the challenge, learned a lot, and moved on to find something that strikes a deeper chord in her soul. One of my Y friends explained: “For me, although obviously there was some suspense, I knew going in that she had to decline the job — that’s just what a Y would do — it was just a matter of how.”
Most X’ers liked it, too. The pinnacle she’d reached in the corporate world was, afterall, clearly pretty unstable. Yes, she was on top — today — but, if nothing else, the movie had made obvious how being up one day in no way guaranteed a place tomorrow. Wise to get out now. One of my X’er friends elaborated: “For X’s, the movie is about what’s wrong with organizations and why it’s a mistake to hitch your wagon to any one person or any one organization for too long or without a sense that the organization will love you back.”
Personally (okay, I’m a Boomer), I found the ending, well, ridiculous. Why would you work so hard and not take advantage of winning? If she’d stayed in the job and done something positive with the spoils, that would make sense to me. Perhaps she might have served as a more humane role model for the next trainee — changed the corporate culture for the better. Or, maybe she could have even done something more grand — targeted some of the corporation’s resources toward a charitable goal — used her new-found power to make the world a better place.
Of course, after reflection, I get and respect the happy, balanced life she chose to lead . . . really. I guess I do.
Although extreme, this movie may be more of a parable for our corporations than we would like to admit. Many of the movie’s themes are ones that our research bears out. Gen Y’s are entering the workforce with enthusiasm and confidence — and succeeding on many fronts. They are finding Boomers a bit schizophrenic — both warm mentors and off-the-wall corporate warriors. And many X’ers have not exactly welcomed them with open arms.
Many Y’s are also, at best, agnostic in their commitment to a corporate career. Maybe they’ll stay, or maybe they’ll move on to other work environments that offer some new blend of learning, challenge and life balance. The old inducements hold much less appeal.
Lisa Orrell, Chief Chick of Chickonomics, is a professional speaker and author who strives to educate chicks, society, and the business world about essential evolutions in women's issues, and gender relations, that impact all of us.