Why I feel sorry for Gen Y

Today I read this post by a Gen Y blogger about why she thinks another blogger (Gen Xer Penelope Trunk) gives bad career advice to Gen Y. While I agree that Penelope can be a little nutty, she does know what she's talking about. I don't feel sorry for Penelope when she gets flack for her writing, because I know she's got the experience behind her and she's well aware of what she's doing when she posts provocative blog entries.

I do, however, feel sorry for a lot of Gen Y bloggers. Because a lot of what you write now is not coming from a place of experience. It's the same crap Gen Xers said 15 years ago, but we were lucky that verbal communication in a F2F setting in 1995 is not on the Internet for eternity.

Now, to be fair, the Gen Y blogger that got me thinking didn't really write anything embarrassing. Seriously, I have seen a lot worse from a few Gen Y Facebook friends who I regularly question - What are you thinking posting that? However, if I had any advice to give to the 25-year-old GenerationXpert, it would be to shut up and listen.

It's true, the Boomers were pains in our asses early on in our careers. And it's true we Xers were right about some things - but not everything. The same is true now. We Xers may be a pain in Gen Y's ass, and they are right about some things. However, ask yourself - How sad would it be if this was the best we got. Today. Right now. Never learned anything new. Never got any smarter. Never learned from our mistakes. In 10 years Gen Z will be bitching about Gen Y. It's not generational. It's growing up.

But we Xers are lucky. The Gen Ys can't go find our musings about how smart we were at 25, because the Internet was in its infancy. But today's young bloggers need to remember - what will your writing say about you when you are 35, 45, or 55?