i’m going to be brutally honest in this post, and because of that i think you’ll feel either one of two ways at the end of this: (1) fired up and completely on board, or (2) totally offended.

<figcaption class="wp-caption-text">image by setlasmon, flickr artist</figcaption></figure>

i’m a new breed of employee and, believe it or not, there are a lot more like me. we’re all over the place, and the best news — for us anyway — is that there are more of us coming. and perhaps the first thing that we could care less about is the traditional corporate structure.

to us, it doesn’t really matter what your title says. it doesn’t matter how old you are, or where you come from, or even where you went to school. what we do care about is what value you bring to the table… and what kind of computer you use (mac, for the win!). it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been around or how new you might happen to be because good ideas are good ideas, no matter who has them. and that’s what we gravitate towards.

we don’t want someone who sits at a bigger desk to tell us what to do, and it’s not about a lack of respect for authority. for us, we just have a different idea of who actually is the ‘authority’. for many of us, that happens to be ourselves. we want to work on what we want to work on, and it’s because — on some level — we have an attachment to it. we’re passionate beings, and we like to express and explore that passion. we don’t want to just go through life checking boxes.

we care about what we do and how we do it. employees like us don’t want email and we don’t want telephones; we want facebook and twitter. we want to be mobile. we want our office and our information in our pocket because we want our work to be anywhere. board shorts on a beach? no problem. off-site meeting with a client? no problem. we also want to have a voice in the direction that our tribes take. but beyond having a voice, what we really care about most is actually being heard. we’re not all stupid.

we care just as much about giving information away as we care about consuming it. why should anything be strictly mine? or yours? or anyone’s? you may be a great analyst and do great things with information that is provided to you, but when have you ever given back to the community that provided that opportunity to you? because if there’s one thing you should know about us, it’s that we’re relentless.

we don’t think that we can have an impact on the world — we know that we can. so don’t try to censor us. don’t hold us back. don’t act like you know what’s best for us. don’t think for one moment your ideas are better than ours just because you’ve “been there, done that”. don’t expect the same things out of us because you’ve gotten it out of everyone else who has come before. obedience without question. satisfaction over scraps of success. sorry, but we’re not interested. not anymore.

i’m part of the new breed of employee. i’m a 2.0 in a world of 1.0. so whatever expectations you had for me, go ahead and throw them out the windows 95/98/2000/xp. maybe the reason you’re having such trouble with me is because you’re puttingartificialboundaries on me. it’s time for a paradigm shift; dare i say it’s time for a revolution.

so don’t box me in.

    • *i told you that you’d either be fired up and completely on board, or that you’d be totally offended. so… which one is it?</p>

i’m glad.