Comments on: A Spoiled Generation?

By: Daniel Laughlin

Daniel Laughlin — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:08:14 +0000

Save Generation X! Kudos on the GenY perspective and all the coverage it’s getting. A lot of good content and some great conversations have been coming out of it. I just want to put in a call to save generation X. I’m finding an alarming trend to shring the range of what GenX was. When the first books game out on GenX or the 13th Generation, we were born between 1960 and 1980. In the GenY slides, were GenX is down to about 67-77. Talk to NASA. Fight to be listened to. Light fires of excitement about space exploration. Stay connected and live on the wire, but don’t turn me (1965) into a Boomer:)

By: Carl

Carl — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:19:44 +0000

I wanted to apologize for my first comment being negative. I am happy that NASA is considering the new generation. Be persistent because through the effort great changes may occur.
My overall point in a more positive spin would have been that NASA ought to be raising their standards. NASA should attract the best and the brightest from all over the world like was done in the past. As a beaurocracy NASA needs to resist promoting people etc based on their time in NASA. Experience is a great protector but not a good innovator. The decision power and the power to make changes should be given to the ambitious and proven members independent of their time in the agency. But as I was saying, NASA ought to be looking for the best and the brightest and if they are to attract those people than they need to offer more then the competitors.
My second point was that NASA should allow ideas to be rejected more quickly. Wasting many peoples time on an idea that the far majority has rejected should be stopped. Innovation and creativity is important, but being able to discern when an idea is a bad one is arguably more important in this point in time. Look at many of the existing governement projects that have failed or are failing. NASA has been at the creative edge for many years so more energy needs to be put into recognizing bad ideas early.
Again I am sorry for relieving frustration by being so negative. ;P

By: Gabe

Gabe — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:13:44 +0000

To the GenY four,

You guys ROCK! Keep preaching it my man/woman. The key point you guys make is that organizations that don’t engage GenY, won’t exist in the future. Simple as that. The DoD suffers from the exact same problem. Not many come in, and those that do are immediatley chased away. An orgainzation ceases to exist if nobody fills the ranks.

The fact that GenY (and GenY at heart) crave a work-life balance is salient. If you can’t give me this, then too bad for you…I’d rather take less pay or a “lessor job” to achieve this than to stick around out of some sense of duty. Family first, job second. Those orgs that capture this, win.

It’s a brand new world out there!

By: Carl

Carl — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:34:57 +0000

This may not relate but I was requested by a member of the conference to post these thoughts. Feel free to email me if you like. [PS This site does not view correctly in internet explorer 6...I cannot see the left side of the webpage. Home looks like 'me'.]
I believe that the more intelligent people you have working on the lower rungs of the ladder who are given the freedom to make changes themselves to their own processes, the more improvement there will be. When you have more ‘less intelligent’ people working on the lower rungs, that are not improving anything, are unable to relate to the needs of others, and are still making changes, you end up with a giant mess of a bureaucracy like we have now. You can’t have dumb people, or at least unaware people, making the process changes. If they want a better NASA overall they need to start raising the bar and attracting the most intelligent people. That is why NASA was good years ago and now it is a cumbersome bureaucracy of sheep. They need to identify intelligence and ambition more than they need collaboration. A bunch of sheep collaborating will still not outsmart the shepherd. NASA does have some really intelligent people that they have identified. They need many more. They need to let the sheep eat their grass and stop giving them more ability to change things by promoting them.
Charismatic sheep tend to look intelligent, so just be aware. Ideas like switching NASA to apple because it is posh is dumb. The intelligent people should be pointing out that a NASA RFP to buy new computers looks at things like cost versus benefit to decide which new computers to purchase. The intelligent people should point out that if there is a need to start buying computers by using their poshness as a factor along with cost, availability, tech support, etc; then that should be implemented. Just choosing apple or twitter with no thoughts on impact is a sheep thing to do. I pray that NASA does not become a social hierarchy where the charismatic sheep make the decisions.

By: A Taxpayer

A Taxpayer — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:04:49 +0000

Respectfully, I see so much mis-directed energy. A government agency will never be the source of innovation or value. Instead, they stifle innovation and destroy value.

Please — if you want to make a difference, which I applaud, do it without participating in a government programs that simply redistributes wealth.

Don’t skip the hard steps: go convince the capital markets that your ideas are good ideas. Get them to invest and then go nuts. That, my friends, is the American way.

By: Natalie

Natalie — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:25:28 +0000

Libby, I agree with you that we are all here to direct our passion toward a peaceful purpose – I love that! I think that’s a cause worth having and living for and sacrificing “financial success” as the world measures it. I just attended the Gen Y conference and came out of it confused – are “we” (Gen Y) trying to figure out how we can get Gen Y involved in making JSC a better place, or are we trying to get Gen Y interested in space since they’re not interested (and 40% opposed) and they’ll be footing the bill, or could it be something else? One thing is for sure…the presenters set out to get a dialog going and that has definitely happened. That’s a great start – but now it’s a matter of ACTION. We can’t sit around in a mucky debate – we have to just start doing something. Whether it’s Gen Y taking baby steps to engage Gen Y in an awareness of NASA or Gen Y taking baby steps to improve JSC doesn’t matter – both are great. But I think the first one is bigger because we’re talking about changing the thinking of the future generation which will then influence the first. What does everyone else think?

By: Libby

Libby — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:13:40 +0000

As a Boomer on the borderline of X who happens to agree with a lot of the comments made here, I agree that if we want people to support the NASA mission then we have to be willing to meet everyone on their own ground… For GenY that is clearly Starbucks & social networking sites, etc…

For a long time, I have posted on my favorite sites about the importance of our mission and shared my point of view about the many great things we get to do here… I wish more of us were allowed to build those types of connections with NASA’s full support & buy-in, without being paranoid that it will be seen as empty socializing, or even worse – some type of abhorrent anti-social behavior by people who aren’t comfortable online… I’m sure if all the people of NASA were encouraged to share more about what we do online, then more people outside NASA would start to understand and support our mission…

Also, as a woman who has put up with loads of crap to get to where I am in my career, I believe in empowerment and I agree that empowering ourselves FIRST is the only way change happens… Government agencies are notoriously awful at it & someone has to start the ball rolling…

As a person who has worked with all kinds of people over the course of a long career, I’ve seen the power of diversity first-hand… Teams work best when they represent multiple points of view…

Where I _disagree_ with the GenY presentation is the overall approach, which seemed anything but inclusive to me… In trying to teach “us” the value of “you,” quite a few of “us” felt marginalized and devalued… This is the natural fallout of us & them thinking, the basis of all prejudice and a form of anti-diversity in my mind, no matter who’s using it…

Maybe some recognition of the fact that a lot of us at NASA got here because we were once like you, and the fact that a lot of US are also frustrated with the way things happen here, would have helped us hear you a bit more…
It also would have helped had “you” given “us” a little more credit for what we have done since most of us who have spent our careers here have done so because we believe strongly in what we do…

Quite a few of “us” could have left for more money or a bigger title, but we didn’t… And while I’ve never been on Mars or the moon, I feel soo lucky to have accomplished some of the amazing things I have done here at NASA… I’ll never be rich or powerful working here, and that’s frustrating sometimes, but it’s so worth the sacrifice to get to do the exploring that I have always and _will always_ love… Most of the people of NASA, both young and old, came (& stay) here for that same reason — because this is one of the few places we can direct our passion towards a peaceful purpose… That’s a pretty big thing to have in common…

By: House

House — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:04:13 +0000

I think that the “spoiled” label, or another that is similar, has been applied in the past to all generations by the generations above…it is hard for those who were raised in the “old” system not to be jealous of or annoyed at the new generation whose members have is “easier” (as the grass is always greener) and whose memebers are trying to change what the other generation was rasied in or even creasted. Can you see the potential for conflict?
Of course there always is the questions of whether they are truly spoiled, or just express themselves in that way, or the way in which they expressed their needs was interpretted as spoiled by the older generation whose members have their own grudges and biases that condition them to respond in such a way?

It is also true that Gen Y has been the richest generation so far in terms of stock increases and disposable income with jobs and no big expenses prior to the memebrs reaching college. There have been some big changes since then, Gen Y has watched there vision of thw world change, crash, and now that they are old enough, educated enough, rich enough to have a say, they are, and in a loud and technilogically driven way that is bound to anger others.
I have to wonder about the people who call the geny y dreamers “spoiled”- because why wouldn’t you want life to be “easier” for those who come after you? Why do you try to correct them, push them down? why don’t you accept, applaud, encourage them for having a good life and wnating to make a difference? Instead of suppressing them, use their energy and enthusiasm and re-focus it, if you feel it is misaimed?

By: Dan Carpenter

Dan Carpenter — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:49:59 +0000

Gen Y, first of all, I am thrilled that any generation is talking about communicating the thrill they get from involvement in this field. I have gone through the pitch twice and probably need a few more times to truly digest it (so thanks for the flat PPT!).

Let me share a few thoughts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....munication

This link will explain StratComm enough for this point: Top down, one way communication is not dead. What I see is that whatever additions to the NASA-Aerospace communications efforts are made, this one will still be with us for awhile. Why do I say that? Because as much as you want to flatten the orgs, our country’s leadership and budgeting do not currently work that way. So while you think top down, one way is dead for your generation, it still exists for the rest of the world. (I hope to live long enough, I am 51, to see you kill it)

The challenge then is not to kill it, but to design a new process/system/effort that ADDS to the stodyg top down method by filling in with the various methods described in your pitch.

Sorry, must quit for now. I am doing WiFi at McDonalds and my battery is about out of juice.

The law of the jungle is adapt or die. And I think that has been around for a few thousand years. But hopefully you will spur more adpatation and more quickly than it would have happened if driven from the top down…

Faithfully, Dan Carpenter

By: Fitzpatrick

Fitzpatrick — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 07:37:25 +0000

Katherine- great thoughts, and I couldn’t agree more. If the presentation came across as self-limiting, that was actually the opposite of our intention. I think some background is needed here. The presentation was a result of a request from others outside our generation to characterize Generation Y because it is a group of people which NASA has realized that it has a large disconnect with. Our task was to provide a point-of-view from as wide of a range of an entire generation (no small task, there!) as we could. We chose a somewhat unconventional powerpoint presentation to do this because it was both a commonly-used communication means and a new approach to communicating a message at the same time.

To generalize an entire generation is tricky. I think the fellow Gen Y community in the space business sees itself in the same terms of perseverance and persistence as you described above. The vast majority of Gen Y lies outside the circles of space exploration, unfortunately, and they have been identified as a group of people NASA wants to connect with.

Our message was to say that in order to connect with that audience, communicators need to take into account just HOW different the generation is. By doing so, we all can start to learn how to come together to understand perspectives from ALL generations, backgrounds, and experience levels. So the question of limiting ourselves is one I don’t think you need to ask the space Gen Y community- we are trying to stand up and provide our perspectives as just that- perspectives. We aren’t trying to make people come find us. The message of the presentation is that in order to learn something from everyone, we need to take in ALL perspectives and open up a discussion to work towards improving things, because the alternative is to fall into the acceptance of things the way they are because that’s how they’ve always been. How can we push back the frontiers of exploration with that mentality?

The providing of a perspective is merely a method of picking a starting point to open up a dialogue. Again, thank you so much for the comments. If you have ideas on how to improve on the slides or want to discuss more ideas about how to make NASA better for all generations, please let us know!