Why millennials want to work for themselves

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Millennials are young people who currently make up the majority of the working-age population. However, most of these people do not want to work "for an uncle", but want to build their own business. Read about why this is happening and how to lure millennials to work in this article.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, I am sure that most millennials want to work on their own terms - without a petty boss who will control their every step.

For 15 years now I have been teaching students and watching their professional plans change dramatically. Until 2000, they sought to work in such large companies as, and. Then they became interested in such giants as Apple, Google and Facebook.

In the past few years, a new fashion has appeared that can overshadow everything - to work for yourself, to build your own business.

Such self-employment is very common among young people: many of them drop out of universities and colleges, refuse to work "for an uncle" and start building their own businesses. According to the World Bank, 30% of the population can work for themselves. Even in advanced economies, where there are many job opportunities, there are a growing number of people starting their own businesses.

While millennials are expected to make up 75% of the working-age population by 2025, they will never be employees in the truest sense of the word. According to statistics, millennials rarely stay in one job for more than three years. So it is likely that millennials will work exclusively for themselves.

Let's see why this trend has appeared.

Millennials value freedom and work-life balance much more than other generations

Why? This is not to say that millennials are more attracted to harmonious living conditions than others, or they are fighting to improve the quality of life. Most likely, they are simply more selfish and independent, and therefore do not want to follow the rules.

Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at the University of San Diego, surveyed more than a million millennials and found that feelings such as self-importance, self-esteem and narcissism are prevalent among young people.

Obviously, this is what has a significant impact on the choice of employment: when you work for yourself, you do not have a boss, which is a very tempting prospect for millennials who value freedom and independence.

According to statistics, young people who are just starting their own business work more and earn less. If you really want to maintain the optimal work-life balance, then think twice before starting your own business.

Millennials tend to underestimate the hardships that always come with entrepreneurship

On the one hand, they think it's easy to imitate Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg: all you have to do is hate college and feel “out of place,” and then you are guaranteed entrepreneurial success.

At the same time, millennials somehow do not take into account the extraordinary talent and hard work that mega-successful entrepreneurs possess. Ultimately, such superhumans are an exception to the rule, a "miracle of nature" even.

On the other hand, millennials tend to overestimate their talents far more than any other generation. Most people on planet Earth are overconfident, but millennials have outdone everyone. Most of all, Generation Y tends to overestimate their creativity: they can consider their own rather mediocre ideas breakthrough and innovative.

While society will only benefit if entrepreneurship continues to grow and develop, we need to educate millennials about the downsides of entrepreneurship and their own abilities. It is especially necessary to do this in cases where young people do not have obvious talents and hard work.

How to do it? Perhaps we just need to be honest with millennials: give them full feedback, not hush up the criticism that has accumulated against them, and, most importantly, not exaggerate their abilities.

Giant companies are now considered greedy, corporate and non-creative - thus they are no longer considered attractive places to work

This is odd considering the fact that most of these young companies initially positioned themselves as places to develop their talent and make good money.

Employers can learn a good lesson from this:

To attract millennials, you must make it clear to them that they will work for a successful and innovative company and make a lot of money.

Trust matters to everyone, but after many young giant companies have grown at the expense of millennials, Generation Y feels cheated. Time will tell if Google, Facebook, and Amazon will succeed in rebuilding their former reputations, or if they will be replaced by a new generation of companies that will understand millennials and keep in touch with Generation Y in every possible way.

In short, millennials don't so much want to work for themselves as they don't want to work for others. They believe that the "uncle" will shackle their creativity. They need achievement and want to feel like they've achieved everything on their own.

Own business for millennials is a kind of survival strategy, as they strive to avoid boring and tedious work and want to implement their ambitious plans.

Older generations, like Generation Y, were fed up with traditional jobs, took freelance jobs, or started their own businesses.

The main reason for this is that they had a negative experience, they fully drank all the hardships of working "for an uncle." We call them “necessity entrepreneurs,” but only because their necessity is truly objective.

And no one has the right to judge millennials when they try to do the same.