An article from the Helsingin Sanomat by Anna-Sofia Berner- Translated from Finnish

Nowadays the young want both freedom and security from the jobs. What if they are left without either?

‘I don’t even want it! Simply do not want it! And they don’t get it.”A friend and me are drinking mineral water in a café, discussing the future and work. Her latest patch of temporary employment has just come to an end and there is no next gig in sight. It’s not a problem since she didn’t really want to stay at that job. Not on a permanent basis, anyway. A steady job in a big, conservative company just isn’t that attractive a notion.

This is something they don’t understand at the big, conservative company. They’ve always been a sought after employer and never before had any difficulty attracting young talent. So they’ve been able to hold off on hiring people on a permanent basis by giving young people one temporary assignment after another. And eventually they are young no more.

Could this change?

My friend is not alone in her unwillingness to wait for an economic upturn. The most courageous take charge of their own lives: move abroad, start a company of their own, change their field. The most daring do this even if there are still jobs available at home in their own fields.

“They started a company and everything was immediately different. In negotiations, they are treated seriously, as equals. Meetings are in real conference rooms, with coffee and snacks,” my friend said as she recounted the experience her friends had when making the change from temporary workers to entrepreneurs and subcontractors.

Way to go.

Temporary jobs often feel more secure than giving them up. The familiarity is comforting. Habit makes many keep on taking temporary jobs from big companies, all in hopes that one day the gates of heaven will be thrown open in the form of a permanent job and the security it brings.

My friend’s way of thinking is new to them: Really? You wouldn’t want a perfectly good, steady job? Why the hell not?

Because you can have more.

In the café we are alive with ideas of all the cool things we could do on our own. In a really cool office space, naturally. Nothing guaranteed, but at least we’d be our own bosses.

My friend’s earrings swing when she gets excited. For a second we no longer feel like highly educated temp workers. We are digital cowboys.

Four days earlier a rich, 39-year old father of two, known as the Bulldozer, is giving a presentation on the stage of the Bio Rex movie theater. He is known to be pals with the special advisor to the Russian President. He is a successful IT entrepreneur. He has written a business management book called No Fear- Business Leadership in the Age of Digital Cowboys, which was translated into Chinese and a slew of other languages. He is Pekka Viljakainen.

In the seats, I’m all ears. Viljakainen is talking about me. “The PlayStation generation – or people born in 1985 and after it…”

Yeah! Thanks to my date of birth, I’m part of the gang even though I never played PlayStation. I had an 8-bit Nintendo.

According to Viljakainen my generation will be responsible for all the billion dollar innovations over the coming years. Digital Cowboys are the elite of my generation: independent, international and highly networked information workers imbued with education, ideas and agility.

Viljakainen’s compliments make me blush. Despite the superlatives, I recognize myself, and my friends, in his speech. It massages my ego. We’re not used to this sort of attention.

According to Viljakainen us digital cowboys have spent our lives connected to data systems and social networks. Information is our currency. We’re not lone rangers. We share our data and are interested in the opinions of others.

We want our employers to provide us with freedom, inspiration and an egalitarian community to work in.

Employers really need to read Viljakainen’s book as soon as possible. More and more people seem to have realized that there is more to life than a steady paycheck.

“I figured I’d hang in there for a few more years. Then maybe I’ll have children. ”

This is a friend of mine speaking, about a month back. An MBA. She wasn’t comfortable at her job, due to poor leadership. Data didn’t flow and goals as well as schedules were poorly, if at all, defined. People worked in solitude.

That makes sense, I concurred, with my temp jobs. Hold on to your steady gig. Kids are a good idea, what with the steady job and all.

A few weeks later the phone rings.

“Guess what,” my friend asks excitedly. “I quit.”

She had secretly applied for a new job and, after an interview, got it. Damn hanging in there.

After hearing about it, my friend’s colleague, who is in his 50, said that bosses really need to start thinking of ways of holding on to employees of my generation.

It’s not like we are off to live on the dole or into downshifting.

We want interesting assignments and a demanding, but personable boss who doesn’t expect us to kiss his or her hand – unless we just decide to be our own bosses.

This is not one of those trends driven by the so-called creative industries. In my circle of friends everyone thinks this way. A warehouse temp. A mother studying to work in the cultural field. An electronics engineer, who has gone through several corporate downsizing processes.

We are not willing to commit to employers, because employers are not willing to commit to us. We know no job is permanent. Since we were kids, we’ve seen time and again how easy it is to get rid of committed workers – even in good economic times.

For the baby boomers, work was most important. For us, it’s not.

An engineer, who has been sold with a company twice, laid off three times and fired once scoffs at the sixty-something generation. “Making a job the center of your life is stupid. You can lose it in two weeks.”

My friend who is a bookkeeper and economist is the luckiest of us. Thanks to his education he has employers competing for his services – he can choose both freedom and security.

It’s a luxury. The rest of us digitals are often left without both. There is no security in sight and freedom often turns out to be illusory when your life is steered by decisions your employer makes.

Every employee is dependent on his or her employer, but a temporary worker is more acutely aware of this fact than the regular employees. What we’ll be doing next spring or next month is entirely dependent on the employer’s decisions and we will be the last to know what they are.

This dependency does not feel nice after being able to make decisions for yourself: what are my hobbies, where will I study, where will I go for exchange.

We’ve been taught to do what we want. But what do we want? And can we really get it?

We have endless discussions about the relative merits of nice temp jobs, poorly paying apprenticeships abroad and less interesting jobs. In person and on Facebook:

“My boss was obviously not pleased that I wanted time to think when he made what he thought was a great offer (= another temporary assignment)…”

“My unemployment got off to a flying start: I have a job interview on Monday. Already made a therapy phone call, because I’m not sure it’s a job I’m interested in.”

“I didn’t want another substitute gig. It would be for just six months and pay was closer to two than three k. And I think my whole body is telling me NO. I guess I’ll just have to freelance like crazy and try not to get depressed. These are difficult decisions.”

“I’d imagined a more exciting life and compared to it this humdrum office life looks kinda… well, I guess I ought to be happy I have a job.”

Pekka Viljakainen paints a picture of the Digital Cowboy as a fearless hero, but in reality we are scared.

We vacillate between insecurity and self-confidence. Insecurity falls by the wayside when we hear of courageous decisions by people our age. It returns when we read about youth unemployment and reluctant entrepreneurs living on poverty line in the news.

Fear makes us grasp at every temporary job we’re offered, like a lifesaver, even if we’d just been planning to conquer the world.

It’s not cool at all.

What are we afraid of? Unemployment. Marginalization maybe. Not being able to start a family and buy a house.

We’re also afraid of wasting all our grand plans and dreams. Deciding which is the bigger fear is hard.

I look at my friend’s earrings swinging and at the brave look in her eyes. Maybe it’s not such a hard decision to make after all.

See original article( in Finnish) here : Pätkätyöläisestä digicowboyksi 

All Rights Reserved - © Helsingin Sanomat, a Sanoma company