Generation Y Career Burnout: Too Much, Too Soon?

There's been a flurry of content popping up on the web related to employees, particularly female employees, hailing from Generation Y (or the Millennial Generation, those born between 1981 and 1995) experiencing burnout early in their careers. As a someone who's part of Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980), and who's been in the workplace for nearly 20 years, I was intrigued. What are the newest professionals experiencing that's leading them to burn out, and how are they responding to it?

Late last year, Larissa Faw, a contributing writer to Forbes.com, sparked a mild furor when she published a story entitled "Why Millenial Women Are Burning Out At Work By 30." The piece generated more than 200,000 page views, 3,800 Twitter tweets, and nearly 14,000 shares on Facebook. In this op-ed style piece, she asserted that many of her peers were burning out on their chosen careers before they were out of their 20s, and offered some ideas why this was happening.

Faw proposes a variety of reasons why her peers might be going down in flames at the office, including the stress of working during the recent "Great Recession" and the fact that at each career stage, men are twice as likely to advance as women. She also reports that many Gen Y women have never really learned to relax, writing:

"It seems relaxation is something Millennial women have never experienced. One reason that women are burning out early in their careers is that they have simply reached their breaking point after spending their childhoods developing well-rounded resumes. 'These women worked like crazy in school, and in college, and then they get into the workforce and they are exhausted,' says Melanie Shreffler of the youth marketing blog Ypulse."

Faw's unofficial observations are being backed up by surveys and helping professionals. Marina Khidekel, writing in 2010 for Marie Claire, noted that a 2009 survey by The Conference Board had found 64 percent of workers under 25 were unsatisfied with their jobs, versus just 44 percent in 1987.

The unhappiness hasn't gone unnoticed by those working with 20-somethings. In the same article, Khidekel quotes Debra Condren, Ph.D., a New York-based psychologist and author of Ambition Is Not a Dirty Word, as saying, "I've definitely had more 20-something women coming to me because they're heading toward burning out. Work for them is about living out their ideals, not slaving away in an office. So they tend to get disillusioned faster when their jobs don't measure up to their standards."

How are Gen Y women coping with burnout?
One of the more interesting trends that may have its roots in this wave of early-career burnout is an increase in entrepreneurship among young adults.  A report released this week by Millennial Branding and analytics firm Identified found that the job title “owner” is the fifth most popular one listed by folks under 30 on their Facebook profiles. Just seven percent of those surveyed listed worked for a Fortune 500 company.

Some employers have noticed the increase in turnover coming from Gen Y, and have started pondering reshaping their office policies to be more friendly to this age group's preferred way of working. Jessica Stillman, writing on the workplace learning website Mindflash, suggested 3 free ways bosses could help Gen Y people feel less stressed in the workplace.

• Provide short-term projects and instant gratification, to accommodate the shortened attention spans of this generation.
• Allow multi-tasking. Young people this age are used to it thanks to technology and can feel bored without it.
• Don’t hide anything. In other words, be transparent about changes in the organization.

Other women in this age group are using the stressors that can lead to early-career burnout as an educational tool. ASU alumna Jessica Taylor, a corporate communications professional based in Phoenix, wrote a response to the Forbes article on the site BettyConfidential.com, noting that she found much of what was discussed in the original story to be true. However, she also cautioned against lumping all Gen Y women in the same category when it came to dealing with career-related issues.

"I think that happiness and success are defined differently for each of us, regardless of how many items we can check off on our accomplishment lists. And as far as burning out goes, I do it once every few weeks! It’s life, and it’s a crappy feeling, but learning to navigate through challenging experiences is what propels us forward, more equipped to handle it next time."

The questions to you

• If you're a member of Generation Y, are you experiencing any of the symptoms of career burnout that have been described here? Why do you think that is happening?
• If you're not a member of Generation Y, what do you think of their burnout issues? Have you ever felt burned out professionally?

~Liz Massey
Managing Editor, ASU Alumni Association