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Sleep Walking

Stealing time is one thing but money a bit different but there could be a logic to say that they are one and the same. What is interesting about the stories is that all the thievery is going on in the office not away working from home though showing up at noon could go one way or the other. While its easy and tempting to blame a whole generation as lazy, the real problem lies elsewhere. 

There are no competent or inspiring people managers or leaders of any sort that these young folks work for. So no surprise they feel no desire to perform at work. If a person was able to read 74 ebooks a year pretending they were reading their email, that person should not have been hired to begin because they have no measurable job to do. Every account in the article points to the same problem - one of over-hiring and not having a well-defined job where performance can be tangibly measured. That and no sense of team, shared vision, common purpose and the like.

These folks are sleep-walking through their careers (if its even worth calling that) trying to keep the paychecks coming so they can live whatever concept of life they want to live. The thinking is extremely tactical and the pace at which the world is changing does not appear to bother them at all. This is my own observation as well. People in the early stages of their career are often completely unconcerned about what would become of them professionally in 5-10 years, never mind longer. The rate of change we are experiencing is unprecedented and there is no playbook for most of it. When the internet happened, it was a big deal but having seen it, this feels a lot bigger and more pervasive. 

It would seem that folks who need to stay in the game for multiple decades would think long and hard about what it means for them and how they can best prepare for the future. Such is not the case for the vast majority - there is this great complacence that is fascinating to watch. I am much closer to the end of my career than the beginning and I find myself thinking all the time about what my professional future will be, what if any moat I have. Only people of my age bracket seem to think the way I do. The stealing of time and more appears to part of that same lack of concern about what the future holds

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