Jeff, I am at least one generation older than those you label as the “fairness generation,” but my biggest beef with regular corporate work has always been the absence of fairness.

In my experience, it’s not about Aesop’s ant and grasshopper. You can toil away as the ant did and still the spoils will be given to the grasshopper who fiddles the tune that management likes.

And it gets worse all the time.

Companies can hire whomever they wish without justification. So you fill out the application and submit a competent resume. The interview (and job) will go to the son of the boss’s golf partner. It’s called networking and everyone accepts it as quite OK.

It works the same with layoffs. They can terminate whomever they want. In fact, sometimes they even fire the person who has been rewarded the most in the past for achievement through consistent raises. Now they are paid too much and can be replaced with someone less expensive.

Yes, if you define fairness as rewarding everyone the same regardless of work done, fairness is definitely unfair.

If you define fairness as rewards commensurate with work done, I’m all for fairness!

And maybe the so-called fairness generation is too.

-Diana