I live in a house full of millennials, three of whom are having their first skirmishes with working life. Every day I study them, marvelling² at how little their early experiences resemble my own. Sometimes I think it is because they are different. Sometimes because the world is different. I don’t know the right answer — but at least I know the wrong one when I see it.

我们家有好几个千禧一代，其中3个刚开始尝到工作生活的滋味。我每天都在研究他们，惊叹于他们的早期经历与我有多么不同。有时我觉得这是因为他们和我不一样。有时我觉得是这个世界变了。我不知道正确答案是什么——但至少我能一眼看出哪些答案是错误的。

Last week I got an email with the subject line “attracting millennials” from the dean of Columbia’s School of Professional Studies. He has been pondering the question of why so many of the brightest twentysomethings quit their fancy jobs, and has come up with a three-pronged strategy to help companies hang on to them. It goes like this: motivate through learning, market your benefit, invest in HR.

上周，我收到了一封来自哥伦比亚大学职业研究学院(Columbia University School of Professional Studies)院长的邮件，主题栏写着“吸引千禧一代”。他最近一直在思考一个问题：为什么会有这么多20多岁的青年才俊辞去光鲜的工作？他想出了一个三管齐下的策略来帮助企业留住他们。策略是这样的：通过学习进行激励、推销你的福利、投资于人力资源(HR)。

I stared at these puny³ bullet points and wondered if this man had ever met a millennial¹. That evening I asked my focus group around the dinner table if they agreed that the answer to mass disenchantment was more HR and training. Much derision followed.

我看着这些小小的要点，纳闷这个人是否和千禧一代打过交道。那天晚上我向围坐在餐桌旁的“焦点小组”问道，他们是否认同这样的见解：大规模幻想破灭的答案是更多HR和培训。随之而来的是一片嘲笑声。

So how ought companies act to keep their graduates, I asked them. They snatched up their devices and addressed their sprawling⁴ acquaintanceships on social networks — could anyone who had landed a big graduate job that they were now thinking of quitting please get in touch?

接着我问道，那么企业该怎么做才能留住毕业生。他们迅速抓起各自的手机，向他们在社交网络上越来越庞大的人脉关系网发问——有谁得到了一份像样的毕业生工作，但现在考虑辞去？

What followed was a diverting evening hearing the experiences of the disenchanted at Unilever, Goldman, Lloyds, a magic circle law firm, a big PR company, Sainsbury’s and a couple of big-name management consultants⁵.

接下来是一个有趣的夜晚，听着这帮小年轻吐槽对联合利华(Unilever)、高盛(Goldman)、劳埃德银行(Lloyds)、一家“神奇圈”(Magic Circle)律所、一家大型公关公司、森宝利超市(Sainsbury's)以及两家大牌管理咨询公司幻想破灭的经历。

One graduate told me she had just spent four months working on a deck of 250 PowerPoint slides no one would ever read. Another said juniors at her law firm were expected to nip out to buy sandwiches for seniors, as if they were their fags at Eton. A graduate with a first in English from Oxford⁶ university said her boss insisted on checking every email she wrote before it was sent, making her doubt her own ability to write a sentence.

一名毕业生告诉我，她刚刚花了4个月的时间做了一份长达250页、压根没人会看的PPT幻灯片。另一个毕业生说，她所在律所的初级律师要给资深律师跑腿买三明治，就像伊顿公学里那些受欺负的孩子一样。一名从牛津大学(Oxford University)毕业并拿到英语专业一级荣誉学位的年轻女士说，她的老板坚持检查她所写的每封邮件，然后才能发出，使得她开始质疑自己写句子的能力。

Almost everyone complained of the sheer stupidity of the tasks they were given to do.

几乎所有人都抱怨自己接到的愚不可及的任务。

And then as an afterthought, they mentioned the hours. It’s not fun to have worked all night and then to be given a bollocking for not having shaved.

接着，他们想起了另一个问题：工作时长。通宵工作之后因为没刮胡子而被臭骂一顿，这一点也不好玩。

What is going on here? Are they spoilt whingers? Or are these jobs really intolerable? I think it’s a bit of both: they are up against the widest gap between expectations and reality that the professional world has ever seen — and it’s not their fault.

到底发生了什么？他们是被宠坏的满腹牢骚之人吗？或者这些工作真的很无聊吗？我觉得两种原因都有：他们面对的期望与现实差距之大，在职场世界是前所未见的——这不是他们的错。

Most of these graduates have been told over and over again by prospective⁷ employers that they are extraordinary, and that their jobs are amazing. The Bain website is typical: “We need smart, innovative⁸ thinkers who aspire⁹ to incredible things. The learning curve is steep. But the work is exhilarating. And your career potential is infinite.”

多数毕业生听到未来雇主们一遍又一遍地强调他们的出类拔萃、他们的工作有多棒。贝恩(Bain)网站上的内容就是典型例子：“我们需要聪明、具有创新力、渴望尝试不可思议之事的思考者。学习曲线是陡峭的。但工作令人振奋。你拥有无限的职业潜力。”

When I was their age no one ever told me I was amazing or that the future was infinite, so I wasn’t especially disappointed to find I wasn’t and it wasn’t.

我像他们这么大时，没人告诉我我很出色或者我拥有无限的未来，所以当我发现自己没那么出色、未来也没那么光明时，我并没有特别失望。

By contrast, millennials are being set up by their employers for an inevitable¹⁰ fall. At first things go OK — there is the promise of air miles and the general swagger of it all. But after a few months, the boredom¹¹ hits and they find they aren’t faced with exhilarating work. They are filling in spreadsheets that have no apparent purpose.

相比之下，千禧一代从一开始就被雇主推上了注定会掉落的高台。最初一切貌似美好——有机会出差挣得飞行里程等等，总之是一份让人神气十足的光鲜工作。但是数月后，厌倦袭来，他们发现自己面对的并不是令人兴奋的工作，而是日复一日地填写着看不出意义的电子表格。

Junior jobs were always dull, but I suspect that they are worse than they were. In my day there was no PowerPoint, no spreadsheets, no PR, no HR, no layer upon layer of non-work to be doing. Even in my earliest jobs when I was given boring tasks I realised that someone had to do them. These graduates feel part of a machine: because everyone knows they probably won’t stay, no one makes any particular effort to get to know them.

初级工作总是平淡的，但是我怀疑如今的情况比过去更糟。在我那个时代，还没有PPT、电子表格、公关、HR，也没有一层又一层并非工作的事情要做。即使在我接到乏味任务的早期工作中，我也明白总得有人做这些工作。当今这些毕业生感觉就像机器的零件一样：因为每个人都知道他们很可能不会留下来，所以没人特别花功夫去了解他们。

More dangerous still is the gap between the corporate¹² bullshit and the business itself.

不过，更危险的是企业胡扯与企业现实之间的差距。

A young graduate at a management consultancy tells me that every day it is drummed into him by superiors that the firm always acts in the best interests of the client. But every week he watches the same people trying to flog further costly¹³ services that the client doesn’t need.

一名在管理咨询公司工作的年轻毕业生告诉我，上司每天都会向他灌输公司总是以客户利益至上的观念。但是每周他都会看到这些人试着兜售客户不需要的高价额外服务。

When the penny drops like this, there are only two possible outcomes. Either you quit — and this particular millennial has just banked his bonus and is about to do just that — or you silence your doubts and get sucked into the machine.

当年轻人幡然醒悟时，只有两种可能的后果。要么你辞职——这位年轻人刚刚拿到奖金，正打算辞职——要么收起你的怀疑，甘心投入运转中的机器。

This is what employers should be concentrating on. They should be trying to distract their new graduates at the point of maximum disaffection. The answer isn’t training or more HR — it is all round better management. They must stop telling them they have landed the most amazing job in the world. Instead they should give them something interesting to do, or at least be able to explain why filling in that particular spreadsheet really matters.

这才是雇主应该关注的地方。他们应该尝试在新毕业生最失落的时候吸引住这些年轻人。答案不是培训和人力资源——而在于更好的日常管理。他们必须停止告诉年轻人他们得到了世界上最牛的工作。相反，他们应该交给他们一些有意思的任务，或者至少解释一下填写那些电子表格的意义。