Apparently, I’m at ease with technology and have an egocentric, cynical attitude in the workplace. Or at least I would if I shared the archetypal characteristics of Generation Y, to which I (just) belong.

Apparently, I’m at ease with technology and have an egocentric, cynical attitude in the workplace. Or at least I would if I shared the archetypal characteristics of Generation Y, to which I (just) belong.

Those born between 1978 and 1994 have come in for a lot of analysis of late. I’ve received countless invitations over the past year to listen to experts talk about how to get the most out of Generation Y workers, or ‘echo boomers’ as they’re also called. I have to say I’ve declined most of those invitations, partly because I was a bit skeptical about the whole concept.

So I was pleased to find I’m not the only one to question the validity of the notion. Jean Pralong, a professor at Rouen Business School, carried out a study on 400 people and found out that the key influence on your attitude to work is not the decade you were born but whether or not you have a job. More similarities were found between paid workers of Generations X and Y than between paid workers and students in Generation Y.

For example, students of Generation Y thought work colleagues were often dishonest with each other and building a career was mainly about opportunism. Those views were not generally shared by their contemporaries in gainful employment.

The research is a timely reminder that analysis of generation gaps can be overdone. If you want to see a real difference in generational attitudes, go to China. Parents who grew up in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, missed chunks of their education and were sent to work in the fields, unsurprisingly have a very different attitude to life from their sibling-less children who grew up in a relatively affluent, politically stable environment.

Compared to that, the gap between baby boomers and the so-called Generation Y in the UK looks pretty small and can be largely explained by the fact that the baby boomers are, well, older and have seen a bit more of life.

The idea that fundamental attitudes to life and work shift every 25 years seems a bit hokey to me, but what else would you expect from someone born in 1979.