What's sad is that it's so diluted that Millennials have no idea it was once associated with copiers. They think Canon and HP first, or maybe the Epsons and Brothers they have at home. PARC is ancient lore. Document solutions = SharePoint even internally, because our products are so cumbersome we won't even dogfood our own products. There is not one thing Xerox does that others do not do better and cheaper, with far more market presence. It's a company without reason for being, carrying forward simply because of it ain't broke, don't fix itism.
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Let's not genralize. There are great millenials. There are not so great millenials. There are great seasoned employees, There are not so great seasoned employees. What Xerox has failed to do is embrace those willing to bring new ideas to the table (regardless of age) and take a chance on a different way of thought. A chance of doing something a different way. A chance to buck the 'old way' and delve into the new. Age has nothing to do with it. Intelligence and forward thinking does.
I have worked with amazing millenials. I have worked with amazing tenured employees. It's the 'not being afraid to dip the toe in' that is awesome - then you hit the wall when you encounter someone who believes in 'we've always done it this way and it works'.
As a boomer that worked at XIM pre Y2K I second the post of the millenial. Even back then, with Arthur Andersen robbing the place blind the entrenched Xeroxers fought change tooth and nail. I was offered a very nice full time position, broad band but I saw the writing on the wall even 20 years ago. In all honesty, I am surprised this pain has been held off for so long. Office copiers are going the way of film cameras, and Xerox has failed to re-invent itself. There will be successful spin-offs and those spin-offs will have opportunities, but the Xerox old guard has got to go.
I am a millennial. I worked at Xerox. I know where it started and what they did, and knew this before I came to the company.
This thread is full of sour grapes. Just because you've been unable to find a job elsewhere doesn't mean you have a right to accuse those who do of "laziness" or "disloyalty". I came to the company full of ideas, and so did the other young colleagues I had. Unfortunately, though, what we found was a company full of geriatric thinking and don't-give-a-f*ckism (see above comments for examples of exactly what I mean) that made it very clear that at Xerox there is no room for change and no room for innovative thinking.
Management could not possibly have been less receptive to new ideas, and the fact that Xerox's information systems are the WORST in the industry is compounded by the fact that they are managed by mid-level people whose only goal is to save their own job. No one was trying to solve problems; people were just interested in maximizing their departmental budget. XIM made getting access to critical supply chain information an absolute nightmare. The result was catastrophically poor decision-making due to lack of influential data. time and time again...
So before you write off an entire generation of people, many of whom are more talented, motivated, and agile that your average Xeriod could ever hope to be, think for a second about why you're still there. I've worked in a number of places before and since Xerox, and I have never seen so many people showing up at 9:30, leaving at 4, spending all of their time on espn.com, and coasting out to retirement.
Xerox does business the same way they did in 1995. The fact that you (read: baby boomers) can't keep up with the pace of change that our generation brings is one of the reasons why myself and every single millennial colleague I had there left within 3 years. Your company is tanking, and it seems that it's always someone else's fault. You can keep blaming Ursela, you can keep blaming John V., or you can keep blaming the young people who come in full of ideas and run in 6 months (or are chased away), but you're the people who will have to eat the crow. It's the company's job to retain talent, nobody has an obligation to stay with a dying company full of toxic coworkers who are as resistant to change as Rochester is to good weather.
I would offer a different viewpoint. Our group has brought in 8-10 interns and new college graduates in the past 18 months. All of them, yes, ALL of them, left within 6-8 months as soon as they saw how things worked here. They saw no examples of innovative thinking, and no opportunities to increase their skill set, etc. Except for one who was just looking for a paycheck, they all expressed a desire to grow and learn more and as soon as they picked up on the "Xerox way" of doing things (too bureaucratic, too slow, stuck in process ruts from the 80's and 90's, etc) they found positions outside the company.
No question Z is an improvement...Aware, knowledgeable, action oriented and hard working.
Of course there may be a millennial that bucked their cohort, but I can’t think of one I met at Xerox.
Gen Z is a lot more impressive than millennials I've found
Can we not generalize an entire generation?
...I'm looking you, baby boomers...you know, the ones who raised the millennials...
All millennials I worked with at Xerox, left within their first year after contributing very little. Yet management pandered to their individualism. They were Wholly unimpressive. That said, Gen Z ain’t afraid to do real practical and intelligent work.
All millennials I worked with knew exactly where Xerox started. You are just espousing sour grapes. Get over yourself.