In this Generational Viewpoints article, we asked members of Hansen, Barnett & Maxwell (www.hbmcpas.com), a Salt Lake City-based accounting firm with more than 60 employees, to share their perspectives about their generation's attributes that need better explanation or understanding. Generation Y semi-senior Travis Olney, born in 1984, and Baby Boomer partner Robert Bowen, born in 1949, opined on the following question:"What would you most like others in your firm to understand about your generation?"

OLNEY'S GENERATION Y VIEWPOINT

I have to say that I may not be the most representative person to speak for my generation. I'm not the "typical" Generation Yer. I was born in June of 1984, a month after Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. That said, somehow I don't have a Facebook account. I don't Tweet. I don't have an iPhone or an iPad, and I'm terrible at video games. Perhaps I'm "old school." Nevertheless, there are a few things that I would like others in my firm to understand about my generation.

Perhaps it's the old-school part of me, but I will admit that people from my generation can sometimes have unrealistic expectations. I know some who believe that they should already have everything that older generations have worked years to achieve. Although the majority of Gen Y may not share these feelings of entitlement, a segment believes that they should get paid more to work less.

However, I would say that the majority of Gen Y members are very grateful to be employed and to be gaining experience in their chosen career field. In many ways, we are children of the economic recession. Most of Gen Y didn't get to enjoy the economic highs of the 1990s and 2000s. Instead, we graduated and began looking for a job during the recession. Even though most of us didn't have much to lose in our retirement accounts, we have been impacted by the recession and have learned many lessons from these economic difficulties.

We want to have successful careers, and we understand this will require hard work, long hours at times, and a good deal of stress. However, we want to find the most efficient ways to accomplish our work, and we think that technology provides many opportunities to improve efficiency. We also want to find a way to balance our professional and personal lives. We do not want to look back on our careers in 40 years and recognize that our only achievements have been professional.

To end, on behalf of Gen Y, I would like to propose an agreement with all of you Baby Boomers. Gen Y has been informed, on numerous occasions, that we have it easy on the "new" CPA Exam. Although your arguments are highly debatable, Gen Y is willing to concede that the "old" exam was much harder than the "new" exam on one condition: Please don't tell us your "walk uphill both ways in the snow" CPA Exam stories anymore.

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