I think they include a one pixel transparent image that is stored on their server. When your email loads that image, they know. Something like that anyways!
Hubspot released a freemium tool to the world today called Signals. It is a chrome extension that essentially pops up a notification on your desktop when your email is read.
Is this a good thing? If this gets widely adopted it could potentially change how we treat email. Dynamics might shift with information like this. 'I know you know etc'
Don't forget that plenty of people are a lot more productive with some kind of structure in place. No amount of 'skinny jeans wearing' gen Y'ers will change that fact.
I am gen Y and I freely admit that I do more work in a 'designated working environment'. I hate monotonous work, and it has led me to building scripts etc to do the boring work for me. Our strength comes from that desire to not be bored, so we come up with creative solutions to bypass them. If a company can't bend to that mentality, and we aren't completely financially stuck with having to work, we will quit for a place that does.
Nah, that's just displaying competence. The vast majority of cross generational pop psychology is just evergreen bs to sell adds.
There are entitled brats in every generation. Put another way, there are plenty of ivy leaguers throughout history who's dads called a friend to get their kid a raise. just keep doing good work, you'll be fine.
"Our strength comes from that desire to not be bored, so we come up with creative solutions to bypass them." Ugh, barf. This sort of egomania is exactly what many people don't like about "we" gen Y'ers (I'm 27). "We" didn't invent the concept of creativity or innovation, it makes you sound silly to suggest "we" did.
Sorry to come off so strong; this stuff irks me because I'm from your generation and this sort of self-obsession reflects badly on me and other humble, hard-working gen-y'ers.
I had a difficult time convincing management that it was worth spending 30 hours developing a script to automate a task that normally takes 10 hours to do, even though we do that task at least once a week. Finally, I just ended up doing it on my own "free" time at work and showing it off in a meeting. I got chastised for spending the time doing it, but they were still impressed that the task now only took 5 seconds to complete. I ended up winning an award for it.
Unfortunately, that didn't mean I had less work to do. If you find a way to make your job more efficient, don't be surprised when management finds a way to expect more work from you.
