CIOs already struggling to keep Boomers, GenXers and millennials happily productive in their organizations could soon have a new challenge on their hands: Managing a tech workforce in the age of the "gig economy."
Increasingly, workers 35 and under are indicating that they prefer to work as independents on a project-by-project basis. "Millennials are adopting [freelancing] at a faster rate than what we've seen from previous generations," says John Reed, senior executive director at Robert Half Technology. And that's a deliberate choice rather than a consequence of a layoff or other negative event. "Millennials are actually saying, 'I'm going to make this transition. I want that lifestyle,'" Reed says.