The millennial generation is taking control over how they work and how they live. The group, currently about 18 to 33 years old, is adopting technology that is disrupting old structures and writing the playbook on how to take advantage of technological change.In their home lives, millennials are daring to cast off conventional structures like mortgages, houses and cars. They're having an impact on Seattle where those on the leading edge of change congregate to live and work. Just like the baby boomers before them – whose generational size they rival – millennials are reshaping the culture. Matching Creativity In Seattle, creative and skilled millennials have a lot of power. Technology companies seek them out and pay them well. Developers build for them. At the Microsoft campus in Redmond, spaces have opened to suit their needs.

“It’s one of the central requirements or desires of the millennial generation to not be told how to do your work. Not being told where to do your work; not being told when to do your work,” said Chris Owens, general manager of worldwide real estate at Microsoft. “So we’ve tried to create a lot more choices in how they can do their work.” More choice is now possible because the infrastructure of work is changing. Data storage in the cloud allows older companies and new enterprises to lighten their load, shedding rooms full of servers or never acquiring them in the first place. This grants workers a new level of mobility and it means young enterprises can concentrate on building the company, not the infrastructure: A little startup money goes much further. “I often tell people that I would give anything to be 20 years younger and just coming out of college and being an entrepreneur again,” said James Maiocco, a director at Microsoft Ventures. “It’s a very, very different market.” ‘Culture Of Curiosity’

More mobility in work opens up the possibilities for how to work and with whom. Maiocco, for instance, is not spending all his time on a corporate campus. He’s set up shop in the South Lake Union area of Seattle, at a co-working space called WeWork. Co-working spaces have existed for years, but WeWork is distinctive because it serves creative people who want to meet the people who can help them get going. It offers access to investors like Maiocco and an array of services entrepreneurs need. The large firms these entrepreneurs interact with come out ahead too. “I sat down with four startups yesterday, gave them some feedback and also learned some great things about some markets that I didn’t know about,” Maiocco said.

WeWork is an idea that has spread from New York to centers across the country. Seattle’s WeWork opened several months ago, with a capacity of 800. “This is designed to be flexible in so many ways,” said Gina Phillips, WeWork’s city lead in Seattle. Rent is month to month, so people can rapidly move from single desks to bigger spaces, starting small and growing fast. Membership here automatically gives workers a home base in any city where there’s a WeWork, including access to meeting rooms. There are kitchens and meeting rooms, local beer and citrus water. A lot of the people working here are millennials, including Eileen Namanny, a senior project manager at a Texas marketing company. She and a colleague were among the first in the door when WeWork opened earlier this year.

“It’s still pretty exciting. Everyone you meet, you’re just in awe while they’re talking about what they do,” Namanny said. During an interview a bald eagle flew by her window, and Namanny’s excitement brought people to her cubicle from work areas nearby. Elsewhere, workers clustered around a computer screen as a just-finished project was shown. People from different companies were sharing the moment together. And it's not that the workers are young, because many of them are not. Mark Relph is mid-career, recently left Microsoft seeking change, and decided to pay for an office at WeWork instead of staying at home alone. “Everyone has Internet access, everyone has a desk, but at some point you want to be around other people,” Relph said. Maiocco said there is a particular quality to the people working in this new way.