The Weekly Round-Up: What young people really want at work

And the coolest datacentre around...

Young people. Smart and enthusiastic, with bright, unlined faces and their perky, can-do attitude. How the Round-Up hates them.

This week comes fresh evidence that these so-called millennials aren't just a different generation to the rest of us, but are also from a completely different planet, especially when it comes to ideas about the working day.

While most of us choose a job based on factors such as salary, distance from the office to the nearest pub selling real ale and quality of the stationery cupboard, these smart young things have an utterly different set of criteria.

Working hard or hardly working? Two out of three students surveyed plan to ask about social media usage policies during job interviewsPhoto: Tom K!/Shutterstock

According to a survey of more than 2,800 college students and young professionals in 14 countries, by Cisco, one in three college students and young employees under the age of 30 would prioritise social media freedom, device flexibility and mobility over salary in accepting a job offer.

Yes, that's right. Instead of worrying about whether that first job can actually provide them with enough money to eat, it seems they're more concerned about whether they can get on Facebook and Twitter.

According to the survey, more than two out of five college students and young employees (45 per cent) said they would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access and mobility over a higher-paying job with less flexibility.

Over half of college students globally would turn down a job with a company that banned staff access to social media, or would find a way around the policy (the scamps). Two out of three plan to ask about social media usage policies during job interviews.

The research also found that half of students would rather lose their wallet or purse than their smartphone or mobile device. The Round-Up reckons that's probably because they've got nothing in their wallets anyway.

A majority of college students globally - seven of every 10 - believe they should be allowed to use company-issued devices for personal and business use, and four out of five want to choose their own kit.

Of course, some bosses may well grit their teeth and put up with these smug young twenty-somethings asking all sorts of obnoxious questions about whether they can tweet in the office, because all companies are desperate to get a bit of that magic millennial pixie dust sprinkled over their operations.

But the Round-Up wonders whether students' enthusiasm for BYO device and permanent access to social media may slide somewhat when it meets the real-world needs such as paying the rent...

Time to chill out

As every wise techie knows, when life in the office is becoming unbearable, it's always good to find an excuse to head off to the datacentre. Sometimes this means just nipping down to the basement and standing among the servers to escape office politics for a while, but if you're lucky it might mean a trip across town.

But what if your datacentre was on the edge of the arctic circle? Cool indeed, for several reasons.

This week silicon.com took a photo tour around a datacentre campus in Keflavik, Iceland - just outside the Arctic Circle.

Iceland's chilly climate naturally cools the datacentre's servers while the country's abundant supply of geothermal and hydroelectric energy provides a renewable power supply to the facility.