A future-of-work expert said Gen Zers didn’t have the “promise of stability” at work, so they’re putting their personal lives and well-being first.
You mean they saw what happened to their parents.
I just saw Docs, nurses and staff who had pensions for 30+ years just get butchered as the new Hospital system took over. Routed it all to standard 401ks. Why put your soul into a company. They will never come through. That ship has sailed.
My only hope is people look around at the fact that one of the few ways to still get a pension is through union work, and the current unionization wave continues into something bigger, better, and greater than we’ve had in the past.
That’s one of the risks of not being unionized. My employer can’t touch my pension (not that they would want to since they all came up from the union rank and file too) because it’s all managed through our union contract and there’s no chance in hell that we ever approve a contract that gives them that kind of control.
Even that isn’t complete protection. The government can always change the rules as they go. Not to mention a complete breakdown of society wouldn’t exactly do wonders for pensions and 401k’s either.
It’s a good thing that Biden’s NLRB is the most pro-union in living memory then, isn’t it?
Edit; also, contracts are binding. If and when we enter a world in which union contracts are tossed out by authoritarian fiat, we’re in much bigger trouble than simple anti-uion policies.
I’m curious about how different Gen Z is from Millennials here, because everyone in my age range that I know seems to share this sentiment with them?
I’m a millennial too, and I see some of this but it only seems to be some industries. I’m a programmer and my coworkers are like 90% about “the grindset”, but people I meet who are in health and wellness are 90% the other way. I also feel like cities and large metros tend to be more focused on work, and less urban areas are more focused on living.
I would say a lot of millenials are this way too, and it’s not fair to say it’s just a gem z thing, but it’s far from the majority… At least around me. There seem to at least be pockets of it, but overall I feel like it’s closer to 20%.
With gen z, I feel like the people are way more heavily skewed the other way. I’ve had gen z general contractors and such just cut the bullshit, tell it like it is, and show that they value ME more than THEIR BOSS. It seems much more universal in their generation.
But that’s just my experience. I dunno which is more universal.
Gen x here and we seen it coming as well but no options for us at the time. I don’t blame any of you. Corporate greed and the great 401k lie is bullshit. They want us to work till we’re dead. Screw them.
Can’t speak for OP, but I don’t look at the 401k as a stable retirement vehicle. It’s a vehicle to pump “dumb money” (read: casino chips) into the stock market. If the stock market downturns just before you retire, if the firm managing your 401k makes bad investments, if another 2008-style real estate collapse happens, your retirement fund suddenly has less money in it than you hoped, so you’re gonna have to work longer.
The 401k replaced the pension. It used to be that a company would pay for your retirement, now you pay for your own by being forced to pay into the stock market, and it doesn’t go nearly as far as the pensions used to. People are working well into their 60s or older, because 401k’s often don’t pay out enough to live on. It’s another way that companies have figured out to avoid having to pay their employees while pumping up the value of the stock market at the same time.
In the late 80s and early 90s, all the badly managed companies went bankrupt and convinced business friendly judges to delete pensions, too expensive, you see. This left a lot of boomers and their parents with nothing all of a sudden.
The 401k problem is that you are now responsible for managing things and all the liability that brings. Pensions were managed by professionals.
As a millennial: I think it’s the dichotomy between “I play the game even though I hate it because it genuinely feels like the only viable option to have a remotely satisfying life” and “fuck the game”.
As an older Gen Z I concur. Even those of us who aren’t completely fucked are extremely anti-corporate with little loyalty to any job. There’s a guy named Jordan Howlett who I feel sums up the average Gen Z attitude towards all the bullshit in the world really well.
Don’t get me wrong I still work hard and try to do well at my job, but the second I hit my time for the day I’m gone. Work is strictly transactional. No one expects their employer to give them money for time they didn’t work, so I ain’t about to give my employer time for money they didn’t give me. They’ll also fire my ass the second they need a stock bump, so I’ll be damned if I’m gonna stick around if I find something better.
Actually the biggest difference I’ve seen isn’t in effort but ability. I work with everyone from Boomers to Gen Z and by far my Gen Z coworkers have the hardest time with being given a general task and completing it without detailed instructions. Even with detailed instructions, I often have to repeat the instructions due to mistakes and check my younger colleagues’ work more closely.
I think this is, in part, because Gen Z grew up with things that just worked or that they needed to go to a third party to fix if there were issues. Boomers fixed their own cars and did a lot of DIY home repair, Gen X and Millenials both learned to navigate computers and the internet before there were any real instructional guides or helpful UIs. Shit, we used to program games on our calculators for fun. I think many in Gen Z just never had that because many of those DIY elements require proprietary tools now. A smartphone just works and is designed to be so intuitive a baby can figure it out. It’s not their fault, but it does mean that some critical thinking skills are absent because they’re used to outsourcing the solutions to those problems.
But, again, I have never perceived that they’re not hard workers. On the contrary, I’d argue my Gen Z coworkers, when they’re on their game, are way more efficient than everyone else and definitely work smarter, not harder, which I try to learn from them.
I manage teams at a university. Gen Z types tend to be very motivated but won’t easily do useless busy work just cuz you think they should. You need to motivate them. That’s the boss’ job, though.
The real problem was the previous generations who happily devoted themselves to their bosses getting richer.
That’s pretty true of every generation. If you give anyone a seemingly boring task with no explanation why it matters, they’re going to suck at it. What I’m saying is I can’t give my Gen Z coworkers an open ended task without detailed instructions, even when I explain why it’s important.
Where are they living while ‘living’? Costs money to live…
I’m immediately click bait suspicious of any reporting that’s generation says this.