The generation gap
Some notes on the narrative around Gen Z as a workforce.
Willingly, or unwillingly, I am classified as a Gen Z. Like many others, most times I refuse to accept this tag, but with time, like others, I have given up this fight.
One of the more interesting commentaries on Gen Z as a generation is the narrative on their attitude at the workplace. Now is the first time the world is seeing Gen Z entering and making up the workforce, and they come with their own quirks, and generation defining characteristics. The older generations are clashing with Gen Z at the workplace. And it is giving rise to some interesting discourse on Gen Z’s attitude towards work. As with most debates, it's heavily polarised where either they're poor workers who want 'balance' or hailed as heroes for pushing against an unreasonable work culture. Truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle.
I’ve been working for a year and a half now. I have been part of some of this discourse and it has always intrigued me. Both, the older generation’s disdain for Gen Z, and Gen Z’s disdain of the workplace. So I jotted down some of my thoughts, and observations down.
Eight points on Gen Z and the workplace
Every generation thinks the generations after them are bad, in almost all aspects. so, it's fair to make that adjustment in the narrative from the generations above.
I think it is beneficial for all of us that narratives around work culture are being challenged. some practices will sustain the criticism, and others, rightly so, will collapse. we need this dialectic for the optimum system to emerge.
It is true that Gen Z has developed the capacity to think of themselves as beyond work. Ironically, all the generations above have fought hard to give us this future. It's a good byproduct of progress - where humans have a better capability to actualise themselves. Maybe it is jealousy, or a normative understanding of the world, where the generations above cannot fathom how Gen Z treat work and its important in their life, and it is likely that Gen Zs rejection of work as the center of their life is hard for older people to digest.
It is also true that we grew up with technology (proxy for things to be and come easy to us). It is true that we have grown up as people for whom things have been easy. Searching for work, and doing work - both are easier for us than generations above. e.g.: as a lawyer, I now have the benefit of internet, access to case laws on fingertips, research tools, organisation tools that generations above did not have. They had to work twice as hard for everything. And it may also be true that a necessary consequence of this upbringing - Gen Z assumes that most things will be easy, and not difficult. That their choices and preferences will be respected. And perhaps this is the single biggest tension point between generations.
I do not think that Gen Z is less hardworking, or more stupid than generations above. at worst, they're equal to those above. But I firmly believe this generation has more drive and imagination due to the sheer luck of being born in the most advanced times in history.
Like every generation Gen Z has bad workers and great workers. I think there is an oversized tendency to use the non-normative instances (oversimplified - 'bad' instances) by Gen Z that is repurposed to comment on the work ethic of the entire generation. These 'bad' instances are - a one liner intimation of leave, or quitting on the second day because they thought the boss was toxic, or logging off early because they want to pursue other things in life. It's 'bad' because this challenges our accepted notions of work
People will always be bad workers when they're working on something they're not interested/passionate about. that's been and will always be the case. Nothing new or unique to Gen Z here. driven Gen Z folks, are as good as, if not better than all those before them. It's a simple sorting algorithm. Older generations had more 'grit' because most of them didn't have an option other than those presented to them. Today, after centuries of progress, and on the shoulder of past generations, Gen Z finally can choose the life they want to live. Gen Z’s willingness to be more moody, or flippant with what they do is not a sign of being a bad worker. It is a sign of a developing society which has been able to offset the risk. This is a win for humanity. Humanity benefits when the sorting algorithm works optimally.
Gen Z will get older and perpetuate this same narrative for the generations after them. I am sure I will think the generation after me is lazy and beyond saving. That's just the way the world works. Despite this, we progress as a civilization and that's what's important.
All in all - I think this debate is pointless (other than studying the changes in terms of an anthropological study to understand the evolution of society) and not worth the chasm it creates between generations. We all are in this together. for progress :)