Who wants to follow corporate culture that doesn't make sense or prioritize work over well-being? Not being exploited doesn't feel age related to me.
We're told from a young age that if you get educated and work hard you will be successful. You will be able to buy a house.
So, Gen Z gets a degree and is released into the hellscape that is the current state of American society. 40+ hour work weeks that are incredibly stressful, with bosses and companies who do not care about you at all. Rent, health care, child care, student loans - impossible to afford all these things on their low salaries, and when the business they work for is probably making as much profit in the history of the company, they see it as extremely unfair.
Vacation days? Time off? Barely any, deal with it. Getting called in on your day off? Part of the job.
And the worst part is all around them they hear boomers and older people tell them that this is normal. "Oh you're just weak and complaining. I had it worse in my day. You have an iPhone, Netflix, and Starbucks, you're living in luxury!"
Gen Z looks around and says - wait, is this really it? Is this what I've been preparing for my entire childhood? To just be miserable all week and have 2 measly days off that is barely enough time to do all the non-work stuff that needs doing like cleaning, bills, shopping? I see my coworkers 100x more than my family and friends. I get 2 weeks of vacation EVERY YEAR. I can barely afford to share an apartment let alone buy a house.
And I'm supposed to do this for 40 more years??? This is Life?
Fuck that
Oh, and to top it all off, they're inheriting the mess that is climate change.
Yeah, you won't have it easy in other industries that have plateaued or shrunk over the years due to technological shifts, but social mobility towards a very acceptable lifestyle is still plenty possible in the US.
For example:
I have a computer science degree and I am far from bad off but I am one serious medical illness away from having to blow my retirement fund on medical bills or lose my house. And I pay $14k a year for that shitty medical insurance.
Coding for 20 years, 12 since my college degree... still no Google job.
And for the privilege of being in the top 10% I get to work 70+ hours a week and haven't taken a vacation where I haven't been called by my boss... ever... not even my honey moon.
And I'm lucky, most of the people I know don't own a house or have a retirement fund or safety net.
My father is in his 70s, has millions in savings but medical bills for his cancer will eat through almost all of that before he passes.
I'm pretty sure the American dream was not to rent for the rest of your life, work 60+ hours a week, retire at 80, never take vacation, be called by your boss all hours of the day, and leave nothing to your kids because your entire life savings got wiped out in your last 5 years of life by medical expenses.
And that is the life of an upper middle class family! 75% of the country has it worse.
And that is buying a house 7 years ago. No way in hell could I do that today.. my house is now "worth" $750k... I paid half that 7 years ago but my pay is barely higher than it was then so no way in hell I could afford it now. When I bought $750k would have been a literal mansion.
As for work? Work is work. That's why people look forward to retirement. In an old Calvin and Hobbes Calvin says "It isn't work if nobody is making you do it." On the other hand, just about anything becomes unpleasant if someone is making you do it and making you do it their way.
When i told i was on a month-long vacation, the question was "oh, you're on sabbatical or in-bewteen jobs?". I just have 10 weeks a year plus two weeks of training of my choosing. It was a bit more than the bare minimum, but not having at least 7 weeks/year would be really harsh.
There is also a problem with inversion of cost. “Things” were expensive my parents day - TV, etc. Property was cheaper, so a boomer sees an iPhone and says a person is rich, but looks at his own 3k sq ft house and thinks “nothing special”.
So this article fits with my experience of the millennials being neurotically driven to be perfect and hit every corporate expectation, and finding themselves anxious around a generation that is more self-assured and blasé towards work. The big difference is that now the other, less driven generation is younger and more current than they are.
People are finally realizing that "the hustle" is a fucking scam if you don't have enough equity in your "hustle" that you're on its Board or in the C-suite. Which is almost nobody at this point. We're finally rejecting this glorification of labor at the expense of ourselves, our society, our environment, etc.
