Gen Z Misunderstood

“Gen Z doesn’t want to work. They don’t want to do their jobs. They are so entitled!”

I’ve been hearing some version of that with increasing frequency lately.

When I hear that, my attention and curiosity is drawn more to the complainer than the complained about.

First off, I think every generation is annoyed with the generation(s) that come after them. Shaking your fist and saying “kids these days” is almost a parody of itself at this point.

Also, I wonder how much of this “entitlement” is actually reasonable? How much is reasonable to ask from an employee?  What does “hard work” look like in an age of AI? How should we draw the boundaries around our work life to take care of ourselves?

Maybe we wish we could have said the things they are saying now to our managers 15 or 20 years ago - but we felt we couldn’t?

Of course “what is reasonable?” almost always depends. It depends on the company, the situation, and the goals of the people involved. Jobs are after all a transaction - employees agree to sell their time to their company for a certain wage. That deal continues to make sense until it doesn’t - for either party.

For employers - maybe they want to look harder to find “better” workers? For employees, maybe they want to look harder to find a place that better fits their needs? And of course for each party - there are trade offs for whichever path they take.

And this is where I turn back to the complainers. What is your job? Are you doing your job?

Your job is to teach the people you work with about the tradeoffs inherent in the decisions they make around their work.

So that means - if you’ve got a Gen Z employee who is feeling entitled, refusing to do work or accept feedback - it’s your job to say “this is how we do work at this company” rather than avoid that confrontation. It's not easy, but it's actually a disservice if you don’t teach them these lessons now. Maybe they'll go somewhere else and meet that harsh reality there, having lost valuable time at your company? Maybe they'll stagnate and wonder why they are not progressing? Or worse what if they are first on the chopping block when layoffs come?

And as a leader - it is incumbent on you to communicate upwards the tradeoffs the company is making by having certain expectations of its people. Are people going to burn out? Are they going to quit? What is the cost of the turnover the company will face for a given level of expectation? What is the company willing to put up with to maintain a given set of norms - in the face of broader workplace and cultural trends that call into question older ideas of “hard work.”

I don’t have strong opinions about whether Gen Z is lazy or entitled. Maybe they are? It doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether the people ahead of them teach them what it means to be successful employees.

The leaders that are willing to invest in their young employees will thrive.

The ones who stick to complaining are going to have a rough time.