Gen X here. This article is bad, and the author should feel bad.
What, you don’t like smoothbrained out-of-touch takes about an entire generation based on the transparent dictate of global property holdings companies?
Old Souls in Young Bodies™ my ass. People are going low-tech to escape pervasive panopticon and the endless stream of fake fucking people and conspiracy peddlers.
Any time I read these broad-brush generation articles, I have to hold my eyes still to avoid setting my skull on fire with frictive heating.
I trust Forbes to be correct about this about as much as I trust Forbes to be correct about anything.
They’re a trash rag that exists solely to fellate capitalist shitbags.
Fuck 'em.
Even if it were accurate, it could entirely be explained by socioeconomic or demographic reasons — e.g. the majority of Gen-Z workers:
- live with their parents or room mates, thus no peace and quiet when WFH.
- are too poor to afford food, thus depend on the free coffee, cereal, and fruit to make ends meat.
- sample size is smaller, with most not working in roles where WFH is even an option (or is viewed negatively by superiors)
- the oldest of Gen-Z are still in their 20’s, and perhaps at the age where the desire to socialise in person is strongest.
Basically, the oligarch capitalist mouthpiece is throwing shit at the walls to see what sticks, because commercial real estate is fuck.
the oldest of Gen-Z are still in their 20’s, and perhaps at the age where the desire to socialise in person is strongest.
I mean, I’d argue you yourself are guilty of what we’re accusing the article of doing here.
It’s not that older people don’t want to socialize in person with each other anymore, it’s more that after graduating high school, you’re separated from your high school friends by where you go to college, then after college, you’re further separated by where you are able to get a job, meaning “adults” don’t really have as many choices about “socializing in person” simply because every friend of theirs has been taken far, far away from them based on economic circumstances.
Source: In my 40’s and my friend group has been splintered all over the planet since I was in my mid-twenties. Kind of lead to having to be okay with keeping in touch over the internet.
We can stop attributing such things as a “choice.” Adults want just as much in-person socializing time with their friends and family, often they just simply don’t have access to it. *shrugs
See also: Death of the “Third Place.”
The top three ways people feel engaged at work are:
- Supportive coworkers
- A fun work environment
- Recognition (for Gen Z and Millennials especially).
The fuck?! Is this the shit C-execs jack off to? It’s tripe like this that gets us pizza parties instead of realistic compensation.
Having been paid very good, and today less good due to a career change. I’ll happily tell you payment gave absolutely zero impact on feeling engaged at work. If the job sucks, it’ll suck with good pay as well.
Sure, it might be easier to push through. But it will not make it more engaging. Co workers and a supporting environment sure will though.
Not to say I don’t want compensation to be higher across the board, but we should have both.
Yeah but if pay is good and but work sucks I can still focus on it and grind through the day. If pay is bad im always distracted by all the resumes im sending out.
Whoever wrote that article couldn’t be more out of touch with reality. That kind of writing may impress their corporate managers but the rest of us see right through that bullshit for what it is, which is bullshit.
Also, fuck corporate speak. Every time I see a job ad or a recruiter posting that reads like that, it’s an immediate pass.
As a Gen X I welcome our Gen Z overlords. I am looking forward to these bright minded individuals to creating the kind of retirement I always dreamed of.
Trying to understand why your optimism made me feel pessimistic.
Probably because X won’t be allowed to retire until the retirement homes . . uhhh, have room . . ?
The majority of 65+ people aren’t going to be able to “retire” in another 10-20 years. The entire premise of retirement funds and pensions is that the planet is not on fire and ecosystems aren’t collapsing… That is to say that inflation is stable and predictable, and younger generations are employable; paying back into the system.
Go to any retirement calculator and change the annual inflation rate from the 2-4% default (historic reality) to 6-7+% (reality with climate change). For the majority, that will mean the difference between being wealthy into their 90’s, and being broke in their 70’s. Gen X is going to be the first generation to realise the retirement savings they were told would be adequate, is wholly insufficient. Hopefully N2O suicide booths are an option.
We need to scream this from rooftops because zero fabrication is present in your comment.
It don’t matter how much you save if you are physically or mentally unable to work. Youd be surprised how many regular folk don’t really make it to 65.
Brother, you ain’t kidding. All hail my Zoomer overlords!
Its so rediculous because obviously with something like this you want it to be delivery.
Exactly
It makes some sense, TBH. I think we all forget what it’s like to start your first office job and have no context around working for real. You pick up a lot of random tribal knowledge from being surrounded by people who have worked for years. And Gen z doesn’t get that and must notice it missing.
Also, they’re the age where you still go out and get wasted with coworkers after work. They don’t have kids to get back to.
Still, once they’ve been at it a few years, i’m sure the novelty will taper off.
Gen z doesn’t get that and must notice it missing.
Can’t miss what you don’t know. And tribal knowledge getting passed around isn’t represented in movies or TV if at all, so where would they learn about what they don’t know to ask about?
What does work is having chat and email to document the tribal knowledge and pass that around.
A good remote job still has communication and ways to bounce ideas off each other. That’s not every company but they certainly exist.
Maybe some types. I never went out with co-workers. During that time I would meet up with my actual friends after work. I have like many people I have worked with but ultimately we are just acquaintances.
Seems like a steaming pile of conjecture
Remote learning has had a devastating effect on education. Gen Z’s time in college and high school was royally fucked by the pandemic. It’s no wonder why they would be less interested in remote work, not because they’re “old souls.”
It’s more likely we’re too young to have enough leverage at job negotiations to be able to demand WFH
There is absolutely stuff lost in pure WFH.
People of all ages and roles don’t ask the actually important “lack of knowledge” anymore in important meetings, IMO due to a fear of it being recorded and used against them.
Not to mention the ease of turning around and explaining something to someone, or overhearing a discussion and adding an expert opinion.
That said, WFH is absolutely the best way forward. We just need to determine how to regain the in-person off the cuff stuff lost in WFH.
I think the biggest thing is teams are not colocated anymore. If your going to be having folks remote one way or the other that eliminates any benefit wfo had. If not that then you get that the benefits are something that is sporadic and limited whereas wfh benefits are constant and every single day (save commuting time, save commutings money, healthier and less expensive food, see your family and/or pets, take a meaningful lunch time that actually refreshes you)
Understand that I’m absolutely on the side of WFH and I fully understand the benefits of it.
But to describe the loss of WFO knowledge as sporadic is just Trumpian levels of lying.
Edit: it would be nice to find a way to regain that which was lost without dropping WFH, since losing WFH isn’t a thing.
Im not sure you lose the WFO knowledge though. It just does not come up quite as easily. I actually find WFH results in more specific one on ones where you have to say to someone. I need to understand X, wereas in WFO it was like you just announce something is wierd or what up with X and there is an impromtu back and forth that gets the knowledge transfered. When I say its sporadic. I mean the occasions where it occurs is sporadic. So you can go days or weeks without some sort of tidbit being passed on so for all those days in office it offered no real benefit, whereas you always get the WFH benefits any time you do it.
This news source shoild be banned like when was the last time Forbes published something that wasnt ravenous propaganda?
Gen Z refusing to telework is something I didn’t expect but understand.
Yeah. How?
I’m curious on your opinion, because it feels like this article is fairly light on data supporting the assertion. (This is genuine interest, I’m not here to start an argument.)
It at least feels like another corporate “we’re going to spin the data the way we want it” kind of situation, where they’re making leaps to the conclusions they want based on data that may not support that.
It’s Forbes.
Right, which is a big part of why I feel the way I do about it, but I’m at least trying to engage with the OP here.
Fair enough
It is. Don’t forget younger people have less leverage in job negotiations. I’mbfine with working in person because I have no relevant job experience and need to take whatever wages and working conditions I can get to score a job that’s not minimum wage trash
Gen Z dealt with the horrors of online school. It’s understandable if they prefer not having ptsd teleworking, alone, and depressed like in 2020.
I’m further curious about this, because I completed a collegiate degree during COVID and the remote aspect made it one of the best school experiences of my life. Arguably, I am a millennial, and I had previously dropped out of school twice due to a combination of doing poorly in school because I was working so much, and not really making enough money to keep going without incurring massive debt to achieve it. COVID was the first time for me where everything came together well enough for me to be able to work, go to school, and not be at the mercy of an overburdened personal schedule to achieve it, because of how much time being school-from-home saved me in transportation time.
I heard about some online school horror stories for like… elementary school kids. You know, when teachers didn’t understand that not all computers could do the fancy Zoom backgrounds and stuff, and gave some kids their first taste of what it feels like to be a have-not among a group of haves. A lot of crying and wondering why they couldn’t do something other kids could do, because the old teacher who wasn’t familiar with technology was oblivious and did something dumb in an attempt to get kids excited about online school. Sure, if this was your first school experience, it sucked.
I heard far fewer horror stories about middle-school/high-school kids, but if you’ve got some, I’m willing to hear it out (Full disclosure: I don’t have kids, so I don’t have direct experience). However, I am certainly hoping for a more detailed response than a single sentence saying they were all alone and depressed with ptsd. Because I didn’t feel disconnected from my friends, although I do live a “digital native” life and so do many of my friends simply out of necessity as adults because we became separated physically over time as our jobs took us to different places in life. COVID didn’t knock me on my ass and make me feel isolated, because US life had already forced me to adopt such things, but maybe I’m in the minority here.
I was in university during the 2020 lockdowns. I hated it. Not because the teachers were technically inept (they were not, far from it) but because sitting alone in my one bedroom apartment all day with no real social interaction is just depressing af. The mixing of work and home just weakens both for me. I cannot get as productive at home as in a dedicated work space and I also cannot get fully comfortable at home if it is a work space for me. As long as I can go to a physical work location, I will. I might work from home once in a while but not primarily. I enjoy the casual interactions with collegues far too much.
Gen Z refusing to telework
I’m not convinced that’s even true.
The study forbes referenced appears to be essentially “how to design offices for gen z”, presuming they really want to use an office.
The tips to drive virtual engagement are pretty standard management material at this point.
Would have liked to see some real evidence to “boomerang” being philosophical, that felt like a cheap misuse of the term to seem more relevant than “what kind of games should be in the break room”
They’re misinterpreting their own crappy chart. Gen Z falls between Millennials and Gen X, but somehow the author lumps them in with boomers, and then makes up a whole rationale.
You can probably explain the discrepancy completely by accounting for the people in Gen Z that probably still live with parents/roommates where WFH is impractical compared to going into the office/coworking space.
Perhaps but I for example hated working from home even when I lived in my own one bedroom apartment. I need the casual interactions with collegues that you don’t really get online and a dedicated workspace where I can get into „the zone“ and don’t get distracted that easily.
Remote worker advocates are so unbelievably short sighted it’s mind boggling. If you argue that your job can be effectively done remotely (and some can but certainly not as much as advocates claim) then it can be done by someone in developing countries for a fraction of the cost. Not done well but decades of offshoring has shown that companies don’t care how shitty things are done if they save a few bucks.
being in the office when your work can be done remotely will not make your work less offshoreable. Pretending your work can only be done in an office will not work.
